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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    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    I'm Glad My Mother Is Alive
    Until the film takes an abrupt, annoyingly melodramatic late turn, the Millers handle Rottiers' character with great delicacy, aided by strong lead performances and a refusal to show Rottiers' adopted home as either idealized or seriously lacking.
  2. Undefeated
    It's common for coaches to take roles as father figures on a high-school and college level, but Undefeated gets into how that dynamic works on both ends, as Courtney seeks to salve the pain of his family history.
  3. Limelight
    As usual, Corben's style is caffeinated and a little rough around the edges, but he's a tenacious journalist, and his yen for sensationalism gives Limelight an irresistible tabloid pop.
  4. Happy, Happy
    The characters remain governed by what they've been told about themselves for years - that they're ugly, devious, mean, low-class, or silly - until a fresh set of eyes changes what they see in the mirror. Knowing this mutual moment of stark self-awareness is coming doesn't make its arrival any less powerful.
  5. Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure
    Bate invites a disparate bunch of SULM true-believers to explain their obsession, and many of them point to the same spirit of voyeurism that makes YouTube videos go viral today: that sense of getting an unfiltered look into how other people live.
  6. Finding Joe
    Finding Joe feels like a homemade quilt: It's warm and comforting, but visually busy, with a repeating pattern that some will find stuffy and overwhelming.
  7. The Sons of Tennessee Williams
    The significance of that group anecdote - from the message of unity to the way Mardi Gras gave some gay New Orleanians a way to explain their lives to their parents - can't be overstated, either for its impact on human rights or its power to move.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
    Padilha's film has a witheringly low opinion of most people - the gangs are no better than animals, the regular police are gleefully corrupt, the liberal intellectuals are sanctimonious fools, and the politicians are only interested in protecting themselves.
  9. The Woman
    The mix of blunt sexual politics and dime-store-paperback luridness has the bracing quality of tub-brewed rotgut. It eats away at the stomach lining - that is, if it can be stomached at all.
  10. Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe
    Best of all, Candace Against The Universe plays up the heart of the relationship among Candace, Phineas, and Ferb: For all her schemes, the show often revealed that Candace really does love her brothers. But this new movie makes a point to show how much they appreciate her as well.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    To Rome with Love
    The storyline involving Alec Baldwin, as an established architect on vacation in the city, is by far the most rewarding in the film, and it provides substance to what would otherwise be a strenuously whimsical endeavor.
  12. Trouble with the Curve
    In Trouble With The Curve, Eastwood plays a reminder of an older way of doing things, a professional whose likes the world won't see again once he's gone. The role isn't much of a stretch.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hipsters
    Light as a bubble, Hipsters suggests that age may catch up with everyone, but that there will always be people fighting against the current of conformity, even if they only express it via how they wear their hair.
  14. Now You See Me
    Now You See Me, which is essentially an "Ocean’s" movie recast with illusionists, demands a kind of childlike fascination with swindles, and a willingness to be hoodwinked along with the characters. Walk in with those expectations and it won’t be hard to see the appeal of this ludicrous but spirited caper, which has nearly as many rug-pulls as game movie stars.
  15. Magic Mike
    Like "The Girlfriend Experience," Magic Mike doubles as an of-the-moment film about life in a down economy, so much so that it would play like a bait-and-switch if it didn't just as thoroughly deliver as a movie about stripping.
  16. The Last Rites of Joe May
    The Last Rites Of Joe May succeeds in some of the smaller details and the soulful performances.
  17. The Lie
    The Lie's payoff strikes an unexpected, refreshingly open note that makes this slight little indie more resonant than its scale suggests. The line this couple is about to cross is significant, and the film takes it seriously.
  18. The Conquest
    The Conquest offers that familiar thrill of being allowed to peek behind the curtain and see what our leaders are really like, and while it's more rote than revelatory, that may be because the American way of wielding power - and telling stories about it - has gone global.
  19. Rampart
    Harrelson thrives amid the restlessness, and gives perhaps the peak performance of his increasingly distinguished career.
  20. Garbo: The Spy
    Even without the fine psychological shading, Garcia's story is a doozy.
  21. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1945)
    Powell and Pressburger bring their combination of good humor, visual flair, and unflinching insight to the three telling episodes that make up the film's 160-minute run time.
  22. Being Flynn
    Weitz's sense of play and the Badly Drawn Boy soundtrack each give Being Flynn an enjoyable lightness; meanwhile, the curdled, hidden rage lurking within both Flynns gives it an equally enjoyable edge.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Footnote
    The love, jealousy, and stubborn pride of the relationship between Ashkenazi and Bar-Aba is the heart of the film, and that makes the deliberately uncertain note of the ending particularly frustrating.
  24. Captain Phillips
    More often that not, however, Captain Phillips is riveting. Though he remains unfortunately convinced that violently shaking his camera is the best way to achieve visual urgency, Greengrass nevertheless excels at pressure-cooker scenarios.
  25. 4:44 Last Day on Earth
    The improvised dialogue takes hairpin turns, some less fruitful than others, holding onto just enough traces of structure to sustain the film's brief length.
  26. Thin Ice
    The movie takes some dark, violent turns once Crudup enters the picture, and loses some of its initial soft, regional charm. But Kinnear and Crudup are funny, and the plot does fold together with the kind of cruel logic that these sorts of twist-a-thons often lack.
  27. The Front Line
    The action in The Front Line is bloody and tense, but the movie also reduces war to its simplest terms, defining it in terms of the reluctant soldiers who know that only accidents of birth and location determined which side of the battlefield they inhabit.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Kill List
    While the sum of Kill List comes across as less than its parts, it offers some strikingly nightmarish imagery and a feel that's reminiscent of an earlier, grittier era, yet at times sharply contemporary.
  29. The Hunter
    The movie fumbles badly when it's time to turn those actions toward resolution, forcing an ending that seems both arbitrary and cruel. At under 80 minutes, the movie is terse enough that it could do without trumped-up events.
  30. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
    Genesis And Lady Jaye accurately portrays a restless artist with a kitchen-sink aesthetic, and offers up a film to match.
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