The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,410 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 2.7 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: 5,569 out of 10410
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10410
  3. Negative: 1,106 out of 10410
10410 movie reviews
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  1. OBEX
    This blend of genres, aesthetics, realities, and virtual realities doesn’t all add up—or adds up a bit too neatly, as the script makes Conor’s hazy backstory unmistakably clear—but OBEX is still endearingly contained, passionately executed, and impressively unique.
  2. You're Cordially Invited
    You’re Cordially Invited is a rigorously unoriginal and uncreative film, in compliance with the flat mundanity of content that the streaming giants want their audiences to bask in.
  3. Love Me
    While the movie’s breadth-over-depth approach might have been more powerful as a short film, Love Me still delivers a unique blend of charm and existentialism across its 92-minute runtime.
  4. The Things You Kill
    Impotence and violence, two terrifying poles of threatened masculinity, rage throughout The Things You Kill, while its women more readily accept uncomfortable complexities.
  5. Love, Brooklyn
    It ends up like every other three-person romantic dramedy ends up, but at least Love, Brooklyn boasts competent players going through its motions.
  6. The Dating Game
    The moments where these reluctant clients open up about their wholesome desires, their dreams of spending their lives with someone they can grow old appreciating, invigorate the unfocused film. The rest of the time is spent whirling around all the fascinating subtopics Feng brushes.
  7. Zodiac Killer Project
    For those who haven’t really thought about the filmmaking behind the glut of true-crime clogging up the streamer carousels, there are some revelatory moments of media criticism in here. But for those more aware of how the sausage is made, it’s simply a light and dry bit of jabbing at a dominant kind of media.
  8. Rebuilding
    The importance of community for survival is a dominant theme in Rebuilding, and the bonds explored in the film feel authentically human as opposed to cloyingly optimistic.
  9. Companion
    The ongoing sight of a blood-soaked Thatcher finding herself through violent confrontations, essentially figuring out on the fly whether she’s a Terminator or a Final Doll, is diverting enough. Her melancholic presence hints at the trippier, more genuinely unsettling horror movie this could have pivoted into. It’s also a reminder of how facile the rest of the movie really is.
  10. Kiss of the Spider Woman
    Messy and muddled in its presentation and messaging, Kiss Of The Spider Woman needs more than just compelling performances to raise this project to the level of esteem granted to its predecessors from 30 and 40-odd years ago.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dog Man
    Dog Man is a sugar rush.
  12. By Design
    It’s a pointedly strange experience, sometimes annoyingly so and sometimes unexpectedly crushing, but all enjoyably kooky depending on your tolerance for this kind of thing.
  13. The Ugly Stepsister
    Blichfeldt’s film offers a R-rated counterpoint better than most “faithful” fairy tale adaptations.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Flight Risk
    Over-writing doesn’t delay Flight Risk’s pace or tension; Wahlberg does. The actor ended up apologizing for his boneheaded 9/11 remarks not long after making them. Maybe one day he’ll apologize for Flight Risk, too.
  15. Presence
    Presence has the story, limited scope, and 85-minute runtime of a 1940s B-picture, infused—as those pictures often were, and as his crime movies usually are—with a disciplined style and contemporary electricity. It’s budget Gothic that’s worth every penny and then some.
  16. The Colors Within
    Low on incident but high on emotion, The Colors Within poignantly draws a line from our most private selves to the art we create as an expression of who we really are inside.
  17. Inheritance
    Burger—a Hollywood journeyman who’s done some hackwork but began his career with the 2002 conspiracy mock-doc Interview With The Assassin—keeps things moving with a vérité point-of-view that sometimes makes it feel like the camera is the one doing the spying.
  18. Unstoppable
    It’s commendable to avoid further clichés with regard to the portrayal of physical difference in film, but Unstoppable fails to pin down what exactly should take their place.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Back in Action
    Despite reuniting them, Back In Action has nothing new to give its movie stars. It’s not enough that they’re “back” in more of the same material seen in Charlie’s Angels, Knight And Day, or White House Down. They deserve material that considers all that has come before and builds upon it.
  20. Wolf Man
    Wolf Man rarely bares its teeth, opting instead for tail-tucked melancholy. Relatively absent of jumpy gotchas or relieving humor—though there is a slightly tongue-in-cheek moment involving a doggy door—the film relies on injecting its Gothic origins with a dose of modern dread. Dangers lurk outside the home, but could just as easily infiltrate it. The march of death could hasten its pace for anyone at any time, rendering those around them impotent.
  21. Grand Theft Hamlet
    A making-of film fueled, like the Let’s Plays and livestreams it’s in conversation with, by the chaos of a plan gone wrong, Grand Theft Hamlet is equal parts charming and cheesy—both due to its experimental setting.
  22. I'm Still Here
    Heartrending yet never maudlin, I’m Still Here is a humanist drama that, in shining a light on insidious injustice, becomes a balm to warn and warm its audiences in equal measure.
  23. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
    While the guys are enormous, Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera is lighter than the first movie. Cranking his personality to make Big Nick more morally palatable, Gudegast emphasizes the likability of his motley crew throughout, not the moral gray areas of law enforcement.
  24. Santosh
    In its most compelling stretches, Santosh operates as a kind of subverted procedural in which every aspect of the investigation is, at best, an informality of dubious legal standing.
  25. Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever
    If Don’t Die had a bit more of the discipline its subject imposes on his own days, those feelings might linger longer.
  26. From Ground Zero
    With little in way of organization, From Ground Zero can oscillate frustratingly between styles, artistic ambition, and production quality.
  27. The Fire Inside
    In an era where the mid-budget movie has mostly disappeared, The Fire Inside’s modest, thoughtful reworking of the sports drama formula can feel refreshing.
  28. Mufasa: The Lion King
    One could even make the argument that Jenkins has made a fundamentally better film than Favreau while working with inferior, less elemental material. But that doesn’t change the fact that Mufasa is, ultimately, compromised by its studio formulas in terms of both story and style.
  29. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
    Just as warm-hearted, bouncy, goofy, and unassumingly sharp as ever, the film makes the case that no matter how close Wallace and his out-of-time village get to our digitized reality, long-suffering Gromit will be there to provide grounding glares—and remind us to take a moment to pet your dog.
  30. Sonic the Hedgehog 3
    Sonic The Hedgehog 3 lets its animated heroes shine. There’s less “live” in this impressively blended live-action movie, which is not a detriment.
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