The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. The Big Short
    In the end, McKay’s edu-tainment tactics work, even if the laughs aren’t as hearty as his broader work with Ferrell. The Big Short pulls off its own oddball gambit: grabbing attention through fringe wonkiness rather than a tantalizing glimpse at bro-banker lifestyles.
  2. The Devil's Miner
    So polished that it might pass for a scripted narrative feature, but that's not a bad thing. They found a remarkable spokesman in Bolivian teenager Basilio Vargas, and while his cogent, organized descriptions of his life, beliefs, history, and ambitions sometimes seem too calculated, at least they're calculated to communicate efficiently and appealingly.
  3. Closed Curtain
    Closed Curtain is a spotty meta movie that might leave a viewer wishing Panahi could go back to making films that aren’t about himself—which seems to be the point.
  4. Moana
    Occasionally, the movie’s combination of formula and tweaks makes it play like a one-blockbuster-fits-all reconciliation of a standard Disney checklist with a second list of corrective measures. For the most part, though, the movie feels more heartfelt than calculated.
  5. The Wailing
    The Wailing might be a somewhat meandering and nonsensical genre recombination, but that spell never breaks over its lengthy running time.
  6. Chris & Don. A Love Story
    Describing the early stages of their sexual attraction, Bachardy sums up the whole outrageously fortunate arc of his life. "It was exactly what the boy wanted," Bachardy says. "And he flourished."
  7. Shadow
    The scales ultimately tip slightly in favor of style, but when that style is this gorgeous, remembering a movie for the way it looks rather than its plot isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
  8. The Edge of Democracy
    The documentary’s scope is so vast, and its subject so dense, that it ends up skimping on details that a lengthy written article would likely lay out more clearly.
  9. Gimme the Loot
    It’s a bright, lively movie, with a vision of New York as a multicultural free-for-all, where everybody’s always looking to see what they can take from everybody else.
  10. Tchoupitoulas
    A hypnotic 80-minute drift through nocturnal New Orleans that seeks more to pick up on bits of culture and atmosphere than to tell any stories. They blow up the conventions of documentary realism to capture the city's soul, a much more abstract, elusive undertaking.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Eel
    Pointless conflict aside, The Eel is a thoughtful film, oddly touching despite its quirks.
  12. Skyfall
    Skyfall doesn't forget it has to be an exciting spy film above all, but from its first scene, it ratchets up the drama in ways that have little to do with action.
  13. Thunder Soul
    Everything here is pitched relentlessly toward uplift, but at least that uplift is genuine, the product of one visionary's indomitable will and a musical universe he brought into existence through vision, dedication, and plenty of stubborn hard work.
  14. Of Time and the City
    A caustic, witty, regretful elegy for a place so transformed that it's virtually unrecognizable.
  15. Consuming Spirits
    The connections and the meaning aren't immediately apparent, and viewers are given plenty of time to find their own patterns and invent their own associations. Then, in its final half-hour, it pulls all the threads together, and a breathtaking bigger picture finally comes into focus.
  16. Memoir of a Snail
    Though crafted with wry care and a captivatingly scuzzy aesthetic, the bittersweet biography is so miserable that the “sweet” ends up as a cloying chaser to old escargot.
  17. A Fantastic Woman
    At its most compelling as a conventional character study of an unconventional female lead.
  18. Your Name.
    There’s admittedly a certain pleasure in the deft fake-out that Shinkai executes here—most viewers will automatically make an assumption that’s ultimately proven wrong—but it comes at the cost of overall narrative incoherence.
  19. Melancholia
    The grand concept is really just a vehicle for a more intimate study of depression and its dangerous, shifting polarities.
  20. You, the Living
    You, The Living, if only by virtue of a more intimate scale than Songs, benefits from a lightness of touch and even a thin sliver of optimism in some sequences.
  21. The Go-Go's
    Ellwood’s most valuable views are these more candid, honest looks, as there’s something refreshing about the band coming clean, revealing all its dirty laundry in a no-holds-barred manner.
  22. Upstream Color
    It might be fair to argue that the resonances of Upstream Color are too obscure and internal — many viewers have and will be baffled by it — but it’s the type of art that inspires curiosity and obsession, like some beautiful object whose meaning remains tantalizingly out of reach.
  23. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
    Works best when it straddles the same line between mild hostility and equally mild affection.
  24. Ballets Russes
    Geller and Goldfine have assembled a vital historical document, covering a cultural era now mostly lost, corrupted imperceptibly but permanently when fledgling ballerinas started dreaming about Broadway and Hollywood instead of Swan Lake.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The General
    Credit director John Boorman with bringing a life like Cahill's to the screen with such acuity that it's easy to overlook the many familiar elements of his mobster movie.
  26. The Grand Bizarre
    It’s just a constant riotous whirlwind of eye candy.
  27. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
    Whenever it hits its stride, it's a well-acted, vividly executed, full-speed-ahead special-effects extravaganza that puts as much bang as possible into every remaining scene.
  28. Mikey and Nicky
    Mikey & Nicky is sometimes dull and sometimes confusing—and it's both at once in the first 10 minutes, when Cassavetes is semi-comatose in a hotel room—but it also features plenty of absurd-but-believable human behavior.
  29. Paprika
    A film so joyfully insane that it feels like Kon is overcompensating.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hell and Back Again
    The film portrays the dizzying divide between war and recovery eloquently enough that those choices seem like intrusions instead of connections, a misstep in what's otherwise a devastating profile of a soldier.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »