The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,414 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: 5,571 out of 10414
  2. Mixed: 3,736 out of 10414
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10414
10414 movie reviews
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  1. Terminator Genisys
    This new Terminator, the first since the dreadfully dreary and Arnold-less "Salvation," is engineered to feel at once eerily familiar and raise-the-stakes fresh.
  2. Mala Mala
    Amid all the images of celebration and joyful physical abandon—including a showcase solo dance performance that functions as a kind of climax—the most lingering images are the ones depicting daily routines.
  3. A Poem Is a Naked Person
    As a musical, the film is often thrilling.
  4. Magic Mike XXL
    Magic Mike XXL is a piece of arm candy, as shallow as a mud puddle and just as bright. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to hang out with.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Felt
    Everson is endlessly watchable as she cycles through despair, anger, wariness, and trust. Her sense of humor as an artist and performer shines through.
  6. The Little Death
    The Little Death never feels remotely of a piece, and is likely to find its proper audience months from now when the individual sketches show up on YouTube.
  7. Runoff
    Like its rural setting, Runoff is slow, deliberate, and concerned with practical things.
  8. 7 Minutes
    Despite its unconvincing seriousness mixing poorly with its unconvincing dark comedy, 7 Minutes proves difficult to despise outright; it’s watchably swift and somewhat engaging in the moment.
  9. Advantageous
    As in a lot of good sci-fi, the movie is set in a particular world, but driven by the characters that inhabit it.
  10. Fresh Dressed
    It’s about just about everything, so while the subject might seem niche it’s actually so broad and expansive the film strains to cover it properly in a trim 82 minutes.
  11. 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets
    The toxic paranoia poisoning American life is on display in 3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets, a fine and timely documentary about the 2012 killing of black youth Jordan Davis.
  12. Escobar: Paradise Lost
    Escobar: Paradise Lost employs this structure in a way that divides the movie neatly in half: one hour of tedious expository flashback followed by one hour of solidly exciting present-tense thriller action.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Batkid Begins
    Miles treats this whole experience with an affectingly genuine innocence—something that the filmmakers, and many of the participants, seem to think can be bottled and sold as a soul-cleansing palliative.
  14. Max
    It is dull and weird — weird in that way that it is pronounced we-ee-eird, the stretched vowel signaling a weirdness that is probably unconscious on the part of the filmmakers.
  15. A Little Chaos
    Watching A Little Chaos, one might assume that its makers were dramatically limited by the details of Le Notre’s life, when it was really just their own imaginations do the limiting.
  16. The Princess of France
    In an era in which the big movies are bigger and more expensive than they’ve ever been, few acts of resistance seem more meaningful than making a small, careful, and personal film that still wants nothing more than to invite the viewer into its private world.
  17. Ted 2
    Either way, Ted 2 strikes a sometimes-awkward balance between sincerity and cheap provocation. It also forgets that the real draw of the first film wasn’t Ted himself, but Wahlberg, whose sweet-lug routine scored a lot of belly laughs.
  18. Big Game
    Big Game fails to live up to the kookiness of this set-up. Instead, it opts for ’90s action movie clichés and generic coming-of-age-isms. Helander’s inelegant, exposition-heavy English-language dialogue doesn’t help matters.
  19. Burying the Ex
    In spite of its modest running time, Burying The Ex feels stretched thin; it takes a good 35 minutes to get going, only kicking into gear once Evelyn returns from the dead.
  20. Gabriel
    Gabriel, the first feature written and directed by Lou Howe, gives Culkin an opportunity to demonstrate serious range, and he takes full advantage; if this film doesn’t ignite his career, it’ll only be because too few people see it.
  21. Dope
    Dope has more characters and subplots than it knows what to do with, and its performances are all over the place, ranging from Clemons’ and Revolori’s charismatic turns as second-banana goofballs to Roger Guenveur Smith’s stylized impression of a local millionaire, so vampiric that he might as well be slathered in German Expressionist makeup.
  22. Eden
    A viewer is always aware that they are being shown a place and an era, which helps explain why Eden manages the tricky business of being a movie that is overtly about lost time, but which unfolds chronologically, without as much as a flashback.
  23. The Face of an Angel
    Past Winterbottom films have turned “real life” into both comedy and tragedy. The Face Of An Angel turns it into a directionless skulk.
  24. The Overnight
    The pleasure of the movie lies in the way it both rewards and subverts expectations, delivering on the risqué possibilities of its premise while also coming up with something smarter and a little deeper than a log line might suggest.
  25. Infinitely Polar Bear
    In Infinitely Polar Bear, Ruffalo attempts to put a recognizable, charismatic, slightly worn face on manic depression. Somehow, though, he comes up with a vaguely theatrical, and vaguely wearying, performance.
  26. Manglehorn
    Pacino has finally started acting again, which is cause for celebration. It’ll be real cause for celebration if/when he also starts picking projects worthier than The Humbling, Danny Collins, and now Manglehorn, all of which see him struggling to find moments of truth within a contrived, borderline ludicrous scenario.
  27. Inside Out
    Bucking the current company mandate of churning out lesser sequels and prequels, it’s not just a brilliant idea, but maybe the most conceptually daring movie the Bay Area animation house has ever produced. And that’s really saying something, what with "WALL-E" on the books.
  28. The Tribe
    One reason that The Tribe “works” is that it presents a story so simple and familiar, so cliché even, that one doesn’t need to understand what the actors are saying to follow along.
  29. Live From New York!
    Of course, a single documentary can’t cover everything, but this one’s slim but entertaining 80 minutes suggests that Nguyen erred on the side of brevity.
  30. Madame Bovary
    Wasikowska gives a solid, emotionally precise performance, ably supported by the men around her (especially Ifans, who relishes Monsieur Lheureux’s unctuous cajolery), and the result is intelligent and eminently watchable.
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