The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,456 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: 5,593 out of 10456
  2. Mixed: 3,748 out of 10456
  3. Negative: 1,115 out of 10456
10456 movie reviews
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  1. The Menu
    Mylod’s stew saves its most mouth-watering plate for the last. That’s why it’s fiendishly delightful.
  2. Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend
    This is anonymous filmmaking of the highest order—it could be about anyone. There’s no insight into Ferruccio Lamborghini or what made his pursuits special. It could also be directed by anyone—Moresco’s indistinct filmmaking is neither enthralling nor involving.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The People We Hate at the Wedding
    This slog of a film will have you checking your watch, wishing for an open bar, and begging for the sparkler sendoff.
  4. Poker Face
    When the entire theme is about misdirection, then yes, assessing how enjoyable the swerves and bluffs are, both narratively and conceptually, feels entirely appropriate. And they all too often feel like letdowns.
  5. Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
    Dense and laborious, Bardo sometimes feels like an endurance test. Its moments of visual brilliance carry it far. Just not far enough to become essential viewing
  6. A Christmas Story Christmas
    The result is something that, while never reaching the ineffable magic of Clark’s film, ends up in solidly entertaining, if slightly disjointed, holiday territory.
  7. Slumberland
    Playing like an amalgam of Monsters, Inc. and Inception, this family-friendly fantasy thankfully doesn’t put audiences to sleep, but neither does it draw us into its dreamy sensation.
  8. Falling for Christmas
    It’s silly, sitcom-y, and impossible to call “good,” but Falling For Christmas is the kind of bad that feels almost appealing.
  9. The Fabelmans
    The Fabelmans is a measured and incredibly intimate look at Spielberg’s upbringing as he developed his aptitude for storytelling through a medium that mesmerized him since the night he went to see The Greatest Show On Earth as a child. It also spotlights cinema as an extraordinary device that not only unveils powerful truths, but often shapes them as well.
  10. Spirited
    While not without some issues, the movie lands as a modern-day fable whose colorfully packaged and exuberantly pitched life lessons carry an undeniable timeliness.
  11. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
    Is this massively ambitious, unfairly burdened sequel as good as Black Panther? Definitely not—and it probably could never have been. But in a mythology where death is more often used as a narrative device than a true measure of loss, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever magnifies the truth that the title character’s world will endure, even if he doesn’t—and there are at least as many lessons to extract from his absence.
  12. My Father's Dragon
    The core of the film is in Tremblay’s and Matarazzo’s portrayal of a budding friendship, and the resulting adventures that Elmer and Boris have are certain to entertain plenty of families looking for a comfortable evening on Netflix. It will just be difficult for fans of Cartoon Saloon’s previous films not to notice that My Father’s Dragon has more modest goals than its forebears.
  13. The Estate
    The execution is where it’s lacking: the wit, the timing, the headlong comic drive, and the ability to make us laugh at actions and dialogue that, in any other context, would be rude or distasteful.
  14. Next Exit
    In the end, one’s assessment and enjoyment of Next Exit rests less in its treatment of the more conjectural elements of its story, and more in its sensitive and sympathetic rendering of decidedly Earthbound, day-to-day messiness. Maybe the exit isn’t what we should be looking for, in other words.
  15. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
    Boasts a high enough hit-to-miss ratio in its gags to succeed as a comic biopic but can’t help milking the gags that hit until their freshness evaporates.
  16. Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams
    Guadagnino’s documentary is very much like walking through an immersive and interactive museum designed to make one feel nostalgic for a bygone era of art and craft. It’s magical stuff.
  17. The Wonder
    Thanks to a typically mesmerizing leading turn from Florence Pugh, it’s a film that can hold up a mirror to believers and nonbelievers alike as the best stories of faith do.
  18. I'm Totally Fine
    It’s a movie that purports to root itself in grief, but instead wraps itself in such a cloak of wispy, noncommittal vagueness that virtually everything about it dissipates on contact.
  19. Causeway
    Other than the pair of outstanding lead performances, there really isn’t much cause to watch it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Enola Holmes 2
    The true joy of both Enola Holmes films is in the actors’ performances and the humanity they bring to the characters.
  21. Nocebo
    The “mystery” elements simply aren’t mysterious. Yet without them, the sparse moments of gore and icky bugs aren’t quite enough to pad things out.
  22. Prey for the Devil
    The most frustrating thing about Prey For The Devil is that there seems to be a good movie somewhere in this patchwork of themes and pastiches.
  23. Run Sweetheart Run
    Keeping audiences at a distance—watching and empathizing with Cherie, but never building suspense regarding her survival—Run Sweetheart Run loses its breath long before Cherie’s story arrives at its ludicrous conclusion.
  24. Armageddon Time
    It asks more questions than it answers, and doesn’t let anybody off the hook. It’s also a great movie for anyone who grew up in New York City area in 1980, with the right needle drops and art direction. This is James Gray’s eighth feature and, in the end, his simplest. It may also be his best.
  25. Call Jane
    Call Jane is a feminist work told with straight-arrow purpose. It assumes that the slightest melodrama would devalue the sacrifices these women made and the community they created. If that’s a miscalculation, the movie is still effective and enlightening—and a worthy companion to 2022’s The Janes, an excellent nonfiction documentary on this remarkable cooperative.
  26. All Quiet on the Western Front
    This is a film about the boys who don’t come home, and its story proves both deeply affecting—and surprisingly timeless.
  27. Wendell & Wild
    Selick and Peele operate a bit at cross purposes in Wendell & Wild. The genius visualist wants to haunt our dreams. The socially engaged provocateur wants to haunt our troubled collective realities. Whatever doesn’t quite mesh in their collaboration is easier to forgive when feasting upon such extraordinary sights.
  28. The Banshees of Inisherin
    Writer-director Martin McDonagh’s soulful masterpiece offers a a windswept elegy on a camaraderie that has reached its inexplicable expiration, as well as melancholic rumination on mortality.
  29. Ticket to Paradise
    It’s as if everyone made this movie about the joy of being on vacation—while also taking one.
  30. My Policeman
    Instead of a classic tragic romance, it ends up being a turgid, airless concoction. Styles’ fans might find something to admire since they’ll get to gaze at their idol. But the rest of us should avoid looking.
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