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. Away We Go
    Though Away We Go lacks the screwball unpredictability of something like "Flirting With Disaster," it compensates with a unexpected depth of feeling, a novelist’s (or memoirist’s) sense of detail, and a panoramic view of what home means.
  2. Land of the Lost
    It doesn't help that neither Ferrell nor McBride bring their best material, with McBride offering yet another variation on an angry redneck, and Ferrell falling back on Ron Burgundy-like bluster and nonsense exclamations.
  3. My Life in Ruins
    Vardalos has brought back the tourist comedy and delivered the dumbed-down "If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" no one wanted.
  4. Downloading Nancy
    In short, this is a movie about bruised people bruising each other, and if Downloading Nancy had more of an openly pulpy sensibility, then the repugnant premise might’ve had some lasting impact.
  5. 24 City
    Mostly, 24 City falls into the same Jia trap of inadvertently drawing the viewers' gaze past his human subjects and to the poetic images of a country in painful metamorphosis.
  6. Unmistaken Child
    Baratz’s apparent willingness to accept everything at face value papers over some of the more troubling aspects of Tenzin’s mission, but Unmistaken Child allows the mysteries of the process to be preserved without judgment.
  7. Up
    Up is challenging, emotionally and narratively, but it trusts viewers to keep up; Pixar has never been interested in talking down to children or their parents.
  8. Drag Me to Hell
    Raimi’s new film feels distinctly unburdened and fun, happily frolicking in its own pulp silliness.
  9. Departures
    Here's a great way to start savoring life: Don't waste it on pat manipulations like this.
  10. Pontypool
    Primarily though, the film works as a tour de force for McHattie--a veteran character actor making the most of his character’s long, fluid monologues--and as a sly commentary on journalistic responsibility.
  11. What Goes Up
    What Goes Up has a one-of-a-kind character in Coogan, a cynic with a savior complex, who lies partly out of convenience, and partly because he knows--as Glatzer and Lawson know--that even a messy story can still inspire.
  12. The Girlfriend Experience
    The thinking behind Grey's casting, with its obvious sex-industry connections, lends the film a degree of verisimilitude, but it really pays off in a cameo by film critic Glenn Kenny, who brings a hilariously sleazy theatricality to the role of an "escort critic" who expects graft for his reviews.
  13. O'Horten
    O’Horten feels like a waking dream. It's a film of subtle, insinuating charm, a character study about an eminently sane, reasonable man unsteadily navigating an increasingly insane, unreasonable world.
  14. Easy Virtue
    Easy Virtue needs a strong center to justify its celebration of American effrontery, and Biel lacks that prideful edge.
  15. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
    It’s a busier and less coherent film, too, with a baffling master plot and a crowded pileup of special effects in search of something to do.
  16. Dance Flick
    It would be hard to imagine a film with less going for it than Dance Flick.
  17. Terminator Salvation
    The way-too-familiar climax feels less like a comment on destiny than like watching a finely crafted but soulless product roll off an assembly line.
  18. Summer Hours
    Its final scene is almost overpoweringly tender and beautiful, offering a hopeful rejoinder to all the prior scenes of family members shedding their shared legacy.
  19. The Brothers Bloom
    Johnson sets viewers up for greatness, but ultimately offers much milder pleasures. The film isn’t an outright con, but it’s easy to feel a little misled by the end.
  20. Angels & Demons
    At half the length, and with half of Hanks' sneering pretension, this would make a pretty terrific action film.
  21. Jerichow
    The movie ends abruptly, setting up an epilogue that viewers will have to provide for themselves. Jerichow's sparseness, tiny cast, and minimal plot can make the film seem a little elusive, but there’s a certain elegance to Petzold's concision, too. He shows all he wants us to see.
  22. Management
    Like its protagonist, Management is dopey and impractical, but strangely winning all the same.
  23. Adoration
    At a minimum, his new film, Adoration, marks a welcome return to the Egoyan of old, the one who could spin seductive mysteries out of disassembled parts and show how images can be manipulated into comforting lies.
  24. Julia
    In tone and plot, Julia often resembles an extended episode of the AMC series "Breaking Bad"--except that Swinton's character is never NOT bad.
  25. Little Ashes
    The film’s biggest problem, beyond the overheated melodrama and paper-thin period trappings, is that the trio's fictionalized dalliances diminish their real art.
  26. Next Day Air
    A very pleasant surprise, Next Day Air is the rare crime comedy that does justice to both sides of the equation.
  27. Outrage
    Audience reaction to Outrage will depend heavily on how people feel about outing. Dick’s film probably won’t persuade anyone who finds the practice to be a loathsome and intrusive invasion of privacy, but after a relatively dry beginning, the film builds in passion and intensity until attaining a stirring cumulative power.
  28. Rudo y Cursi
    Carlos Cuaron's otherwise terrific new comedy Rudo Y Cursi barely survives its third-act "Goodfellas" descent into seedy coke-and-crime drama.
  29. Star Trek
    Gripping action and vulnerable heroes writ large. It boldly goes somewhere different and makes it hard to leave the film not hoping for a return voyage soon.
  30. The Limits of Control
    Too much of The Limits Of Control feels canned and airless, so stifled by Jarmusch's obsessions that it loses all sense of surprise.
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