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. Black Christmas
    Seems to go out of its way to obliterate all the elements that made the original so special.
  2. The Good Shepherd
    De Niro made the right choice in making this a film of cold, gray Leiters rather than dynamic Bonds. But he never makes us feel the chill.
  3. Night at the Museum
    Stiller's continued efforts to court the broadest possible audience has taken the edge off his comedy. Whenever he shares screen time with Williams, it looks like the grim future he's mapping out for himself.
  4. We Are Marshall
    It's uplifting, but shallow.
  5. Venus
    O'Toole is frail and probably won't make many more movies. So Venus is pitched partly as a fond farewell to a beloved artist, and his whole beautiful generation.
  6. Curse of the Golden Flower
    Few filmmakers could produce so grand a spectacle, but Zhang used to be good for more than just eye candy.
  7. Letters from Iwo Jima
    It's hard to explain exactly why Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima is so much better than its companion World War II film "Flags Of Our Fathers," except to say that Flags tries too hard to emphasize the ironies of selling a war, while Letters deals with the ins and outs of the war itself.
  8. The Painted Veil
    While the film remains intelligent and transporting, a gorgeous travelogue into another time and place, it nonetheless feels like it's going through the motions, applying period gloss to a story that needs to be more tactile.
  9. Rocky Balboa
    Watching Rocky Balboa go through the usual paces does trigger a few helpless waves of nostalgia, especially once Bill Conti's famed score kicks in and Stallone sticks it to a few sides of beef. But audiences needn't be responsible for helping an over-the-hill actor through his midlife crisis.
  10. Chats perchés
    The Case Of The Grinning Cat is a sequel of sorts to Marker's epic three-hour 1977 documentary on the decline of the left, "A Grin Without A Cat"--though this new work is both shorter and more playful.
  11. Matthew Barney: No Restraint
    No Restraint misses a lot of opportunities, like the chance to contrast Barney's work with artists working on a lower budget, or to examine his positive and negative influence on modern art, or to break down an economic model based on selling off the pieces Barney discards along the way.
  12. Dreamgirls
    It's the ultimate pop-culture sacrilege: a movie about soul music that has no soul.
  13. The Good German
    With a few self-conscious exceptions, Soderbergh makes an earnest attempt to return to that place and time in both history and American filmmaking, and his risk-taking pays fascinating dividends.
  14. Breaking and Entering
    After being strapped down by a run of elegant, high-class literary adaptations--"The English Patient," "The Talented Mr. Ripley," and "Cold Mountain"--writer-director Anthony Minghella liberates himself in Breaking And Entering, his first wholly original screenplay since his piercing, minor-key debut feature "Truly, Madly, Deeply."
  15. Charlotte's Web
    This take on Charlotte's Web has its tacky side, but when dealing with a book this simply sweet and this revered--and given what was done with White's similarly gentle "Stuart Little" only a few years ago--"It could have been worse" practically counts as high praise.
  16. Eragon
    If Eragon proves anything, it's that not all dragons produce magic.
  17. The Pursuit of Happyness
    The Pursuit Of Happyness represents a belated and calculated attempt to scrape off the glossy movie-star veneer and connect with the everyday struggles of living hand-to-mouth in the big city, but it's too late. Watching his (Smith's) performance here is a little like imagining an American version of "Rosetta" starring Julia Roberts.
  18. Home of the Brave
    Whatever its model, the film is assembled from much poorer material, leftover parts of Lifetime movies and well-meaning indie films seen only on opening nights at some forgotten festival in Tampa.
  19. Apocalypto
    The whole film is too reliant on action-movie cuts and zooms, plus James Horner's insistent score, but it's beautifully rendered and convincingly exciting.
  20. Blood Diamond
    Much like Zwick's "Glory" and "The Last Samurai," Blood Diamond strives to be an "important" film while stopping well short of being genuinely provocative and artistically chancy.
  21. The Holiday
    Even with a wild card like Black desperately retooling his lines, there's nothing authentic or personal about The Holiday--it's as chilling as heart-warmers get.
  22. Unaccompanied Minors
    The film is too busy hurling its cast from one labored slapstick setpiece to another to loosen up and allow them to have fun or be spontaneous.
  23. Off the Black
    Nolte almost makes it work.
  24. Screamers
    The band is sincere, and many of its followers are just as sincere, but there's always a danger that too much "screaming" can turn a meaningful statement into an inarticulate din.
  25. Family Law
    While Family Law is well-shot, it's not spectacularly well-shot, or involving in any conventional cinematic way.
  26. Days of Glory
    Days Of Glory isn't subtle in its exploration of the racial politics of warfare, but its grim, cynical portrayal of young men considered worthy enough to die for a foreign country, yet unworthy of being treated as equals, proves bluntly powerful.
  27. The Lives of Others
    von Donnersmarck gives his debut feature, The Lives Of Others, no particular style, and the absence of visual risk-taking renders an exciting premise ponderous and stolid.
  28. The Nativity Story
    A filmed Sunday-school lesson that favors a dry, by-the-Book approach over even a suggestion of dramatic interpretation. It's more Christmas pageant than movie.
  29. Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj
    Penn, who probably didn't need this shoddy placeholder after the cult success of "Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle's," acquits himself with a gentle charisma that makes the crudity go down easy. Granted, it's still s---, but with a sweeter odor than usual.
  30. 3 Needles
    Give Fitzgerald credit for ambition and good intentions, but for all its truth-to-power saber-rattling, 3 Needles is distressingly dim.
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