The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
For 10,413 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: 5,571 out of 10413
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10413
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10413
10413 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser
    At an egregious 106 minutes, Joe Dirt 2 feels like a director’s cut where every single moment of footage was carefully preserved, no matter how pointless or unfunny or digressive it might be.
  2. I Am Wrath
    If the film’s casual racism—the villains are almost all some shade of not-white—feels more perfunctory than malicious, it’s because it’s just another secondhand element in the collection of bad clichés passing for a script.
  3. Department Q: A Conspiracy of Faith
    These are the kind of character- and plot-driven police procedurals designed for binging, a lot like Netflix favorites "Happy Valley" and "The Fall." Although each of the first three films tells a full, discrete story, they work best cumulatively, as the ongoing adventures of one cranky, conscientious cop.
  4. League of Gods
    It undoes itself over and over, as though struggling for the right choice of plot points. And yet, League Of Gods is also a dazzling example of the Hong Kong high artifice, in which the least important thing about a special effect is whether it looks convincing.
  5. Ace the Case
    The film is too violent and dark for kids but too juvenile and bland for grown-ups.
  6. Daguerrotype
    Daguerrotype is frustratingly easy to rationalize. It’s also about an hour too long; by the time it reaches the end credits, even the spell cast by his eerie direction and handsome widescreen compositions has worn off.
  7. Slamma Jamma
    It’s a lazy, crappy film, and perhaps even a cynical one, but its ineptitude is charming.
  8. Tout Va Bien
    Though certainly dull and didactic at times, Tout Va Bien is remarkable foremost for its sustained twilight mood of exquisite resignation, of exhausted sadness and bone-deep world-weariness.
  9. A Question of Faith
    The plot’s mechanics in tying the families together are often clumsy and contorted, in ways that are strange without being particularly interesting.
  10. Ghost Chase
    For all the difficulties facing young filmmakers attempting to make it in Hollywood, many services are designed to aid their struggle. Film schools, for example, can help young visionaries hone their technical skills and expand their knowledge of film history. But more helpful than anything, if Ghost Chase is to be believed, are the ghosts of long-dead butlers who take the form of midget extraterrestrials.
  11. Prototype
    There’s a lot to ponder in Prototype, not least in the confounding coda that suggests a note of hope for rebirth, but the film’s powers are visceral as much as (if not more so than) they are cerebral.
  12. Vampire Clay
    It’s not a great film by any means, but it is the epitome of a “Fantastic Fest movie,” meaning enjoyed best with friends and a few drinks.
  13. Hellraiser: Inferno
    The first of several low points in the series. At this point Kirsty’s out of the picture (at least temporarily), the original rules of Cenobite engagement are discarded, and Pinhead’s ultimate fate is sealed. So what’s left? You guessed it—a Gritty! Contemporary! Reboot!
  14. Hellraiser: Deader
    Hellraiser: Deader starts off okay—But that’s just Stockholm syndrome.
  15. Hellraiser: Hellworld
    As far as the Hellraiser elements go, this is the laziest yet.
  16. Hellraiser: Revelations
    Revelations completes Hellraiser’s transformation from an original and refreshingly adult concept into teens indiscriminately screwing and dying, hollowing out the soul of the franchise while functioning as a loose remake of the original.
  17. The Great Pretender
    The Great Pretender has its share of dark punchlines, but its central concern is a sympathetic one: what we see in other people and how we would like to see ourselves.
  18. Madness in the Method
    Most of the time, Mewes’ follows in the later-period footsteps of his friend Smith, steering a what-the-hell production that’s less entertaining than the two buddies just talking.
  19. Tourist Trap
    What keeps it all from becoming high camp is the film’s eerie atmosphere and unsettling childlike quality, which sucks the viewer into a nightmarish alternate reality with such plainspoken innocence that we have no choice but to accept it at face value.
  20. The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson
    The Murder Of Nicole Brown Simpson is directed like a Lifetime thriller, relying heavily on stark lighting and ominous music to create suspense. (Neither is effective.)
  21. Homewrecker
    Its clever comedic writing couldn’t quite overcome its sometimes subpar camerawork.
  22. Adoration
    The film flounders a bit in its second half, as it struggles to maintain the tension of its inciting incident. But Harduin’s performance as Gloria goes off her meds and descends into her own private world would be impressive for an actress of any age, let alone a 13-year-old.
  23. Nona: If They Soak Me, I'll Burn Them
    Donoso does put an effort into maintaining visual interest throughout this micro-budgeted character study, alternating between professionally shot, full-frame tableaux and intimate, grainy camcorder footage, accentuated with light touches of Brakhage-style experimental montage. However, it remains an undeniable—and inconvenient—fact that the most interesting aspects of If They Soak Me are all offscreen.
  24. Trump Card
    By this point, D’Souza is unconvincingly frothing on the soundtrack about how “the socialist left and the Democrats want to make us grovel” and “make us worms,” but the whole premise is, predictably, a radical, cynical misunderstanding of Orwell.
  25. The Calming
    The Calming ultimately might have benefitted from an animating tension—from something beyond its sustained mood of lovely but unvaried serenity.
  26. Midnight in Paris
    The flubbed ending is more glaring because the film is otherwise so enjoyable and relatable. It’s achingly familiar in its exploration of what seems to the seniors like a final dash toward adulthood and its accompanying freedoms.
  27. Roe v. Wade
    Loeb mostly tamped down the lunacy endemic to an obscure corner of choir-preaching moviedom, and for what? No critical mind runs the risk of mistaking this partisan broadside for innocent edutainment.
  28. Separation
    The film’s lone value may be setting up the perfect answer to that “improve a movie with one letter” challenge: Add an indefinite article to the front of its title, and you’re left with one of the great films of the new millennium—and, incidentally, a much more unnerving portrait of a marriage on the rocks.
  29. What Drives Us
    The film works better as a casual glimpse behind the curtain of big-name acts, exuding a voyeuristic appeal in the footage and anecdotes of beloved musicians opening up about their pasts. It’s breezy fun, if a little forgettable, spending 90 minutes with charismatic performers who have a knack for a good yarn.
  30. Her Socialist Smile
    Her Socialist Smile develops, in other words, a kind of ethics of the image. Gianvito is not, of course, suggesting that we should somehow give up our senses—only that, whatever the technology or medium we engage with, it is our responsibility to keep our minds from becoming what Keller called “automatic machines.”
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »