The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,413 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: 5,571 out of 10413
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10413
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10413
10413 movie reviews
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  1. I Am a Sex Addict
    Zahedi isn't afraid to put himself out there, even when his thoughts and actions are profoundly unflattering; his self-effacement makes the film a reflection on narcissism and misogyny rather than an exercise in both.
  2. Basic Instinct 2
    Fortunately, as a showcase for Sharon Stone's physique, Basic Instinct 2 is a rousing success. In every other respect, it's a colossal failure.
  3. ATL
    Ultimately, the film could stand to be more inconsequential, because whenever anything happens to move the story along, it immediately loses its laid-back Southern charm.
  4. Ice Age: The Meltdown
    It's more like watching a typical animated-shorts collection - a few highlights, a lot of clinkers - than like watching an actual movie.
  5. Slither
    Though it occasionally dips too deep into a well of redneck humor, Slither cleverly exploits the nervous laughter that fills a theater whenever a horror movie gets too frightening to bear.
  6. Brick
    Manages to be visually arresting, packed with geeky allusions to everything from Raymond Chandler to "Blue Velvet."
  7. Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!
    Alternately hypnotic and headache-inducing.
  8. The Devil and Daniel Johnston
    By the time Feuerzeig gets to his final shot--an artful portrait of Johnston's parents, with their son looming over them like a curse--he's emerged with the most harrowing and aesthetically keen portrait of madness and artistic inspiration since "Crumb."
  9. Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School
    As absorbingly weird and dark and sad as the film becomes, it still labors against jumpy construction, an irritating variety of visual styles and film stocks, and a crowded story that no one gets much individual screen time, which means that redemption for everyone comes far too quickly and neatly.
  10. Iron Island
    Iron Island is at its most compelling early, as Rasoulof explores his human-scaled ant farm, detailing how people make lives for themselves in cramped quarters, using cardboard partitions and jerry-rigged appliances.
  11. Drawing Restraint 9
    It's hard to shake the sense that there's less here than meets the eye, but what meets the eye burns with a rare intensity.
  12. Inside Man
    With juicy supporting roles for Chiwetel Ejiofor and Willem Dafoe as Washington's fellow officers, the film works best when the characters are just sitting back and shooting the breeze, which is what they're doing much of the time. Here, puzzling out a robbery is more fun than stopping it.
  13. Stay Alive
    A laughable would-be fright-fest that's as strikingly inept as a Boll movie, but nowhere near as much guilty fun.
  14. The Beauty Academy of Kabul
    Mermin presents all this without editorial comment, and her film would be worth watching if only for its look at a profound culture-clash. But it goes one better, and delves into one of those clashing cultures, capturing it in a moment of change that goes far beyond one beauty academy's superficial concerns.
  15. Lonesome Jim
    It finds some fine comedic moments when it stops focusing on Affleck's never-ending angst and starts exploring small-town oddness.
  16. L'Enfant (The Child)
    L'Enfant is intended as a pointed critique of pop culture's celebration of arrested adolescence. The title could refer to Renier's baby, Renier himself, or even the gang of schoolboy robbers that he's gathered around himself.
  17. Stoned
    Apart from Considine, the actors all deliver superficial performances beneath several layers of slathered-on Summer Of Love drag, and Woolley's use of multiple film stocks and flash-cut editing jumbles together a bunch of '60s filmmaking clichés without putting them to any particular use.
  18. Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector
    Laughing at this turkey might not necessarily make you a redneck, but it sure does make you easily amused.
  19. American Gun
    The Sutherland segments are the most bothersome, because they never really reach a resolution, and because they're betrayed by Avelino's uni-faceted approach.
    • The A.V. Club
  20. V for Vendetta
    Mostly, it's content to remain a compelling, visually striking political mystery with some big ideas woven into it--subversive notions about integrity, liberty, and political change.
  21. Find Me Guilty
    A new courtroom comedy that finds Diesel chewing scenery in a role originally intended, and seemingly custom-made, for Joe Pesci.
  22. She's the Man
    Bynes appears in practically every scene, and the film seems to have been designed as a showcase for her comedic skills, which she apparently left behind in the trailer.
  23. Thank You for Smoking
    Much like his father Ivan (Ghostbusters), first-time director Jason Reitman has a broad, anything-goes comedic sensibility that allows silly gags and incidental humor to sneak in alongside the satirical barbs.
  24. Take My Eyes
    Take My Eyes might look and sound like an earnest message movie, but its bone-deep understanding of the tricky psychology of abuse feels effortlessly authentic.
  25. Don't Come Knocking
    It's a beautiful mess, but it's a mess all the same.
  26. The Devil's Miner
    So polished that it might pass for a scripted narrative feature, but that's not a bad thing. They found a remarkable spokesman in Bolivian teenager Basilio Vargas, and while his cogent, organized descriptions of his life, beliefs, history, and ambitions sometimes seem too calculated, at least they're calculated to communicate efficiently and appealingly.
  27. Iluzija
    Ristovski wants the plight of a bullied moppet to serve as a sweeping metaphor for Macedonian struggle, but his miserablist excesses have the effect of converting realism into a graphic cartoon.
  28. Failure to Launch
    The only bright spot--beyond McConaughey's boyish Southern charm and a pleasant soundtrack--is Zooey Deschanel as Parker's acid-tongued roommate, whose quirks include alcoholism and nihilism. Someone really should tell Deschanel that she's already too big and too good for thankless Eve Arden roles.
  29. The Hills Have Eyes
    Thanks to assured direction and a fine cast, Hills isn't terrible, only terribly unnecessary.
  30. The Shaggy Dog
    Okay, so when does the fun start?
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