The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Fantastic Planet
    Fantastic Planet uses an accessible medium to show the evils of propaganda and express the need for individuality. Laloux's vision of a Dali-meets-Krazy Kat alien landscape populated by twisted creatures is quite striking, even if the film's psychedelic elements haven't exactly aged well.
  2. Final Destination: Bloodlines
    Bloodlines honors a legacy of unrepentant silliness and gleeful gore with a knowing wink.
  3. 4 Days in France
    What makes 4 Days In France special, though, is that it’s far more expansive than its basic premise would suggest.
  4. Into the Wild
    There's a bittersweet quality to McCandless' story that Penn captures intuitively.
  5. Miss Juneteenth
    At its heart, Miss Juneteenth is about the relationship between a mother and her daughter, which Peoples brings to the screen with a subtlety that’s very true to life.
  6. The Party
    The shining star of this little community is Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas), who’s put together an intimate gathering of friends to celebrate her recent promotion to Shadow Minister for Health.
  7. A Scanner Darkly
    Which makes it all the more frustrating that the film doesn't quite work, and that it drags from episode to episode--some are brilliant, most merely intriguing--with little momentum.
  8. Cropsey
    Cropsey is compelling as a meditation on how we use stories to explain the inconceivable, and how if no story is handy, we take the available clues and make one up.
  9. The Great Man
    It’s shockingly humorless and glacially slow for a film featuring a bendy boy genius, an invisible woman, a human torch, and a talking pile of stones.
  10. The House of the Devil
    If nothing else, Ti West’s retro “Satan rules!” thriller The House Of The Devil gets the look and tone of early-’80s horror schlock exactly right.
  11. The Dinner Game
    Adapted from a long-running stage play, The Dinner Game has been refined to peak comic efficiency, with every misunderstanding and hare-brained scheme neatly cascading into bigger and bigger catastrophes.
  12. The Iron Claw
    The chemistry between the brothers is palpable, creating emotional heft behind each victory and defeat.
  13. Red Cliff
    The film is both traditional and modern: austere in its engagement with history, and insistent in its showy action beats.
  14. Rust and Bone
    Both actors are tremendous - especially Schoenaerts.
  15. Eye in the Sky
    Like Brian De Palma’s underrated "Redacted," this is a film that doesn’t want to be easily pegged, either in terms of its politics or generic allegiances. Such ambiguity is a virtue, but for all his technical facility, Hood doesn’t really have the finesse of a great, fearless satirist.
  16. Frantz
    Beer and Niney do solid work, but their sensitive efforts can’t quite breathe life into a story that no longer seems terribly relevant.
  17. Val
    If you’re already a fan of Kilmer’s work, there’s clear value in watching him pal around as a young man on the brink of stardom or rehearse as Jim Morrison for The Doors. But for everyone else, Val can sometimes feel like an uncomplicated victory lap.
  18. The Fight
    Snappily edited, with a visual style reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh’s modular design, The Fight tells viewers of a certain political perspective what they want to hear (that Trump is bad).
  19. All About Lily Chou-Chou
    Drifting through time and space without firmly situating the viewer, Iwai's elliptical style requires patience, but also a willingness to be carried along by its gorgeous, dreamy lyricism.
  20. 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.
  21. Cheech and Chong's Last Movie
    The tension between Cheech & Chong is a tale as old as time. But their overwhelming respect and love for each other make Last Movie an amiable tour through an unlikely and historic career, arriving at an even more unlikely send-off.
  22. Like Father, Like Son
    Like Father, Like Son has the overall depth and tenor of a Lifetime movie. Kore-Eda can do much better.
  23. Filmworker
    Matthew Modine — who wrote about Vitali repeatedly in his published diaries of the hellish production of "Full Metal Jacket" and is also interviewed in Filmworker — echoes what seems to be a common sentiment about Vitali: that the guy is a friendly mystery, either a glutton for punishment or a saint.
  24. Fair Play
    What Fair Play gets most right, though, is its headlong dive into the messy complications and charged ambiguity of navigating romance in a fast-changing world. The result is an enjoyably caustic, character-driven drama that connects on multiple levels.
  25. She Will
    It’s the film’s mercurial nature, its hazy dreamlike logic, that makes it so extraordinary.
  26. Queen of Katwe
    In some ways, the more novel element is the film’s depiction of chess, which in Katwe is a popular sport on the level of football. And while that might seem unlikely, it’s accurate, at least in the wake of Mutesi’s success.
  27. Werewolf
    Werewolf unmistakably announces McKenzie as a potentially significant new voice, gifted enough to make well-trod ground seem newly landscaped.
  28. Pop Aye
    Pop Aye is a standard, if well-made, indie road trip dramedy. But, you know, with an elephant.
  29. Time
    Time could almost be written off as misogynistic, except that it's so specific about its rage. It's almost as though Kim was so fed up with having the same argument with his girlfriend, all he could do was make a movie.
  30. A Field in England
    It’s the period itself that’s front and center here — not in the usual sense of historical accuracy, but as a sort of theater of the bizarre that allows Wheatley and his wife, screenwriter Amy Jump, to indulge in dementia.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »