The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Gigli
    Writer-director Martin Brest lends the film a professional sheen, and his stars (who some rumors suggest may have become romantically involved) have charisma to spare, but the film has all the charge and momentum of a Paxil ad.
  2. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
    Offers plenty of eye candy, if little else. Ultimately, the film is clearly superior to its predecessor, but that's mostly because the first Tomb Raider left so much room for improvement.
  3. Mondays in the Sun
    Fortunately, no one seems to have clued Bardem in on the game plan, and the fierceness and complexity he brings to his role nearly saves Mondays In The Sun.
  4. Buffalo Soldiers
    Tightly plotted and well-acted, the film litters its brisk run time with darkly funny and haunting setpieces.
  5. Hotel
    Until he finds a style to better communicate ideas or emotions, Figgis' plans to reinvent cinema will have to go back to the drawing board.
  6. Seabiscuit
    Though the results are a matter of record, the uplift is nevertheless intoxicating, even enough to compensate for a film that routinely substitutes corny iconography for real imagination and vision.
  7. Lucía, Lucía
    Has its moments, but by the time it reaches its anticlimax, Roth won't be the only one irritated at getting jerked around for no discernible reason.
  8. Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
    Filled with video-game in-jokes, Spy Kids 3 comes roaring to life in action scenes based on different gaming genres, each of which takes full advantage of the 3-D effects.
  9. Camp
    Camp offers plenty of reasons to bristle at its cheery shamelessness, but it's too high-spirited and charming to resist.
  10. Masked and Anonymous
    Dylan's performance doesn't offer any clues. He's an icon and he delivers an icon's performance, literally: He could easily have been replaced by piece of wood with his face painted on it. That distance also means he remains more or less untouched by the embarrassment going on around him, even though it's largely his own creation.
  11. Cuban Rafters
    Balseros doesn't fully measure up to Michael Apted's work because of the dingy quality of its video-to-film transfer, as well as flaws inherent to a project that started as one type of documentary and ended up as another--namely, that the filmmakers didn't ask enough of the right questions in the first two installments to make the third fully connect.
  12. This Thing of Ours
    A shamelessly derivative mob movie.
  13. Johnny English
    Johnny English's international popularity may or may not translate here, but in a sequel-glutted summer, even a mildly amusing time-waster can't help but stand out.
  14. The Embalmer
    Both the actor and the character deserve a better movie, one that might have channeled the latter's desires into more than just a few rote genre thrills.
  15. How to Deal
    There's a surprising intelligence and gravity working beneath its bubbly surface, informed by an unusual degree of empathy for its adolescent audience and a rare willingness to confront the darker regions of youth experience.
  16. The Sea Is Watching
    Though the episodic, low-key action bears a resemblance to Kurosawa's Madadayo -- his little-seen, underrated final film -- neither the characters nor the plot lend it even a hint of dynamism.
  17. Dirty Pretty Things
    Frears has directed a surprisingly sturdy hybrid of thriller and social melodrama, even if the thrills turn ludicrous and the social critique grows a little pat.
  18. Bad Boys II
    Bad Boys II is the rare case in which escapism involves leaving the theater.
  19. September 11
    Until filmmakers get a little distance, maybe they'd be better off ignoring such projects.
  20. Garage Days
    Proyas is a veteran music-video director, and for its first half the film feels like one long video, albeit in a good way. He initially lets music and images tell his story rather than words, but in its second half, Garage Days succumbs to its overreaching, convoluted plot.
  21. A Housekeeper
    Berri's work never really rises above the gradual or the mild, and it eventually settles gently into one of those elliptical conclusions that mark mainstream French cinema at its most tasteful and staid, but the film's fully realized performances and sharply observed moments make it a pleasure, albeit a minor one.
  22. Km. 0 - Kilometer Zero
    It's hard to fathom what they intended for this forgettable group of lonelyhearts, other than to choreograph a whopping 14 happy endings at once--all of them forced, none of them earned.
  23. Northfork
    With their third film, the Polish brothers find their authorial voice, resulting in a lyrical work whose free-floating Lynchian weirdness coalesces into an unexpectedly touching movie.
  24. The Cuckoo
    Though it gets far too cute, The Cuckoo settles into the snappy rhythms of a promising sitcom pilot, at least until Rogozhkin decides to get serious.
  25. I Capture the Castle
    Garai's flowery, overwritten narration proves irritating in the movie's first half, then unfortunately sets the tone for a fatal second-half descent into soap operatics, dippy dialogue, and airless melodrama.
  26. The Holy Land
    One of its great strengths lies in its surprising universality.
  27. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
    League begins as a smart variation on the summer blockbuster, then loses its nerve in a second half sure to satisfy neither cheap-thrill-seekers nor fans of neglected literary oddities.
  28. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    Verbinski knows when to break out the stunning action sequences and when to let his characters dominate the film, and he handles both modes expertly.
  29. Tattoo
    Unlike so many "Seven" followers, it makes its missteps memorably, and offers a variety of stylistic rewards by way of compensation.
  30. Swimming Pool
    Swimming Pool returns Ozon to the psychological complexities of "Under The Sand" and his early mini-feature "See The Sea," and he again proves himself a master of building shocking moments from a series of seemingly insignificant gestures and throwaway lines.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »