The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,414 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Badlands
Lowest review score: 0 A Life Less Ordinary
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,571 out of 10414
  2. Mixed: 3,736 out of 10414
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10414
10414 movie reviews
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  1. The Mystic Masseur
    The Mystic Masseur shows more signs of life than "Cotton Mary," but it's still a producer's movie: attractively mounted, dramatically inert.
  2. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
    Funny and endearing.
  3. ABC Africa
    Beyond giving a human face to Uganda's crises, Kiarostami attempts to capture the actual place, a swirl of contradictions as vibrant and beautiful as it is troubled.
  4. Hollywood Ending
    The best thing about the movie is its premise: It's a good idea, taken from before Allen's recent losing streak, but it's stretched too thin for its own good.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Spider-Man
    Spider-Man brings the beloved comic-book character to the screen with both angst and action undamaged by the move.
  6. Spiral
    Higuchinsky turns the screen into another giant vortex, drawing the characters and the audience deeper into a dark, captivating spell.
  7. Circuit
    As slick and attractive as its cast. But the movie gets away from Shafer.
  8. Sade
    In keeping with his concept that the mind and the body are inseparable, Sade builds to an extraordinarily powerful centerpiece when the two come together, fusing fear and desire, pleasure and pain, innocence and enlightenment.
  9. Sex with Strangers
    The film is ostensibly about sex and swinging, but in depicting the complex boundaries of the sexual fringe, it ends up saying a lot about the joys and frustrations of maintaining any relationship.
  10. Dogtown and Z-Boys
    So much fun that its considerable worth as history and sociology seems almost incidental.
  11. Life or Something Like It
    A banal message movie.
  12. Jason X
    Feels like it was written as a fairly straight horror/sci-fi movie, then script-doctored by a comedy writer intent on satirizing the original script. As a result, the film's intentional and unintentional laughs mingle so freely that it becomes difficult to differentiate between the two.
  13. Rain
    Rain lays so much portent on every scene that it becomes ungenerous and morally forbidding, as if each bummed cigarette or leisurely cocktail will lead the family that much closer to oblivion. In this case, the punishment is far greater than the crime.
  14. The Salton Sea
    A grimy mess set among L.A.'s speed-abusing "tweakers," Salton has neither the substance to justify first-time feature director D.J. Caruso's pretentious flourishes, nor the skill to make those flourishes work on their own terms.
  15. Some Body
    At times approaches the flavor and shapelessness of real life.
  16. Facing the Music
    Uncompromising in her art, her teaching, and her professional relations, Boyd makes for a classic tough old bird of a character.
  17. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
    Stays unrelentingly pleasant, but affability is a poor substitute for laughs or chemistry.
  18. Murderous Maids
    Doesn't shy away from the social or psychological explanations of the Le Mans murders, but never comes down on one side or another.
  19. Murder by Numbers
    A moralizing thriller so listless that it plays out like a game of mouse and mouse.
  20. Girls Can't Swim
    "Adolesence can kill you," Birot has said in an interview. In a film that leaves the "you" intentionally vague, moment after moment she shows how.
  21. Enigma
    Achieves a dullness that defies its pedigree and its story's potential.
  22. The Scorpion King
    Prototypical summer-movie fare, designed to be consumed, enjoyed, and forgotten all at once.
  23. World Traveler
    A hopelessly stolid and distant evocation of Bob Rafelson's "Five Easy Pieces."
  24. Nine Queens
    Bielinsky's debut is a fine con picture, but at its best, it achieves even more, presenting the profession as a lifestyle with almost existential ramifications.
  25. Chelsea Walls
    Works equally poorly as a tourist brochure and as a drama.
  26. The Triumph of Love
    Shaw and Kingsley both create crisp, comic performances, but Sorvino remains a problem throughout. Her physical transformation falls short of the "Boys Don't Cry" standard, to put it mildly.
  27. Mule Skinner Blues
    Comes uncomfortably close to mocking these unlikely filmmakers, raising questions about its director's intentions and his respect for the subjects' humanity.
  28. The Cat's Meow
    Faithfully recreates a bygone era of larger-than-life filmmakers and stars.
  29. Human Nature
    Nature lacks a little of Malkovich's freshness, but that's just about all it lacks.
  30. Frailty
    When the twists arrive, they feel like much of the film: creepy and cliché-free, but still terribly wrong.
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