The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,413 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: 5,571 out of 10413
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10413
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10413
10413 movie reviews
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  1. Minari
    Minari is that rare slice-of-life drama that contains multitudes without needing to look beyond the borders of its highly specific story.
  2. The Farewell
    From a distance, The Farewell can look scattered, a series of ambling vignettes on the tradition-rooted quirks of modern China and the nature of families divided by culture and space. But there are some bright moments of truth, bittersweetly illuminating the grey spaces we create in our expressions of love.
  3. Marty Supreme
    The miracle of Chalamet’s performance is that as brazen, indecent, and dishonest as Marty is, he makes a temporarily convincing case for himself as a thwarted athlete, rather than a crook with an athletic fixation.
  4. The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
    A devastating and deceptively simple tale adapted from 10th-century folklore, Isao Takahata’s The Tale Of Princess Kaguya distills a millennium of Japanese storytelling into a timeless film that feels both ancient and alive in equal measure.
  5. No End in Sight
    It's a cogent, often infuriating explication of how the execution of the war went awry.
  6. Phoenix
    For what it sets out to accomplish, across a brisk 98 minutes, Petzold’s film feels perfectly judged. And it builds to an ending that’s just plain perfect.
  7. Magellan
    Diaz makes a mockery of Magellan in his depiction of the revered globetrotter, his take on the Age Of Discovery damning to say the least.
  8. Goodbye Solo
    What distinguishes Goodbye Solo, beyond Savané’s larger-than-life personality bumping up against West’s intractable curmudgeon, is the continued particularity of Bahrani’s work.
  9. Gunda
    You won’t learn much from Gunda. It’s an arty pastoral mood piece, not an educational tool. Which is not to imply it lacks a philosophy.
  10. The Power of the Dog
    The Power Of The Dog divulges its secrets in deliberate, measured fashion, growing richer with each new reveal.
  11. Downhill Racer
    Nobody can accuse Downhill Racer of lacking artistic integrity. Trouble is, artistic integrity is all it has to offer.
  12. Deep Red
    For all its nonsensical qualities, it also contains some of Argento's most hallucinatory images and unforgettable setpieces, as always reason enough to watch even when the usual reasons are nowhere to be found.
  13. Alien
    Despite years of imitators, sequels (some great, some not so), and edited-for-television broadcasts, Alien has lost none of its power, and the big screen only intensifies its impact.
  14. Columbus
    Come for the breathtaking architectural scenery, stay for the likable pair staring up at it.
  15. The Artist
    It's a beautifully shot, beautifully acted piece of fluff.
  16. Yankee Doodle Dandy
    There may be no American movie more patriotic than Yankee Doodle Dandy, a jingoistic biopic of famed Broadway star George M. Cohan that transcends its innumerable genre clichés through the sheer willpower of its star.
  17. Foreign Correspondent
    Foreign Correspondent seems a sterling example of how the director could help the war effort by using current events as a launching point for his signature brand of suspense.
  18. Zama
    In its own befuddling, bone-dry way, this is a comedy—one that takes fiendish pleasure in puncturing the pomp and circumstance of a cog in the empire-building machine.
  19. Dead Souls
    The storytelling ends up saying nearly as much as the stories themselves: Not simply capturing and filing memories, the film becomes a portrait of how these survivors have processed their trauma, how they’ve framed the horror of their experiences, and how they’ve coped with survivors’ guilt.
  20. Cameraperson
    As an autobiography told in pictures rather than words (including occasional glimpses of Johnson’s parents and her children), Cameraperson makes a strong case for the merits of the observational life. As a bonus, it also demonstrates what it looks like when the person who’s holding the camera sneezes.
  21. The Mother and the Whore
    As in the best films of John Cassavetes, The Mother And The Whore transcends the medium of film altogether and appears to capture life as it is lived, in all its messy, painful, infinite sadness.
  22. Dick Johnson Is Dead
    That Johnson mostly pulls this off through the lens of black comedy, without succumbing to outright miserabilism, is an achievement. May we all have the opportunity to be present at our own funerals, surrounded by loved ones, before it’s too late.
  23. The Quiet Girl
    The Quiet Girl has a meaningful message on nurturing. But with so little of consequence going on, it’s crucial to get the emotions precisely right. Without voiceover narration tying everything together, some scenes feel out of place, random, or offer little beyond aesthetics.
  24. Letters from Iwo Jima
    It's hard to explain exactly why Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima is so much better than its companion World War II film "Flags Of Our Fathers," except to say that Flags tries too hard to emphasize the ironies of selling a war, while Letters deals with the ins and outs of the war itself.
  25. The Seventh Continent (1989)
    The Seventh Continent deals with the deterioration of an average middle-class family by focusing obsessively on mundane life details. As images and actions start repeating themselves, it becomes clear to the family (and to us) that their lives are little more than a collection of routines, without joy or meaning. The conclusion they reach is better left as a surprise, but suffice to say, the third act shifts gears completely.
  26. A Woman Under the Influence
    Falk and Rowlands—in performances of almost indescribable intensity—detail a marriage anchored by love, but tossed by the expectations of others and the unpredictable swell of madness.
  27. Anomalisa
    Many will guess the resolution of Michael and Lisa’s affair well in advance. That scarcely matters, though, given how beautifully distinctive Anomalisa is from moment to moment.
  28. I'm Going Home
    From his wonderfully idiosyncratic bits of silent comedy at a storefront window to a brilliant one-take of Malkovich watching a calamitous scene unfold, de Oliveira seems determined to exit on his own terms.
  29. The Conversation
    What Coppola achieved is a psychodrama about the dangers of being locked in your own private world, of slipping on noise-canceling headphones of any variety. Listening and hearing are not the same thing. Confusing one for the other can have dire consequences.
  30. The Arbor
    It helps that the actors' faces are so mesmerizing, particularly Manjinder Virk as Lorraine.
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