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. Extract
    Nobody is better at capturing the crushing banality of everyday life than Judge.
  2. Amreeka
    Amreeka lacks the sense of humor that set "Aliens In America" apart--and frankly, it’s rarely as insightful about the biases and strengths either of Arab émigrés or of sheltered Midwesterners.
  3. American Casino
    The film doesn’t come to life until too late in the game.
  4. The Final Destination
    The whole movie is just one increasingly dull roll downhill. The same could be said for this once-fresh franchise.
  5. The September Issue
    A fascinating, frustrating documentary.
  6. We Live in Public
    We Live In Public doesn’t show that Harris was a genius so much as that he was a mentally and emotionally unstable egotist, trying to force a revolution in self-broadcasting and connectivity that later happened more naturally.
  7. At the Edge of the World
    Plays like an extended episode of "Deadliest Catch" with eco-warriors as the stars--in fact, the Animal Planet show "Whale Wars," now in its second season, follows Sea Shepherd’s exploits--and it’s frequently a rousing adventure.
  8. Big Fan
    Because the audience isn’t privy to the hero’s thoughts, the final 15 minutes or so of Big Fan are white-knuckle.
  9. Wolke Neun
    Ultimately though, apart from the ages of the protagonists, Cloud 9 is a standard-issue infidelity story.
  10. Halloween II (2009)
    Halloween II provides ample spotlights for Zombie’s visual gifts, but—apart from some striking Oedipal fantasy sequences featuring Sheri Moon Zombie as the spirit of Myers’ mother—we saw most of this last time around, and a lot of promising material leads to dead ends.
  11. Taking Woodstock
    Lee’s movie is pleasant enough, but it’s too swept up in the spirit it’s celebrating to ask the relevant questions.
  12. Inglourious Basterds
    its moments of greatness--and there are more than a couple--feel weirdly disconnected, stuck in a movie that doesn’t know how to put them together, or find a good way to move from one to the next.
  13. World's Greatest Dad
    With Dad and his last writer-director effort, "Sleeping Dogs Lie," Goldthwait has accomplished the formidable feat of making wry, tender, fundamentally sweet comedies about the human condition that just happen to center on acts of autoerotic asphyxiation and bestiality, respectively. That isn't easy.
  14. Post Grad
    When a film whose cast includes Michael Keaton, Jane Lynch, Fred Armisen, Craig Robinson, Demetri Martin, and the now rarely seen Carol Burnett can’t scare up more than a smattering of laughs, the patient was never meant to live in the first place.
  15. Shorts
    Jon Cryer and Leslie Mann have a couple of sly moments as overworked career people, and Spader again proves he learned a lot by working with William Shatner for so long. But the bottomless slapstick and silly effects quickly grow wearying, as does a cast of young actors whose work can politely be called energetic.
  16. Fifty Dead Men Walking
    What makes Fifty Dead Men work is the story’s sheer moral complexity, which dares viewers to sympathize with anyone onscreen for more than a few minutes at a time.
  17. Five Minutes of Heaven
    Hirschbiegel fails to discipline his English-speaking cast, allowing Nesbitt so much rein with his caffeinated performance that sympathies shift to Neeson’s comparatively sanguine murderer.
  18. The Marc Pease Experience
    In a squandered lead performance, the adorable, winning Schwartzman plays the non-adorable, non-winning title character.
  19. Art & Copy
    The film is essentially a skillful advertising-industry infomercial that speaks its subject’s slick aesthetic language.
  20. My One and Only
    Dying to hear George Hamilton’s origin story? No? Well, too bad, because the mediocre, nostalgic-soaked comedy-drama My One And Only, loosely inspired by Hamilton’s childhood, has been produced with a few big stars attached.
  21. Passing Strange
    Lee doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel when it comes to filming live theater, but he moves the camera artfully and edits with an energy that matches the music.
  22. Still Walking
    The movie seems like a perfect found object, as if it had always existed and was just waiting to be uncovered.
  23. The Headless Woman
    A remarkably nuanced, ever-evolving performance (María Onetto).
  24. District 9
    District 9 fuses science fiction mayhem and biting social commentary as well as any film since "Starship Troopers." It’s the rare alien invasion story that has the aliens running scared.
  25. Ponyo
    It’s essentially a stroll through a fantastically detailed pastel world, in which the plot is little more than an excuse for Miyazaki to dive into a world teeming with colorful (and sometimes prehistoric) life.
  26. The Time Traveler's Wife
    The story is still mostly fabulous, and its novelty helps carry the film, but this still comes across like a poor high-school stage version: sincere and kind of sweet, but endlessly clumsy.
  27. Bandslam
    Throughout its first two acts, Bandslam is charming, sweet, and funny enough to merit inclusion in the upper echelon of teen comedies. Then comes a third act weighed down with arbitrary romantic conflicts, leaden melodrama, and a tiresome subplot.
  28. The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
    About Piven: When did it go wrong? When did the caustic character actor guaranteed to liven up even the dullest movie turn into a walking black hole of smarm from which no joy can escape?
  29. Earth Days
    Nearly a quarter of the way through Earth Days, the movie seems on-track to being just another tongue-clucking “Isn’t it a pity” doc, painted in broad strokes.
  30. It Might Get Loud
    The resulting jam session ought to be a music geek’s wet dream, but there isn’t enough common ground to produce more than a few flashes of inspiration.
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