The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,414 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 2.6 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 10414
  2. Mixed: 3,736 out of 10414
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10414
10414 movie reviews
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  1. It Happened One Night
    It’s every goddamn romantic comedy you’ve ever seen. They can all be traced back here, virtually without exception, for eight straight decades now. Technically, the film has never been remade, but that’s largely because, in spirit, it has never stopped being remade. Something so perfectly structured can support nearly endless variations. It’s timeless.
  2. Rear Window
    In its perfect fusion of popular entertainment and high art, Rear Window ranks among Hitchcock's best.
  3. My Neighbor Totoro
    Compared to the breathtaking action sequences and elaborate fantasy landscapes of Miyazaki's early features, the genteel, languid Totoro seems at first slight, and even soporific. Yet My Neighbor Totoro may be the most enduring entry in Miyazaki's impressive filmography, because it's so particular about the nuances of human behavior and emotion.
  4. Once Upon a Time in America
    A film of fatally flawed heroes, oversized passions, nation-building, and, inevitably, violence, America follows its characters from childhood to old age by way of the kind of grand-scale filmmaking that wouldn't be seen again until Martin Scorsese's Gangs Of New York. [2014 re-release]
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dog Day Afternoon
    Dog Day Afternoon is a frank social melodrama that’s also a celebration of quotidian bravery. The camera might linger on guns and barely restrained violence, but it also dwells upon the love and the support that’s extended in the weirdest and most unexpected of places.
  6. Eraserhead
    See Eraserhead once and it’ll lodge itself firmly in some dank recess of your brain and refuse to vacate.
  7. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    In three short scenes, this otherwise linear film unexpectedly slips loose from time, portraying a joyous moment, a tragic revelation, and then a long, slow scene that holds both in the balance, letting viewers tip the scale in whichever direction their hearts incline. It's an effect that could only happen in cinema, and it's made all the more stunning by its appearance in a film taken from a by-all-logic-unfilmable book.
  8. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
    Calling Schrader's masterpiece a mere biopic doesn't do it justice. It's more a dreamy, hypnotic meditation on the tragic intersection of Mishima's oeuvre and existence that takes place as much in its subject's fevered imagination as the outside world.
  9. Little Women
    Little Women is the best kind of Hollywood film: thoughtful yet escapist, sophisticated yet accessible, expertly crafted and deeply felt. The performances are all top notch—Ronan and Pugh, especially, breathe new life into their characters. Gerwig’s direction is also first rate.
  10. A Streetcar Named Desire
    The movie Streetcar still seethes with lust, and retains so much of Williams’ florid dialogue and insinuation that it often feels like Kazan and his cast are getting away with something.
  11. Deep Red
    For all its nonsensical qualities, it also contains some of Argento's most hallucinatory images and unforgettable setpieces, as always reason enough to watch even when the usual reasons are nowhere to be found.
  12. The Third Man
    A sharp, exciting thriller that beautifully captures a dispirited Europe nowhere near recovered from WWII, Carol Reed's The Third Man is one of those miraculous films that work on every level.
  13. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
    The film plays just as easily as a stand-in for the mob mentality that let Joseph McCarthy run amok in his attempt to sniff out every last American with communist sympathies—past, present, and future—until all had conformed to a rigid definition of the right thinking.
  14. Dumbo
    It's not only one of the best classic-era Disney features, but also one of the best animated films from any studio at any time.
  15. Pinocchio
    For all its Jiminy Cricket optimism, Pinocchio is a potent illustration of how people can only improve because they’re so lousy to begin with.
  16. Bambi
    More than any self-declared masterpiece in the Disney catalog, Bambi has earned the right to be called timeless, because its concerns are transcendent and universal.
  17. Amazing Grace
    One of the great performances of the 20th century.
  18. The Magnificent Ambersons
    The Magnificent Ambersons is still masterly. It’s the movie that all other films about families in decline are measured against.
  19. Kagemusha
    Though the story's Shakespearean underpinnings give Kagemusha the weight of classic tragedy–in this case, the tragedy of a man rendered helpless by larger historical forces–the film astonishes mostly as pure spectacle.
  20. Two-Lane Blacktop
    Hellman gives viewers plenty of time to study every detail, dwelling less on action than on quiet, small-town vistas, rundown diners, and forgotten stretches of Route 66.
  21. Prince of the City
    The tough urban realism Lumet perfected in cop dramas like Serpico, Q&A, and Prince Of The City has been reflected in first-rate TV shows like Homicide: Life On The Street, The Wire, and The Shield. But those shows had multiple seasons to draw out the breadth of institutional corruption, while Lumet miraculously covers this territory in 167 minutes.
  22. Vanishing Point
    Newman picks up speed and symbolic baggage as the movie progresses, and much of the film’s brilliance lies in the way Sarafian balances the two elements.
  23. Straw Dogs
    Though studio interference and his own personal demons hampered his later work, Straw Dogs shows a master in control of his effects, which made an artist of Peckinpah's sensibility an especially dangerous man.
  24. Nashville
    It’s at once ridiculous and genuinely inspiring—Robert Altman in a nutshell.
  25. The Searchers
    By the time of The Searchers, Wayne had toughened to match Ford's darker vision. Redemption is still out there, but it has to be fought for, and sometimes winning it doesn't make anyone happier.
  26. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
    It's a black-and-white shocker, a crazed psycho-melodrama, a pitch-black show-biz satire, a warped meditation on the traumatizing effects of child stardom, and a gothic tale of familial dysfunction as its dysfunctioniest.
  27. Frankenstein
    Frankenstein works as a fast-moving thriller and, even now, a stylish, frighteningly atmospheric horror film, but also as a sad outcast parable. Frankenstein's creature may be a monstrosity, but he's also instantly sympathetic to anyone who's ever felt like a misfit.
  28. Stagecoach
    Stagecoach gives fine shading to a simple story, making it look and feel like a forgotten American myth.
  29. Bringing Up Baby
    The quintessential screwball comedy.
  30. Anatomy of a Murder
    Anatomy Of A Murder respects the audience enough to turn us into the jury, and trusts that we, too, can consider the facts like adults.
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