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. Seraphim Falls
    If Seraphim Falls' audience appreciates its good points and ignores an ending that tries too hard, they'll just be following a grand genre-buff tradition.
  2. Music and Lyrics
    The film's a bit like a dessert that could have been dinner, particularly with so many winning elements (including songs by Fountains Of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger and a brief appearance from a wickedly sleazy Campbell Scott). But dessert isn't a bad thing either, particularly when it's prepared with this much heart.
  3. 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.
  4. Close to Home
    Sayar and Schnendar are likeable performers, and if Bilu and Hager had pushed the "private school for girls" side of Close To Home a little harder, they could have had a sharp satire on their hands. Instead, it's all played straight and close to the surface.
  5. Reno 911!: Miami
    Reno 911's anti-heroes are doomed, deluded losers, but they engender a strange sympathy all the same.
  6. The Abandoned
    The Abandoned is a rare horror film that moves from the real world into a kind of psychic space, and slowly suffocates its characters inside their own heads.
  7. Amazing Grace
    Unlike its subject, Amazing Grace won't change the world, but its quasi-religious sense of conviction proves rousing. Apted's unexpected crowd-pleaser is inspirational, but also surprisingly entertaining.
  8. Into Great Silence
    As a place to enter and meditate, Into Great Silence is imminently worthy, but as a documentary, it doesn't do enough to probe the meaning of the quotation Gröning returns to repeatedly: "Oh Lord, you have seduced me, and I was seduced."
  9. Black Snake Moan
    Like "Hustle & Flow," Moan succeeds on languid atmosphere and the conviction of its leads. But it'd be nice if the execution matched the startling audacity of its premise.
  10. The Exterminating Angels
    The problem with Exterminating Angels is that its explanatory side overwhelms its playfully perverse side.
  11. Beyond the Gates
    Hurt steals scenes with a brilliantly nuanced character, a man bitter enough to make every line delivered to his peers a challenge or an accusation, yet experienced enough to present those challenges with an ingratiating politesse that only cracks in extremis.
  12. Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
    Maxed Out sacrifices depth for breadth and like a lot of low-budget documentaries, it's done no favors by its grimy, no-fi aesthetic. But the film's scattered ruminations on credit card mania add up to a powerful indictment of a culture of mindless consumption spinning out of control.
  13. The Namesake
    It's well-acted and filled with striking compositions, but director Mira Nair has trouble with a different kind of balance.
  14. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    There's a kind of dry tastefulness about The Wind That Shakes The Barley's historical recreations, even when Loach is staging rapes and executions.
  15. The Last Mimzy
    If Mimzy serves as a gateway drug that gets "Shrek" fans into classic science fiction, then it'll have performed an invaluable cultural service.
  16. Blades of Glory
    Some of the jokes are about skating, others are about whatever random thing happened to pop into Ferrell's head with the cameras rolling, and just about all of it is funny.
  17. The Hawk Is Dying
    A fragile little movie, occasionally ridiculous, but with M. Night Shyamalan's "Lady In The Water," Giamatti proved that he can make even the weirdest material believable.
  18. Are We Done Yet?
    It isn't gangsta, but it's winning all the same.
  19. The TV Set
    Could almost be a Christopher Guest bridging project--it's essentially Guest's The Big Picture for TV instead of film, though it's structured in the low-key, rambling, observational manner of Guest's later ensemble comedies.
  20. Whole New Thing
    Develops its story slowly and carefully, nearly always opting for the plausible over the sensational.
  21. Disturbia
    Once the plot finally kicks into gear, director D.J. Caruso (Taking Lives) effectively cranks up the tension.
  22. Fracture
    Not since Lecter has a role been this well suited to Hopkins, whose intelligence and pristine formality as an actor often make him seem alien--or worse, an incorrigible ham.
  23. Jindabyne
    In the end, it's all a bit too self-consciously mysterious and Lawrence leans a bit too much on the atmosphere to do the work for him as he builds to a frustrating ending. But his vision of a place haunted by a restlessness it can't define proves unsettlingly infectious.
  24. Les amitiés maléfiques
    Up to the last five minutes, Poison Friends stays true to that heady, idealistic-to-a-fault world of academia.
  25. L'iceberg
    The film is striking and often charming, and any movie that places three tall, lanky types aboard a miniature boat named "Titanique" can't be slammed too much. But in the end, it's easier to admire than to love.
  26. The Hip Hop Project
    Project provides an unmistakably one-sided view of rap as God's gift to the poor, angry, black, and young, but given the beating rap has taken in the press lately (please Oprah, don't hurt 'em!), the film's pro-rap cheerleading couldn't be more timely or necessary.
  27. Chalk
    Chalk pays homage to the kind of teachers students never forget, which makes it all the more perverse that it's so stubbornly, albeit affably, forgettable.
  28. Bug
    Friedkin's latest rivals his Druid horror flick "The Guardian" for sheer lunacy--Bug remains disconcerting, real, and raw. It poignantly suggests that some lost souls would rather be crazy and doomed than alone.
  29. Gracie
    There's a reason the underdog sports formula is followed over and over: When it's executed as skillfully as it is here, the damned thing works every time.
  30. Hostel: Part II
    It's also, in its sick, sick way, a real crowd-pleaser.
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