The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,422 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 2.6 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: 5,575 out of 10422
  2. Mixed: 3,739 out of 10422
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10422
10422 movie reviews
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  1. Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!
    Alternately hypnotic and headache-inducing.
  2. Iron Island
    Iron Island is at its most compelling early, as Rasoulof explores his human-scaled ant farm, detailing how people make lives for themselves in cramped quarters, using cardboard partitions and jerry-rigged appliances.
  3. The Notorious Bettie Page
    Mol nails it, in a performance that should earn her a comeback on a Heath Ledger-like scale.
  4. Sir! No Sir!
    Ffor all its clumsiness, Sir! No Sir! movingly captures the raw excitement of grunts discovering their power and their voices in their ability to resist.
  5. Somersault
    Watching the Australian coming-of-age film Somersault is a little like watching a fluffy white bunny hop through a minefield, one tiny spring away from becoming tonight's rabbit stew.
  6. Three Times
    A sampler of novella-length films set in three different time periods and starring the same two actors, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times resembles one of those delicate trios served at fine restaurants, each a fresh interpretation of a common ingredient.
  7. 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.
  8. Russian Dolls
    These characters are still rich, and their potential growth still compelling. Here's hoping we meet them again in another five years.
  9. Keeping Up with the Steins
    What begins as a scathing but loving satire of materialism loses its way once it turns into a warmhearted after-school special about a nice young Jewish boy discovering the true meaning of the bar mitzvah.
  10. Wah-Wah
    Wah-Wah can't sustain the mastery of its superior first hour, but it maintains a core of truth that sets it apart from less-convincing depictions of boys becoming men.
  11. 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.
  12. La Moustache
    La Moustache recalls the "everyday suspense" films of Roman Polanski and the existential woe of Michelangelo Antonioni, but it isn't as strange or penetrating as the former, or as artfully shot as the latter.
  13. Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul
    Hacke is in almost every shot, taking in the performances and sometimes singing and dancing along, inviting the audience to share in the joy of discovery.
  14. The Heart of the Game
    The entertaining new documentary The Heart Of The Game at least acknowledges many of the same conflicts that arose in Hoop Dreams, even though it's really more about two outsized personalities and their infectious passion for the sport.
  15. The Lake House
    Elegantly scripted by Pulitzer Prize-winner David Auburn, The Lake House never establishes any clear rules about how and when these strands of time can intertwine, but it succeeds at forging a bond between people who only know each other on the page.
  16. Lower City
    Whatever its pretensions of social relevance, Sérgio Machado's Lower City is essentially an exploitation movie, and not a half-bad one at that.
  17. Wordplay
    The film's subjects are almost uniformly likable, self-deprecating, funny, and hyper-verbal, and their peculiar passion for crosswords and the sense of genial camaraderie among buffs proves surprisingly infectious.
  18. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
    Director Lian Lunson keeps the tone reverent, making I'm Your Man the cinematic equivalent of a testimonial dinner. But there's a place for that kind of film, particularly for subjects who've earned it.
  19. 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.
  20. Superman Returns
    Singer's reverence for the 1978 version edges perilously close to mimicry, as if he has no new ideas to bring to the table, but he succeeds in drawing out the Superman myth with simple power and a refreshing absence of irony.
  21. The Road to Guantanamo
    They never come up with a sufficient reason for crossing into Afghanistan. Their motives for heading straight into a war zone sound like something out of a stoner comedy: They went in search of "really big naan."
  22. Strangers with Candy
    Lives and dies on the strength of individual gags, most of which are clever, but none of which quite make up for the absence of a strong narrative drive. Sometimes being funny isn't enough.
  23. Who Killed the Electric Car?
    Above all, the film is an extended love letter to the EV1, a sleek GM electric marvel that, by Paine's reckoning, marks the single greatest innovation in human technology since the wheel.
  24. You, Me and Dupree
    You, Me And Dupree isn't terribly democratic about spreading the laughs around; whenever Wilson disappears from the screen, the comedy evaporates in kind.
  25. Monster House
    Director Gil Kenan has a feel for dizzying "camera" work, and the screenplay combines witty gags with a sweet, albeit familiar, suggestion that kids shouldn't be in any great hurry to be anything but kids.
  26. Azumi
    As a moody drama, it falls short, but as lightweight escapism, it sets off sporadic but irresistible explosions of pure cinematic delight.
  27. The Night Listener
    Williams delivers a solid, twinkle-free (though closed-off) performance, but the film as a whole can't decide what it wants to be.
  28. 13 Tzameti
    Géla Babluani is unmistakably a first-timer, and his debut project is raw and rough-edged. But he aces the way simple images can make the most of a simple story.
  29. My Country, My Country
    Reserving the only trace of editorializing for the end credits, which list some sobering numbers on the occupation and this so-called successful election, Poitras mainly allows her subjects and the circumstances to speak for themselves.
  30. Quinceañera
    Quinceañera sketches its characters and conflicts with warmth and empathy.
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