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. Hitch
    A slick new meta-romantic comedy selling a transparent yet strangely irresistible fantasy of upscale romance among the beautiful but guarded.
  2. Inside Deep Throat
    Inside Deep Throat starts small and keeps expanding outward until there's seemingly no facet of American life the phenomenon hasn't touched.
  3. My Mother's Smile
    As absurd as the situation gets--and the film occasionally launches into surreal asides that only heighten the absurdity--director and star both keep it grounded in the situation's emotions.
  4. Uncle Nino
    Written and directed by Robert Shallcross, and seemingly misdirected into theaters from its natural home on the ABC Family Channel, Uncle Nino is a sweet but not particularly distinguished effort.
  5. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
    The movie winds its way artfully from a straight animal study to something more profound. It's hard to shake the film's astonishing final thoughts and shots, as Bittner nervously contemplates parrot eggs while hawks circle overhead.
  6. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    It's as notable for what it isn't as for what it is, but in a field full of loud, obnoxious fare, its easygoing affability qualifies as a welcome change of pace.
  7. The Letter: An American Town and the 'Somali Invasion'
    Makes effective drama, but ultimately it's just an outrage machine, designed to get the viewer fired up by the sight of warring ideologues preaching to their own.
  8. Nobody Knows
    Loosely structured around four seasons, Nobody Knows unfolds in a long series of episodes that slowly progress from lightly comic to bracingly sad as the situation deteriorates.
  9. Boogeyman
    Mostly Boogeyman remains content to be a film about a boogeyman who hides in closets and under beds and gobbles people up. And for that, it deserves a certain amount of respect. On the other hand, the film could hardly be any sillier.
  10. The Wedding Date
    The lucky Mulroney gets to play the kind of sensitive hunk that women want and men want to be, but he's the only one who can be heard over the tired wheezing of the romantic-comedy machinery.
  11. Harry + Max
    One of the film's oddest missteps is in making the boy-band gig just another occupation, instead of using it as a central way to illuminate the brothers' unusual bond.
  12. The Nomi Song
    Without coming out and saying it, The Nomi Song creates the sense that its subject might simply have been a few hundred years ahead of his time.
  13. Rory O'Shea Was Here
    It wants to humanize the plight of the disabled, but it undermines its worthy aims by presenting its leads as martyrs and saints.
  14. Swimming Upstream
    The film begins as a delicate duet between Rush and Davis, but as Rush spirals out of control, his performance becomes a flashy, over-the-top solo akin to his hammy turns in "Shine" and "Quills."
  15. Sunset Story
    Has its share of look-at-these-cute-old-commies laughs… But Gabbert mostly avoids making her subjects into hobbling punch lines, or even turning them into one-dimensional heroes.
  16. Assisted Living
    Assisted Living gets a little better as it wears on, and at least it's refreshingly short.
  17. Daybreak
    It maintains a strong enough sense of squirmy humanity that its characters' epiphanies and emotional growth feel both hard-earned and richly deserved.
  18. Freak Weather
    Though the whole of Freak Weather is too forced and fitful, significant stretches of the movie hold together. McKenzie gives a magnetic performance.
  19. Travelers and Magicians
    Unsurprising tribute to the sweetness of rural dwellers.
  20. Alone in the Dark
    A fairly faithful adaptation of what a game is like, but without the pleasure of getting to play or the much-needed option of pressing the "off" button.
  21. Hide and Seek
    Like far too many junky post-"Sixth Sense" thrillers, Hide And Seek essentially exists for the sake of its third-act plot twist, but the climactic revelation merely pushes it from bad to worse.
  22. Fascination
    Nearly everything about Fascination feels overdone. At its delirious worst, it's as pungent a Parisian cheese shop, offering a cornucopia of laughable scenes.
  23. Lost Embrace
    At its best, Lost Embrace conveys, with real warmth, the hopelessly intertwined pasts and shared futures of a community of outsiders and immigrants. At worst, it's a sitcom without a laugh track.
  24. Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land
    The main problem with The Promised Land is that Jhally and Ratzkoff are eager to foster dissent, but not to invite it into their own movie. Their talking heads sound rehearsed and repetitive, and the righteous anger dissipates without a contrary opinion to provide a ceiling.
  25. Army of One
    By the end, even Goodman seems to have lost interest.
  26. Are We There Yet?
    All too effectively conveys the claustrophobic horror of being shackled in a small space with two whiny, hateful children.
  27. Beautiful Boxer
    Uekrongtham films the saga in gorgeous style.
  28. Head-On
    A romantic comedy with jagged edges, Fatih Akin's exhilarating Head-On paves the road to love through miles of prickly thatch.
  29. Monsieur N.
    De Caunes and screenwriter René Manzor do well when they dwell on history from a mundane human perspective, but Monsieur N. is too dry and too unsurprising for its two-hour running time.
  30. Watermarks
    Well-intentioned and exceedingly nice, Watermarks aspires to warm the soul, but succeeds only in numbing the mind.
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