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. Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
    Maxed Out sacrifices depth for breadth and like a lot of low-budget documentaries, it's done no favors by its grimy, no-fi aesthetic. But the film's scattered ruminations on credit card mania add up to a powerful indictment of a culture of mindless consumption spinning out of control.
  2. The Namesake
    It's well-acted and filled with striking compositions, but director Mira Nair has trouble with a different kind of balance.
  3. The Exterminating Angels
    The problem with Exterminating Angels is that its explanatory side overwhelms its playfully perverse side.
  4. Zodiac
    Zodiac is the rare serial-killer movie in which the psychosis stems as much from the pursuers (and the filmmaker) as the pursued.
  5. Wild Hogs
    Abysmal.
  6. Black Snake Moan
    Like "Hustle & Flow," Moan succeeds on languid atmosphere and the conviction of its leads. But it'd be nice if the execution matched the startling audacity of its premise.
  7. Full of It
    Despite a novel premise and an appealing, energetic cast, Full Of It seldom finds magic in its supernatural whimsy.
  8. Into Great Silence
    As a place to enter and meditate, Into Great Silence is imminently worthy, but as a documentary, it doesn't do enough to probe the meaning of the quotation Gröning returns to repeatedly: "Oh Lord, you have seduced me, and I was seduced."
  9. The Astronaut Farmer
    Too odd for a studio movie, too cornpone for the independent scene, The Astronaut Farmer finds its creators stuck awkwardly between worlds, making what amounts to a deep curiosity.
  10. Reno 911!: Miami
    Reno 911's anti-heroes are doomed, deluded losers, but they engender a strange sympathy all the same.
  11. The Abandoned
    The Abandoned is a rare horror film that moves from the real world into a kind of psychic space, and slowly suffocates its characters inside their own heads.
  12. Amazing Grace
    Unlike its subject, Amazing Grace won't change the world, but its quasi-religious sense of conviction proves rousing. Apted's unexpected crowd-pleaser is inspirational, but also surprisingly entertaining.
  13. Gray Matters
    Far from a watershed moment for lesbian coming-out films, Gray Matters has a queer sensibility that's several miles south of "Will & Grace."
  14. Starter for 10
    A beautifully observed coming-of-age story.
  15. Glastonbury
    The film is clearly an act of boosterism, and it makes a pretty good case for the Glastonbury cause.
  16. Breach
    The main problem with Breach is that the story is told through O'Neill, who's far less compelling, in part because Phillippe doesn't have the chops to draw out his own set of contradictions. By committing himself to O'Neill's perspective, Ray misses the opportunity to uncover more information about Hanssen's relationship with his wife and church, his aberrant sexuality, and his mysterious connection to the Russians.
  17. Bridge to Terabithia
    This is Csupo's feature directorial debut, but as creator, producer, and writer of "Rugrats" and "The Wild Thornberrys," among several other series, he's had a long career in animation, and he handles the CGI setpieces masterfully.
  18. Ghost Rider
    Cage has some fun with the role, making Blaze a kind of Zen Elvis with a strange fixation on Carpenters songs, but the film's priorities lie with the digital effects and not the story, and even the effects aren't that hot.
  19. Close to Home
    Sayar and Schnendar are likeable performers, and if Bilu and Hager had pushed the "private school for girls" side of Close To Home a little harder, they could have had a sharp satire on their hands. Instead, it's all played straight and close to the surface.
  20. Daddy's Little Girls
    While its look at interclass romance among African-Americans and the struggles of a working-class single father is fresh and vital, the heavy-handed execution isn't.
  21. Music and Lyrics
    The film's a bit like a dessert that could have been dinner, particularly with so many winning elements (including songs by Fountains Of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger and a brief appearance from a wickedly sleazy Campbell Scott). But dessert isn't a bad thing either, particularly when it's prepared with this much heart.
  22. Bamako
    The film feels oddly slack and inert, livened only by testimony better suited to another forum.
  23. Hannibal Rising
    Director Peter Webber can't do much about what's missing from the story: a soul or a sense of purpose.
  24. Norbit
    There's enough material here to add another hour to Spike Lee's "reel of shame" in "Bamboozled," but hideously offensive black stereotypes are merely the tip of the iceberg.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience
    The cumulative effect of Operation Homecoming is to bring to light the soldiers' collective experiences and the enduring nightmares they suffer in our place.
  26. The Decomposition of the Soul
    Decomposition bears powerful, uncompromising witness to man's inhumanity to man, which is one of the most important things any documentary can do, though, it's also one of the most grueling.
  27. Because I Said So
    Any relationship between the world of Because I Said So and actual human behavior is purely coincidental.
  28. The Messengers
    The Messengers, dutifully cobbles together a pastiche of successful horror films past--"The Grudge," "The Sixth Sense," "The Birds," "The Amityville Horror," and "The Shining"--without asserting a single original idea of its own.
  29. The Situation
    It's a rare moment when the STORY makes the point, not the speeches.
  30. Fired!
    At one point, David Cross tells Gurwitch to enjoy being unemployed, because "When you're fired, you're interesting." But as Fired! proves, that ain't necessarily so.
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