The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,412 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: 5,570 out of 10412
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10412
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10412
10412 movie reviews
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  1. The Aristocrats
    A surprisingly fresh and funny feature-length look at an unrelentingly filthy vaudeville gag that's been passed down from comic to comic like an urban legend, often changing with every telling.
  2. Tony Takitani
    Movies can't exactly replicate the feeling of reading a book, but Jun Ichikawa's adaptation of Haruki Murakami's short story Tony Takitani comes remarkably close.
  3. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    Sijie mostly adapts his own work dryly and literally—the footage of the Chinese mountainside is breathtaking, but it's the only thing in the film with much depth.
  4. Melancholian 3 huonetta
    Viewers will either be transported by Honkasalo's somber artistry or begging for someone to stick a gasoline-filled syringe into their veins...As art, 3 Rooms is magnificent, but as a viewing experience, it's almost impossible.
  5. Yat luk che
    Fantasy sequences in which Yu and his friends are thrown into the world of a '70s kung-fu film or melodrama seem like a clever way to evoke the period and bring their story to another plane, but they just end up looking cheesy, spoiled by half-executed effects. "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" this ain't.
  6. The Devil's Rejects
    Zombie fills The Devil's Rejects with thrilling setpieces, pays homage to his inspirations without outright ripping them off (most of the time), brings back some cult-movie icons (hello, Mary Woronov and E.G. Daily), and works in some profanely clever dialogue.
  7. Hustle & Flow
    The vibrant rap drama Hustle & Flow wraps the authentic around the inauthentic, telling an underdog story that sticks to formula, yet resonates with an undeniably real energy and texture.
  8. The Island
    An overblown science-fiction epic in which ostensibly unthinking, unfeeling stem-cell-like entities not only think and feel, but look and act like glamorous movie stars.
  9. Bad News Bears
    Does nothing to justify its own existence other than be consistently funny from start to finish.
  10. 9 Songs
    Between the performances in the bedroom and on stage, 9 Songs gives off plenty of heat, but the whole project seems half-thought-out and hastily arranged, hampered by butt-ugly DV photography that turn skin tones grimy and make the Brixton scenes look as high-grain as a bowl of Mueslix.
  11. The Edukators
    The film's daring, honest ending helps redeem the uneven drama, but the road there may occasionally try the patience of even the most sympathetic armchair revolutionaries.
  12. Last Days
    In the end, it feels like a life aestheticized, not examined.
  13. November
    Feels more like a clever student short that got out of hand than the Kafka-esque nightmare that director Greg Harrison (Groove) likely intended.
  14. Making Grace
    Undemanding, upscale, and agreeable enough in a low-key kind of way. It's a film of subtle, ingratiating charm rather than explosive revelations.
  15. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
    There's little wrong with Charlie, but it needs the Burton of old to animate its candy-colored universe with mischief and awe. Instead, he remains trapped like Wonka in a hermetic house of wonders, and the movie suffocates along with him.
  16. Wedding Crashers
    In spite of its cast and seemingly can't-miss premise, Wedding Crashers is at its best a succession of mild chuckles.
  17. Happy Endings
    There aren't a lot of laughs in Happy Endings, and those that sneak in are pretty wry. There's no comedic snap either, and while that seems not to be the point, humor might have helped with the film's often-sluggish pacing.
  18. The Warrior
    Boasts an action-movie plot and an action-movie title, but precious little action. It's a lovely film about brutal men, but its integrity and visual splendor ultimately can't make up for its overall lack of visceral excitement.
  19. God's Sandbox
    The sensual sex scenes and raw violence of God's Sandbox make it pretty much an exploitation film, and as an exploitation film, it isn't bad.
  20. On the Outs
    It's all too easy to dismiss the characters' troubles as entirely of their own making. But the cast's fearless, evocative performances help a great deal.
  21. Return to the Land of Wonders
    Pachachi doesn't integrate her interviews into any kind of comprehensive portrait of recent Iraq history. They're bunched together randomly, like a collection of vignettes.
  22. Murderball
    Along the way, Murderball surpasses the typical who-will-win sports-film dynamic and becomes a fascinating and personal exploration of quadriplegia.
  23. Dark Water
    Dark Water devolves into something resembling genre schlock, albeit the kind featuring zesty supporting performances from the classy, Oscar-nominated likes of John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, and Pete Postlethwaite.
  24. Fantastic Four
    A garish mediocrity.
  25. The Beautiful Country
    A gorgeous film, framed with an eye that makes every country seem beautiful in one way or another. It's probably fitting that the human element seems fragile and flat by comparison, but the contrast leaves Beautiful Country fairly bland.
  26. Chronicles
    It's daring and it's different.
  27. Steve + Sky
    Has more flavor than leftovers have a right to.
  28. Doing Time, Doing Vipassana
    The film is as low-key and internal as the meditation it touts, and nearly as uplifting.
  29. A Sidewalk Astronomer
    Jacobs focuses almost exclusively on Dobson's theories and mission, which he illustrates by contrasting jaw-dropping images of the sun's surface with people ignoring Dobson's entreaties to "Come look at the sun."
  30. Rebound
    It'd be tempting to accuse Rebound of neutering Lawrence, but the sad fact is that Martin Lawrence doesn't have a whole lot of comic genius to betray.
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