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. If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise
    Ultimately, If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise is a documentary about the myriad ways that the poor stay poor, and the way our society marginalizes them by reducing them to numbers on a balance sheet instead of people with their own unique stories to tell and their own network of friends and family who love and rely on them.
  2. Redux Redux
    By keeping their movie grounded in street-level pursuits and raucous shootouts, the McManus brothers situate the multiverse concept in a believable reality that doesn’t require a subreddit to detangle. Redux Redux jumps swiftly and elegantly, finding timelines worth visiting again and again.
  3. Golden Exits
    If Perry’s last film, the throwback psychodrama Queen Of Earth, used Bergman worship as a jumping off point for its own genre games, Golden Exits is just a tin-eared imitation: Interiors remade as a stilted exercise.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    First Position
    Fortunately, first-time filmmaker Bess Kargman has selected a diverse array of competitors from different backgrounds who have significant talent in common.
  5. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
    The entire picture exudes the wide-eyed (some might say immature) wonderment found around slobbering beasts and magic spells. No, you absolutely do not need to know a thing about D&D to like this. But if you have a familiarity with the Forgotten Realms, the 1980s D&D cartoon show, or if you’re just a Led Zeppelin fan, there’s something here for you. Otherwise, there’s too much going on to ever feel left out.
  6. Pusher
    As Refn counts down the days and ratchets up the tension, Pusher shifts from a subdued lowlife sketch, with lots of raunchy conversation between Buric and his horndog ex-con buddy Mads Mikkelsen, to a nail-biting look at a man running out of options.
  7. The Final Master
    Without Wong Kar-Wai’s visual grandeur to provide a sense of the epic, The Final Master just lurches clumsily from one scene to the next, flatlining whenever fists aren’t flying.
  8. Gimme Danger
    Considering how cheerfully its subject courted controversy, this is a chummy, openly booster-ish profile, designed as an introduction for those ignorant of the Stooges’ legacy. It’s plenty entertaining, but it’s also nearly as tame as Iggy, in his prime, was wild.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    El Conde
    What saves El Conde is the specificity of its subject and the style of its auteur.
  10. The Life of Reilly
    Spellbinding.
  11. The Wolf Man
    The Curt Siodmak-penned, George Waggner-directed film uses werewolf legends as an excuse to put modern minds comfortable living with moral ambiguity into conflict with undeniable evil.
  12. I Served the King of England
    I Served The King Of England views diabolical events from the sidelines, something like "The Remains Of The Day" reworked as an absurdist comedy.
  13. The Meaning of Life
    The Meaning Of Life is unsparing and elaborate in its vision of humanity at its foulest.
  14. Gangs of New York
    A grand achievement in history and anthropology, supporting its ambition and scope with a sumptuous re-creation of the period and an immediacy that allows a forgotten past to barrel into the present.
  15. The Rookie
    Touching and wise, with fine performances and impeccable widescreen photography, The Rookie is a rare family film that encourages kids to pursue their dreams, but not before giving full weight to the consequences.
  16. Nowhere in Africa
    With sumptuous widescreen photography and a pounding world-music score, the film makes for an absorbing travelogue at best, as pretty as a picture book and just as flat on the surface.
  17. Slow West
    What it demonstrates most conclusively is that writer-director John Maclean, making his first feature after a career spent mostly as a musician (notably as a member of The Beta Band), knows how to tell a terrific yarn. Why he chose not to do so with the movie as a whole, then, is something of a mystery.
  18. Barry
    Barry doesn’t so much offer glimmers of the man Obama would become as lay experiential groundwork for his later life choices.
  19. Mister Roberts
    With no battles and a setting that primarily stays on the U.S.S. Reluctant, Mister Roberts still captivates, aided by some shimmering dialogue already polished to perfection by the Broadway version, along with the renegade hijinks of the crew.
  20. Post Mortem
    Larrain crafts Post Mortem as a slow, quiet character study, narrowing in on Castro in his home and office while the world outside descends into madness.
  21. The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years
    It’s a testament to the buoyancy of the film that such exhausted, well-trod material can still feel fresh.
  22. Your Sister's Sister
    This time out, Shelton seems to be playing the part of someone who doesn't know how to finish what she started.
  23. Midsommar
    Aster, it can’t be denied, possesses an almost supernatural command of dread. He knows how to hold a shot just long enough to create pinpricks of discomfort, to disorient with an abrupt cutaway, to drop stomachs with the godlike perch and glare of his camera.
  24. The Stepfather
    Appreciating what’s special about The Stepfather involves accepting—or at least tolerating—some clunky moments.
  25. Groundhog Day
    A hilarious and unexpectedly profound comedy.
  26. Grand Prix
    Whenever the cars are running, Grand Prix is one of the best studio efforts of the '60s. The film only stalls when it's off the track, which is where more than half of this three-hour epic takes place.
  27. Koyaanisqatsi
    Reggio has a flair for iconography, and whatever external baggage Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi may carry, they should be admired for their vivid, astonishing illustrations of humanity consuming itself in clouds of its own smoke and debris.
  28. The Dark and the Wicked
    Although its bleak worldview may be a turnoff for viewers who like their media a bit more life-affirming, if you’ve ever said to a friend, “it’s so fucked up, you’ve got to see it,” The Dark And The Wicked is one horror movie that lives up to its title.
  29. The Woodsman
    While The Woodsman gets the psychological profile right, it fails to make Bacon a man.
  30. Society of the Snow
    Society Of The Snow may be the best version of this saga told so far. Still, it feels incomplete and doesn’t dig deeper even as it hints at greater pathos beneath the surface.
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