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. After Parkland
    This documentary might’ve been better with another few years’ worth of reporting and perspective.
  2. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
    While Jude succeeds at lampooning the chaos of contemporary political discourse, Bad Luck Banging takes on a few too many issues to make a coherent statement on any of them.
  3. The Song of Sparrows
    It's easier to find enjoyment in Sparrows on a moment-by-moment basis than to swallow its message whole, but that method squares just fine with Majidi's aesthetic, in which tiny, quiet joys are the best kind.
  4. State of Fear
    Builds to a key point about the consequences of democracies fighting terrorism by erasing its central tenets, but in doing so, it doesn't underplay the horrors wrought by Guzmán's organization.
  5. The Naked City
    Perhaps the best thing about Naked City is that it does justice to that source material. At times, it rivals Weegee's best work in its harsh, unsentimental portrayal of New York as a city with a dark side the size of the Hudson River.
  6. La faute à Fidel!
    But while Kervel will probably have to have her own children before she fully understands the changes parents go through, she's bound to adjust to her folks' whims. Having no power of her own, what choice does she have?
  7. Thor: Ragnarok
    Thor: Ragnarok, with its jabs of reportedly improvised banter, isn’t really an action movie. It’s a round-robin buddy comedy, mismatching Hemsworth’s amiable lug to characters old and new.
  8. Narco Cultura
    If it weren’t for "The Act Of Killing," Narco Cultura would be the year’s queasiest documentary. The film — which counterposes Quintero’s day-to-day life with that of Richi Soto, a crime-scene investigator in Juarez — is both an unflinching record of Mexico’s drug war and an investigation of how violence becomes unreal and glamorized.
  9. Teacher's Pet
    Impatient adult escorts ought to appreciate the brevity, and their kids should find plenty of good-natured diversion in the film's generally charming story.
  10. The Haunting
    Sound effects, disorienting camera work, expert editing, and Humphrey Searle's discomfiting score all suggest, without showing, a horrible presence waiting in the wings. Though parts of The Haunting are talky, even that works in the film's favor, as Tamblyn's glib dismissals and Johnson's calm professorial tone are unable to clear up the mystery at its core. After all, the specters that can't be seen, classified, or otherwise contained are the scariest of all.
  11. Lemon Tree
    This story--or stories like it--has been told and re-told too often. Lemon Tree works best when Riklis cuts out the predictable melodrama and trusts the fertility of his central metaphor.
  12. 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.
  13. Breach
    The main problem with Breach is that the story is told through O'Neill, who's far less compelling, in part because Phillippe doesn't have the chops to draw out his own set of contradictions. By committing himself to O'Neill's perspective, Ray misses the opportunity to uncover more information about Hanssen's relationship with his wife and church, his aberrant sexuality, and his mysterious connection to the Russians.
  14. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
    Even though 2 Or 3 Things' central irony is blunt, Ludin's tone remains measured throughout, and never self-serving.
  15. Tully
    In its strongest moments, Tully has the quality of a good short story, in the way it details the underlying affection and resentment that creeps into the lives of its four main characters, played with great sensitivity by a cast of mostly unknowns.
  16. Japanese Story
    When the credits roll and the mood breaks, Japanese Story finally reveals itself as more dewy-eyed than deep, but as long as the mood holds, it holds fast.
  17. 28 Days Later...
    Like his makeshift societies, Garland's tantalizing set-ups tend to unravel in unsatisfying ways.
  18. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut
    When it's on its game, and it frequently is, South Park's portrayal of its foul-mouthed, pre-teen, construction-paper-like protagonists' navigation of the absurd adult world around them cuts as deeply as any other current comedy.
  19. Novitiate
    Betts appears to have started out with a rather mundane idea and then stumbled, over the course of her research, onto something much more fruitful. The result is as intriguing and frustrating as that suggests.
  20. (T)error
    (T)error moves forward chronologically, and features enough astonishing twists to rival any episode of "Homeland."
  21. Some Kind of Heaven
    Some Kind Of Heaven contrasts the dissatisfaction of its subjects with the sunniness of their surroundings, the better to stress the wide gap separating how they feel and how they’re expected to feel in a community one talking head refers to, un-ironically, as “nirvana.”
  22. All This Panic
    Gage leans on the bright personalities of her subjects, while using roving handheld camerawork, smears of big-city color, and a shallow depth of field to capture some of the romantic grandeur they see in the world. All This Panic feels like a gift from her to them. Fortunately, we get to enjoy it, too.
  23. From Afar
    From Afar plays like a typical first feature, with ambition outstripping execution by a hefty margin.
  24. Tangerines
    The shift from philosophical parrying to actual combat doesn’t make Tangerines more compelling; on the contrary, it suggests that the filmmakers didn’t have the confidence to tell their story without falling back on genre tropes.
  25. Beba
    It can be overwhelming at times, and it’s true that Huntt’s deeply rooted powers of introspection can sometimes curdle into self-absorption. But her lacerating honesty and restless, searching spirit make Beba a virtuoso bomb-drop of a documentary.
  26. On the Rocks
    There’s something a little tidy about the resolution, closing a movie of messy emotional confusion on a note of affirmation and maybe even a kind of surrender. But On The Rocks shines brighter in the context of a career, especially in indirect dialogue with Lost In Translation.
  27. Red Road
    As long as Arnold can avoid giving any reason for Dickie's strange behavior, Red Road remains creepy and hypnotic, but as soon as Arnold explains what's going on, the movie's structure collapses into the rubble of cliché.
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