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. Five Minutes of Heaven
    Hirschbiegel fails to discipline his English-speaking cast, allowing Nesbitt so much rein with his caffeinated performance that sympathies shift to Neeson’s comparatively sanguine murderer.
  2. Fame
    A film that’s largely a raw, uplifting love letter to creativity in every possible form.
  3. Ong Bak 2
    What sold the original Ong Bak was the action, not the story, and on an action level, Ong Bak 2 lives up to its title.
  4. The Exploding Girl
    There isn’t much to The Exploding Girl, but it’s blessedly compact, and owns its no-big-deal-ness.
  5. Easier with Practice
    Love stories don’t come much squirmier than this one, and Alvarez plays it with honesty, insight, and the awkwardness inherent in this blindest of blind dates.
  6. Mid-August Lunch
    It’s a trifle, but a trifle that sticks.
  7. The Tenant
    Though the result is too slow and curious, with a weak lead performance by the writer-director, The Tenant's tone of abstracted anxiety is distinctive, and its central message, that the obnoxious define the world for everyone else, provides another tile in Polanski's career mosaic of paranoia and power brokerage.
  8. Mysterious Object at Noon
    All of this free association falls under the wide umbrella of "experimental" cinema, meaning that the often flagging pace and incoherent stretches are balanced by sublime moments of inspiration.
  9. Romeo + Juliet
    For all the hubbub, the film succeeds in relating Shakespeare to modern times, thanks mainly to the use of energetic pop music and the gameness of the performers.
  10. Strictly Ballroom
    Luhrmann works aggressively for laughs early in the picture, playing up the gaudiness and piggishness of the old-guard dancers in camera angles as extreme and unflattering as a mid-'80s David Lee Roth video.
  11. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
    What keeps Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! from being irredeemably offensive are Almodóvar’s efforts, however vague and tentative, to undermine his own thesis.
  12. Salt
    Salt's mechanical command of action is what makes it one of the most entertaining films of a summer thin on its once-abundant variety of cheap thrills.
  13. Get Him to the Greek
    Hill, dialing back on the pissy vulgarity of his supporting roles in "Knocked Up" and "Funny People," makes the perfect foil, as passive and impressionable as Brand is reckless and impulsive.
  14. State of Fear
    Builds to a key point about the consequences of democracies fighting terrorism by erasing its central tenets, but in doing so, it doesn't underplay the horrors wrought by Guzmán's organization.
  15. Drawing Restraint 9
    It's hard to shake the sense that there's less here than meets the eye, but what meets the eye burns with a rare intensity.
  16. Sisters in Law
    Almost as fascinating as the depiction of modern Cameroon law is the snapshot of how the 21st century has found its way into rural Africa. Cameroon has always been one of the more developed African nations, but the place where Sisters In Law takes place still consists mainly of tumbledown shacks strung together chaotically.
  17. Justice
    Because Justice is from the Wiseman school of documentaries, there's no narration and people don't share their thoughts with the camera, which means the movie can come off as a little hollow.
  18. Exit: The Right to Die
    In the wrenching final scene, the concept of "dying with dignity" becomes much more than just a catchphrase used to justify a controversial practice.
  19. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
    Even though 2 Or 3 Things' central irony is blunt, Ludin's tone remains measured throughout, and never self-serving.
  20. In the Pit
    Rulfo's simple strategy of sticking close to his subjects and allowing them to wax philosophical about their lives and labors pays off.
  21. The Decomposition of the Soul
    Decomposition bears powerful, uncompromising witness to man's inhumanity to man, which is one of the most important things any documentary can do, though, it's also one of the most grueling.
  22. Glastonbury
    The film is clearly an act of boosterism, and it makes a pretty good case for the Glastonbury cause.
  23. Severance
    Severance still seems a few rewrites away from living up to its potential, but it's remarkable how much just a modicum of wit can spice up the standard backwoods slice-and-dice. Scaring people with a horror film is easy; entertaining them takes a little skill.
  24. Diggers
    As befits a heartfelt ode to working-class values, Diggers puts in lots of hard, honest work that finally pays off in a wholly predictable yet unexpectedly moving conclusion.
  25. Brand Upon the Brain!
    Coming after the inspired trifecta of "Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary," "Cowards Bend The Knee," and "The Saddest Music In The World," Brand feels a little like boilerplate Maddin rather than a fresh burst of inspiration.
  26. Steel City
    For the most part, they live life convincingly, in a refreshingly inward-looking, well-made film that's smart enough to stay small, and leave the car crashes to the big summer action movies.
  27. Beyond Hatred
    It's so rare these days to see a documentary that aspires to be cinematic that Beyond Hatred may seem at first to be slightly better than it is.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Drama/Mex
    In many ways, Drama/Mex is a typical Iñárritu-style mélange of souls in crisis, bouncing off each other in unexpected ways.
  29. Crossing the Line
    It's an enormous scoop for a Western filmmaker, but a potentially compromising one, too. How much can a filmmaker challenge the dubious elements of Dresnok's story? At what point can the film be considered an unwitting propaganda tool for an oppressive, totalitarian system?
  30. The Life of Reilly
    Spellbinding.
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