The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,411 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 2.6 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 10411
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10411
  3. Negative: 1,106 out of 10411
10411 movie reviews
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  1. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
    On a production of this magnitude, few actors have the presence to assert themselves above the cacophony, but Crowe carries the film with the rare combination of charisma and brute masculinity that has made him a star.
  2. Anything But Love
    Predictable and corny, but to their credit, Cary and Rose strive to make the situation real.
  3. Hukkle
    More than a slight, pleasant oddity, Hukkle shows Pálfi's keen attunement to the sensual possibilities, both in nature and in cinema.
  4. A House on a Hill
    The energy of Workman's editing and the innate value of seeing the creative process play out makes House watchable.
  5. Red Betsy
    Though Burmester and Elliott make able sparring partners, Red Betsy literally succumbs to an on-the-nose staging of Charles Dickens' “A Christmas Carol,” with the old man cast as the model for Scrooge in a school play.
  6. Mango Yellow
    It's a lot to suffer through for a film that has nothing to say, but insists on saying it anyway. Repeatedly.
  7. My Architect
    Touring his father's magnificent structures, Nathaniel shows signs of coming around to his mother's point of view, and of realizing that Kahn's towering contributions to art and humanity perhaps exceed (if not altogether excuse) his shortcomings as a father, a husband, and a lover.
  8. Martin & Orloff
    The film too often gets bogged down by a rhythmless pace and an overabundance of the kind of wacky physical business better left to experts in a dumber brand of comedy.
  9. In My Skin
    Makes heavy demands of even jaded viewers, who are unlikely to stomach de Van's anatomical noodling from the same curious distance. But for the brave, the film's literal journey to find the "I" inside the body moves forward with a riveting single-mindedness.
  10. Gloomy Sunday
    Gloomy Sunday's success in transcending its own clichés and conventionality -- at least until the morose finale -- is due in part to the story's primal romantic pull, aided by attractive actors who either stare longingly into each other's eyes or cavort in states of undress.
  11. Elf
    The cast wrings laughs out of David Berenbaum's script as if it were a damp washcloth.
    • The A.V. Club
  12. Love Actually
    Provides enough happy endings to make the audience forget that romance and Christmas miracles don't always work out.
  13. Hidden in Plain Sight
    Nods at objectivity but announces its activist intentions throughout.
  14. The Matrix Revolutions
    Once the dust clears, it's hard to think of a film saga that's wound down with such a profound anticlimax. It's a whimper in bang's clothing.
  15. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
    Stunning you-are-there account of a grand swindle in the making. Were the coup not such an outrageous and chilling affront to democracy, their documentary would be a gut-busting comedy along the lines of Woody Allen's "Bananas."
  16. Suspended Animation
    A film as grisly as it is dumb.
  17. Die, Mommie, Die!
    Mean-spirited and stagy where "Psycho Beach Party" was cinematic and charming, Die, Mommie, Die recycles gags from Busch's screenwriting debut--from transparently phony rear projection to a character's crippling constipation--and the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty hard.
  18. Shattered Glass
    Shattered Glass simply sinks its teeth into a juicy story, never better than when Sarsgaard methodically paints the sniveling Christensen into a corner.
  19. The Human Stain
    Roth's novel was at heart a howl of rage against a corrupt, hypocritical, judgmental world, but Benton's austere adaptation--stunningly shot by the late Jean-Yves Escoffier--speaks largely in muted tones.
  20. Girlhood
    Garbus knows how to catch people at their most open, as they define their own types and simultaneously transcend them.
  21. Sister Helen
    An unforgettable tribute to a remarkable life, Sister Helen is inspirational in a way a film about a more conventionally pious religious figure could never be. Travis seems to be the antithesis of a cardboard saint.
  22. The Singing Detective
    What this Singing Detective really needed was to be reworked top to bottom, preferably by a writer fleeing some demons of his own.
  23. Radio
    Anyone who already knows better than to taunt the disabled, or former Oscar winners, should probably give it a pass.
  24. Brother Bear
    Unfortunately, Brother Bear doesn't offer much to marvel at beyond its animation.
  25. Elephant
    Has a gentle, hypnotic tone that's insistently sweet and elegiac, in spite of the horrors that overwhelm the frame. In its juxtaposition of the serene and the violent, the beautiful and the brutal, the film achieves a balance that's exquisitely judged, tiptoeing artfully through a cultural minefield.
  26. Scary Movie 3
    Sneaks in the occasional child-molestation or bestiality joke, but otherwise seems content to cannibalize the broad slapstick of Zucker's halcyon days with Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams.
  27. Beyond Borders
    Send a check to UNICEF and go see "Lost In Translation," "Mystic River," or "Kill Bill" instead.
  28. Last Party 2000
    The Last Party's scattershot approach doesn't linger on any single topic long enough to make a convincing case for any side.
  29. In the Cut
    Though the oppressive artiness makes the early scenes fairly ridiculous, the director's odd methods add rare tension to the climax, as it becomes evident that the finale won't be so predictable in Campion's hands.
  30. Sylvia
    In spite of Frieda Hughes' objections, a few snippets of Plath's poetry slip into Sylvia, but they don't do the movie any favors--they just add more weight to a story that already buckles at the knees.
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