The A.V. Club's Scores

For 10,422 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:
10422 movie reviews
  1. A mesmerizing study of the nature of evil itself.
  2. A moving, gently reassuring tale that softens the boundaries between humanity and nature, life and the afterlife.
  3. Grace and his collaborators set out to make a typical '80s sex comedy and succeeded all too well; most of the movies they're paying homage to weren't very good, either.
  4. It's too little premise stretched over too much movie, and while the cast gives it their all, Nolfi's characterless direction only makes the movie feel that much slighter.
  5. Ignoring the weak storyline entirely, Rango is a joyously weird experience.
  6. In every aspect, from story to tone to characterization to visual aesthetic, it's laughably perfunctory, as though everyone involved were too embarrassed to give it more than a half-ironic token effort.
  7. Drive Angry feels like a five-minute Comic Con show reel that's been expanded beyond its limits. It's agonizingly cool.
  8. Not withstanding rich performances from Wilson and Lonsdale, the film never comes close to embodying that level of complexity.
  9. Far from being a liability, Dolan's youthfulness gives it unmistakable vibrancy: This is a love-crazy, movie-crazy affair, laying bare its emotions just as plainly as its influences.
  10. Though the film never balances the grown-up stuff with the gross-out gags, it suggests the Farrellys might be able to do mature after all.
  11. Star Martin Lawrence, now the sole remaining element from the original "Big Momma's House" 11 years ago, looks pretty tired both in and out of makeup here.
  12. Zero Bridge is a rigorous piece of filmmaking, but it's played at too minor a key, honoring the neo-realist tradition so slavishly that it lacks an identity of its own.
  13. This is a movie about the casual ways people know each other, even when their relationships are hard to explain-or perhaps even justify.
  14. Mixing social commentary and black humor with copious amounts of blood and cracking bones, We Are What We Are offers a cannibal's-eye view of Mexico City's seamier side.
  15. Vanishing On 7th Street does work well as a kind of mood-piece, observing all the ways we surround ourselves with the illusion of warmth and security, before the shadows creep in.
  16. The Chaperone is being marketed as a comedy, though no one seems to have told anyone involved.
  17. It's to the film's credit that its inescapable conclusion seems in doubt until the very end.
  18. Frey didn't really need a ghostwriter for this story, he just needed an archivist with a Xerox machine and a mercenary streak.
  19. Tacked onto a perfectly respectable thriller, Unknown's mass of unlikely turns and implausible reveals make the whole film seem retroactively less sophisticated.
  20. An unabashed valentine to Winters, but like an unfortunate number of valentines, it proves a little embarrassing to the giver and recipient alike.
  21. If anyone's likely to have trouble with Carancho, it's fans of Trapero's previous films, who won't be able to help noticing the sizeable step he's taken toward conventionality.
  22. Broadly speaking, Canner hails from the Michael Moore school of first-person editorializing, but Orgasm Inc. isn't given to vanity or cheap shots.
  23. Rather than peering into the heart of darkness, North just slaps a coat of Art atop her true-crime subject, and the upshot is akin to an especially pretentious episode of "Law & Order."
  24. Whenever all the pieces are in place, though, Lee reverts to the kind of storytelling he does best.
  25. Far too much of the film is devoted to eye-rolling pop-culture gags and long montages set to recycled Elton John songs.
  26. Aniston and Sandler, however, play characters too awful to deserve anyone better than each other. But what did we do to deserve them?
  27. The cast, anchored by sweetly goofy Ed Helms, redeems the film at every turn, adding humor and dimension to characters who might have otherwise drowned in tacky grotesquerie.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    The film's premise-that Bieber achieved his superstardom through years of hard work overcoming towering obstacles-is so ludicrously flawed that everything built upon it borders on self-parody.
  28. The formalities of the period dialogue and a wavering, inexplicable accent test him (Tatum) beyond his limits, and the film isn't thoughtful or original enough to survive it.
  29. A deplorable unofficial reworking of "Single White Female."

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