The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,419 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 2.5 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: 5,574 out of 10419
  2. Mixed: 3,737 out of 10419
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10419
10419 movie reviews
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  1. My Life in Ruins
    Vardalos has brought back the tourist comedy and delivered the dumbed-down "If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" no one wanted.
  2. The Happening
    Shyamalan still has an abundance of personality and ambition, and there are scattered moments of craft throughout, but the gulf between his lofty aspirations and feeble accomplishments has seldom been wider or more chuckle-inducing.
  3. Aloft
    What’s really been withheld, in this dreary drag of a movie, is a reason to care.
  4. The Dark Tower
    It would be a waste of everyone’s time to go on about how this 95-minute movie deviates from the source. Let’s just say it turns The Dark Tower into something generic, and leave it at that.
  5. The Last Witch Hunter
    It’s a shame that The Last Witch Hunter ends up crumbling into another generic showdown of murky fantasy effects and snatched artifacts, with a final shot that is literally framed around a door to possible sequels.
  6. The Color of Time
    The better moments of Color Of Time make use of the ringer cast Franco was able to assemble, however momentarily.
  7. Sleepless
    It might not be Donald Westlake, but it does its thing: meaningless, nonstop violence and movement, enacted by a large cast of characters who are only looking out to survive into the next scene.
  8. The War with Grandpa
    There’s a pleasing kernel of genuine warmth glowing at the heart of this movie, but it’s been heavily insulated—almost buried—by juvenile silliness. One could argue that this merely echoes the family dynamic, but your tolerance for buffoonery will still need to be quite high.
  9. Dead or Alive: Final
    In Dead Or Alive: Final, Miike trades his grimly comic, sex-and-blood insignia for a self-consciously wacky conflation of Hong Kong action cinema and Japanese anime, with a little cheap science fiction tossed in for good measure.
  10. The Haunted Mansion
    It's also hard to figure out who this movie is supposed to delight: It's too scary for little kids and not nearly scary enough for anyone allowed to rent "The Ring" without getting carded.
  11. Get Hard
    Ferrell and Hart are too likable and crowd-pleasing to let the movie collapse around them. But they’re also too talented for something this wan.
  12. Law Abiding Citizen
    A flagrantly ridiculous thriller that tries to retrofit "Saw" to function as a mainstream, semi-respectable vigilante picture
  13. Ghosted
    There’s a funny notion in Chris Evans effectively playing a damsel in distress, but like everything else in Ghosted, the filmmakers have no idea how to play it.
  14. Dear Santa
    If Christmas movies can’t be good, they can usually at least be pleasant distractions. Dear Santa is neither. It’s a regrettable film, one that wasn’t ever worth the wordplay that started it.
  15. Friday the 13th
    It's almost charming in its sheer lack of ambition, but the lack of creativity in its by-the-numbers shocks is harder to excuse.
  16. Vanguard
    The move from practical stuns to a discount VFX simulacrum (no real cars appear to have been wrecked in any of these chase scenes) has not flattered Tong’s amateurish direction.
  17. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
    The charismatic Idris Elba debuts in a key role as an alcoholic priest who recruits Cage's unique services. Yet instead of elevating the franchise, Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance ends up squandering even more potential.
  18. Thunder Force
    Overall, the comedy in Thunder Force is apathetic and airless, no matter how hard McCarthy tries.
  19. Year One
    Year One isn't dreadful; it just isn't nearly as funny as it hopes to be.
  20. Motherhood
    Dieckmann fails to notice that Thurman doesn’t have the comic chops for the material--she comes off more like a self-pitying loser than a witty, put-upon everywoman.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Fireflies in the Garden
    An ending that suggests reconciliation and forgiveness isn't just unearned, it's bewildering, given the wretched behavior we've seen; it implies that the entire story was filtered through some unidentified unreliable narrator who wanted to take the higher ground while still harboring a serious grudge.
  22. The Longest Week
    Aggressively derivative though The Longest Week is, however, it’s clearly the work not of a lazy thief, but of a raw talent who’s still struggling to find his own voice. In the meantime, his impressions are pretty darn impressive.
  23. Red One
    The aggressively secular and gift-based systems of Red One are almost enough to prompt a moist-eyed holiday wish for more piously churchy seasonal entertainment.
  24. Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
    Nothing is more dangerous than a sequel to a wildly successful awful movie, because the artisans involved have to preserve the franchise, which means honoring the original formula as if it were a cure for cancer.
  25. The Ledge
    The Ledge is a sometimes-fascinating, often-aggravating chamber thriller that works best when it's doubling as an inquiry into faith.
  26. Doom
    If he (The Rock) can keep those wandering eyebrows in check, his future as an action hero appears unlimited--that is, provided he can resist taking roles in movies like this one.
  27. Mercy
    Mercy takes a more bombastic approach with more speculative technology, only to chicken out of using that bombast to do anything other than jostle the audience through a series of contrived absurdities. If this is the future of crime thrillers, everyone needs their screentime severely curtailed.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    The Smurfs 2
    The film undermines its rudimentary plot points at every turn with base humor.
  29. Alice Through the Looking Glass
    It’s briskly paced and sometimes neat to watch in reality-bending 3-D, but none of it is quite as head-spinning as it should be. The movie doesn’t dare alienate its family base with genuine trippiness; instead, it pacifies with tedious familial backstory.
  30. The Man from Toronto
    For a character-driven “mistaken identity” comedy that lives or dies based on the humorous interactions between two A-list leads, its lousy script barely constitutes life support.
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