The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,409 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: 5,568 out of 10409
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10409
  3. Negative: 1,106 out of 10409
10409 movie reviews
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  1. Song Sung Blue
    Like a Diamond song, Song Sung Blue is a little corny and a touch overly familiar. But when it finds its wavelength, the good times never seemed so good.
  2. Anaconda
    Anaconda may be getting the benefit of the doubt here because of how few studio comedies make it to theaters. In another era, it might easily have gotten lost in a wave of post-modern updates that included The Brady Bunch and Starsky & Hutch. Its plot offers few surprises, but its simple foundations and character motivations give Rudd and Black so much room to play that it’s an amiable time.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Cover-Up
    At a time like this, Cover-Up is a vital reminder that demanding a better world is possible, straight from the people who have done the critical work required to confront America’s darkest forces.
  4. The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants
    The fourth theatrical feature film in the SpongeBob SquarePants oeuvre—The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants—doesn’t give audiences a memorable outing, much less a best day ever. It’s a big downgrade, and a huge disappointment for long-time fans of the subversive and unapologetically silly character.
  5. The Housemaid
    Paul Feig has always seemed a little uncomfortable with exploitation, but he makes some progress with this thriller.
  6. Avatar: Fire and Ash
    Fire And Ash is terrific entertainment that occasionally gives the impression of well-appointed vamping; it’s almost enough to wonder if all the meticulous writer’s-room blueprinting of two-to-four Avatar sequels might have done as much harm as good. Viewers who just long for more time in Pandora are in luck: Cameron may not see a way out himself.
  7. Resurrection
    Divided yet compounding as the totality of Resurrection unfolds, our sharpened senses catch onto the details of Bi’s work, our awareness heightened around how many ways we can engage with the film in front of us, and movies in general.
  8. Atropia
    Without a tangible connection to the material—most notably to Iraq and its people—Gates’ viewpoint feels unguided, doomed to be influenced by the same pervasive prejudices that Atropia ostensibly attempts to combat.
  9. Ella McCay
    It all adds up to a movie that isn’t screwy enough to be a screwball comedy nor deep enough to be a dramedy.
  10. Dust Bunny
    Toning down the blood-drenched viscera of Hannibal while channeling the morbid yet whimsical stylings of Pushing Daisies, Fuller’s inaugural film effort is completely in tune with his previous narrative interests, though this time filtered through the gaze of a precocious child.
  11. Silent Night, Deadly Night
    The film is even less than the sum of its genre trappings.
  12. 100 Nights of Hero
    If 100 Nights Of Hero is a critique of the misogynistic societies that cultivated these fairy tales, it is also an intentional embrace of the mythologies—however misguided they may seem—that have prompted women of all walks of life to test the limits of what they can get away with.
  13. The Chronology of Water
    Stewart applies an admirably experimental vision to her adaptation, but she can’t translate whatever power she may have found in Yuknavitch’s text to the screen.
  14. Five Nights at Freddy's 2
    Its entire third act is just expectation for a third movie that hopefully never comes. It is a bare minimum branding experiment, a dumb thing designed to be recognized with the hope that enjoyment will simply follow.
  15. La Grazia
    La Grazia salutes simple, humble decency, and writer-director Paolo Sorrentino follows the example of his protagonist, largely avoiding the usual array of visual flourishes that have marked his previous collaborations with Servillo. The result is a decidedly reflective film that’s among the director’s most affecting.
  16. Oh. What. Fun.
    Beyond its desperate gestures towards better movies and its countless regifted plot points, Oh. What. Fun. does end up looking a lot like a familiar Christmas fixture: a garbage bag full of torn wrapping paper.
  17. Marty Supreme
    The miracle of Chalamet’s performance is that as brazen, indecent, and dishonest as Marty is, he makes a temporarily convincing case for himself as a thwarted athlete, rather than a crook with an athletic fixation.
  18. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
    More quaintly focused than the exuberant previous film, though with no shortage of eccentric characters or longwinded side stories, Wake Up Dead Man agreeably seeks answers both existential and earthly.
  19. Hamnet
    In traditional terms, it could simply be described as a tearjerker. Like Buckley’s performance, though, it’s richer than that, a cross between an out-of-body experience and a full-body sob. Some will likely resist it on those grounds, understandably. But, again, framing our reactions with the feelings of others is rarely a good idea, and despite its moments of faltering, Hamnet hits like an emotional wrecking ball—devastating as it clears its path.
  20. Eternity
    By sidestepping the sharper, tougher questions about matters of the heart, the film still plays it too safe. Freyne may love all three characters, but what he doesn’t do is make his audience care deeply enough about which of them will get their happy ending—and which one won’t.
  21. Zootopia 2
    Rather than push animation forward, Zootopia 2 is content to be just another colorful kids’ movie about cute, funny animals in a big, frenetic world.
  22. The Great Escaper
    A compelling piece of straightforward true-crime that makes the most of its throwback form.
  23. Sisu: Road to Revenge
    There are moments when the sequel nearly overdoes it, when Helander’s thirst for blood threatens to overpower the film. Yet, in its simplicity, it finds a steady rhythm that quickens gradually, peaks, and resets. It isn’t profound or enlightening, but for 89 minutes, it rides the fury road confidently, flipping tanks and unleashing hell along the way.
  24. Wicked: For Good
    The intimate highlights are too few and far between in this distended adaptation.
  25. Rental Family
    Fraser walks through this aggressively sappy drama with the aura of simple goodness that has served him well. But such concentrated radiance starts to feel like a denial of the painful reality Rental Family ignores. The movie wants to give you a hug, but you may be tempted to slap it across the face.
  26. Left-Handed Girl
    There’s something impersonal about Left-Handed Girl, like a greeting card written by a close friend with their non-dominant hand. Select words and phrases are legible, but the overall wobbliness has the entire sentiment feeling a bit fuzzy.
  27. Come See Me in the Good Light
    Learning about Gibson’s ‘roid rage from their treatment, and Falley’s acceptance of it, is a more moving example of their care for one another than much of what the film finds in their shared profession.
  28. Sirât
    The idea of being confronted with temptation and trepidation in the desert is reminiscent of a classic Biblical encounter between Jesus and Satan. Laxe offers a much-too-literal takeaway during the film’s final moments, a sour comedown after some truly breathtaking shots of adrenaline. But as the cliché advises, it’s the journey Sirāt takes us on that truly merits appreciation.
  29. The Carpenter's Son
    It takes dedication to make a dull movie where Nicolas Cage plays Joseph and Jesus gets into a fistfight with Satan, but The Carpenter’s Son sets to its task with devotion, if little else.
  30. Playdate
    When people complain about the death of mainstream comedies, it’s bottomfeeding films like Playdate that are the genre’s executioner. No energy, no wit, just a tasteless and tacky sequence of events that barely manages to clear the bar for what’s still considered a movie.
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