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. Casa de mi Padre
    As with "Black Dynamite," many of Casa De Mi Padre's sharpest, most inspired gags riff on the source material's ingratiatingly amateurish production values and exuberantly incompetent stylistic choices.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hell and Back Again
    The film portrays the dizzying divide between war and recovery eloquently enough that those choices seem like intrusions instead of connections, a misstep in what's otherwise a devastating profile of a soldier.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission
    A disarmingly enthusiastic documentary about how its subject eventually found his own way into orbit.
  4. The Wolverine
    Now here’s a comic-book movie. In a summer that’s delivered one overstuffed Phase Two sequel and a bloated reboot designed to establish a whole new universe of interconnected franchises, The Wolverine has a self-contained efficiency that’s hard to resist.
  5. Escape Plan
    Though this movie can’t match the formal qualities that made the pair’s most iconic films work, it goes a long way toward recapturing their sense of cheesy fun.
  6. Michael
    It's a chilling film about the routine business of unspeakable acts.
  7. Marley
    That's a lot for any film to unpack, and "The Last King Of Scotland" director Kevin MacDonald deserves a lot of credit simply for keeping the narrative coherent.
  8. The Fairy
    For the most part, it's too dry and quirky to connect. Still, those gags are something.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Natural Selection
    A generous, unguarded performance from Rachael Harris cuts through the cuteness of a quirky premise in Natural Selection.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Salt of Life
    The breeziness of The Salt Of Life disguises a barbed consideration of mortality and being written off, becoming part of the scenery in later life - just another elderly man with a dog, watching the world go by.
  11. This Is Not a Film
    Pleasing mainly just as a message-in-a-bottle from a restless, persecuted artist-that is, until the amazing closing shot, which brings the volatility of post-Green Revolution Iran home with unforgettable force.
  12. 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.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    We the Party
    Van Peebles compensates for his stylistic clunkiness - the film overuses split screens and sometimes looks so bright, it could be a '90s sitcom - with funny, unexpected sparks of life.
  14. God Bless America
    The key point about God Bless America is that it's extreme but not exaggerated, a dark comedy that indulges - and questions - a violent, misanthropic fantasy about laying waste to the cultural landscape while staying grounded in a recognizable reality.
  15. Polisse
    The best moments of Maïwenn's Polisse, about the dedicated members of a Child Protection Unit in northern Paris, have the same quality, a fly-on-the-wall docu-realism that feels eerily like the real thing.
  16. Starlet
    Starlet is an unusually subtle, quiet character study - especially given the potentially salacious subject matter - that builds to a quietly powerful climax.
  17. RoboCop
    This RoboCop earns its stripes, mostly for the seriousness with which it treats its Frankenstein story.
  18. Seven Psychopaths
    While Seven Psychopaths sometimes hits the philosophical shallows, its pleasures still run deep.
  19. Ruby Sparks
    The setup is rote, almost insulting, but it's smarter than it looks: Once the pieces are in place, Kazan's script reveals a deeper game.
  20. The Road
    Moving fluidly between gory sight gags and implied, insinuating terror, The Road is a movie made to be seen after midnight, preferably in a mildly dilapidated theater with a full house.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Frozen
    In its simple pleasures, it’s every bit as enjoyable as "Winnie The Pooh," with a strong and valuable moral undercurrent to boot.
  22. Fightville
    The dramatic stakes are high in Fightville, and Epperlein and Tucker shine a little light on the margins of this marginalized sport.
  23. Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
    At two and a half hours, Warriors Of The Rainbow has the shape of something weightier than the simplified good-vs.-evil movie it actually is.
  24. Robot and Frank
    Schreier elicits warm performances from Langella and Susan Sarandon, and even from his robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard).
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Sleepless Night
    Given how much it's in motion, Sleepless Night doesn't have much time for character development, but Sisley is a memorable antihero whose toughness barely masks his growing desperation and exhaustion, as his bleeding knife wound serves as the film's version of a countdown clock.
  26. Portrait of Wally
    Portrait Of Wally tells a gripping story, but the filmmakers should have been more forthright about their own part in it.
  27. The Good Dinosaur
    Perhaps more than ever before, the animators do the heavy lifting: Every detail, from the gentle bob of a beast's breathing to the fluid shifts of Spot's facial expressions, has been lovingly rendered.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Beloved
    Honoré's combination of contemporary romantic hijinks and the stylization inherent in the musical genre aren't juxtaposed ironically: Beloved is a tenderly sincere musical that celebrates love even as it acknowledges the ways in which it can sometimes lead to tragedy.
  29. Sleepwalk with Me
    As charming as it is winningly modest, but it's so incredibly slight a stiff wind would knock it into a different hemisphere.
  30. White House Down
    While White House Down isn’t going to score points for originality, seriousness, or subtlety (Emmerich likes his political messages blunt and loud), it is a lot of fun; if nothing else, Emmerich is a great widescreen showman who knows how to stage mayhem on a grand scale.
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