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. Dolemite Is My Name
    What the film lacks in depth and focus, it makes up for in personality. Murphy’s obviously the star here, but Moore’s loyal entourage comes to the movie with plenty of charisma of its own.
  2. Guardians of the Galaxy
    Guardians boasts not one, but two Han Solo proxies — not to mention an ass-kicking Princess Leia surrogate, a villain with a very Sithian fashion sense, and the flora answer to Chewbacca. Also, one of the Han Solo types is a talking raccoon.
  3. The Hunter
    Though The Hunter maintains the same even tone after it turns into a chase thriller, the look begins to resemble the work of William Friedkin and Walter Hill in its clean, elemental approach to action.
  4. Lore
    If nothing else, Shortland gives Rosendahl a star-making platform on par with Cornish’s in "Somersault": She’s a magnetic screen presence who subtly conveys not only the struggle and guilt inherent to her situation, but also a residue of hate that’s carried over from her parents. The actor, like her character, shoulders a heavy burden.
  5. A Prayer Before Dawn
    Director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (Johnny Mad Dog) makes some audacious, impressionistic choices, focusing on the nexus of sensual and brutal, but this is the rare true story that really could have used some creative embellishment.
  6. I Carry You with Me
    Teaching the audience about the intricacies of the U.S. immigration system isn’t the point of this film—the point is to make you feel the intangible ache of being where you belong and far away from home at the same time. In that way, the film poetically, heartbreakingly succeeds.
  7. In America
    While In America doesn't convince as an immigrants-in-the-U.S. story, it resonates powerfully as a portrait of grief and reconciliation.
  8. Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai
    Arriving on the heels of "13 Assassins," Miike's gloriously irreverent take on the samurai action genre, Hara-Kiri seems conventional by his standards, especially in a long middle section that occasionally dips into sentimentality.
  9. Room and a Half
    For those who can’t abide conventional biopics, here’s a viable alternative: A Room And A Half, a fantastical, imaginative depiction of the life of Nobel-winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky.
  10. Dirty Wars
    As a polemic, Dirty Wars is provocative and productively depressing, raising doubts about the effectiveness of military missions that have the potential to create ideological enemies, as well as the degree to which elected officials can—or are willing to—place checks on secret ops. (Obama gets no more points than Bush in any of the matters discussed.)
  11. Grosse Pointe Blank
    Smart in a rare way that matters greatly to good contemporary comedy: Like last year's "Flirting With Disaster," its script and direction underplay absurd situations, letting its characters amuse without showing the strains of forced wackiness.
  12. Machuca
    Though Machuca ultimately doesn't shy away from taking sides, it wisely keeps the focus on the human element. The politics take place in the background until they demand the foreground.
  13. Night School
    Night School takes the human-interest route instead, and while that doesn’t allow for the most complete vision of the program, it does put a touchingly human face on the movie’s opening statistic—as well as grant a sliver of hope for those 1.2 million American kids who abandon their education every year.
  14. Red Rocket
    Rex is a revelation here, a star reborn. He shrewdly conceals the depths of Mikey’s bone-deep selfishness under a lot of guileless blather, a hapless fool routine. The movie only works if our dawning awareness of his rottenness collides with what a hoot he can be, in all his calculated boylike scampishness.
  15. 3:10 to Yuma
    Mangold delivers a taut modern take on a lesser classic, preserving the "High Noon" themes about doing the right thing against all odds, and injecting a more modern pacing and urgency without going overboard. His film isn't Leonard's classic, but it's a solid, genre-respecting Western in its own right.
  16. Jane Eyre
    Wasikowska doesn't seem much changed from her "Alice" role, and she trips through Jane's adulthood as though it were a fantasia instead of a moody suspense story.
  17. Actress
    Alternately candid and cagey, Robert Greene’s documentary turns the chores and frustrations of a modern-day homemaker into a study in roles — social and personal, conscious and unintentional, on-camera and off. It isn’t, by any means, a difficult movie, but neither does it take any easy routes.
  18. A Monster Calls
    The craft of the film is undeniable. The artistry is subtler and perhaps harder to perceive. But it’s there, lurking in the dark, waiting to rise up when least expected.
  19. Buck
    Perhaps Brannaman's art is too subtle and instinctive to be captured on camera, but it's a shame Meehl doesn't do a better job of capturing exactly what makes him, by all accounts, a miraculously successful trainer.
  20. Shaun of the Dead
    Mixing horror and humor is no mean feat, but Shaun Of The Dead tightens throats in fear without making the laughs stick there in the process.
  21. And Everything Is Going Fine
    It does justice to a subject who made his life and death works of art.
  22. Their Finest
    But if Their Finest is a little stodgy and tasteful, it also possesses Scherfig’s trademark wistfulness.
  23. Creepy
    Perturbed and darkly funny.
  24. The White Tiger
    There’s little of the intimacy of Bahrani’s best work, and while the book has been described as dark-humored, the movie feels more like a typical prestige adaptation, hitting the key themes and scenes without finding an independent tone. Despite its obvious currency, it’s more yesterday than tomorrow.
  25. Syriana
    Gaghan brings in many more players, but edits the film into the lean, propulsive shape of a thriller. That ends up being something of a problem; some sub-plots never fully untangle and characters get lost as Gaghan rushes toward a conclusion that, taken on its own, is the stuff of a slightly hysterical leftie pamphlet.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Silent Souls
    While the pace and the dour, meditative tone of Silent Souls can sometimes verge on parodically arthouse-esque, the sincerity of the film's thoughts on loss and longing, on the burdens of grief, and on reawakened awareness of existence, is always painfully heartfelt.
  27. Reds
    It’s a stylistic throwback as well: an old-fashioned, star-studded, big-budget historical epic with an intermission, filmed in a classical style that hearkens back in some ways to David Lean’s Lawrence Of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.
  28. The Colors Within
    Low on incident but high on emotion, The Colors Within poignantly draws a line from our most private selves to the art we create as an expression of who we really are inside.
  29. It Felt Like Love
    By the end, audiences may end up craving a more charitable, less dour study of teenage mating habits — one, like the less “realistic” Raising Victor Vargas, that doesn’t portend trauma for any sapling trying to blossom too soon.
  30. Intimate Stories
    Intimate Stories stays doggedly, purposefully minor, in part because director Carlos Sorin and screenwriter Pablo Solarz want to explore the casual interactions of people doing nothing.
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