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. Love Happens
    The film contains almost no rough edges; thanks to decades of previous use, just about every shot and sequence is as polished as a riverbed stone.
  2. Catch That Kid
    The film combines dour heroes with a drab look, and the string of "Don't try this at home"-style stunts should underwhelm even viewers too young for James Bond or XXX.
  3. The Space Between Us
    Chelsom applies the middle-school-dance sentimentality with a ladle, leaning heavily on the tinkle of an overbearing score and a soundtrack of generic, cost-efficient pop cues.
  4. RV
    Apart from a funny turn by "Arrested Development's" Will Arnett as Williams' evil boss, nobody appears to be having a good time. And the feeling is infectious.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Skinwalkers
    While it isn't particularly scary or suspenseful, it's fun and surprisingly breezy compared with its big-budget brethren.
  6. The Last Song
    Offers a taming-of-the-shrew scenario so relentlessly bland and old-fashioned it makes "Dear John," the Sparks adaptation from two months ago, look like "Last Tango In Paris."
  7. Rites of Spring
    Rites Of Spring does have a real "no idea what's going to happen next" quality, which is rare. Then again, that's because the movie feels haphazard and unfinished: more weed than plant.
  8. Amnesiac
    The film uses minimal locations, minimal cast, and minimal blood for a story that, in another director’s hands, could play like Grand Guignol. But this sense of restraint — which, combined with some stylish choices on Polish’s part, can be quite elegant — is also what makes it largely forgettable.
  9. Annie
    Broadway purists determined to hate Annie need not fear, because there’s plenty worth complaining about.
  10. The Amityville Horror
    The remake simply replaces the laughably dated horror tropes of the 1979 version with a commercial-slick J-horror aesthetic that's sure to look just as silly to audiences in another 15 years.
  11. Superhero Movie
    Undiscriminating comedy fans hungering for the High School High of superhero parodies need look no further.
  12. P.S. Your Cat Is Dead!
    Guttenberg adapts James Kirkwood Jr.'s humanist black comedy -- and drains all the recognizable humanity out of it, turning it into a morose, unlikable reflection of its sad-sack lead character.
  13. Uptown Girls
    Uptown Girls refuses to make Fanning likable, which speaks to a certain misplaced integrity, and tends to throw a wrench in the film's halfhearted attempts at formula.
  14. Impostor
    It essentially uses the setup of an early Dick short story as a bookend to one long, dull chase scene.
  15. The Ritual
    The Ritual just becomes a bad possession movie that’s not pulling off its hokey scares, rather than a bad possession movie unable to fulfill its more down-to-earth ambitions.
  16. Mindhunters
    Trashy and indefensible in most respects, Mindhunters may be a good-bad movie, but entertainment is entertainment, however it comes.
  17. Fifty Shades Darker
    It’s a female-driven fantasy, for sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not toxic. And God help the poor woman who believes it.
  18. Just Go with It
    Aniston and Sandler, however, play characters too awful to deserve anyone better than each other. But what did we do to deserve them?
  19. Trash Humpers
    With every project, he pops open the same trunkload of shtick and leaves everyone to argue over whether it’s art. It’s a win-win situation for Korine, who’s either a genius or a provocateur who’s succeeded in gaming his stuffy critics.
  20. Old Guy
    Old Guy, as is, is just a film about an old guy, free of complexity or nuance, coasting towards its formulaic conclusion.
  21. Thinner
    Thinner’s problems begin with a grotesquely unconvincing fat suit and makeup that make Burke look less like a big man battling obesity than a melting marshmallow man. The plug really should have been pulled on Thinner after the first makeup and prosthetics tests, since the bad design digs the film into a hole it never begins to shimmy its way out.
  22. Regretting You
    The best that can be said about the film is that The Fault In Our Stars director Josh Boone, well-versed with the teen weepy, sometimes approaches the schlock with a bit of self-deflating slyness—something more attuned to the audience’s eyerolls and the cast’s barely-hidden smirks than to the serious source material.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    About Cherry
    Demanding everyone accept you as you are can be a way of refusing to compromise, and the film's failure to explore this aspect of the lifestyle its portraying is almost as disappointing as moralizing would be.
  24. Dear Wendy
    Its mad rush to offer shallow takes on every Big American Issue would be offensive if it weren't so misguided. It's almost cute the way Dear Wendy thinks it knows what it's talking about and then just keeps going and going long after it's stopped making sense.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    After Earth
    Shyamalan’s sensibility may not be enough to turn After Earth into a great (or even very good) film, but it does yield interesting — and at times strikingly realized — results.
  26. Dragon Wars: D-War
    All the thought seems to have gone into the marketing, and none into the unfathomably terrible script.
  27. The Haunting in Connecticut
    As a piece of storytelling, The Haunting In Connecticut is pretty lazy. As a horror movie, it’s lazier still, bringing out every annoying shock-cut and disorienting sound-design trick of the last decade.
  28. The Out-of-Towners
    Director Sam Weisman's pushy, subtlety-free direction certainly doesn't help. Martin is still capable of making a decent film, but The Out-Of-Towners isn't it.
  29. Run the Tide
    This isn’t a terrible film, by any means. It’s a completely forgettable film, which is arguably worse—especially for Lautner, who at this point is on the verge of vanishing down the memory hole with it.
  30. Phoenix Forgotten
    First-time director Justin Barber, who cowrote the screenplay with T.S. Nowlin, builds his narrative around the Phoenix Lights, but sticks so close to formula that they might as well be called the Blair Lights.
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