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. Swimming
    Siegel is almost too tasteful, nearly to the point where his coming-of-age story loses color and purpose. But he finds a mesmerizing presence in Ambrose, a terrific young actress who carries the film without a second of showiness.
  2. Manito
    Eason's twist of fate and too-sudden ending seems as rooted in Washington Heights as the music that pours from the neighborhood's car windows, the smoke that billows from its late-night eateries, and the stoic resignation inscribed on its inhabitants' faces.
  3. Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII
    The lack of a splashy style puts the tales of the rescued and their rescuers properly at the center, but whether viewers connect will depend in part on how saturated they are with Holocaust lore.
  4. Marion Bridge
    If von Carolsfeld had worked more surprises into her style and presentation, Marion Bridge wouldn't live down to its genre stereotype so readily.
  5. Exit 8
    Exit 8 excels at capturing that isolation and disaffection in an elegant environmental ouroboros, though what it does once it establishes its atmosphere never matches that simple artistry.
  6. Tyrel
    Tyrel is essentially Microaggressions: The Movie.
  7. Doin' It in the Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC
    Mostly, however, Doin’ It In The Park thrives simply via its myriad sights of nobodies juking and dunking their way past opponents, exuding an authentic for-love-of-the-game competitiveness that’s as infectious as it is intense.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Waking Ned Devine
    This slight movie gets by on its grungy charm, if not its class.
  9. Land of the Dead
    The satire is headline-fresh, the action scenes keep pace with summer blockbusters, and no one shoots an evisceration with as much skill.
  10. The Boss of It All
    The Boss Of It All, though clever as a piece of genre deconstruction, isn't terribly funny.
  11. Bleak Moments
    The ability to find performers who never seem for a moment to be performing is also here, giving Bleak Moments, like all of Leigh's films, an almost voyeuristic feel.
  12. Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
    Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted does stray into some dark areas—death, anxiety attacks, suicidal ideaton—but the spirit of the documentary (and the music) is overwhelmingly joyful.
  13. Mogul Mowgli
    Ahmed can’t sand over all of the flaws through sheer charisma. But with him at center, the movie is always watchable, even in its imperfections.
  14. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
    The moral to Clash's story? It's surprisingly easy being red.
  15. Thirst Street
    Burdge holds the picture together, playing a character who walks a fine line between being sympathetically damaged and terrifyingly loony.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Monument Ave.
    Though too short to earn any real sympathy for the characters, and too slow to generate any excitement, Monument Ave. is moderately haunting and occasionally affecting.
  17. The Imitation Game
    The Imitation Game is at its best when it focuses on the collision between cryptography and proto-programming. (No individual can truly be said to have invented the computer, but Turing comes close.)
  18. Smiley Face
    It's a fittingly loose, shambling little nothing of a comedy that's occasionally inspired, but at least a draft or two short of its potential. Still, it's a pleasure to watch Faris--a gifted, likeable comedian who tends to be the best element of many terrible movies.
  19. London Road
    As pop sociology, London Road doesn’t delve terribly deep, repeating the same simple observations (principally: people are self-interested) over and over. As a nearly avant-garde musical, however, it’s a constant grin-conjuring marvel.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown
    There's really no bad performance by the great English actress Judi Dench, but this romanticized Victorian historical drama treads close.
  21. To the Limit
    To The Limit is full of a lot of talk about "risk" and "dreams" and "making the impossible possible," and Danquart's stabs at making this an inspirational tale can be a little exhausting.
  22. Leap Year
    Never to be confused for the rom-com starring Amy Adams - though that would be the mother of all video-store mix-ups - Leap Year lets actions speak louder than words, and the actions here are shockingly explicit.
  23. The Water Horse
    Few kid films manage to assemble this much ambition alongside this much sincere, sweet emotion.
  24. A Monster with a Thousand Heads
    It’s worth seeing just for its object lesson in how shifts in perspective can radically alter the tenor and meaning of material that might otherwise come across as pompously silly.
  25. Sisters in Law
    Almost as fascinating as the depiction of modern Cameroon law is the snapshot of how the 21st century has found its way into rural Africa. Cameroon has always been one of the more developed African nations, but the place where Sisters In Law takes place still consists mainly of tumbledown shacks strung together chaotically.
  26. Man Push Cart
    Quietly heartbreaking.
  27. Tadpole
    Though sloppily structured and sometimes dangerously flimsy (not to mention truncated at a mere 78 minutes), Tadpole has an unforced charm that compensates for the absence of more traditional cinematic virtues.
  28. All the Real Girls
    Deschanel and Schneider--who both give rich, funny performances--and everyone around them have inner lives that don't always translate into words. When they speak, it's usually in dialogue halfway between poetry and inarticulate fumbling.
  29. Time of the Wolf
    At its best, the film sustains the heightened tension of great science fiction, dropping in on a frightening new world that's just this side of familiar.
  30. The Raid 2
    The Raid 2 takes a substantially different tack from that of its 2011 predecessor, adding a convoluted plot and only intermittently attending to the sort of acrobatic ass-kicking for which the original became a global smash.
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