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. Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World
    Lo And Behold approaches the internet with the same mixture of wonder and dread that the director previously applied to pitiless nature, but the subject matter is inherently less cinematic.
  2. Service (Serbis)
    At its best, Serbis is a vibrant slice of life that establishes this theater as a living organism, nurturing a society of outcasts; it's like "Ship Of Fools" with blowjobs and boil-lancings.
  3. All Light, Everywhere
    All Light, Everywhere is about both making and questioning connections, but by the end, its methods feel not so much productively protean as frustratingly noncommittal.
  4. Dig!
    By giving Taylor the last word, Dig! becomes little more than a self-serving, unconvincing infomercial for a musician who comes across as functional and bearable only when compared to his counterpart.
  5. Kneecap
    Writer/director Rich Peppiatt’s film has a harder time connecting its stylish music video silliness with drama that meanders and a political message that repeats like it’s stuck on a cheap turntable.
  6. A Poem Is a Naked Person
    As a musical, the film is often thrilling.
  7. Broken Embraces
    Broken Embraces welds Douglas Sirk melodrama to the most gracefully unsettling elements of Alfred Hitchcock, wrapping both in the stylish, hushed elegance that’s become Almodóvar’s trademark since his mid-’90s reinvention.
  8. My Beautiful Laundrette
    The movie has elements of a coming-of-age saga, a gay romance, a drug-smuggling thriller, and a redemption tale, but it works first and foremost as a portrait of a milieu that had previously been all but invisible onscreen, and that remains so to this day.
  9. Father Mother Sister Brother
    Father Mother Sister Brother depicts with earnest melancholy the things taken for granted in life that don’t become real until after death, but its stiffness keeps it from being a work of true emotional significance.
  10. Blue Caprice
    Blue Caprice otherwise proves a deft mood piece, one that probes its characters’ states of mind while remaining wholly unmoved by their grievances and hang-ups.
  11. Tramps
    The film itself is barely bluffing that it has any stakes; the caper is vague enough to be inconsequential. Tramps knows it’s small potatoes, but is it any better for it?
  12. Spettacolo
    Although Spettacolo is thoughtful and charming throughout, it’s mildly disappointing that the film doesn’t further engage with the self-reflexivity of the annual event itself.
  13. Maggie's Plan
    A comedy that proves that an appealing cast (Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, Julianne Moore) and a wonderful premise are no guarantee of big laughs.
  14. Heavy
    Heavy is the kind of deliberately slow-paced character study that allows carefully realized performances to shine.
  15. Adventureland
    Jesse Eisenberg stars as a kinder, gentler version of the insufferable faux intellectual he played in "The Squid And The Whale."
  16. Every Little Step
    It's a huge improvement over the Attenborough film; given the film’s non-fiction roots, it seems poetically apt that a documentary take is much more satisfying and engaging than the Hollywood treatment.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Testament of Youth
    There’s a good movie in Brittain’s story, but you wouldn’t know it from this lethargic, BBC-produced bore.
  18. Like Someone in Love
    Is this the stuff of gripping drama? Not at all. But like nearly all of Kiarostami’s films, it’s the stuff of good conversation.
  19. Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest
    Poignant and powerful, complex and melancholy, the film ends with rehearsals for yet another money-grubbing comeback tour.
  20. Sid and Nancy
    For a while, the tension powers the film. And when it doesn’t, the lead performances by Oldman and Webb pick up the slack.
  21. Lady Macbeth
    By engaging with multiple forms of oppression, the film forms a radical statement on the intersections of racism, classism, and sexism that elevates it far beyond a nicely shot, Victorian-era episode of "Snapped."
  22. Inside Man
    With juicy supporting roles for Chiwetel Ejiofor and Willem Dafoe as Washington's fellow officers, the film works best when the characters are just sitting back and shooting the breeze, which is what they're doing much of the time. Here, puzzling out a robbery is more fun than stopping it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    El Sicario: Room 164
    El Sicario: Room 164 is an almost laughably simple, aggressively drab-looking film, but it packs a wallop.
  24. Fifi Howls from Happiness
    Though Farahani takes care to pose her project as both a portrait of and an intervention in Mohasses’ life, it winds up being considerably less interesting as the latter.
  25. By the Stream
    By The Stream continues to meld the auteur and his muse with its two central characters, employing several of Hong’s narrative and technical staples with an air of heightened self-reflection.
  26. Chico & Rita
    The characters are simply rendered, but when it comes to capturing cities and scenes, the cinematography takes on the color and detail of a Mexican street mural.
  27. Something in the Air
    Because of its autobiographical slant, Something In The Air has been compared to Assayas’ 1994 breakthrough, "Cold Water," which gazed upon roughly the same period of the director’s life.
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