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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    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Finding Fela!
    What makes Finding Fela! just as poignant is the fact that Kuti, while still listened to and appreciated by millions, is not as ubiquitous a cultural institution as Davis or Brown. Gibney doesn’t fully, forcefully make the case in Kuti’s favor — but he does take a big step in the right direction, all while sketching a vivid, evocative portrait.
  2. Cabin Fever: Patient Zero
    A pandemic thriller infected with horror-film clichés, Cabin Fever: Patient Zero ditches the nasty allegory of Eli Roth’s original and Ti West’s studio-butchered first sequel for far duller, standard-issue conventions.
  3. War Story
    Jackson’s technique is undercut, if only a little, by story and characters that sometimes cross the line from minimalist to just plain underdeveloped. Yet as a formal exercise that gives Keener the space to really inhabit her character, War Story is effective.
  4. The Kill Team
    War is hell, in other words, and punishing these soldiers—and Winfield in particular—for doing what they were taught to do is wrong.
  5. Get On Up
    Get On Up is the Hollywood biopic at its near-worst — a formless, extravagant assortment of historical incidents and lip-synched musical numbers, which ultimately amount to little more than a 138-minute showcase reel for Chadwick Boseman’s technically impressive and utterly opaque James Brown impression.
  6. Guardians of the Galaxy
    Guardians boasts not one, but two Han Solo proxies — not to mention an ass-kicking Princess Leia surrogate, a villain with a very Sithian fashion sense, and the flora answer to Chewbacca. Also, one of the Han Solo types is a talking raccoon.
  7. The Killer Inside Me
    Affleck is the perfect actor for this role, though he’s a little too mush-mouthed to do the voiceover narration required of a noir.
  8. Hercules
    Unsurprisingly, Johnson makes for a perfect movie-star Hercules, and the film gets a lot of mileage by playing his charismatic-but-modest take on the character off of the strong, predominantly British cast.
  9. Happy Christmas
    Nobody involved ever came up with an idea or character remotely worth exploring, yet they all forged ahead anyway, placing their faith in the filmmaking process itself, and this damp squib of an ostensible movie is the decidedly lackluster result.
  10. Magic in the Moonlight
    Firth and Stone are terrific, but they’re cast as screwball leads. Given only intermittent opportunities for levity, the two end up serving as mouthpieces for Allen’s dubious self-justifications.
  11. Lucy
    It comes across, instead, as a directorial flight of fancy, an imaginatively goofy take on an already goofy idea, exaggerated by Besson’s blunt style and an uncommonly fast pace.
  12. And So It Goes
    A mediocre movie, starring two great actors who’ve certainly done worse, that benefits from baseline competence and lowered expectations.
  13. A Most Wanted Man
    What resonates, in this smart but minor procedural, isn’t the harsh vision of a post-9/11 world, but the unglamorous depiction of governmental grunt work.
  14. Very Good Girls
    The casting isn’t all together unconvincing: Olsen and Fanning’s collective ability to project intelligence beyond their years works both ways, allowing them to play both precocious youths and youthful adults. But Very Good Girls catches them in between those stages, and the effect isn’t evocative so much as muddled.
  15. A Master Builder
    Demme barely even makes an effort, shooting mostly in bland close-ups with the occasional zoom for completely random emphasis. Nor does A Master Builder have any meta-element—it’s like "Vanya On 42nd Street" without 42nd Street.
  16. Mood Indigo
    No amount of imaginative trickery can fill the void of feeling at the movie’s center. Whimsy for whimsy’s sake is just too much to take.
  17. Wish I Was Here
    For better or for worse — okay, mostly for worse — he’s made the exact film he wanted to make; it just took him some time, and a lot of charity, to get the earnest thing off the ground.
  18. I Origins
    I Origins is an exercise in supreme obviousness, beginning (but not ending) with its double entendre of a title.
  19. Video Games: The Movie
    Video Games: The Movie talks a lot about storytelling, but practices very little of it.
  20. Alive Inside
    Alive Inside runs a brisk 78 minutes, but that’s still far more time than it requires to make its point; once you’ve seen a couple of old people suddenly come to life upon hearing “I Get Around” or “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” there’s not much to be gained by being presented with half a dozen more instances.
  21. Sex Tape
    It’s less a movie than a bad sitcom episode stretched to feature length and raunched up to an R rating.
  22. Planes: Fire & Rescue
    It’s nice to look at, easy to watch, and impossible to remember for the length of a car-ride home.
  23. The Purge: Anarchy
    Retains the original’s premise and politics, but actually puts them to use.
  24. Affluenza
    The film is an empty shell, reducing a complex lament to a shallow portrait of wealthy hedonists behaving badly.
  25. Road to Paloma
    Before the plot butts in, Road To Paloma works reasonably well as a moody travelogue that keeps finding new ways to show off its dingy bona fides.
  26. A Long Way Down
    This film adaptation, however, never succeeds in settling on a tone at all, veering ineptly from flippant goofiness to maudlin sentiment and back again.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Made in America
    Jay Z spends much of the film trumpeting his own keen eye for diversity, without acknowledging the fact that as festival bills go, Made In America is utterly unremarkable—and nowhere near as diverse as he claims.
  28. Land Ho!
    While it’s heartening in one sense to see this youthful, offbeat take on two men’s determination to stay eternally fresh, there’s something about the ease with which the characters reorder their lives that makes Land Ho! seem both a little slight and a little precious.
  29. Rage
    Unfortunately, eccentricities are few and far between in the movie, with sleepy action that bungles its best ideas (like its potentially interesting twist ending) and finds Cage delivering one of his more moribund performances.
  30. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    Yet for all the heart and soul the actor pours into his role, watching Dawn still feels a bit like seeing massive, expensive wheels spin in place.
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