The A.V. Club's Scores

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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
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  1. Only Yesterday (1991)
    Only Yesterday is animated, but rarely cartoony, in either its design or its storytelling.
  2. First Cow
    Just don’t mistake the lightness of step for a softness of philosophy. There’s a political dimension to all of Reichardt’s films, which almost invariably follow characters muscled to the margins of society.
  3. Mad Max: Fury Road
    For all the chaos erupting at all times, we never lose track of what’s going on, because it’s been staged not just with diabolical mischief, but also total clarity. What a movie.
  4. Le Samouraï
    Le Samouraï is a terrific film, at once a tense thriller and a fascinating character study, and only as cold as it looks until its unforgettable final scene.
  5. Winter's Bone
    Granik has no taste for noir archness, opting for a chilly, shot-on-decaying-locations naturalism that feels as lived-in as Lawrence's performance.
  6. The Queen
    Mirren begins the film having her portrait painted, looking every inch the monarch and proud to play the part. By the end, she's let the pressure of one week, and maybe a lifetime, show in her eyes.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
    All the performers are superb, though as the title suggests, this is Viviane’s show, and Ronit makes for an exceptional martyr (she gets a Passion Of Joan Of Arc-worthy close-up or two) who never loses her very human shadings.
  8. I Called Him Morgan
    When it’s all done, More and Morgan remain ciphers, and not the type whose intangibility is evocative of something greater. All we have are the known facts, and that is all that I Called Him Morgan provides in the end.
  9. All of Us Strangers
    Ultimately All Of Us Strangers says that only a lucky few get to free themselves to accept love and redemption. It’s a heartbreaking and sad notion, but when delivered with as much sensitivity and visual panache as Haigh does, it becomes cathartic.
  10. The Hustler
    Like the best sports films, The Hustler makes the game look exciting even to outsiders, but Rossen's film is ultimately about a more universal subject than impossible breaks and the heavy spin of masse shots. Adapting Walter Tevis' novel, Rossen made a morality tale without the moralizing.
  11. Procession
    Greene, whose earliest documentaries were rooted in the cinéma vérité tradition and its portraits of ordinary American lives, has crafted a poignant group portrait with something to say about the crossed wires of pain and memory.
  12. Bloody Sunday
    At its best, Bloody Sunday produces the same chilling illusion of history writ large, clearly detailing the strategies of both sides, then blankly observing the conflict through unadorned, newsreel camera stock and the precise orchestration of large-scale chaos.
  13. Blue Is the Warmest Color
    Explicit lesbian lovemaking aside, Blue is, at heart, a somewhat ordinary coming-of-age romance, pulled and stretched nearly to its breaking point.
  14. American Splendor
    With a lovably cantankerous sense of humor and an honest strain of hard realism and pathos, the film thrives on the tension that comes from an artist who devotes himself to the truth, but watches his image get away from him.
  15. Phantom Thread
    Anderson’s most diabolical trick is woven into the fabric of his style: He’s used perfectionist craft to celebrate the value of imperfection.
  16. My Perestroika
    My Perestroika is fairly foursquare as documentary filmmaking goes; it isn't stylistically snazzy, nor doggedly vérité. Its closest kin in the genre is Michael Apted's "Up" films, which are similarly focused on how people change over time.
  17. The Souvenir: Part II
    It’s looser, wilder, funnier, and almost euphorically uplifting, rocketing at increasing speed towards a new life for its main character and directorial proxy that makes the starting premise look almost irrelevant.
  18. This Is Not a Film
    Pleasing mainly just as a message-in-a-bottle from a restless, persecuted artist-that is, until the amazing closing shot, which brings the volatility of post-Green Revolution Iran home with unforgettable force.
  19. Finding Nemo
    What's more impressive, and in the end more important, is the high standard of storytelling that Pixar continues to meet by locating both humor and emotional depth in worlds created out of lines of code.
  20. Small Axe: Mangrove
    If Mangrove is contrived in the way lots of legal procedurals are, it also tackles its conventions with a conviction that makes you believe in them all over again.
  21. The Incredibles
    The action sequences are choreographed with the crackerjack timing expected from Pixar, but the film's funniest and most affecting moments exploit the tension between a special family and a world that insists on dulling them down.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Look Back
    All of this beautiful animation intrinsically drives at why people create in the first place, highlighting both the life-affirming and deeply messy realities of making manga.
  23. Green Border
    What’s most marvelous about Green Border—aside from its resounding commitment to humanization, buttressed by a thrilling and harrowing narrative—is that it doesn’t let anyone off the hook.
  24. A Prophet
    A Prophet has been compared to American TV series like "Oz" for its episodic plot and large cast, but it’s more like a Gallic "Goodfellas": thoroughly absorbing, exciting, even poetic. It’s a full evening’s entertainment.
  25. Oppenheimer
    For all this and more, Oppenheimer deserves the title of masterpiece. It’s Christopher Nolan’s best film so far, a step up to a new level for one of our finest filmmakers, and a movie that burns itself into your brain.
  26. Cold War
    Pawlikowski, who doesn’t waste a shot (nor compose one that isn’t a work of art on its lonesome), creates a gripping present tense from the clarity and efficiency of his storytelling: No matter how often he lurches us forward in time, we remain locked into the emotional sphere of his characters.
  27. High and Low
    While not a masterpiece on par with Kurosawa's best work, High And Low is a fine example of his craft, and further proof that it's not a few masterpieces but the overall scope of a career that defines a great director.
  28. The Truman Show
    The film is unfortunately about little more than its potentially mind-boggling plot and structure.
  29. Once
    In its own subdued, mellow way, Once is just about perfect.
  30. Sorry, Baby
    Its fragmented literary structure and Victor’s captivating lead turn cohere theme, form, and content, melding the elliptical episodes into a canny representation of memory.
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