The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,412 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 2.5 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: 5,570 out of 10412
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10412
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10412
10412 movie reviews
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  1. Evolution
    Evolution is the sort of film that doesn’t require you to “turn off” your mind, but does ask that you surrender certain expectations. Most of all, this is a vision that no other director would have imbued with such a potent amalgam of tender and twisted. It’s a pleasure to have her back.
  2. Lion
    In trying to tell the whole of this nearly implausible tale, the film can’t figure out whether it’s more invested in young Saroo’s harrowing journey or older Saroo’s feeling of displacement.
  3. Miss Sloane
    The main problem is a dialogue-heavy script by first-time screenwriter Jonathan Perera that mistakes quantity of verbiage for quality.
  4. Always Shine
    Always Shine shines brightest when it lets these women be themselves, and the filmmaking provides the dissonance.
  5. Mifune: The Last Samurai
    Mifune: The Last Samurai is less a comprehensive overview of the actor’s life than it is an analysis of what that life meant.
  6. Bad Santa 2
    The heist-movie plot, the bawdy gags, the ironic repurposing of old holiday-season chestnuts: They’re all here, hastily stuffed into a new package.
  7. Allied
    Zemeckis has fashioned an unfashionable throwback, and if Allied doesn’t land the gut-punch it winds up to deliver, there’s nevertheless plenty to admire in a blockbuster craftsman and two beautiful stars paying tribute to the spirit of an older Hollywood.
  8. Rules Don't Apply
    Aside from Beatty’s performance, the only consistent thing the movie has going for it is ineffable strangeness; it seems to be trapped at the bottom of the chasm that separates its subversive aims from its nostalgic pursuits.
  9. Moana
    Occasionally, the movie’s combination of formula and tweaks makes it play like a one-blockbuster-fits-all reconciliation of a standard Disney checklist with a second list of corrective measures. For the most part, though, the movie feels more heartfelt than calculated.
  10. Nocturnal Animals
    Like Ford’s debut, Nocturnal Animals treats film as a medium of luxury, where the emotive and the self-indulgent cross paths. He is primarily a sensualist.
  11. Divines
    Divines, written and directed by French-Moroccan filmmaker Houda Benyamina, rivals "Girlhood" as a portrait of combustible banlieue femininity, emanating raw energy and scrappy good humor even as it builds to an unexpectedly tragic and horrifying finale.
  12. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
    Patchy but occasionally charming, the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them delivers most of what has come to be expected from J.K. Rowling’s book series and its successful film adaptations.
  13. Manchester by the Sea
    Manchester By The Sea sweats the big stuff and the small stuff, and that’s key to its anomalous power: This is a staggering American drama, almost operatic in the heartbreak it chronicles.
  14. Bleed for This
    Bleed For This looks at Vinny Paz and sees only unshakable determination, and though there’s a certain queasy, even darkly comic thrill to seeing the man (courageously? foolishly?) bench press his injuries away, Teller can’t make much of a character out of nothing but raw conviction and a spectacularly crappy mustache.
  15. The Edge of Seventeen
    Despite its upstart distributor and relatively low-key cast, it’s an unabashedly mainstream movie; compared with edgier, more indie versions of onscreen American youth, it might even look a little pat.
  16. Officer Downe
    Officer Downe isn’t overly concerned about viewers exercising many brain cells.
  17. Life on the Line
    The slumming stars actually make the situation worse for everyone; Life On The Line plays like an ego trip without any accompanying fun.
  18. The Red Turtle
    The Red Turtle nevertheless remains throughout a simple, gripping story of survival, deriving its sense of adventure from the most basic plot imaginable: Here’s a human being, stranded in a strange place, using his strength, intelligence, and courage to forge some kind of a life for himself.
  19. I Am Not Madame Bovary
    Fans of both non-action Asian cinema and stifling bureaucratic nightmares, your long wait is finally over.
  20. Uncle Kent 2
    A short running time and an amiable tone kept Uncle Kent from ever becoming a chore, but aside from one hilariously awkward ménage à trois scene and a poignant final shot, the film was so slight that it almost dared the audience to get anything out of watching.
  21. Shut In
    A thriller that takes a long time to get even remotely thrilling.
  22. True Memoirs of an International Assassin
    Cleverer than the average Kevin James comedy, though its better gags are unlikely to inspire more than a snicker.
  23. Elle
    One conundrum is that Elle is singularly a Verhoeven film, but doesn’t quite look like one.
  24. The Monster
    With The Monster, writer-director Bryan Bertino plants a prickly mother-daughter drama at the center of a violent creature feature. It’s an intriguing combination in theory, but the individual elements both feel a little half-baked, and stirring them up into one doesn’t help. They’re two mediocre tastes that taste mediocre together.
  25. The Love Witch
    If The Love Witch simply raised the profile of its director, Anna Biller — a true auteur who not only wrote, directed, produced, and edited this film but also designed and hand made its sets and costumes — then it would be a success.
  26. Arrival
    Arrival has come, like a visitor from the cosmos, to blow minds and break hearts.
  27. Almost Christmas
    Whatever its faults, this is a nice movie, a crowdpleaser best experienced with an appreciative audience.
  28. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
    This is an uncharacteristically unsubtle work from Lee — yet in the end, it’s not ineffective.
  29. USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage
    The sets are either claustrophobically limited or anonymously empty; the period detail is nonexistent; and the special effects are on par with a Syfy original.
  30. Army of One
    The problem is that Army Of One doesn’t add up to much. It’s not quite a satire nor quite a full character study.
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