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. The Business of Being Born
    More propaganda than cinema, and at an hour and a half, its exhaustiveness diminishes its impact. But Epstein anchors the film nicely with her own pregnancy, which occurs while the documentary is in production and comes to an unexpected conclusion before shooting ends.
  2. Caramel
    At its best, Caramel boasts a quietly engaging slice-of-slice casualness.
  3. Praying with Lior
    Intimate, moving documentary.
  4. Definitely, Maybe
    Put simply, the film excels most at not being awful.
  5. Chicago 10
    Chicago 10 is a lot of fun, but it could stand to take its subjects a little more seriously, if only because they themselves are so frequently goofy that mocking them is complete overkill.
  6. Married Life
    To a degree, the dynamic between Brosnan and Cooper resembles Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy's relationship from "In The Company Of Men."
  7. Flight of the Red Balloon
    Flight was commissioned by producers overseas, and it feels similarly, impeccably slight.
  8. My Blueberry Nights
    Wong's visions of a New York café, a Memphis bar, and a Vegas casino--not to mention the swaths of beautiful country in the Southwest--have that enveloping quality that make his films so persistently seductive. The natives should feel flattered.
  9. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
    Segel has always played more a serial monogamist than a horndog, and his earnest, self-deprecating screen persona graces the film's crudest moments with a kind of innocence.
  10. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
    The big payoff, of course, is Neil Patrick Harris reprising his role as "Neil Patrick Harris."
  11. Up the Yangtze
    Goes from sleepily hypnotic to riveting over the course of 90 minutes.
  12. Battle for Haditha
    Unsubtle but gripping.
  13. A Jihad for Love
    Even though the message that people should have the right to love whomever they want is hardy groundbreaking, Parvez captures some interesting conversations about what it means to be gay and Muslim.
  14. Encounters at the End of the World
    A sort of distracted, freewheeling form of inquiry and observation drives Encounters At The End Of The World, a loosely constructed documentary that seems to have been made on a whim.
  15. Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
    It's more Thompson-for-beginners than an exhaustive inquiry, but as introductions go, it's thorough and thoughtful.
  16. Kabluey
    While the film's social-satire elements are flat and overly familiar, its dry absurdity is unmistakably Lynchian.
  17. Felon
    Felon's dialogue is overheated and some of its plot twists are preposterous, yet it's still white-knuckle tense, and held together by dozens of small, well-observed moments.
  18. Boy A
    For all Crowley's reliance on quiet naturalism, Boy A ultimately steals a page from film noir, showing how guilt and constant hounding can turn any ex-con into the desperate animal everyone presumes him to be.
  19. Quantum of Solace
    It's dark and exciting, but with little breathing room.
  20. Red
    Red's dialogue is a bit blunt, its characters are too broadly outlined, and the situation verges on the ludicrous at times, especially in the way these dumb kids keep committing terrible crimes without leaving any evidence. But the movie isn't meant to be an exercise in realism.
  21. Trouble the Water
    Trouble The Water is infuriating in its depiction of helpless Americans getting left behind, and uplifting in the way it shows the Roberts putting their lives together, but it's also frustrating, because it lacks some focus.
  22. I.O.U.S.A.
    Though the filmmaking is playful at times, the film is essentially 90 percent message, 10 percent movie.
  23. Traitor
    Without its mesmerizing lead performance, Traitor easily could have devolved into direct-to-DVD fodder.
  24. Flow: For Love of Water
    Skips right past depressing on its way to apocalyptic.
  25. Phoebe in Wonderland
    There's too much "problem, solution" to Phoebe, although the movie's anxieties are believable enough to earns the moments of uplift. The film may be too concerned with being a crowd-pleaser, but it least it makes the crowd suffer a little along the way.
  26. Battle in Seattle
    It's the next best thing to being there, in that it's likely to make shuddering viewers intensely glad that they weren't.
  27. Ghost Town
    Though the plot contrives to throw Gervais and Leoni together and then pull them apart, the two leads stay consistently in sync through it all, laughing at each other's jokes and generally sharing the kind of normal adult communication that's often missing from movies about people falling in love.
  28. Igor
    While the stitches holding together the plot are clearly visible, Igor breathes some enjoyable life into its stolen grab-bag of gimmicks.
  29. Flash of Genius
    It's a smart movie for grownups, an increasingly rare commodity.
  30. Body of Lies
    It's not like the screens are so flooded with decent movies that we couldn't use another, particularly a timely, clear-eyed thriller about the Middle East and the role of the U.S. therein.
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