The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
For 10,456 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: 5,593 out of 10456
  2. Mixed: 3,748 out of 10456
  3. Negative: 1,115 out of 10456
10456 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gran Turismo
    Gran Turismo lacks the concentration to feel like it’s really going anywhere. Instead, there’s the nagging feeling it’s just spinning its wheels.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Red White & Royal Blue
    Red, White & Royal Blue, ultimately, isn’t revolutionary. It’s more traditional than not—which means, thankfully, that it’s still a lot of fun.
  3. Heart of Stone
    What’s there demonstrates a modicum of decent world-building, from which filmmakers can hopefully spin-off better, more capably crafted capers.
  4. The Last Voyage of the Demeter
    Despite this unevenness, there’s a lot to love in The Last Voyage Of The Demeter for horror fans and casual moviegoers alike.
  5. Meg 2: The Trench
    It’s faint, if legitimate, praise to say that The Meg 2: The Trench is better than the first film because, while it repeats everything the first film did wrong, it improves on everything it did right. It lacks the drive, imagination, and sense of awe to work as a pastiche of Aliens, The Abyss, Jaws, and Jurassic Park. But the more fulsomely the movie embraces its big budget, DVD-era silliness, the longer it and the audience are riding the same enjoyably stupid wave.
  6. Sympathy for the Devil
    Cage may hate that people quote his over-the-top moments out of context, but since this entire movie is one, you can’t really take any of it the wrong way.
  7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
    Quippy, zippy, and punchy, this teen-focused take on everyone’s favorite pizza-loving vigilantes is a refreshing reappraisal of a property that could very well have felt stale in 2023.
  8. Talk to Me
    Though it leans on familiar genre tropes and stylistic conventions, a devastating script and charismatic cast (spearheaded by Sophie Wilde) make Talk To Me a terrifying and pervasively heartbreaking tale of grief.
  9. Haunted Mansion
    The movie at times feels like an eternal cycle of the nine-minute ride, which loses its luster after 123 of those minutes. It offers you this chilling challenge—find a way out! Better yet, refrain from being the mortal foolish enough to enter in the first place.
  10. They Cloned Tyrone
    At first glance, They Cloned Tyrone is a silly satire of early ’70s blaxploitation flicks like Super Fly or Willie Dynamite that adds what writer-director Juel Taylor and writer Tony Rettenmaier call a “... dash of Scooby Doo.” Fortunately, the filmmakers here have something more in mind.
  11. Oppenheimer
    For all this and more, Oppenheimer deserves the title of masterpiece. It’s Christopher Nolan’s best film so far, a step up to a new level for one of our finest filmmakers, and a movie that burns itself into your brain.
  12. Barbie
    The world-building in Barbie is exceptional.
  13. Theater Camp
    It’s constructed from the inside out, all of its characters and energy flowing from a genuine place.
  14. Insidious: The Red Door
    Insidious: The Red Door is not a broken movie by any means. It’s a comprehensible experience, though perhaps less so if viewed as a standalone feature instead of the presumably final chapter of a continuing narrative. But Wilson was tasked with telling a pretty dull story, both in terms of its visceral horrors and its thematic ambitions.
  15. Joy Ride
    Joy Ride is a real blast, offering its sentimentality as a garnish to a road trip that emphasizes the sex in sex positivity.
  16. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
    A must-watch for anyone looking for a thrilling summer blockbuster.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
    Whatever emotional heft the pic may aim to harness is lost amid glib jokes, overly complicated mythic lore, and ultimately, pat platitudes about embracing who you were always meant to be.
  18. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
    What’s frustrating about Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny is how clearly it wants to recapture the magic of its predecessors while fundamentally misunderstanding how to approach a sequel set so chronologically apart from the rest of the franchise.
  19. God Is a Bullet
    Cut God Is A Bullet down to a tight 90 minutes, and it might at least consistently deliver the cheap thrills and nihilistic kick it only occasionally achieves.
  20. No Hard Feelings
    Jennifer Lawrence proves, once again, that she can carry a film by the sheer force of her on-screen magnetism and performance agility.
  21. Asteroid City
    Because of the structure of the film—the story within the story—none of them feel urgent or especially resonant. There are moments of brilliance both from the performers and from the writing. But they never cohere together into a complete story.
  22. Extraction 2
    As in Extraction, the action sequences are the whole game here, and they do not disappoint.
  23. The Blackening
    The movie is highly entertaining, while being oddly validating and very funny. It cleverly weaves the horror tropes that it rebukes right into the narrative. And it’s done without slipping into parody like the Scary Movie series, where similar notions are skewered more broadly and, with The Blackening now on the table, way less successfully.
  24. Elemental
    Its world building is so vast and so intricate (the city has a Wetro and you can watch films like Tide And Prejudice!) that it overshadows the textured plot about the burdens placed on second-generation kids.
  25. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
    It’s an easier-to-follow variation on the template than most of its predecessors, but still one dependent on long-winded exposition dumps. And the character-based material here lacks Bumblebee’s sweetness, coming off as cloyingly manipulative instead.
  26. Flamin' Hot
    Garcia delivers a standout turn as Richard. It helps that he’s not yet a household name, so he isn’t carrying the baggage of any external frames of reference. His earnest and engrossing performance absolutely carries Flamin’ Hot.
  27. The Flash
    It’s sometimes buried under layers and layers of storytelling knots that the film never fully untangles, but the fun is there, and when the film is really working, that turns out to be enough.
  28. Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story
    It certainly captures a side of the man, and maybe that’s all anyone would ask of it. But it’s hard to shake the feeling there’s an even better movie waiting to be made from all this material.
  29. Shooting Stars
    Some parts of LeBron’s professional career are told in truncated form with a few figures left out or combined for cinematic purposes, but that’s it. And the film is better for focusing on relationships rather than on the easy highs of watching fast breaks and slam dunks.
  30. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
    That it falls short when it comes to matching the emotional impact of Into The Spider-Verse is further exemplified by a surprisingly abrupt cliffhanger conclusion that instead of sending the viewer out on a rousing high just makes one wonder why such an otherwise sharp franchise is going the route of weaker MCU entries in shortchanging its effectiveness as a stand-alone film to tease a future installment.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »