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. Antichrist
    Antichrist is a boldly personal film, tossing all von Trier’s ideas about faith, fear, and human nature into an unfettered phantasmagoria, full of repulsive visions and fierce scorn. It’s also the most lush-looking movie von Trier has made in about 20 years.
  2. Amelia
    Considering its focus on a pioneering, rule-breaking icon, the film’s utter lack of personality isn’t just a failure. It’s close to an insult.
  3. Astro Boy
    Older viewers are more likely to see a muddled film full of one-dimensional characters and insultingly strident politics.
  4. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
    Actually, by way of a sequel, the filmmakers could just set Cerveris, Dafoe, and Reilly up for a purr-off. That’d be more fun than most of this film.
  5. Saw VI
    Because Saw does nothing to alter the look, tone, and engineered gimmickry from one movie to the next, it keeps going deeper into backstory and character arcs than horror series past, as if this ugly, cheap-looking schlock were somehow "The Lord Of The Rings."
  6. (Untitled)
    The three main characters aren’t cardboard-cutout poseurs, and for that alone, (Untitled) stands apart.
  7. Motherhood
    Dieckmann fails to notice that Thurman doesn’t have the comic chops for the material--she comes off more like a self-pitying loser than a witty, put-upon everywoman.
  8. Ong Bak 2
    What sold the original Ong Bak was the action, not the story, and on an action level, Ong Bak 2 lives up to its title.
  9. The Wedding Song
    It takes more than just the ominous tread of Nazi boots to infuse gravitas into this well-intentioned but dreary look at the female mind and body during wartime.
  10. Where the Wild Things Are
    Spike Jonze has recently said in interviews that his chief goal ...was to try to capture the feeling of being 9. By that measure--by just about any measure, really--he succeeded wildly.
  11. Law Abiding Citizen
    A flagrantly ridiculous thriller that tries to retrofit "Saw" to function as a mainstream, semi-respectable vigilante picture
  12. New York, I Love You
    The segments don’t form anything like a coherent whole, but they aren’t distinctive enough to clash meaningfully with each other, either.
  13. Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
    Jaud isn’t telling a story so much as he’s making a case, and while his case is persuasive, it doesn’t really work as a movie. The information in Food Beware could fit just as easily--and just as effectively--into a pamphlet.
  14. The Stepfather
    Walsh is just a dumb bully who can’t see more than one or two steps ahead. He’s doomed to generic slasher villainy, and the film thoughtlessly obliges.
  15. The Maid
    Even at its most upbeat, The Maid is something of a tragedy.
  16. An Education
    An Education shares with Hornby’s best work trenchant insight into the way smart, hyper-verbal young people let the music, films, books, and art they love define themselves as they figure out who they are and what they want to be.
  17. The Damned United
    Meaney’s Flintstone-ian brute makes a terrific foil to Sheen’s prissy arrogance, but the other supporting players don’t make much of an impression. Ditto for this slice of history itself, though mileage may vary for soccer fans.
  18. Couples Retreat
    Features a running gag about a little boy in the midst of potty training who doesn’t always go where it’s appropriate. In a nutshell, that subplot explains everything that’s wrong about the film.
  19. Bronson
    There are two Bronsons on display here: the impossible thug that we don’t dare release into polite society, and the guy we enjoy watching do his terrible thing. The man and the movie are both living, punching contradictions.
  20. Good Hair
    Is it possible to talk about the fascinating and complex universe of black hair without dealing with race and identity? That’s the question posed by Good Hair.
  21. Peter and Vandy
    The movie’s saving grace is Weixler, who manages to seem effortlessly natural without resorting to whiny faux naturalism.
  22. The Yes Men Fix the World
    Given the duo’s withering take on capitalism, it’s ironic that their stumbling second feature feels throughout like an infomercial for a shtick whose expiration date is rapidly approaching.
  23. Araya
    As a piece of documentary filmmaking though, Araya is more noteworthy for what it reveals about a changing artform than for what it has to say about its subjects.
  24. Trick 'r Treat
    The idea of a Halloween-centric anthology is solid, but the subject deserves stronger material than this reheated mush.
  25. A Serious Man
    WQholly a Coen brothers movie, in that it’s full of exaggerated characters and comic cruelty, anchored to a way of looking at the world that seems to posit a fundamental absence of meaning. And yet there’s something sweet and even a little heartening about the movie, too.
  26. Whip It
    It’s virtually impossible to hate the film, but Barrymore’s presence behind the camera suggests more calculation than vision; like a lot of actors who direct, she tends to the performances, but her style never rises above bland proficiency.
  27. Zombieland
    The four protagonists aren’t about to let something as minor as the complete breakdown of society get in the way of having a good time, and their fun proves infectious.
  28. The Invention of Lying
    The film doesn’t traffic in drollery for its own sake. Between laughs, Lying uses its skewed reality to comment on our own need to create useful fictions to wallpaper over the abyss.
  29. More Than a Game
    Belman doesn’t look into the bigger problems of James’ team jet-setting across the country during the school year, or the spectacle allowed to build up around him. He cares most about what happens on the court, which is diverting and fun as far as it goes, but not close to the whole story.
  30. Afterschool
    Afterschool wears its many influences on its sleeve, but it’s very much a movie of the moment. The passing of time and the evolution of technology may give it an expiration date, but more likely, Campos’ film stands to be an essential document of what it was like to be a young person in the late ’00s.
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