The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,456 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: 5,593 out of 10456
  2. Mixed: 3,748 out of 10456
  3. Negative: 1,115 out of 10456
10456 movie reviews
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  1. The Dead Thing
    A well-crafted, slow-burn art-horror offering that falls somewhere between doomed character study and moody ghost story, the movie exudes an unerring confidence in its own skin. It’s not an eager group of individual showcases or a proof-of-concept for another project, but a creatively executed rumination on universally relevant themes.
  2. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
    The script makes all of Bridget’s returning relationships feel wonderfully lived-in, and the film is all the stronger for it.
  3. The Gorge
    It’s kind of fun in just how predictable and boilerplate it all is, and The Gorge is never boring. But, frustratingly, it’s obvious that there is a better movie hidden somewhere within it.
  4. Universal Language
    To further dig into Rankin’s blending of the goofily left-field and the openly earnest, the message persisting through the dry punchlines is that to care for your neighbor, to care for all the oddities of home, is to care for yourself.
  5. Paddington In Peru
    More of an awkward step down than a pratfall from grace, Paddington In Peru is messier than its forebears.
  6. Captain America: Brave New World
    Brave New World doesn’t even seem sure about what it’s selling—just that it has to get a movie-shaped something-or-other to market.
  7. Parthenope
    There are, in trademark Sorrentino style, moments of Catholic-Church-baiting blasphemy and playful surrealism (a gigantic bloated toddler makes an appearance), but for all of its eccentricities and ruminations, Parthenope can’t overcome the very prosaic problem of a main character who isn’t really much of a character at all.
  8. Love Hurts
    Love Hurts proves that honest emotions aren’t everything; sometimes you can just buy yourself enough goodwill to get by with last-minute junk.
  9. Kinda Pregnant
    Apart from some slapstick abuse of her fake baby bump (sometimes funny) and the Mrs. Doubtfire-style hustle and bustle of needing to don or repair a pregnancy get-up (less funny), the actual story of Kinda Pregnant winds up feeling like a holding pattern, right down to the predictable punctuation of R-rated raunch talk and gags that gesture toward satire (gender reveal parties! So ridiculous!) without actually scoring any real points.
  10. Armand
    The film is replete with striking visual flourishes, yet its storyline suffers from the inclusion of an unnecessary air of surrealism.
  11. Heart Eyes
    Even when its characters do get earnest, Heart Eyes has its tongue so far in its cheek that these moments of vulnerability are also viewed from an ironic distance. Instead of feeling for these characters, we’re waiting for the bloody punchline—which will come, and will be funny in a deliciously morbid kind of way. There’s nothing to hold on to, and certainly nothing to be afraid of.
  12. The Monkey
    The Monkey is at its weakest when it tries too hard to explain what’s happening, either on a plot or on a thematic level. (The narration can be especially detrimental in this way.) And it’s strongest when it abandons its search for meaning and does a silly dance in the face of Death itself. A dry, mocking one though it might be, The Monkey is ultimately just a laugh.
  13. Mr. Nobody Against Putin
    Plenty of the film feels vital—its observations of a nation’s shifting attitude towards war, towards hate, is crushing and familiar.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  25. 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.
  26. 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.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. 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.
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