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. Big Eyes
    Big Eyes has plenty of surface pleasures, but there was reason to expect more than that from it.
  2. Two Days, One Night
    Two Days, One Night is a small miracle of a movie, a drama so purely humane that it makes most attempts at audience uplift look crass and calculated by comparison.
  3. Winter Sleep
    Epics tend to get extra respect — bonus points for ambition, one might say — and while Ceylan’s film is a decidedly intimate example of the genre, it was clearly perceived, in advance, as an important work just by virtue of its sheer heft.
  4. Annie
    Broadway purists determined to hate Annie need not fear, because there’s plenty worth complaining about.
  5. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
    Secret Of The Tomb plays it as a source of corny jokes, pop-culture references, and father-son bonding moments. In other words, it’s exactly the kind of film that shouldn’t be expected to engage with its assorted bizarre subtexts — but what a movie it could be if it did.
  6. Mr. Turner
    Given the material, it’s fitting that Mr. Turner is the director’s most visually ravishing movie. With cinematographer Dick Pope behind the lens, every shot is gorgeous enough to hang in a museum.
  7. The Gambler
    In any case, none of the gambles Jim makes over the course of the movie are as ballsy as the film’s casting strategy. Will audiences really buy Mark Wahlberg as a wordsmith too brilliant for academia? Smart money says no.
  8. If You Don't, I Will
    For the most part, writer-director Sophie Fillières’ If You Don’t, I Will strikes an engaging tone of melancholic humor through its portrait of a French marriage slowly falling to pieces.
  9. Goodbye to All That
    In between missteps, Goodbye To All That carves out some of its brief running time for the kind of quiet, low-key dramedy that complements the recessive charm of its leading man.
  10. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
    Bilbo fades into the sidelines of his own movie, and that may be why the mournful finale of Battle feels so canned, like a roiling tide of crocodile tears. Eleven years ago, Jackson earned the fond, seemingly endless farewells of The Return Of The King. His Hobbit series has only one ending, and it comes not a moment too soon.
  11. The Color of Time
    The better moments of Color Of Time make use of the ringer cast Franco was able to assemble, however momentarily.
  12. Tip Top
    Confirms director and co-screenwriter Serge Bozon as one of French cinema’s true oddballs.
  13. Mommy
    If it merits no other superlative, Mommy is unquestionably the most hyperactive movie of the year. It begins at a fever pitch and maintains that degree of in-your-face intensity for well over two hours, to either exhilarating or exhausting effect, depending on one’s tolerance level.
  14. Inherent Vice
    In its graceful superimpositions and its use of water to evoke a more idyllic time (particularly in a rainy flashback set to Neil Young), Inherent Vice is very much a companion piece to "The Master."
  15. The Captive
    The structural gamesmanship is just a smokescreen, a way to obfuscate the pulp nature of what is, ultimately, little more than a glorified, low-aiming potboiler.
  16. Top Five
    A disorganized, dawdling mess of a movie that is rarely anything less than charming.
  17. Exodus: Gods and Kings
    If nothing else, Exodus: Gods And Kings makes it easier to appreciate Darren Aronofsky’s "Noah," which, for all of its flaws, was at least animated by a personal relationship to the Old Testament.
  18. Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2
    Simply put, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart 2 doesn’t pop like a Johnnie To flick. Shooting in a digital format for the first time, and without his signature Technovision anamorphic lenses, To seems to have been thrown for a loop; his sense of space and rhythm are off, and his compositions are uncharacteristically flat and conservative.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles
    It’s enough for Workman to simply assemble a patchwork of Welles in his myriad incarnations (as the hearty Falstaff in Chimes At Midnight; as an arched-eyebrow spokesman for Paul Masson wine; as The Third Man’s cynical Harry Lime; as a sharp, vital youth and a sharp, frail elder) and allow the many faces to confirm, contradict, and, ultimately, speak for themselves.
  20. The Pyramid
    In the end, The Pyramid seems designed not for horror, adventure, or action but to provide every possible answer to the question of its found-footage bona fides—yes, no, or maybe, depending on who’s asking. It spends most of its running time hedging uncertainly between trend and backlash, explanations and excuses.
  21. Panic 5 Bravo
    The only thing worse than useless trash is useless trash with delusions of grandeur.
  22. Dying of the Light
    Not to say that the movie is a mess. Instead, it plays out as a more or less conventional direct-to-video-style thriller, distinguished by a handful of subtexts and images that might have been developed in a different version, but here register as mere quirks.
  23. Remote Area Medical
    The camera tracks every emotional up and down, through tests and surgery, with an unfussy precision that allows the themes to arise naturally.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Concerning Violence
    In other words, Concerning Violence isn’t out to soothe its audience with platitudes about peace, love, and understanding. Its exploration of an entrenched system that breeds generations of oppression and violence is extremely upsetting yet still highly rewarding.
  25. Life Partners
    If this all sounds more than a little familiar, it’s probably because similar material about young-ish women growing up and maybe apart has been staged recently and on a variety of scales, from the scrappy intimacy of "Frances Ha" to the broader comedy of "Bridesmaids." Life Partners isn’t as ebullient as the former or laugh-out-loud funny as the latter, but it maintains a sharp specificity about both of its lead characters’ lives.
  26. Still Alice
    Though shot in the stolidly inconspicuous style of a low-rated cable drama, Still Alice is rarely anything short of compelling, in part because its sense of progression and scale offers such a distinctively unsentimental take on the terminal-countdown tearjerker.
  27. A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness
    It’s the cathartic, even meditative qualities of metal that are explored in A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness, a new documentary whatsit that frequently resembles nothing so much as an adaptation of some imaginary black-metal record.
  28. Wild
    People tend to equate great acting with demonstrative emoting, but knowing when not to telegraph what a character is feeling is just as crucial. Sometimes, walking from point A to point Z — simply, without fuss — is all that’s required.
  29. Zero Motivation
    Melancholy climactic trajectory aside, Zero Motivation is primarily very funny.
  30. The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness
    Building to an emotional wallop that’s almost on par with anything found in one of Miyazaki’s or Takahata’s films, The Kingdom Of Dreams And Madness is pornographically interesting for Studio Ghibli fans; as a delicate depiction of the artistic spirit, it’s equally essential viewing for everyone else.
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