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. Premature
    Watching Bill Murray go through the same scenario over and over is one thing. Experiencing the same feeble dick jokes over and over is another.
  2. Jingle All the Way
    If there is a bottom of the Hollywood barrel, Jingle All The Way has been gleaned from the filth upon which that bottom rests.
  3. The Fourth Kind
    Terminally awkward in the way it meshes fake real footage with faker fake footage. It isn’t required to be convincing as fact, but it doesn’t convince as fiction, either.
  4. Stolen
    Stolen is mildly engaging, inasmuch as it poses a riddle and makes the audience wait for the answer, in the classic mystery mode.
  5. Amityville II: The Possession
    Director Damiano Damiani opts for an approach that's simultaneously more shameless, tasteless, and entertaining than the original.
  6. Baggage Claim
    Without a coherent lead performance, all Baggage Claim has left are its generic rom-com plot — which has flight-attendant Patton jetting around the country to meet the perfect man in time for her younger sister’s wedding — and profoundly shoddy production values.
  7. Testosterone
    It might as well be retitled "Waiting For Antonio," since Sabato's appearances bookend miles of convoluted nonsense. For the prurient, that's probably too much to endure.
  8. Cheaper by the Dozen 2
    In its absolute commitment to inoffensive, fun-for-the-whole-family entertainment, it's as extreme in its own way as hardcore pornography.
  9. The Possession of Michael King
    After an efficient start, The Possession Of Michael King drags, weighing itself down with genre conventions the filmmakers don’t seem to understand or care about.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Lake Placid
    It doesn't help that, at 80 or so minutes, it feels like there's a reel missing—you know, the one with the finale that's even slightly more pulse-pounding than any of the four or five other scenes in which the big, impressive-looking monster attacks the heroes as their legs dangle in the water.
  11. Texas Chainsaw Massacre
    This time around, Leatherface is just a run-of-the-mill bogeyman, slaughtering a new generation of lambs for the sins of our age. It’s a sequel as pretentious as its chainsaw fodder: an act of genre gentrification.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Bringing Up Bobby
    Bringing Up Bobby centers around a mugging performance by Jovovich, who can't ground the film's attempts to tie together sentiments from "Paper Moon" and "Miss Saigon."
  13. Ninja Assassin
    How is an action movie that aims for kinetic thrills supposed to develop any forward momentum when it spends so much time looking back?
  14. My All American
    Move over, "Rudy." Hit the showers, "Brian’s Song." There’s a new tearjerking true story of gridiron triumph, one that combines those male-weepie favorites in a way no focus group could possibly resist.
  15. Yakuza Princess
    At 112 minutes, this film is way too long for the amount of story contained within—which, again, would be a forgivable offense, had Amorim filled the extra time with something entertaining. Instead, all we get is inertia, as we wait with the main character for her fate to reveal itself.
  16. Devil's Due
    While it’s generally above-average for this sorry genre, it’s so derivative, in both style and narrative, that there’s still an overwhelming sense of plodding inevitability to the whole affair.
  17. Chelsea Walls
    Works equally poorly as a tourist brochure and as a drama.
  18. Basic
    For twists to work, viewers have to feel like they're being led along, not jerked around, and James Vanderbilt's script eventually devolves into little more than a series of jerks, stopping short only of introducing evil twins and alien interlopers.
  19. ATM
    No, the indie horror movie ATM is not about a psychotic automated teller that charges the steepest of convenience fees - your life! - but it isn't much smarter than that premise, either.
  20. Sexual Chronicles of a French Family
    It's a celebration of libertine sexuality - nothing more, nothing less - and almost remarkably untroubled by any of the dramatic issues it raises. Much of its 79 minutes is spent marveling over how skillfully the actors simulate the real thing.
  21. Kings
    In its highly combustable, confusing, angry environment, where everyone from parents to rioters to cops is just making it up as they go along, the only thing that seems to matter are the underlying drives, whether it’s goodheartedness or resentment.
  22. Uglies
    All of Uglies feels like a rush job where its creators had the instruction manual but lost the proper parts.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Excess Baggage
    Although Excess Baggage is not actually unwatchable, this is mostly due to Del Toro's dazed charisma and an inspired bit of weirdness by Christopher Walken as Silverstone's dangerous uncle.
  24. Dead Silence
    Again coaxing the worst imaginable performances out of his actors (see also: Cary Elwes and Danny Glover in "Saw"), Wan casts charisma-free unknown Ryan Kwanten as a young married man whose small-town past catches up to him.
  25. Hellions
    Plenty of striking, clever, effective movies have been made simply by re-arranging and re-calibrating familiar genre elements. Hellions might have been one of these, if it was predicated on something slightly less shallow than “kids in masks + chanting + blood = scary.”
  26. Big Momma's House 2
    There's something depressing about seeing the low-energy, family-friendly Lawrence sleepwalk through the film's sappy plot points.
  27. 10,000 BC
    "The Day After Tomorrow" was kind of stupidly fun, and 10,000 B.C. might be too, if it weren't so stupidly dull.
  28. Zoolander 2
    It’s a bizarre and pointless spectacle, but not an unamusing one. Characters like Alexanya and Atari feel very much like try-outs for Saturday Night Live characters — not surprising, given that at least four of the cast members have worked on that show.
  29. Valentine's Day
    Explores love in all its myriad forms, from the sickeningly sappy to the cornball to the groaningly precious and obnoxiously cute.
  30. The Year That Trembled
    Movies have the ability to make history come alive, but this dull period soap opera feels more like history that's already been embalmed.
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