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. Paris 36
    The overstuffed film lumbers across clichés of the heart and of history until it reaches a big, tune-filled climax that isn't worth the wait.
  2. The Song of Sparrows
    It's easier to find enjoyment in Sparrows on a moment-by-moment basis than to swallow its message whole, but that method squares just fine with Majidi's aesthetic, in which tiny, quiet joys are the best kind.
  3. Tulpan
    A beautifully choreographed and photographed story about tradition and modernity in rural Asia.
  4. Goodbye Solo
    What distinguishes Goodbye Solo, beyond Savané’s larger-than-life personality bumping up against West’s intractable curmudgeon, is the continued particularity of Bahrani’s work.
  5. Monsters vs Aliens
    On some level, the latest DreamWorks CGI project isn't a movie so much as a gag-delivery system wrapped in special effects. The story is crammed with incident, yet completely trifling; there are a ton of personalities, but no real characters.
  6. 12 Rounds
    There's something strangely charming about films that are all artifice, explosions, and naked calculation. 12 Rounds is at least honest trash: It never pretends to be anything other than manic schlock.
  7. American Swing
    American Swing could use the flair of similar portraits of disco-era debauchery like "Boogie Nights" or "Inside Deep Throat," but it’s even-handed in capturing the operation’s ambition and hubris. Just don’t bring an appetite.
  8. The Haunting in Connecticut
    As a piece of storytelling, The Haunting In Connecticut is pretty lazy. As a horror movie, it’s lazier still, bringing out every annoying shock-cut and disorienting sound-design trick of the last decade.
  9. Guest of Cindy Sherman
    It all begins to feel tawdry, especially since Paul H-O never seems to realize that even though he wants everyone to know who he is, he’s never given a good reason why we should.
  10. Shall We Kiss?
    The very definition of "breezy." It's a featherweight romantic comedy.
  11. Knowing
    Knowing frequently feels one Revelation quote away from turning into a chiding, fundamentalist-friendly end-of-the-world movie in the "Left Behind" mold.
  12. Sin Nombre
    Fukunaga paints better outside the lines, working with cinematographer Adriano Goldman to offer vivid shots of the poverty and despair cutting through Latin America, of gang rituals and territorial skirmishes, and of ordinary people taking dangerous routes to a better life that may be a mirage. Next time, a few rewrites please.
  13. I Love You, Man
    What saves I Love You, Man, at least partially, is the relaxed chemistry between Paul Rudd and Jason Segel, both very funny men who are genuine enough to push back against a premise that's often maddeningly artificial.
  14. Duplicity
    The female lead in Duplicity calls for the kind of atomic, glow-in-the-dark, Rita Hayworth-in-Gilda sexuality that is most assuredly out of Roberts' range. Angelina Jolie effortlessly conjures up that kind of fire-breathing sexiness. Roberts? Not so much.
  15. The Great Buck Howard
    Buck Howard has a nice feel for its tacky, second-rate show-business milieu--a rinky-dink world of telethons, small towns starved for entertainment, and entertainers whose careers have been in freefall since Hollywood Squares went off the air.
  16. Skills Like This
    Skills Like This is never great. But for its first half-hour, it's more fitfully amusing than a movie about a bank-robbing playwright ought to be.
  17. Valentino: The Last Emperor
    From Valentino Garavani's imperious carriage and diva fits to his coterie of tiny dogs, the subject of Tyrnauer's doc comes off like a fictional character, scripted by a writer with a weakness for cliché.
  18. Sunshine Cleaning
    There is a time and a place for scruffy independent also-rans like this, and that time and place is the 2 a.m. slot on IFC.
  19. Miss March
    Robinson is hilarious, at least in the early going. Sadly, Robinson is all that stands between Miss March and complete worthlessness.
  20. The Last House on the Left
    It's now a straight-up crime and retribution flick, capped off by the dumbest wolf-feeding coda a 13-year-old ever dreamed up.
  21. The Edge of Love
    The Edge Of Love is more like a museum piece, placing historical figures in frozen positions, and asking us to judge them as the curators do.
  22. Race to Witch Mountain
    Director Andy Fickman, who previously blanded Johnson up in "The Game Plan," has fashioned the film into a one-size-fits-all, action-packed special-effects extravaganza for the whole family.
  23. Tokyo Sonata
    As always, Kurosawa masterfully controls his film's framing and sound design, and as always, the painstakingly precise mise-en-scene can feel a little overdone at times.
  24. Brothers at War
    It’s practically a feature-length infomercial for the military.
  25. Watchmen
    Snyder's Watchmen keeps moving so assuredly, it's nearly impossible not to get swept along.
  26. Phoebe in Wonderland
    There's too much "problem, solution" to Phoebe, although the movie's anxieties are believable enough to earns the moments of uplift. The film may be too concerned with being a crowd-pleaser, but it least it makes the crowd suffer a little along the way.
  27. Everlasting Moments
    Heiskanen plays her layers beautifully, alternately revealing a talented artist stymied by poverty and marital problems, and a woman fiercely devoted to family first.
  28. Tokyo!
    The entries aren't equally strong, of course, but each comes from a sharp outsider's perspective, approaching Tokyo as a strange, mysterious organism that infects the populace.
  29. 12
    Rarely has the voyeuristic appeal of sitting on a jury been so cleverly expressed.
  30. Red Riding Trilogy
    Red Riding’s depiction of the avarice and corruption possible when regions become kingdoms unto themselves feels simultaneously cynical and true.
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