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. The Binge
    Even the occasional funny line grows wearying, because nothing in this movie happens for any real reason. The details that labor to appear random, the big slapstick plot turns, and the predetermined character arcs are all equally meaningless, unchecked byproducts of filmmakers emptying their joke files with Superbad playing on a loop in the background.
  2. Tesla
    Far from the flamboyant figure of fantasy and popular myth, this version of the inventor is totally interiorized.
  3. Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula
    While the first Train To Busan was an affecting, character-driven tale of grief and redemption, Peninsula flounders in generic spectacle. Even fans may wonder if there are any bones left to pick on this franchise.
  4. Unhinged
    This may be the first role that’s really capitalized on Crowe’s celebrity reputation as a hothead, even if the unnamed lunatic he’s playing only barks threats into a phone instead of chucking it at anyone.
  5. Boys State
    With so much attention paid to the campaign trail, Boys State fails to show us how the waterworks get built.
  6. Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story
    When the movie does turn to the predatory behavior, it mostly feels like an aside; one gets the distinct impression that the filmmakers had to scramble to insert some uncomfortable new material into their otherwise completed documentary.
  7. Project Power
    You might as well spend a couple hours with this film on in the background, but don’t expect much about it to stick with you—except for the jaw-dropping Henrietta Lacks monologue. You may need to pop a pill to forget that.
  8. Sunless Shadows
    This is something different: an acknowledgement that, for many young women in Iran, prison may offer an escape from everyday horrors, to say nothing of the paradoxical freedom it affords them.
  9. I Used to Go Here
    I Used To Go Here would rather be painfully relatable than cutting.
  10. A Thousand Cuts
    The movie is loaded with moments meant to generate shock and outrage, but it could use more shoe-leather procedural scenes, showing in detail how Ressa’s team goes about investigating the police’s abuses of their constitutional authority.
  11. La Llorona
    What stands out about the film is the pain that lies underneath Bustamante’s placid compositions—an anguished desire for justice that, like the Weeping Woman herself, still cries out to be heard.
  12. The Tax Collector
    Does The Tax Collector sound intriguingly bizarre? In actuality, it’s a tediously paced procedural about work-life balance in which suspense-free displays of hackneyed gangbanger signage are filled in with a few flashbacks that look like they were a cut from a much more exciting movie.
  13. The Secret Garden
    The Secret Garden is a mid-tier adaptation, though one with heart and soul.
  14. Psychomagic, A Healing Art
    Historically, of course, making no earthly sense hasn’t been a major impediment in Jodorowsky’s work. In this instance, he commits a sin graver than charlatanism by just being boring.
  15. Howard
    Even for those outside of the Disney musical demographic, Howard is a moving portrait of an artist taken too soon during an era tragically marked by those kind of losses.
  16. An American Pickle
    Rogen’s comedies have often layered broad laughs with humanity and thematic ambition. Here, like Herschel and Ben, they aren’t especially convincing sharing the frame.
  17. 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.
  18. She Dies Tomorrow
    It is an emotionally vulnerable piece of work, touching on everything from the pain of experiencing a mental illness that no one around you understands to what it means to waste your life.
  19. The Fight
    Snappily edited, with a visual style reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh’s modular design, The Fight tells viewers of a certain political perspective what they want to hear (that Trump is bad).
  20. A Girl Missing
    A Girl Missing feels torn between a slippery character study and a social thriller, and it suffers from the absence of the puzzle pieces it declines to reveal.
  21. Summerland
    The above-average cast of adult and child actors has its charming moments, but once the plot enters the tearjerker cliché phase, it becomes clear that what we are being offered is a nostalgia that’s no different from the kind that extolls more conservative values. It’s less a new coat of paint than a varnish.
  22. The Kissing Booth 2
    In broadening the world of the first film without really deepening it, The Kissing Booth 2 often feels more like a spinoff TV series—although at an unconscionable 132 minutes long, it’s hardly a breezy watch.
  23. The Rental
    Much of the first half of the film plays like a straight drama, establishing the conflicts simmering between two couples on a weekend getaway. This setup is so credible, in fact, that it’s doubly disappointing when the thriller elements do finally materialize and then promptly fail to thrill; it’s as if someone snatched the remote and changed the channel to a half-assed slasher starring the same characters.
  24. Amulet
    Amulet elevates these themes of repentance and sin through deft editing, strong performances, and a chilling score. It’s an evocative, confident debut, recalling the metaphorical horror of Jennifer Kent’s "The Babadook" or Babak Anvari’s "Under The Shadow," even as it announces the arrival of a singular new voice.
  25. Radioactive
    The problem with films like Radioactive is that they neither fulfill the biography’s basic duty of elucidating the life and times of the subject nor offer a compelling artistic vision or drama as a substitute for the hard facts.
  26. The Painted Bird
    All of this agony is captured with great skill and artistry. Shot in Cinemascope, in crisp 35mm black-and-white, The Painted Bird is beautiful just to look at, even when its content is unspeakably ugly; there are images that will burn themselves onto your memory, whether you want them to or not.
  27. The Sunlit Night
    Unfortunately, everything engaging about the narrative is overshadowed by gratuitous quirkiness.
  28. Relic
    The kind of dread-infused slow burn that’s very much in vogue at the moment, Relic is so entirely, transparently, even explicitly about the horror of dementia and losing a loved one to it that the more traditional genre elements—like a potential supernatural presence in the house—feel rather redundant, maybe even unnecessary.
  29. The Old Guard
    Greg Rucka pens the screenplay, refashioning his own graphic novel and doing as much to retain tone and character agency as Gillian Flynn did for her "Gone Girl" adaptation, for example.
  30. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
    It’s a film comprised of snapshots, glimpses from a hazy evening. But the Ross Brothers understand that these are the moments that paint people in their best, most unguarded light.
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