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. I'm Not There.
    An ingenious, maddening film inspired by the "many lives of Bob Dylan."
  2. Inside Out 2
    You want to connect to these characters on a deeper level, but it never really lets you get fully invested in them.
  3. The Proposition
    The sketchily symbolic characters and flat plot just frame an atmosphere of sticky heat and Biblical reckoning.
  4. The Son's Room
    In the end, it's that reserve that makes it work. Keeping his distance, the director lets viewers see in full the moments in which grief turns the world into a narrow, never-ending tunnel.
  5. Derrida
    As the film takes shape, the form and the subject develop a fascinating symbiosis, with Derrida cast as an active participant in the deconstruction of his own documentary.
  6. The Bourne Supremacy
    Goes through its airport-thriller paces with dazzling kinetics and style.
  7. You Don't Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantanamo
    Côté and Henriquez err in pressing their case too hard on occasion, especially when they cut to reaction shots of Khadr supporters watching footage of his agony; there's a line between providing context and manipulating the audience that they don't care to acknowledge. Then again, subtlety isn't likely the goal: You Don't Like The Truth beats the drum, and beats it loudly.
  8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    In three short scenes, this otherwise linear film unexpectedly slips loose from time, portraying a joyous moment, a tragic revelation, and then a long, slow scene that holds both in the balance, letting viewers tip the scale in whichever direction their hearts incline. It's an effect that could only happen in cinema, and it's made all the more stunning by its appearance in a film taken from a by-all-logic-unfilmable book.
  9. Hill of Freedom
    It may not be the heftiest or most penetrating entry in the Hong oeuvre, but it’s one of the funniest and probably the most accessible.
  10. Robin and Marian
    Robin And Marian would merely be an exercise in theory if the actors didn't make it breathe. Their scenes together a combination of easy humor and wistful grace notes, Connery and Hepburn find an easy rapport, playing something between legendary lovers and an old married couple.
  11. The Fall Guy
    Even with the action and stunt work operating at full throttle, what really makes The Fall Guy work is the partnership between Gosling and Blunt.
  12. Creed III
    Creed III captures the spectacle and ceremony of boxing, providing the audience with an entertaining thrill ride. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, owing much to its predecessors in the Rocky and Creed series in story structure and character development.
  13. Wicked
    Wicked makes the old Wizard Of Oz look even more like a vivid original, while the newer movie unfolding in front of us looks like a faded memory.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Khodorkovsky
    It's unlikely to enflame American audiences with less of a stake in Russia's political goings-on, but works as a persuasive portrait of a politically toxic situation. As one of Khodorkovsky's advocates admits to the camera, even capitalists are entitled to human rights.
  15. The Biggest Little Farm
    The Biggest Little Farm has many valuable points to make about the connection between how our food is grown and eco-friendly living, but style betrays substance so often here that the message gets lost in the shuffle. Unless that message is simply We Bought A Farm!
  16. Laurence Anyways
    For once in a Dolan film, an actor upstages the camera moves. That’s a promising precedent, as well as a hint that artistic adulthood won’t spoil this hotdogging prodigy.
  17. Sollers Point
    Sollers Point is easy to admire, abstractly and on principle. But you may still leave wondering if a little melodrama, a little bullshit, might have been preferable.
  18. Pillow Talk
    It’s the perfect first-date movie: It’s flirty and romantic and a little bit saucy, but it leaves viewers with just a peck on the cheek at the end of the night.
  19. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
    As for what all of this represents, Small Enough To Jail doesn’t draw any conclusions that its many interviewees aren’t willing to voice themselves.
  20. Hounds of Love
    Hounds Of Love is a remarkable achievement in that it does exactly what it sets out to do, and what it sets out to do is traumatize the hell out of you. You just might not want to watch it twice.
  21. A Most Wanted Man
    What resonates, in this smart but minor procedural, isn’t the harsh vision of a post-9/11 world, but the unglamorous depiction of governmental grunt work.
  22. Spaceship Earth
    Spaceship Earth mostly skims over both the findings and the failings, and neglects a lot of the logistics—understandable omissions for a two-hour documentary more interested, perhaps, in the social ramifications of those two years behind glass. Not that it totally illuminates that aspect either.
  23. Arbitrage
    Between Gere matching wits with a police detective played by Tim Roth, and Gere having to explain himself to the steely Sarandon, Arbitrage is never dull.
  24. 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.
  25. Blue Beard
    As with Breillat’s 2007 period piece "The Last Mistress," Bluebeard is subdued and unadorned, almost plain.
  26. The Princess and the Frog
    Disney’s triumphant return to hand-drawn 2-D animation still holds an awful lot of familiar, comfort-food charm.
  27. The Alchemist Cookbook
    It’s difficult to imagine what a script for all of this would even look like. Whatever The Alchemist Cookbook has to express, it expresses through scenes that feel as though someone were dared to do something while a camera rolled, in the near-extinct tradition of the transgressive underground movie.
  28. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
    It functions reasonably well as a straightforward, agonized melodrama, but it’s first and foremost a master class—co-taught by famed cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (Goodfellas, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Quiz Show), who got his start with Fassbinder—in the dynamic visual use of a constricted space, and proof that a tiny budget is no excuse.
  29. 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.
  30. The Two Escobars
    Finds connections deeply embedded in a soccer culture fueled by the country's thieving cocaine trade.
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