The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,419 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: 5,574 out of 10419
  2. Mixed: 3,737 out of 10419
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10419
10419 movie reviews
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  1. The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq
    The character of Houellebecq implicitly understands that this is just a transaction, and doesn’t take it personally. It’s too bad that, like so much of the movie, this germ of satire is never developed past the point of premise.
  2. Do You Believe?
    A deranged melodrama where any sense of soapy, campy fun is undercut by the preachy, self-serious tone.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    She's Lost Control
    At its simplest, She’s Lost Control is a tale of girl meets boy (where “boy” is the lead’s latest client, Johnny, played by Marc Menchaca), and at its potential worst, just another attempt to probe the line between sex and self though the figure of the sex worker.
  4. Growing Up and Other Lies
    Part of what made Edgar Wright’s "The World’s End" so refreshing was the way that it feinted at being a certain tired sort of movie before suddenly making a wild leap in another direction. Growing Up And Other Lies, is exactly the mediocre movie that The World’s End was pretending to be.
  5. Backcountry
    Without effective characterization to drive the moments in between, the spectacle of humans painfully, extensively, gratuitously suffering for their arrogance is more sadistic than thrilling.
  6. Spring
    A film about taking chances takes its own big chance, risking ridicule with a third act that’s at once sweet, amusing, lackadaisical, and more than a little preposterous.
  7. Jauja
    Everything signals birth—of Argentina, cinema, the nuclear family—until Dinesen descends into a womb-like cave and Jauja takes a hard left turn into enigma. Even the title is a mystery, the Spanish byword for a land of plenty.
  8. The Gunman
    The Gunman is too disorganized and sloppy to make sense as political commentary or to work on the most basic level as a globe-trotting chase thriller.
  9. Tracers
    Tracers, then, is unavoidably a movie about Taylor Lautner joining a parkour gang, and often exactly as silly as that sounds. But it’s also a major improvement over Lautner’s last action-thriller, "Abduction," which had little action, few thrills, and zero abductions.
  10. Danny Collins
    This is the kind of thing that should come effortlessly to Pacino, one of the all-time greats of American acting, but no longer does. In fact, this qualifies as his best and most easygoing film performance in a good decade.
  11. The Divergent Series: Insurgent
    Steeliness comes naturally to, say, Jennifer Lawrence, but when Woodley unleashes the occasional voice-cracking battle cry, it generates tension between her desire for revolution and her utter believability as a teenager with more earnest ideals than ruthless training.
  12. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
    Ultimately, despite Kikuchi’s expressively dour performance and David Zellner’s formal invention... Kumiko feels like a collection of amusing and/or depressing riffs stitched together within a context that barely matters.
  13. Amour Fou
    The artificiality is funny but also thematically resonant: This is a film about fake feelings, the invented romance for which two strangers forfeited their futures. And to Hausner, such a colossal waste of potential deserves not a melodramatic tribute, but the cinematic equivalent of an eye-roll.
  14. Champs
    As a documentary, Champs feels a bit punch-drunk — weaving from one idea to the next while never quite zoning in on any particular target for too long.
  15. Walter
    Much of Walter’s behavior resembles, at very least, a movie version of mental illness, only to have the story reclassify it as a coping mechanism. This unwittingly makes the character seem as affected as any Sundance stereotype—and the movie disturbing for all the wrong reasons.
  16. Home Sweet Hell
    Katherine Heigl has exactly one funny moment in the dire black comedy Home Sweet Hell, which is still one more than anybody else has.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Wrecking Crew
    As a love letter to the director’s late father, The Wrecking Crew sparkles. As a potentially comprehensive, context-rich chronicle of one of pop music’s most inspired engines of rhythm and melody, it mostly sticks to one note.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    3 Hearts
    While the controlling deities might have found some amusement in this narrative, in Jacquot’s hands the tale is more bland than tragic.
  19. Seymour: An Introduction
    The biggest problem with Seymour, though, is that Hawke can’t quite find a structure or rhythm for the movie as a whole. It’s only 81 minutes long, and never remotely boring, but the feeling that it’s due to end at any moment kicks in around the midpoint and persists right up until it actually does end, like the documentary equivalent of "The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King."
    • 54 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cymbeline
    Almereyda tackles one of the Bard’s lesser-regarded later works, the plot-heavy tragicomedy Cymbeline, and again unearths untold depths.
  21. The Cobbler
    Maudlin when it’s not being offensive, The Cobbler belongs to that special class of comedy that seems to get worse with every new (mis)step it takes.
  22. It Follows
    Fans of early John Carpenter will immediately identify the master’s influence — on the voyeuristic slink of the camera, the synth pulse of Rich Vreeland’s throwback score, and the transformation of “safe,” warmly lit residential environments into landscapes of dread.
  23. Cinderella
    Clothed in a colorful mishmash of historical fashions and scored to sweeping strings, the movie is like an antique cut-crystal vase: gorgeous, fragile, empty.
  24. Run All Night
    Even though he never gets a grip on the over-complicated plot, the director hasn’t lost his knack for those elemental qualities that make a good action flick.
  25. Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau
    The film is at its best when cutting between delicious stories... It doesn’t make for the strongest film, but it does work like a case of people swapping outrageous war stories over a few beers.
  26. Chappie
    Like "Elysium," this rusty A.I. story is basically just "District 9" with a new coat of paint; it’s distinguished only by the jabbering, irritating personality of its title character.
  27. These Final Hours
    Incoherent and pointless as it is, These Final Hours moves with commendable swiftness.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Kidnapping Mr. Heineken
    Much like the lager that gives the film its name, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is bland on the palette and best pissed away.
  29. X/Y
    It’s just that the quality of Williams’ script varies wildly, from superb to dire.
  30. Unfinished Business
    A once-energetic comic talent (and underrated serious actor) slows down to a pace he must feel matches his audience these days.
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