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. The Dog
    As a portrait of a life lived strangely — and if you asked its subject, perfectly, with no regrets — The Dog is charming.
  2. Zola
    The performances are a hoot . . . . But the film has perspective problems that extend beyond the slightly queasy, half-comic depiction of sex work.
  3. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks
    Truthfully, Assange’s absence from We Steal Secrets—regardless of the reasons for it—is a major liability, and not just because it prevents Gibney from truly engaging with his headline-grabbing subject. Without a strong personality at its center, the film often feels unbalanced, lurching awkwardly between basic infotainment concerns and a sharper, more specific agenda.
  4. Talk to Me
    Though it leans on familiar genre tropes and stylistic conventions, a devastating script and charismatic cast (spearheaded by Sophie Wilde) make Talk To Me a terrifying and pervasively heartbreaking tale of grief.
  5. Cinévardaphoto
    Someone as attuned as Varda to the quality of an image should know that a flat, disposable medium like video makes images harder to internalize.
  6. Ghostbox Cowboy
    It’s unclassifiable.
  7. Midnight Special
    Shannon, best known for playing weirdos and crazies, is uniquely good at playing restrained everymen, and he inhabits the role of Roy as a man of unspoken internal conflicts and complicated feelings.
  8. The Unforeseen
    Although the parts of The Unforeseen dealing with the anti-development movement are pure go-team agitprop, Dunn lends the movie a lyrical cast by combining aerial shots of the transformed countryside with the voice of Wendell Berry, reading from his poem "Sabbaths."
  9. Spa Night
    Though it leaves too many narrative blanks unfilled, Spa Night is a promising debut from a filmmaker with a lot of insight into the different guises that immigrants and their offspring wear as they make their way through the world.
  10. Japan
    A dense, challenging work by any measure, Japón snakes toward a justly celebrated final shot that's technically astonishing and immensely powerful, cementing the arrival of a promising new talent.
  11. Tickled
    All the same, Tickled does shine a much-needed light on that individual’s long history of abusive behavior, which has resulted in only a light slap on the wrist, thanks to inherited wealth and the power it confers.
  12. Brothers
    A movie so nice she made it twice, Susanne Bier's Dogme-certified feature "Open Hearts" gets a slight makeover in her follow-up Brothers, another raw melodrama about three lives recalibrated by sudden tragedy.
  13. The Last Station
    Little more than a gilded trifle, though it offers its share of light enjoyments.
  14. Mucho Mucho Amor
    As one former collaborator notes, Mercado almost certainly wouldn’t have achieved the level of fame if he’d ever come out as gay. Mercado proved you could be idolized while still being othered, a fact that’s too often glossed over in stories of marginalized people who break down barriers. But that reality couldn’t dampen Mercado’s love–or lust, as he put it—for life, nor does it prevent Mucho Mucho Amor from radiating with it.
  15. The Guest
    Dumb fun is rarely this smartly delivered.
  16. Margin Call
    If nothing else, Margin Call serves as a rebuke to "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" emphatic style - which ultimately glamorizes the profession it means to shame - and brings this dangerous numbers game back to the trading-floor desktops and mahogany-covered conference tables where it belongs. It isn't sexy, but the stakes feel much higher.
  17. The Hand of God
    It has as many superfluous sequences as great ones, with moments that serve no grander purpose than landing a single joke.
  18. Listen Up Philip
    The thing is, Listen Up Philip is a comedy — a howlingly funny black comedy with really sharp teeth.
  19. Regular Lovers
    Regular Lovers isn't a folly-of-youth story that aches with emotion, like "Au Revoir," "Les Enfants" or "The Squid And The Whale." It's drier, and simpler.
  20. The Wild Goose Lake
    What it all adds up to has some of the unevenness of a nightmare, the belly sweat and oscillating fans of muggy summer heat mixed up with unrealities.
  21. The Holy Mountain
    Witty, disgusting, eye-popping, and incomprehensible, The Holy Mountain is every bit as pop-philosophical as Jodorowsky's earlier work, but it also contains original visual ideas nearly every 30 seconds, from frogs in armor to crucifixes made out of painted bread.
  22. The Wonders
    If the film fails to deliver wonders, it does offer substantial pleasures.
  23. Wonder Woman
    The best thing about Wonder Woman, the overlong and intermittently enjoyable new DC superhero spectacular, is Wonder Woman herself.
  24. Murina
    The look (and sound) of Murina are mesmerizing.
  25. The Hidden Blade
    Builds slowly--maybe too slowly--to a mano-a-mano standoff, just like "The Twilight Samurai," and just like the earlier film, the new one presents its climactic swordfight matter-of-factly, with no superheroics and a lot of hesitation.
  26. Boys Go to Jupiter
    It’s a hilarious and touching adventure, made all the more so by its unique and enchanting animation.
  27. (500) Days of Summer
    It goes down smoothly, thanks in large part to Joseph Gordon-Levitt's grounded lead performance and Marc Webb's slick direction, but it seems like every other scene coughs up a dispiriting cliché.
  28. Me and You and Everyone We Know
    A quirkily funny, startlingly assured comedy-drama.
  29. Spencer
    Stewart never seems to find an emotional reality for the icon she’s playing; the resonance begins and ends with the stunt casting of one hounded target of the bursting flashbulbs as another.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Image Book
    If Godard weren’t Godard, would we be so inclined to accept this faux history lesson as truth?
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