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. The Master of Disguise
    A film about as funny as a seeping wound.
  2. Signs
    For a big-budget Hollywood feature, the film places an unusually high amount of stock in the audience's imagination; not since "The Others" or "The Blair Witch Project" have so many shocks been indirect or kept teasingly out of view.
  3. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
    Chabrol handles the upended family dynamic beautifully until the final third, when a wildly implausible sequence of events lessens the suspense just as he should be turning the screws.
  4. The Kid Stays in the Picture
    Evans has as distinctive an American voice as Mark Twain or Vin Scully, and the directors wisely let him do the talking.
  5. Swimming
    Siegel is almost too tasteful, nearly to the point where his coming-of-age story loses color and purpose. But he finds a mesmerizing presence in Ambrose, a terrific young actress who carries the film without a second of showiness.
  6. Lan Yu
    The connection between Hu and Liu seems more scripted than real, founded on musty allegorical clichés about innocent country folk and corrupt city slickers.
  7. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    A superb portrait of a band and an industry in flux.
  8. The Country Bears
    It has the courage to feature some refreshingly lousy bear costumes, but the film seems likely to send most kids tugging at sleeves for the cinematic equivalent of Space Mountain.
  9. Who Is Cletis Tout?
    In the absence of sincerity, Cletis Tout creates a vacuum that flushes out the entire story, leaving nothing but its own hollow cleverness.
  10. Austin Powers in Goldmember
    Myers returns as his menagerie of repulsive characters, but this time, his frantic mugging feels more like an insipid parlor trick than ever.
  11. Happy Times
    Happy Times doesn't buck the clichés so much as infuse them with feeling, playing off the pleasant, unforced rhythm of two characters who pine for simple companionship.
  12. K-19: The Widowmaker
    After spending so much time letting the characters' deeds do the talking, the film veers into overkill, which comes as a letdown. But the actions linger longer than the words.
  13. What to Do in Case of Fire
    Even if the time were somehow right for a madcap comedy about terrorists, What To Do In Case Of Fire would still look pretty lousy.
  14. Stuart Little 2
    Never becomes more than a just-acceptable kiddie time-filler.
  15. Tadpole
    Though sloppily structured and sometimes dangerously flimsy (not to mention truncated at a mere 78 minutes), Tadpole has an unforced charm that compensates for the absence of more traditional cinematic virtues.
  16. Eight Legged Freaks
    The few isolated funny moments, particularly a witty visual gag involving a pop-up tent with legs, provide only a short break from the screen-flooding onslaught of CGI creatures and screaming extras.
  17. All About Lily Chou-Chou
    Drifting through time and space without firmly situating the viewer, Iwai's elliptical style requires patience, but also a willingness to be carried along by its gorgeous, dreamy lyricism.
  18. My Wife Is an Actress
    Sadly, that thin premise snaps after a while, and when Wife takes a serious turn, it becomes apparent how little the director has to say.
  19. The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
    The pleasure to be derived from watching a loopy Australian risk life and limb is not to be dismissed or underrated, but Collision Course proves that that guilty pleasure, no matter how potent, just isn't a solid basis for a film.
  20. Tosca
    Using a single set for each act and cutting minimally, Jacquot seems to recognize his limited ability to make the opera cinematic.
  21. Reign of Fire
    Director Rob Bowman seems at a loss as to what to bring to the film, which, even with its good choice of leads, plods along from one dragon fight to the next, all of them staged to showcase Fire's impressive CGI dragons, but none choreographed with any real flair.
  22. Sex and Lucia
    Medem turns screenwriting into a feng shui exercise, shifting story elements like pieces of furniture around a room, as if the best films are the ones that end up facing southeast.
  23. Never Again
    Clayburgh and Tambor demonstrate genuine chemistry, but the film keeps diluting it with awful attempts at comedy and worse attempts at drama.
  24. Halloween: Resurrection
    It seems content to plod listlessly through the motions.
  25. Road to Perdition
    Mendes' second effort plays like a familiar song transposed to a minor key, a gangland fable soaked in portent and fatalism until its familiarity ceases to be an issue.
  26. Last Dance
    Displays, in all its discomfort and occasional fruitfulness, the trouble inherent in aesthetics by committee.
  27. Me Without You
    Aided by raw, committed performances from her two leads, Goldbacher makes them tough company for themselves and anyone else around them, on or off the screen.
  28. Read My Lips
    For as long as director and co-writer Jacques Audiard focuses on the central relationship, his stylish film stays on steady footing.
  29. Like Mike
    Weirdly earnest and earnestly weird.
  30. Men in Black II
    None of it sticks, but with the door left open for a third Men In Black movie, the one advantage of forgetting everything is not knowing exactly what's coming two summers from now.
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