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. Playmobil: The Movie
    Playmobil: The Movie isn’t as funny as some of the direct-to-video Lego-related movies, either, and that’s very much the field it competes in, theatrical release or not. As children’s entertainment goes, this is a harmless distractor, but it’s also poorly conceived at every story turn, unable to even stick to a particular generic message to make up for its extremely basic humor.
  2. The Wolf Hour
    A gloomy psychological thriller interested in the distinct paranoia of a woman living in self-exile in the South Bronx.
  3. Richard Jewell
    Like so many of the works of Eastwood’s long late period, Jewell offers a story without much of an endpoint, with an uplifting coda that feels almost as jarring as the ending of "American Sniper." But somewhere within its surprisingly pacey two-plus hours is a compelling group portrait of ordinary oddballs in cruel circumstances; it relays Eastwood’s appreciation for individuals over masses better than any speech ever could.
  4. The Cat Returns (2002)
    The results are disappointingly conventional for a Ghibli film—the film is good-hearted, energetic, and full of Ghibli's characteristically beautiful hand-rendered animation, but it's also lightweight and hyper, with none of Miyazaki's more resonant themes.
  5. Midnight Family
    To his credit, Lorentzen never guides the audience’s moral response, allowing us to make up our minds about the Ochoas on a scene-by-scene basis. He also provides ample rationale for their actions by depicting their hand-to-mouth lifestyle alongside the on-the-job drudgery.
  6. Daniel Isn't Real
    Mortimer builds Daniel Isn’t Real to a conclusion that, in concept, should be both tragic and terrifying. Here, it just feels perfunctory.
  7. A Million Little Pieces
    The movie version plays exactly like every other rehab-facility melodrama ever made. Even the stuff that Frey invented seems overly familiar, borrowed from sources ranging from "28 Days" to (somewhat improbably — people in recovery aren’t necessarily allowed dental anesthetic, it turns out) "Marathon Man."
  8. 1917
    By the end, 1917 has positioned itself as a salute to the sacrifices of those who died for their country. Mostly, though, it comes across as a monument to itself.
  9. The Aeronauts
    On the whole, The Aeronauts is a pretty good small-scale adventure movie. It’s also a pretty dull everything-else, the unceasing flashbacks providing multiple instances where telling might have been preferable to showing.
  10. The Two Popes
    Apart from its impressive (though partially digital) recreation of the Sistine Chapel, The Two Popes offers little in the way of purely cinematic pleasures, relying almost exclusively on the expert parrying of Hopkins and Pryce.
  11. Queen & Slim
    Maybe it’s inevitable that the film ends up feeling like an extremely diluted combination of Matsoukas’ two most famous music videos, crossing the political imagery of Beyoncé’s “Formation” with the outlaw imagery of Rihanna’s “We Found Love”—though it’s nowhere as stylish as the former or as sexy as the latter.
  12. 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.
  13. Varda by Agnès
    As a result, it isn’t as cohesive or inspired as her penultimate film, the Oscar-nominated Faces Places. But as a parting gift from one of the most singular creative minds of the 20th century, it’s as life-affirming as they come.
  14. 21 Bridges
    This is a well-crafted, exciting movie, sometimes more impressive for maintaining those qualities in the face of an utterly unsurprising story.
  15. Waves
    Waves felt to me like a bitching soundtrack in search of a movie. Maybe I’ll find one on rewatch.
  16. Frozen II
    Frozen II is just an echo, drawing prospective fans in without finding many new notes to hit.
  17. The Good Liar
    Instead of deepening his material, Condon has made an unsuccessful fling of a movie: fun for a while, but trying to get as far as it can by leaving crucial material off of its profile.
  18. Dark Waters
    Dark Waters would likely have been a forgettable mediocrity in anybody’s hands, given its fact-based, muckraking limitations. Coming from the visionary who gave us Safe, Far From Heaven, I’m Not There, and Carol, it’s a crushing disappointment.
  19. Ford v Ferrari
    Setting aside more particular genre trappings, Mangold re-engineers one of his unfussy studio throwbacks into a supersized Dad Movie event.
  20. I Lost My Body
    Where it fumbles is in the framing device.
  21. The Hottest August
    While it never feels completely defeatist, her film offers scattered snapshots of an uncertain society in its dog days.
  22. Charlie's Angels
    The overall look of the film has the shiny, empty appearance of a newly rehabbed condo, and the quips about women’s love of cheese and gigantic closets have a similarly hollow sassy-greeting-card feel. But the outfits in those closets, it must be said, are fabulous.
  23. Noelle
    Noelle has a few of those peppermint hot chocolate moments, but thanks to its bizarre warm-weather detour and wasting of a stellar cast, it just barely makes the nice list.
  24. Atlantics
    Atlantics is most successful as a look at a particular milieu, which makes one wonder if Diop might have been better off just making a longer nonfiction film on the subject.
  25. The Report
    The actor’s (Driver) performance isn’t just gripping; it’s inspiring. He’s not just portraying Jones; he’s embodying an ideal.
  26. Playing with Fire
    It’s more tedious than unwatchable, and pint-size Cena fans may be curious to see him in a movie more compatible with his Kids’ Choice Awards hosting gigs than the likes of "Blockers" or "Trainwreck." Sadly, the movie never shows similar curiosity about what its young audience, and subjects, might be thinking or feeling.
  27. Midway
    A stolid film that largely rests on its director’s competence at helming extravagant aerial views of pyrotechnic destruction.
  28. Last Christmas
    As escapist comfort-food cinema goes, this is a stick-to-your-ribs, tryptophan-coma-size helping.
  29. Primal
    One hires Cage for a generic timewaster like this in the hope that he’ll make it at least a little more interesting on screen than it was on paper, by virtue of some crazed facial expressions and off-the-wall line readings, but he evidently wasn’t in the experimenting mood.
  30. The Kingmaker
    While researching the project, Greenfield herself thought she might find a “redemption story.” But the film eventually proves to be a far more troubling examination of the Marcoses’ continued political hold in the Philippines.
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