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. Trash Fire
    While it doesn’t include any literal blazing piles of garbage, Trash Fire is spiteful and unpleasant from beginning to end, using every technique at its disposal — from stinging dialogue to grotesque prosthetics to morbid black comedy — to make the audience uncomfortable.
  2. Dog Eat Dog
    An exercise in gratuitousness that’s fitful by design, Paul Schrader’s Dog Eat Dog avoids any relationship between character psychology and visual style; they jab against each other, angrily vying for attention, as a nihilistic commentary on crime movies and genre stories.
  3. Loving
    While one would have to be an unabashed bigot not to be moved by the Lovings’ plight, concluding that it’s not so easily dramatized requires no such prejudice. Quiet dignity in the face of adversity doesn’t make for an enthralling couple of hours.
  4. Hacksaw Ridge
    One might call this a refinement of Gibson’s fixations as a director: battles more terrifying than "Braveheart" and a portrayal of sacrificial lambhood that’s more compelling than "The Passion Of The Christ," in part because Doss, as much of an unwavering do-gooder as he might be, is an actual character with conflicts.
  5. The Ivory Game
    Unlike a lot of other advocacy docs—films that seek to raise awareness regarding some serious issue, often concluding with a call to action—Netflix’s The Ivory Game offers something spectacularly visual: elephants.
  6. Peter and the Farm
    This is one tortured soul, and a rare case in which a farmer’s struggles seem to be entirely of his own making.
  7. Doctor Strange
    “Cool enough” doesn’t do justice to this blockbuster’s city - and reality-bending set pieces. “Awe-inspiring” is closer.
  8. The Eagle Huntress
    Director Otto Bell has found himself in awe-inspiring territory. Aisholpan is a remarkable person interacting with majestic creatures, surrounded by staggering natural beauty. It’s easy to become entranced.
  9. Trolls
    Trolls may have a low bar going in, but the movie scales it quickly and admirably by defying conventions, adding both new and familiar musical numbers, and hiding a valuable, Zen-like message in plain sight.
  10. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House
    Perkins commits even harder to his singularly strange approach to the genre, turning a simple ghost story into an exercise in extremely prolonged unease. It could give Norman Bates the willies.
  11. Inferno
    This latest film, which was made on about half the budget of either of its predecessors, is as close as the Langdon-Howard cycle has gotten to actually being fun.
  12. Into the Inferno
    As fun as Herzog’s highly imitable voice can be, this particular film arguably works best when he remains quiet and simply stares at the fiery void.
  13. By Sidney Lumet
    The late Sidney Lumet, a quintessential “actor’s director” who spent his entire life around the profession, is an engaging enough interviewee to qualify the documentary By Sidney Lumet as indifferently watchable.
  14. 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.
  15. I'm Not Ashamed
    Inelegantly compressing the year up to the shooting, I’m Not Ashamed has more than its fair share of clunkiness.
  16. Creepy
    Perturbed and darkly funny.
  17. The Handmaiden
    A fiendishly clever, sinfully funny con-job melodrama, the kind that keeps yanking the rug out from under everyone on screen and off.
  18. American Pastoral
    This is a memory we’re watching, so of course it’s going to be vaguely distorted, its cracks plugged by cliché. Even if you buy that, though, American Pastoral still gives off the strong impression of a rich, complicated story that’s been flattened of its nuance.
  19. Boo! A Madea Halloween
    Madea remains a distinctive, weirdly compelling character. Maybe someday Perry will make a good comedy for her.
  20. In a Valley of Violence
    A by-the-numbers spaghetti Western that’s kind of slow and uneventful—and the world has no shortage of those.
  21. Moonlight
    Moonlight lets us see Chiron, to see his silent heartache written across three different faces, and that seems a hell of a lot better than good.
  22. Keeping Up with the Joneses
    Director Greg Mottola deserves some credit for trying to give the film a little bit of cinematic flair, something that’s lacking in many Hollywood comedies these days.
  23. Ouija: Origin of Evil
    Flanagan has a couple of solid genre films on his résumé already; at this point in his career, it would have been surprising if Origin Of Evil wasn’t better than Ouija. It is better, though, in every conceivable way, from casting to story to atmosphere.
  24. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
    Even as a star text, it’s shoddy.
  25. 31
    Zombie’s new movie, 31, is all attitude. It’s also the worst thing he’s ever made—interminable, incoherent, and devoid of suspense.
  26. Michael Moore in TrumpLand
    This 73-minute speech isn’t really much of a movie, and as advocacy it’s unlikely to reach Trump-leaning voters. But as a case for Clinton aimed at third-party supporters who are convinced they couldn’t stomach casting a ballot for her, it might turn a few heads.
  27. The Whole Truth
    The Whole Truth is a moderately clever, reasonably entertaining courtroom drama, which is only a problem given the talent involved with bringing something this middle-of-the-road to the screen.
  28. Fire at Sea
    All of the film’s constituent parts are superb (with the exception of the DJ segments, which do seem extraneous). It’s the pointedly unpointed way they’ve been assembled that gives pause.
  29. Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids
    Timberlake himself is a stunner, whether he’s smoothly pirouetting his way through “Suit & Tie” or he’s choking back tears during his stirring set closer “Mirrors.” But his team is well-matched by Demme’s.
  30. Max Steel
    From its thinly sketched teen protagonist to its deluge of hero-will-rise clichés, Max Steel evinces all of the imagination and ambition you’d expect from a movie based on a bestselling line of action figures.
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