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. Boyhood
    There’s a cumulative power here that transcends any rough patches. Boyhood isn’t perfect, but it’s an astonishing, one-of-a-kind accomplishment—and further proof that Linklater is one of the most daring, ambitious filmmakers working today.
  2. Closed Curtain
    Closed Curtain is a spotty meta movie that might leave a viewer wishing Panahi could go back to making films that aren’t about himself—which seems to be the point.
  3. Me and You
    The movie is an underwhelming coming-of-age fable that skirts around its own lurid undertones.
  4. Wrinkles
    Ultimately, though, Wrinkles doesn’t offer the aesthetic rewards necessary to make its sad material compelling.
  5. Gabrielle
    Frequently charming. Marion-Rivard, who won Canada’s equivalent of the Best Actress Oscar earlier this year (the film itself won Best Picture), gives a strong, sophisticated performance, even as she’s disarmingly open in a way that would be almost impossible for an actor without Williams syndrome to fake.
  6. America: Imagine a World Without Her
    Graced with a hilariously definitive title, America is astonishingly facile, a film comprised entirely of straw man arguments.
  7. Earth to Echo
    The most derivative movie of the summer, Earth To Echo, is also the most visually unpredictable, chock-full of degraded digital textures that seem ready to boil off the screen, picture-boxed within Mac desktops and overlaid with extraterrestrial interface trees.
  8. Premature
    Watching Bill Murray go through the same scenario over and over is one thing. Experiencing the same feeble dick jokes over and over is another.
  9. Deliver Us From Evil
    The action scenes are clumsily filmed and choppily edited.
  10. Tammy
    McCarthy co-wrote the film with her husband, Ben Falcone, who also directed and appears as the heroine’s wormy tyrant of a boss. Their collaborative mojo results in some winning sweetness, but not a lot of hilarity.
  11. Transformers: Age Of Extinction
    The fourth, longest, and flimsiest entry in the director’s signature franchise finds Bay mostly in cruise control, snapping to only when the movie veers away from the “robots fighting in tax-friendly locations” formula—which, unfortunately, isn’t very often.
  12. Begin Again
    True to its title, Begin Again periodically restarts itself, nestling flashbacks within flashbacks; it’s an unnecessarily complicated structure for what is, frankly, little more than a corny, overstuffed, “let’s put on a show” musical.
  13. The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
    While Swartz almost certainly would not have been sentenced to 50 years in prison, a system that tries to scare harmless do-gooders into submission does America no credit. In this case, it succeeded all too horribly well.
  14. Drones
    Mumford and O’Leary struggle to make sense of their characters, but are stymied by a script that regards them primarily as mouthpieces for talking points that, again, aren’t even the points anyone’s using when talking about drone warfare.
  15. They Came Together
    Seeing clichés mimicked this skillfully is plenty hilarious.
  16. Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger
    Provides little in the way of comforting catharsis. That may be because Berlinger, a thorough and impassioned muckraker, has managed to find hints of injustice in the justice that was served.
  17. Snowpiercer
    Though shocking violence and black humor run through the length of the movie, what comes through most strongly is its pessimistic political conscience; were the movie less earnest, it might seem Verhoeven-esque.
  18. Yves Saint Laurent
    Yet another biopic that feels as though it were made by an accountant, Jalil Lespert’s Yves Saint Laurent epitomizes the mediocrity of a genre that often aspires to secondhand storytelling instead of first-rate art.
  19. The Last Sentence
    The continual wobbling of on-screen space, combined with some endearingly awkward attempts at humor (dog reaction shots abound), gives this tony biopic a smidgen of charm, though it doesn’t make it any less tedious.
  20. Norte, the End of History
    It feels as though wherever the camera might be—and however it might be moving—is exactly where it belongs.
  21. Venus in Fur
    Polanski isn’t a miracle worker. Venus In Fur works where the facile "Carnage" largely didn’t because the play itself is something of a delight — a straightforward but sharply comic twofer about roleplaying and control-based relationships (be they artistic, romantic, or otherwise). The casting, too, is impeccable.
  22. Third Person
    As schematic as Third Person is on a whole, it’s downright risible on a moment-to-moment basis.
  23. Coherence
    The result is an uncommonly clever genre movie, reliant not on special effects — of which there are basically none — but on heavy doses of paranoia.
  24. Code Black
    Far too much time is spent on McGarry and his colleagues talking to the camera about how little they’re motivated by money or status and how much they just want to help people. That’s laudable, but it’s not compelling.
  25. Heli
    The movie maintains a relentless grip all the same. Unlike the junior kingpins who bear witness to the film’s big blaze, audiences won’t watch in a passive state.
  26. Policeman
    Like its narrative, this gripping film rarely veers in the expected directions — and is never easy to pin down.
  27. Think Like a Man Too
    Think Like A Man was a memorably bad movie; the most eccentric thing about this sequel is its title.
  28. Jersey Boys
    The unfortunate trade-off of Eastwood’s efficient, real-deal classical direction is his stubborn commitment to the script.
  29. A Coffee In Berlin
    This understated indie deepens its portrait of growing up by suggesting, ultimately, that anyone who thinks wasting time is a reasonable course of action needs to wake up.
  30. Test
    Clumsy metaphors and contrived attempts to articulate Frankie’s fears—especially as he awaits the results of the titular test—diminish the emotional authenticity engendered by Daniel Marks’ hyper-real cinematography and the film’s incisively curated soundtrack.
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