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. The Wolfpack
    The Wolfpack is perhaps too reluctant to pursue lines of inquiry; what starts as a nonfiction mood piece grows frustratingly opaque as the brothers begin to venture out into the real world, meet girls, and get jobs.
  2. Soaked in Bleach
    If it doesn’t lead people to believe that Cobain was murdered, it might achieve its secondary goals — to at least nudge them toward the possibility, and to get the authorities to consider re-opening the case. It’s intended as a call to action, not just a salacious re-hash.
  3. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
    A feature-length tribute to great directors with no direction of its own, his second feature is the kind of self-consciously quirky, slapdash movie that still leaves a viewer eager to find out what its director will do next.
  4. The 11th Hour
    By the time the film empties its inventory of shock tactics and reaches its (too calculated) ambiguous conclusion, we’re not sure if Maria deserves better, but it’s pretty clear that Basinger does.
  5. The Yes Men Are Revolting
    In a way, their continued ability to prank government agencies and the media speaks to how little they’ve achieved over the years, which becomes this third film’s subject.
  6. Set Fire to the Stars
    An exercise in tasteful pointlessness, shot in flat black and white and scored (by Gruff Rhys, of all people) with tinkling piano and sawing strings that evoke nothing so much as an aura of cut-rate class.
  7. Jurassic World
    Jurassic World, a goofy and fitfully entertaining summer movie, understands and even winks at its place in the pecking order of blockbuster sequels.
  8. We Are Still Here
    The new chiller We Are Still Here is the latest iteration of people unwittingly stumbling upon an ancient menace, and it succeeds more than it fails, thanks largely to the nice work of first-time director Ted Geoghegan.
  9. Police Story: Lockdown
    Instead of a claustrophobic thriller à la "Die Hard" or "The Raid," Lockdown is a kind of puzzle-box movie, but it hardly seems worth the effort, for the filmmakers or for the audience. Ol’ Jackie needn’t have bothered getting up for this.
  10. Blind
    All this nesting-doll storytelling might feel hollow if Blind didn’t possess such a solid emotional foundation.
  11. Charlie's Country
    Part of the movie’s mischievous charm lies in De Heer and cinematographer Ian Jones’ sophisticated use of Steadicam, which moves almost exclusively with Charlie, often seemingly in a struggle to keep up with his brisk, determined walk.
  12. Insidious: Chapter 3
    The motif of grief runs throughout Insidious: Chapter 3, which is surprisingly thematically rich for the third installment of a horror franchise. This emotional undercurrent informs the fright scenes, which otherwise lean rather heavily on jump scares.
  13. Wild Horses
    What a shambles. Robert Duvall, eminent character actor of the Hackman-Caan generation of difficult big-screen guys, returns to the director’s chair with Wild Horses, a dawdling and sometimes damn near unintelligible ensemble piece set in a Texas border town.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Testament of Youth
    There’s a good movie in Brittain’s story, but you wouldn’t know it from this lethargic, BBC-produced bore.
  15. An Open Secret
    The open secret in Amy Berg’s documentary An Open Secret is that child actors are regularly molested by the adults — managers, publicists, producers — who help them launch their careers. Such an important subject deserves a serious, thoughtful film. Instead, it got Berg (Deliver Us From Evil, West of Memphis), who’s prone to all manner of cheesy manipulation.
  16. The Nightmare
    The human brain, this movie suggests, is the ultimate horror-movie director, and sleep-paralysis hallucinations are just an extreme form of the standard-issue nightmares we all unwillingly create on a regular basis. It’s one thing to be tormented. It’s another thing to face the grim reality that you’re tormenting yourself.
  17. Love & Mercy
    Capturing the spirit of that music (while dramatizing the circumstances of its creation) is Love & Mercy’s biggest victory.
  18. Spy
    Spy, similarly, doesn’t exactly send up James Bond or Jason Bourne espionage thrillers, but it places McCarthy in the middle of the action while subverting the traditionally male domination of that arena.
  19. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
    The uninitiated, meanwhile, can start with Pigeon and work their way backward through Andersson’s trilogy. It only gets better in reverse.
  20. Entourage
    Though Entourage is set just months after the events of the HBO finale, its actors are (noticeably) several years older, and there’s something kind of sad, even desperate about seeing these characters behave like the same horny frat boys they basically were at the start of the series.
  21. Aloha
    Perhaps the energy Crowe could have expended on shaping believable characters went instead to the cultural context.
  22. Unfreedom
    Raj Amit Kumar’s film, which was banned by the country’s national censor board, is an intentional act of cultural and political provocation, and goes about its task as relentlessly as possible.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Survivor
    Fans of Jovovich’s Resident Evil series know the pleasures inherent in watching her sprint hither and yon. That’s about the only thrill provided by Survivor.
  24. I Believe in Unicorns
    It’s a testament to Meyerhoff’s talent as a director that she manages to give the standard coming-of-age material emotional resonance, especially amid classic teen-girl journal imagery like balloons, sparklers, homemade wings, and, of course, unicorns.
  25. When Marnie Was There
    As a children’s movie, it’s uncommonly sensitive and complicated, rooted in relationships rather than dazzling action. But adults may notice its simple poetry turning, after a while, to suds.
  26. Results
    Smulders, Pearce, and Corrigan are loose and eminently likable, and the direction is so in tune with the actors that one is almost inclined to think of Results as a movie carried entirely by performance, overlooking how much its shape depends on style.
  27. Heaven Knows What
    Because there’s no real narrative — just the constant effort to score and survive, plus Harley’s dysfunctional on/off love affair with Ilya — Heaven Knows What doesn’t so much conclude as just stop, which is less than totally satisfying.
  28. Gemma Bovery
    It’s minor, clever, and essential in the specialized field of Gemma Arterton studies.
  29. Tu Dors Nicole
    Shot on gorgeous black-and-white 35 mm that only seems to enhance the melancholic drabness of the events it depicts, Tu Dors Nicole is an especially wispy, French-Canadian addition to an irresistible genre.
  30. San Andreas
    Handsomely shot by Steve Yedlin, Rian Johnson’s regular cinematographer, and boasting a typically likable Dwayne Johnson as its star, San Andreas nonetheless struggles to drum up tension or interest, even as skyscrapers topple like Jenga towers and massive tidal waves sweep through San Francisco Bay.
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