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
  1. Goon: Last of the Enforcers
    A film that’s a lot like the last one, just not quite as funny or endearing. If you loved Goon, you’re gonna kind of like Goon: Last Of The Enforcers.
  2. Birth of the Dragon
    The aura of cheap-o emptiness is overwhelming: Scenes tend to be visually featureless, composed against strangely empty walls or Vancouver street corners. Even the occasionally decent fight choreography looks unappealing.
  3. Death Note
    The result is perversely watchable, which puts it a cut above the average inane wannabe franchise-starter. With no likable characters or internal suspense to keep it in check, Wingard’s direction sputters out into a cloud of slickness and pastiche.
  4. The Villainess
    The Villainess delivers all the overstuffed thrills we’ve come to expect from Korean action cinema. But it also strains under the weight of those expectations.
  5. Leap!
    Rather than inspiring some kind of connection between disparate eras, Leap! uses pop music as a quick fix for kids who might be bored by ballet or orphans.
  6. Beach Rats
    Hittman (It Felt Like Love) turns out to be a conventional storyteller; despite her evocative styling and Dickinson’s surprisingly assured lead performance, her sophomore feature remains confined in monotonous, psychologically shallow coming-of-age-drama indiedom.
  7. Bushwick
    Bushwick imagines nothing less than the collapse of the United States Of America, with half the country in armed revolt. At a time when that possibility can feel all too frighteningly real, it’s dispiriting to see it employed as little more than an excuse to engineer a live-action Grand Theft Auto.
  8. England Is Mine
    It’s a biopic that ends before its subject’s life-changing work even really begins, so those without the knowledge to fill in the gaps will almost certainly leave wondering why they should care.
  9. Marjorie Prime
    The most stylish thing about it is the eerie original music by Mica Levi, the art-damaged noise-popster-turned-composer who previously scored "Under The Skin" and "Jackie."
  10. Patti Cake$
    There’s no cliché so corny that Patti Cake$ won’t exploit it for our approval.
  11. The Hitman's Bodyguard
    The Hitman’s Bodyguard, which bears the tagline “Get triggered” and is essentially a dumber, tackier "Midnight Run," was destined to be one of those Neanderthalic, faux-merican EuropaCorp action movies, like "The Transporter" or "From Paris With Love" ­­— except fate fumbled, and the film ended up as a coasting-on-star-power Hollywood programmer directed by The Expendables 3’s Patrick Hughes.
  12. Lemon
    Gelman and Bravo, who wrote the script together, are married in real life, a fact that somehow makes Lemon’s mix of broad caricature and broader relationship metaphors even clumsier.
  13. The Wound
    The Wound excels so long as it hangs back a bit, watching Xolani struggle to project the authority that his role demands, despite being acutely aware of his own vulnerability.
  14. Logan Lucky
    Soderbergh isn’t exactly hiding a secret drama inside his barrel of laughs and twists. But his comeback project keeps quiet about being one of the sweetest, most affirming movies he’s ever made.
  15. The Trip to Spain
    Thing is, this third movie plays less like some bookend chapter of a complete saga than a floundering middle season of a television show that’s settled into a formulaic groove—which makes sense, given that each Trip is actually a condensed version of an episodic miniseries that aired on British television first.
  16. The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature
    Surly and Andie’s second adventure...is less ambitious than the original.... But it’s also more propulsive, which is to say antic.
  17. Good Time
    Stripping away almost all traces of movie-star glamour to reveal the naked, nervy talent underneath, Pattinson finally bursts out of the chrysalis of his pin-up boy celebrity. The metamorphosis from YA heartthrob into electrifying character actor is complete.
  18. Nocturama
    The film is a masterstroke of synthesis; whatever it borrows, it makes its own.
  19. The Only Living Boy in New York
    Marc Webb’s new movie, in contrast, uses the song for its title, the name of an in-movie manuscript, and as a late-breaking song cue that doesn’t drop the needle so much as clunk it down with turgid inevitability.
  20. Naked
    Let’s place the blame where it squarely belongs: on the moronic premise. Groundhog Day but he’s naked? Why?
  21. Annabelle: Creation
    Like the "Conjuring" films, Annabelle: Creation is a symphony of cheap tricks; its scares are strictly of the funhouse variety, not the keep-you-up-for-days kind, but they’re executed with precision and panache.
  22. The Glass Castle
    While it’s understandable that Walls might not want to linger on the more grim aspects of her childhood, Cretton’s decision to pull punches on those exact moments takes what could be a powerful tale of resilience and forgiveness and spins it into just another piece of Hollywood feel-good fluff.
  23. Ingrid Goes West
    The biggest selling point of Ingrid Goes West is its screenplay, which is full of deadpan comic flourishes.
  24. Planetarium
    Numerous potentially interesting ideas orbit one another in Planetarium, but none boasts sufficient gravity to merit a landing, it seems.
  25. Whose Streets?
    What this film is not, in any way, is comprehensive. Very intentionally, Folayan and company don’t concern themselves with the bigger picture. This is ground-level journalism.
  26. The Dark Tower
    It would be a waste of everyone’s time to go on about how this 95-minute movie deviates from the source. Let’s just say it turns The Dark Tower into something generic, and leave it at that.
  27. Columbus
    Come for the breathtaking architectural scenery, stay for the likable pair staring up at it.
  28. Fun Mom Dinner
    While there is plenty of drinking and a fair amount of drugs (just pot though, let’s not go crazy), the overall effect is more akin to passing out on the couch at 9 p.m. than partying until dawn.
  29. Kidnap
    Kidnap is an asinine child-abduction thriller spliced with a touch of the early Steven Spielberg TV movie "Duel," and the most likable thing about it is that it is utter, unabashed garbage.
  30. Icarus
    Bryan Fogel’s Netflix documentary Icarus tells such an eye-opening story that it almost doesn’t matter when the storytelling itself gets a little sloppy.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »