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. ParaNorman
    It plays with comedy and drama, but keeps failing to commit to one or the other.
  2. Let It Rain
    There’s not much left to chew on when the movie is over; when Resnais adapted Jaoui and Bacri’s scripts, he added a visual counter-narrative that’s absent from Jaoui’s more functional approach. But a passing delight is a delight all the same.
  3. Luce
    It’s a remarkable, chilling performance: from Harrison, certainly, but also from his character, playing code-switching mind games with his teacher.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A People Uncounted
    Hopefully, A People Uncounted will inspire many more projects that illuminate the history and modern-day reality of the Roma, at least as a corrective to what’s been propagated through reality TV.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Welcome to Sarajevo
    Perhaps the worst thing you can say about Welcome To Sarajevo is that it's not a great film, but it's very good, and it should be seen.
  6. Being Evel
    Being Evel’s story is too plain in the telling, but it’s still incredible, and relevant in the way it shows how a person can achieve wealth and fame if he’s willing to leap way high—and to endure the inevitable wipeout.
  7. Paul Williams Still Alive
    The footage in Paul Williams Still Alive - old and new - is highly entertaining, even moving. But it's as though Kessler recorded the DVD commentary track first, then made the movie.
  8. The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
    While Swartz almost certainly would not have been sentenced to 50 years in prison, a system that tries to scare harmless do-gooders into submission does America no credit. In this case, it succeeded all too horribly well.
  9. Extra Ordinary
    Some jokes may dissipate quickly, but its unusual warmth lingers in the air like a friendly ghost.
  10. Only the Brave
    So squarely old-fashioned that it’s a little jarring to notice that many of the characters have smartphones.
  11. The Tunnel
    The Tunnel boasts the kind of plot that would seem ridiculously implausible if it weren't based on a true story.
  12. Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds
    This film is charming and educational enough, but it’s not especially profound; it flirts with big ideas about the origins of life and the twin cycles of creation and destruction but doesn’t really let them sink in.
  13. Tell Them Who You Are
    Tell Them Who You Are is indulgent by design, and the elder Wexler may be right about his son's aesthetic failings.
  14. Hellboy
    Pretty much impossible not to like a little, but it's also hard to like a lot. There's a fantastic film to be made from this material, but now, the burden of making it falls to a sequel.
  15. Radio Unnameable
    Radio Unnameable is at its best when it tries to find some visual analog to Fass' vibe, courtesy of cinematographer John Pirozzi, who takes beautiful snapshots of a sleepless city. It also, in the Fass way, does a little meandering.
  16. Violette
    A few excerpts of Leduc’s prose spoken in voiceover, expressing the same feelings poetically, can’t compensate for over two hours of maudlin self-pity. It’s so annoying that dull shots of Leduc writing serve as a welcome respite.
  17. America America
    It’s a crude, clunky piece of writing, hampered by variable performances and a leading man whose looks of silent resolve are more compelling than his line-readings. Yet the film has the elemental power of a classic immigrant story, revealing a young man’s single-minded, arduous journey to America through black-and-white images that evoke the country’s promise to the huddled masses.
  18. Hail, Caesar!
    Somewhere in there are stretches of the Coens’ funniest comedy since "The Big Lebowski"; it just takes a little patience.
  19. The Painted Bird
    All of this agony is captured with great skill and artistry. Shot in Cinemascope, in crisp 35mm black-and-white, The Painted Bird is beautiful just to look at, even when its content is unspeakably ugly; there are images that will burn themselves onto your memory, whether you want them to or not.
  20. 4
    In spite of a handful of striking images--4 never resolves into anything special.
  21. Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro
    This caper film possesses Miyazaki's usual good-hearted charm, but he injects a manically energetic humor that his more sedate children's films never quite achieve.
  22. The Mad Women's Ball
    This is a work of feminist melodrama, one that uses real events as a backdrop for a romantic, woman-centric tale of rebellious spirits and dreams deferred. As such, it might not be the most nuanced portrayal of this particular chapter in history. But it is passionate, fathers and doctors be damned.
  23. Four Hours at the Capitol
    After watching Four Hours At The Capitol, the January 6 attack feels more like a horror film, one that ends with the monster still at large.
  24. The Color Purple
    The Color Purple offers some entertaining moments, however the sum of it is much less than some of its standout parts. Bazawule clearly had a vision in adapting this story once more, and he’s aided by excellent work from cinematographer Dan Lausten and costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck, yet that vision never fully coheres.
  25. The Lure
    For her debut feature, The Lure, Smoczyńska has very loosely adapted Hans Christian Andersen’s classic story — so loosely, you might not realize that’s what she’s doing until halfway through — into a genre-defying film that blends elements of musicals, horror, romance, and fantasy into a contemporary fairy tale that celebrates the animalistic, the feminine, and the intimate intersections between the two.
  26. Mistaken for Strangers
    Mistaken For Strangers is as much a film about its director as it is about The National, which may qualify it as an entirely new kind of rock doc.
  27. Planes, Trains & Automobiles
    I feel like we catch a brief glimpse here of an amazing filmmaker who never quite existed.
  28. Igby Goes Down
    Gives the impression of spontaneity while being meticulously planned. Most importantly, Steers and Culkin know that the best way to evoke sympathy is never to beg for it; by the end, their achievement seems hard-won.
  29. Safety Not Guaranteed
    It's a tribute to Plaza and Duplass that they're able to make such slight material resonate at all, let alone with the poignancy they occasionally find.
  30. Christine
    While the film does depict the suicide, that moment isn’t nearly as memorable as a pitch-perfect coda involving a fairly minor character, which combines generosity, poignance, and rueful irony in unnerving proportions.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »