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 French Dispatch
    The storytelling is as paramount–and often as dizzyingly entertaining—as the stories themselves.
  2. Lost in La Mancha
    At once bitterly funny and devastating, Lost In La Mancha sides with Gilliam in form and spirit, piecing together the train wreck with snaky humor and interludes that cleverly mimic his Monty Python collage animations.
  3. Bernie
    Though the lightness of Bernie can get disconcerting at times, even cartoonish, Linklater approaches the story with a bemused curiosity that seems about right under the circumstances.
  4. Jinn
    Equally importantly, it shows how much an artist like Mu’min can bring to otherwise well-trod material, and how valuable underrepresented points of view like hers really are.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Chasing Ice
    As someone who admits to having harbored skepticism about climate change himself, two decades ago, Balog is trying to present an image-based response to all the denialists featured in the news montages scattered through the film, people who scoff at the numbers and lack of scientific consensus on whether global warming exists, and what it entails.
  6. Bridesmaids
    It's no surprise that Bridemaids sputters, coughs, and lurches, but it's a winning shambles, buoyed by a sharp, balanced comedic ensemble and some truthful observations about how close friends adapt when their lives fall out of step.
  7. Benedetta
    Belgian movie star Virginie Efira plays the title character with complete conviction, whether she’s kneeling in awe before the Virgin Mary or being pleasured with a dildo carved out of a statue of the Blessed Mother.
  8. Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
    Riveting, eye-opening issue film.
  9. The Invisible Woman
    Handsome and intelligent, it’s nonetheless a tepid portrait of a relationship that would be unremarkable were the gentleman not Dickens.
  10. Tully
    Though Davis makes Tully convincing both as a human being and as a mysterious godsend, it’s Theron whose work is absolutely vital to Tully’s success.
  11. Elizabeth
    But much of it, like its subject, is so cryptic, distractingly stylish, and impenetrably posed that it's rough going most of the way.
  12. Pleasure
    “Shocking” is a word that gets thrown around too frequently. But it’s all too fitting for Swedish director Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure, a graphic, gripping, and unflinching drama charting the rocky rise of an ambitious newcomer to the adult film industry.
  13. The Muppets
    Henson's characters maintained an essential innocence while sending up the very idea of entertainment. They put on a show with quotation marks around it, but the irony never felt cynical. When it isn't getting bogged down in unearned sentiment, The Muppets gets that right.
  14. Time Out of Mind
    It’s the epitome of the anti-vanity project—a way for a veteran charmer to prove that he has more to offer than charm.
  15. Darkest Hour
    There aren’t thrilling dramatic insights to be found here, but Wright’s showboating is unflaggingly watchable.
  16. An Inconvenient Truth
    Quite apart from its environmental agenda, the film is a reminder that there's no space for substance in political discourse: A 30-second soundbite on global warming could easily be brushed off as tree-hugging rhetoric, but after 100 minutes of level-headed elaboration, it's chillingly undeniable.
  17. The Beat That My Heart Skipped
    As tense and taut as any crime saga, but the stakes are more personal.
  18. Lady Vengeance
    It takes patience and industry to make sense of the first half, intestinal fortitude to deal with the second, and a little flexibility to make the transition from one to the other. But the whole process adds up to a fairly impressive two-stage thrill ride, like rafting through choppy waters, then plummeting over a waterfall into a dark and deadly pit.
  19. Enchanted
    Adams' winning performance and the light touch director Kevin Lima (a veteran of animation and live action) brings to scenes not tasked with advancing the plot all suggest that, silly as they may look once you take it apart, irony-free, romantic fantasy--animated and otherwise--still has a place on the big screen.
  20. Lawless Heart
    Its protagonists' hearts aren't lawless so much as stuck in various states of quiet desperation, and the modest charms of this observant, affecting film fortunately bear little relation to the sensationalistic label.
  21. The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
    Like Ang Lee's "Hulk," it's a fusion of arthouse and multiplex instincts, and though it seems unlikely to satisfy anyone, it's just as unlikely that anyone who sees it will forget it soon.
  22. Shrek 2
    The lovable characters remain, but they never do much of interest in a sequel that's safely above average but superfluous.
  23. Samson and Delilah
    Viewers may not realize how far they've been pulled in until the movie ends, and they might feel a sense of loss that it can't keep going just a little while longer.
  24. The Strange Case of Angelica
    Too shaggy at times, with digressions into science and history that come out flat and awkward. But there's a sweet, unshakeable poetry in the main idea of the film.
  25. Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
    A historical epic with elements of wu xia, supernatural thrillers, and drawing-room murder mysteries.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    I'll See You in My Dreams
    Every actor gives their all, even when the material is insultingly thin.
  27. Our Little Sister
    As a result, the movie version feels a tad weightless, especially relative to its hefty running time. Anyone in the mood for two hours (and change) of sheer, unadulterated loveliness, however, will be amply rewarded.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Nico, 1988
    Like Gus Van Sant’s "Last Days," Nico, 1988 is at its best in these liminal moments, its creation of a cognitive space to ponder an artist’s legacy, as well as literal spaces that reflect it: faded ballrooms, twilit monuments, bleary countrysides. Unlike that movie, though, Nico, 1988 occasionally succumbs to hoary biopic clichés, awkwardly imposing narrative beats.
  29. Django
    The action that follows doesn't stray too far from formula, nor does it come close to Leone's film, but it's stylishly entertaining enough to serve as a passable time-filler, particularly when its second-rate hero takes to wielding an oversized (and anachronistic) handheld machine gun.
  30. Testament of Orpheus
    A self-crafted elegy starring Cocteau as himself, an artist at the end of his life wandering through a symbolic landscape filled with his own creations (and guest stars Yul Brynner and Pablo Picasso). In the end, Cocteau takes comfort in the immortality of art, and therefore his own immortality, a sentiment that would seem far less moving and far more egotistical if it weren't true.
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