The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,414 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: 5,571 out of 10414
  2. Mixed: 3,736 out of 10414
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10414
10414 movie reviews
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  1. License to Wed
    Krasinski knows how to play off Williams--his pained looks are all too appropriate in the face of Williams' desperate shtick--but it's disillusioning to see him here, because he seems too smart for this film.
  2. Ratatouille
    Bird and his co-writers leave room for quiet moments and gentle morals, but for the most part, they send visual gags and verbal punchlines tearing past at an enjoyably demanding speed, whipping up the film's energy at every turn.
  3. Sicko
    The problem with Sicko--one endemic to Moore documentaries in general--is that it never confronts any challenges to its position, which can make it seem like the crudest sort of agitprop.
  4. Evening
    Evening proves that there are such things as mistakes, by featuring two hours of bad choices and half-executed ideas.
  5. Live Free or Die Hard
    Willis does everything short of donning a cape and reversing time by orbiting the Earth at light speed, and the air of cheerful ridiculousness recalls Luc Besson-produced action films like "Transporter 2" or "District B13."
  6. Ghosts of Cité Soleil
    If nothing else, Leth shows how wrung-out and careless everyone gets amid constant bloodshed. "We don't need peace," one says. "We need school for our kids. Food. Sleep."
  7. In Between Days
    The director deserves kudos for setting her movie during such a gray, dreary Toronto winter. It couldn't have been easy to find a climate that so resembles adolescence.
  8. 1408
    In the end, 1408 amounts to little more than a radical shock-therapy session for a man still finding his way after the loss of his daughter.
  9. Evan Almighty
    It goes without saying that Evan Almighty, a kid-friendly follow-up to the Jim Carrey vehicle "Bruce Almighty," is more Ronald McDonald than Holy Bible, but it didn't have to be this epically trite.
  10. A Mighty Heart
    Jolie simply exercises Mariane's persistent will, and honors her in the process.
  11. Black Sheep
    The gold standard for the modern monster movie remains "Tremors," which combines genuine thrills with clever plot twists and distinctive characters. By contrast, Black Sheep has a bunch of one-note living jokes running around willy-nilly while being chased by killer sheep.
  12. Broken English
    Given the gift of Posey at the peak of her powers, Cassavetes squanders her star in low-key, go-nowhere conversations, shot without flair and drained of any improvisatory energy.
  13. Lady Chatterley
    This might be pleasant to watch, in a floaty '70s-movie kind of way, if not for the film's groaning 168-minute length and abrupt thudder of an ending.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    You Kill Me
    The main pleasure lies in watching a cast filled with fine character actors like Kingsley, Farina, Hall, and Bill Pullman work their way around the salty, noir-inflected dialogue. It's just unfortunate that those lines add up to such piffle.
  15. Manufactured Landscapes
    What's left off the table is a meaningful examination of environmental artists' responsibility to the environment they depict, and the question of whether all truly great art leaves behind a little toxic waste of its own.
  16. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    Purists will balk at a pointless--and boring--revamp of a major villain, but that's the least of the film's worries. Only a few isolated shots of the group striding together as a team make Surfer feel like a Fantastic Four movie.
  17. Nancy Drew
    Once the rote mystery elements take over, the film devolves into a second-rate whodunit for kids, but even then, Roberts' irrepressible cheeriness and curiosity in the face of danger proves too adorable to resist.
  18. Eagle vs Shark
    Might feel like a colorful little train-wreck drama, but given the recent popularity of such films, it comes across more like a nerdcore clip show, a sort of straight-faced "Epic Movie" for fans of discomfort comedy.
  19. Beyond Hatred
    It's so rare these days to see a documentary that aspires to be cinematic that Beyond Hatred may seem at first to be slightly better than it is.
  20. Macbeth
    It's Macbeth by way of “The Covenant,” all brooding pretty-boys with emo eyes and hipster hair, standing around in gauzily decorated rich-kid boudoirs in the dead of night, and at times, it's too overblown to take seriously.
  21. Lights in the Dusk
    Without Kaurismäki to introduce these lonely, forgotten souls to audiences, who's going to be his friend?
  22. Ocean's Thirteen
    The pleasure here, as before, comes from watching skilled professionals team up for a job well done.
  23. Hostel: Part II
    It's also, in its sick, sick way, a real crowd-pleaser.
  24. Surf's Up
    Mostly, it just stands out in a crowded field of tacky also-rans by being a reasonably acceptable, more or less non-obnoxious way to spend an hour and a half.
  25. La Vie en Rose
    For all its florid pretensions and epic length, the film's overwrought take on its subject's not-so-rosy life leaves behind no lasting insight.
  26. 12:08 East of Bucharest
    Porumboiu starts off making a mordant slice of life, but he gradually entwines the personal and the historical, then ends on a poignant note. The story and situation are slight, but in the best possible way.
  27. Knocked Up
    No one writes for ensembles better than Apatow, and his players are all skilled at giving his work a loose, improvisational feel.
  28. Gracie
    There's a reason the underdog sports formula is followed over and over: When it's executed as skillfully as it is here, the damned thing works every time.
  29. Mr. Brooks
    Sadly, only Hurt seems to recognize that the only way to make this material work is to play it with lunatic enthusiasm instead of grave seriousness.
  30. Crazy Love
    There's plenty of black comedy in their twisted affair, but a more substantial documentary wouldn't leave you smiling.
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