The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,410 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 2.7 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: 5,569 out of 10410
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10410
  3. Negative: 1,106 out of 10410
10410 movie reviews
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  1. Blonde
    What Ana de Armas does in Blonde is nothing short of transformative, but unfortunately, the film will likely do little to change the way people see Marilyn Monroe—once again, a victim of people doing what they think is best for her, perhaps with consent but certainly not enough consideration.
  2. Dig
    The goal of a movie like Dig ought to be simple: keep ratcheting up the tension to the point that when our main character(s) finally turn the tables, it’s hugely cathartic. Unfortunately, the “ratcheting” part is where Dig fails to hit paydirt.
  3. Do Revenge
    While there are major missteps, overall its bright, spirited attitude and attractive, propulsive gusto power a delightfully wicked journey.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Pearl
    Unlike X’s dusty fun, a melancholy atmosphere looms over the carnage, all underscored by West’s fascination with the tragic ends that come from building future hopes upon the shakiest present realities. If only more horror movies dared to dream as big with such emotionally charged results.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Confess, Fletch
    As a return of a big-screen favorite, it’s perhaps a bit too slipshod for its own good, lacking the fun chase scenes and romantic interludes that helped make the first film such a beloved favorite.
  6. See How They Run
    Ultimately, See How They Run is too reverent to its forebears and too toothless in its satire to elevate beyond an overly self-aware genre exercise—competent enough, but all too eager to shoot any attempted subtlety dead where it stands.
  7. The Woman King
    Prince-Bythewood, whose Beyond The Lights is one of the most overlooked movies of the last decade, has created a vision of historical Africa that has truly never been seen in a mainstream American movie. For that alone, she deserves a crown.
  8. God's Country
    A lyrical character study inside a quasi-Western thriller, God’s Country features a never-better Thandiwe Newton embodying that ethical struggle to haunting, unsettling effect.
  9. The Silent Twins
    In The Silent Twins, the Gibbons sisters are let down by a script that undercuts the unique circumstances of their lives with familiar and ultimately less compelling storytelling tropes.
  10. The Retaliators
    The film teases us with hat-tips and in-jokes and then pushes them aside to become an ungainly horror mashup that works in pieces, most notably during its climatic free-for-all, but not as a whole. In The Retaliators, the storylines fly in as many directions as the blood.
  11. Clerks III
    Ultimately, the absence of any meaningful sentiment about grief or personal growth (or anything else) makes the story’s maddening, rote familiarity feel especially lazy—which is why Clerks III lives up to the legacy of its uninspired characters in all of the wrong ways.
  12. Moonage Daydream
    If there’s a message at all in Moonage Daydream, it is secondary to the experiential nature of the movie. That’s hardly a knock. One goes to a concert to be thrilled, not necessarily to gather life lessons. Leave that sort of thing for the other, lesser documentaries.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    End of the Road
    Director Millicent Shelton, a veteran of dozens of music videos and television shows (including two episodes of Latifah’s series Star), wisely builds tension while exploring their family dynamic, and then stomps on the gas to bring it all home.
  14. About Fate
    Despite the off-putting blandness of its poster, soundtrack, and setup, About Fate proves surprisingly charming. Old pros (especially for their relatively young ages) Mann and Roberts manage to sell some significant character flaws.
  15. Pinocchio
    Far be it from us to actively reveal what scuttles Zemeckis’ film, but let’s just say that it seems like the people who made its biggest creative choices have more wood for brains than the character they brought to life.
  16. Barbarian
    Cregger delivers an absolutely stunning addition to the horror canon. Barbarian is a twisted little film, a descent into a hell that is so achingly human that it loops back around as a funhouse reflection.
  17. House of Darkness
    Ultimately, House Of Darkness exists in a strange and equally fatal no man’s land of being simultaneously under- and overwritten. As a feature film, it’s entirely insubstantial, with a premise better served in short form as part of an anthology.
  18. Don't Worry Darling
    Perhaps the chief deficit of Don’t Worry Darling isn’t even predictability, but a discernible lack of new ideas of its own.
  19. Medieval
    Jákl’s film is precisely as generic as its title would suggest, and what little there is to recommend is buried under a mountain of tedium
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Love in the Villa
    Admittedly, this film is to romantic comedies what Olive Garden is to Italian cuisine. But like a bowl of pasta the size of your head and unlimited breadsticks, sometimes copious portions of something completely straightforward manages to deliver exactly the experience you want.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Burial
    After lots of inconsequential talking that should have been streamlined, the film’s payoff—various shootouts and chases and showdowns—proves boring. Consequently, Parker’s film never fully recovers from its meandering build-up.
  22. Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
    At its most powerful, Adamma Ebo’s film is an empathetic indictment of a culture that has evolved—and perhaps mutated— from intercommunity support toward the asphyxiating glorification of gaudy figureheads.
  23. Gigi & Nate
    For a solid portion of its running time, Gigi & Nate at least delivers what it promises: a young man and his monkey—to be more specific, a young, newly quadriplegic man and his service monkey.
  24. The Invitation
    Emmanuel makes for an empathetic audience stand-in and charming heroine; it’s easy to see how she’s pivoted from thankless Game Of Thrones and Fast And Furious roles to leading lady status. If The Invitation proves nothing else, it’s that she belongs at the top of the call sheet.
  25. Me Time
    It’s not just that more timely humor would do better; it’s that most comedy fans would probably rather be watching MacGruber again. Instead of sitting down for Me Time, do that, and hope that Hart and Wahlberg figure out a proper story next time that gives their chemistry somewhere to go.
  26. Three Thousand Years of Longing
    Three Thousand Years Of Longing unfortunately undercuts its own effectiveness as a singular piece, presenting less as a unified vision of an auteur director than a scattershot assemblage of motifs, philosophies, and themes in search of a spine to hold them together.
  27. Samaritan
    It’s both ironic and fitting that while Samaritan positions itself as fresh territory for the actor, it’s only entertaining once it belatedly refashions itself as a throwback to vintage Stallone fare.
  28. Breaking
    Breaking is a noble and deeply sensitive effort that aims to commemorate an honorable veteran who was failed by the dysfunctional and racist country that he bravely served. But despite a committed cast, and a well-staged and devastatingly truthful finale, Corbin fails to break this story out of its predictable mold.
  29. Funny Pages
    The first feature from Owen Kline, Funny Pages is not a dramatic masterpiece, but its setting, tone, look, feel, and casting would send real comic book geeks off doing cartwheels—if only we possessed the coordination. Instead, it will have to suffice to sit there, mouths open with the typical drool, thinking “I feel seen.”
  30. Get Away If You Can
    One hopes the entire process made for great couples therapy, because watching it certainly doesn’t.
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