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. Girl Play
    In the process of becoming characters, the writer-stars have diminished themselves.
  2. Control
    Nimród Antal's terrific feature debut Kontroll takes some time to get up to speed--but once it's fully underway, it develops a heady momentum and a devastating impact.
  3. Look at Me
    The film satisfies in much the same way Allen's movie-a-year comedies used to satisfy.
  4. Beauty Shop
    Beauty Shop's shtick gets old and tired pretty quickly, but a breezy tone and air of easygoing likeability carry it a long way.
  5. Odessa... Odessa!
    Too pretty to dismiss, but too dull to recommend.
  6. Oldboy
    The result is a powerfully visceral experience that justifies itself almost entirely on surface chops, with striking color composition and a complex sound design that elevates the story to an operatic scale.
  7. Guess Who
    An implausible, wildly protracted setup that drags on forever before reaching a payoff that barely registers.
  8. The Ballad of Jack and Rose
    Some good Bob Dylan songs are called in to underline the big moments, but end up eclipsing them instead. There's more drama and insight in a snippet of "One More Cup Of Coffee" than the entirety of Jack & Rose.
  9. D.E.B.S.
    An incorrigible tease. It baits its audience with the promise of fluffy, light-footed cotton-candy fare, but delivers a clumsy, talky, indifferently filmed lesbian romance.
  10. Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling
    Leitman gets some wonderful tall tales from her subjects, who open up like they've been waiting for years for someone to come along and ask, and she complements it with punishing footage of their exploits.
  11. Nina's Tragedies
    It's not often that good movies have a hole in the center, but Nina's Tragedies labors admirably to develop the strong feelings of longing and heartbreak that unite its damaged souls, however briefly.
  12. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
    Even as sequels to bad comedies go, Miss Congeniality 2 seems completely at a loss for fresh ideas.
  13. Mondovino
    For all its pervasive irritations and lack of discipline, succeeds in using below-the-belt tactics to get its message across, especially for those unschooled in the rarified world of oenophilia.
  14. Beyond the Sea
    The stories Pérez-Rey's subjects tell are shocking, even moving. But they're also narrow, limited, and staid, and so is the film that contains them.
  15. Ice Princess
    Ice Princess will probably connect most strongly with kids who have yet to develop an awareness of sports- and family-film clichés.
  16. The Ring Two
    It's passably gripping and occasionally lively.
  17. Melinda and Melinda
    A second-rate comedy and a third-rate drama, Melinda And Melinda gives viewers two unsatisfying movies in one. The only genuine tragedy here involves a once-brilliant comedy writer plunging further into a seemingly permanent artistic freefall.
  18. Fifty-Fifty
    Though it's equally concerned with sensitive young criminals in squalid communities, Schizo is no "City Of God," for better and worse.
  19. Steamboy
    Steamboy adds a touch of innocent wonder to the formula through Ray's eyes, resulting in Otomo's most human film to date, but humanity rarely seems to be among Otomo's priorities. His films seem far more concerned with the spectacle he manages like no one else in animation.
  20. The Rider Named Death
    In spite of good performances and colorful design, The Rider Named Death is too grave and remote to stir much emotion.
  21. Milk and Honey
    Once Milk And Honey stops lurching after huge, actorly moments of near-psychotic intensity, it loosens up and actually gets around to telling a reasonably compelling human story.
  22. Hostage
    By the time the film escalates into a suitably ridiculous Grand Guignol finale, all connection to reality has been severed.
  23. Robots
    The amiable but thin comedy Robots does have a little more going on, but not quite enough to make a difference, although it looks good enough to distract viewers from that fact for a while.
  24. The Upside of Anger
    The film's outsized ambitions are deceptive: Everything here is less than meets the eye.
  25. Millions
    A little broad comedy keeps things perky, but the kids' excellent, restrained acting and the low-key script by "The Claim" screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce hold the whole sprawling project together, from weepy revelations to silly fantasy-saint sequences.
  26. In My Country
    Any social good the film might do gets lost in a soupy morass of histrionics, clumsy storytelling, overripe dialogue, and rampant didacticism.
  27. The Boys & Girl from County Clare
    The film's modest charms are ingratiating and sweet, thanks to Colm Meaney's hilariously salty lead performance and a soundtrack that channels the warm spirit of traditional Ceili music.
  28. Don't Move
    There's nothing cute, cloying, or playful about the lovers in Sergio Castellitto's opaque romantic drama Don't Move, but in their way, they're as incomprehensible as the stars of any gimmicky comic love film.
  29. Dot the I
    The plot's profound implausibility wouldn't matter if the ideas and emotions behind it had any power.
  30. Nowhere Man
    Cheap and ugly in every sense--morally, cinematically, creatively--Nowhere Man accomplishes the seemingly impossible by dragging the seedy revenge genre to a horrific new nadir.
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