The A.V. Club's Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 5,575 out of 10422
  2. Mixed: 3,739 out of 10422
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10422
10422 movie reviews
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  1. Enter the Void
    Enter The Void is a trance-like experience, feeding the shimmering neon of Tokyo at night into a spectacular hallucinogenic head-trip.
  2. Waiting for 'Superman'
    Superman argues convincingly that everyone should have the right to a good education, not just folks lucky enough to score winning numbers: It should be a birthright, not a matter of chance.
  3. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
    Like the worst of late-period Allen, the film recycles character types from his previous work without inventing new reasons to summon them into existence. They're left stranded, seven characters in search of an author.
  4. Jack Goes Boating
    Jack Goes Boating tells a tender story reasonably well, but it rarely lets viewers feel the emotions instead of thoughtfully observing them.
  5. Easy A
    The film is at its best when it isn't afraid to be earnest.
  6. Devil
    Perhaps someday, in the greatest twist of all, Shyamalan will be remembered as the Hitchcock of the early 21st century. Until then, movies like Devil will be misunderstood as schlock.
  7. The Town
    The movie's exterior is solid, but it's hollow inside, like a safe filled with air.
  8. Catfish
    Catfish is absolutely riveting, and even nerve-wracking as Joost and the Schulmans get progressively closer to learning more about their "friends."
  9. Never Let Me Go
    Best approached with little to no advance information or expectations, which is the same way the film's characters experience their lives.
  10. Kings of Pastry
    In a pressure-cooker environment, Pennebaker and Hegedus' moderately engaging but ultimately unsatisfying documentary feels disappointingly lukewarm.
  11. Bran Nue Dae
    The movie builds goodwill doggedly, and then pays it all off with a farcical finale with a rousing message: We're all Aborigines! Who knew?
  12. Legendary
    It does strive for substance and meaning in a way that gives it an unmistakable Barton Fink feeling, if nothing close to a Barton Fink sensibility.
  13. The Virginity Hit
    Bennett never lets us forget that his character is in profound pain, even while attempting to perform oral sex on a transsexual blow-up doll. It's a daring, sweet performance that almost single-handedly elevates The Virginity Hit from a standard Superbad knock-off into a film that feels raw, painful, and real.
  14. Heartbreaker
    Heartbreaker relies far too heavily on the charm and attractiveness of romantic leads whose chemistry is lukewarm at best to sell a groaning collection of rom-com clichés.
  15. Hideaway (Le refuge)
    Hideaway bottles up stormy feelings of grief, guilt, and desire so tightly that register only in a few sharp, impetuous bursts. The rest of the time, it's dull and inscrutable-a film of almost vaporous subtlety.
  16. I'm Still Here
    If this is a documentary, it's a profoundly embarrassing one, in which Affleck has exposed Phoenix's soul and found it shallow and damaged. If it's a mockumentary, though, its greatest value is in pointing out the media's gullibility, and reminding audiences that even in an age of limited privacy, they still have to question what they're told and even what they witness themselves. It's cruel either way, but riveting nonetheless.
  17. Resident Evil: Afterlife
    Really, the whole series would be unthinkable without the films of George Romero. In that respect, Anderson has taken another page from the Corman playbook for his superior B-movie: If you're going to steal, at least steal well.
  18. Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?)
    If nothing else, Scheinfeld captures the essence of the Nilsson experience, and how, according to his attorney, "He would turn up at your door at 4 in the morning, and you knew that the next three days were going to be an adventure."
  19. Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1
    Public Enemy openly raises the question of why officers of the law hated Mesrine so much that they were willing to turn his death into a block party.
  20. Going the Distance
    Going The Distance could stand to color outside the lines a bit more, but it's perceptive about the problems of young people torn between pursuing love or their nascent career ambitions, and the witty script, by first-timer Geoff LaTulippe, is spiked with refreshing profanity.
  21. Machete
    It's often stylish and exciting, but the pile-up of cool kills, hot bodies, and other unprocessed bits of juvenilia doesn't add up to a good time.
  22. Last Train Home
    Sometimes the story is so much like a fiction feature-complete with explosive family arguments and pointed cross-cutting between the free-spirited Qin and her beaten-down folks-that it feels exploitative, as though Lixin were turning real people into characters.
  23. A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
    Though it's a stylistic change from what Zhang's been up to lately, this isn't entirely new territory for him.
  24. White Wedding
    Jann Turner's shiny, happy crowd-pleaser gleans a tiny shred of substance and social relevance from its exploration of racial and class politics in a post-apartheid South Africa that's still very much split across race lines.
  25. The American
    He's (Corbijn) a patient, fastidious filmmaker with a great eye-ideal for his subject here-but his austerity doesn't entirely erase the suspicion that he doesn't have much on his mind. His film is a triumph, but it may be a triumph of style over substance.
  26. Takers
    Rapper, producer, and mogul Tip "T.I." Harris was recently named "global creative consultant" for Rémy Martin cognac. Coincidentally or not, he's also the star and producer of Takers, a heist thriller that feels suspiciously like a feature-length commercial for expensive liquor.
  27. Mesrine: Killer Instinct
    Cassel is convincing and riveting as Mesrine, which helps balance out the film's problematic slick shallowness and disconnects.
  28. The Last Exorcism
    Aided by strong performances from Bell and Fabian, Stamm deftly plays with the boundary of fact and fiction, though his game might have worked better with a little more grounding in verisimilitude.
  29. Centurion
    Centurion offers little beyond viscera for its own sake, without anything like the bold abstraction of "Valhalla Rising."
  30. Change of Plans (Le code a changé)
    Thompson's cast is too large for her to make the best use of her ingenious story-structure.
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