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. Songs from the Second Floor
    Though the laughs in Songs From The Second Floor tend to stick in the throat, they're also cathartic and oddly comforting, because the world outside the movie theater is bound to look cheerier than the one on the screen.
  2. The Powerpuff Girls
    It's a good movie infused with moments of greatness.
  3. Lovely & Amazing
    Emerges as something rare, an issue movie that's so honest and keenly observed that it doesn't feel like one. It earns its thesis statement through minute details and a unique grasp of a commonplace problem.
  4. The Cockettes
    Makes a terrific case for the group's historical importance, even though its performances seem more fun to discuss than watch.
  5. Notorious C.H.O.
    Despite her healthy fan base, Notorious C.H.O. looks like the dead-end to a limited repertoire.
  6. Hey Arnold! The Movie
    Nothing about Hey Arnold! The Movie cries out for the big-screen treatment, but it at least makes the transition from television to film with its charm intact.
  7. Harvard Man
    Channels Toback in his purest form, which will probably be a treat for auteurists and a headache for just about everyone else.
  8. Pumpkin
    The film doesn't seem to know how it feels, much less how others are supposed to feel about it.
  9. Mr. Deeds
    The film owes as much to Caddyshack as to Capra.
  10. Juwanna Mann
    Relies on the most time-tested basic moves of farce for laughs that just don't come.
  11. Dahmer
    Uses the serial killer's life as the starting point for a hypnotic examination of the farthest reaches of loneliness and alienation.
  12. Sunshine State
    Unlike in similar past efforts, Sayles never finds a way to bring it all together. Individual moments of considerable impact alternate with stretches that go nowhere.
  13. Lilo & Stitch
    With its sharp wit and its portrayal of how broken families sometimes fit back together, Lilo would make a fine summer double feature alongside "About A Boy," another film that stays funny while dancing around a tiny abyss.
  14. Minority Report
    Few directors are capable of marrying ideas and entertainment—one is often sacrificed for the other—but Spielberg peppers one gripping action setpiece after another with trenchant details about a near-future robbed of the most basic freedoms and privacy.
  15. Peau d'homme coeur de bête
    Posed somewhere between a fairy tale and harsh reality, the film pulls off a daring feat by turning Blancan into an almost abstract monster as a way of getting into the deeply unhealthy situation that created him.
  16. War Photographer
    The scenes of death, starvation, and destruction are affecting, but they don't say much about the actual subject of the film.
  17. The Emperor's New Clothes
    Holm carries Napoleon's regal bluster without edging into cartoonish folly, taking him seriously enough to make an absurd situation solemn, and keeping the film from winking too coyly at its audience.
  18. Freeze Me
    Comfortable with the inherent contradictions, Ishii throws all sexual politics to the wind in his highly stylized, fearlessly gratuitous fantasy, an unsettling mix of titillation, morality, victimization, and empowerment.
  19. Windtalkers
    Well matched both to the material and each other, Cage and Beach capture Windtalkers' true struggle, the fight to hold on to values like honor, friendship, and tenderness in an environment that demands otherwise. This is as much a Woo trademark as the carefully orchestrated gunplay.
  20. Scooby-Doo
    A work of Battlefield Earth-level miscalculation.
  21. The Bourne Identity
    May be a bloodless piece of thriller craftsmanship, but at a time when craft has become negligible, its efficiency and whipcrack timing are increasingly uncommon virtues.
  22. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
    Young costars carry the film, creating real characters from a generally flat script and Peter Care's largely undistinguished direction, both of which conspire to keep Altar Boys' danger at a distance.
  23. Cuba feliz
    The spontaneity of the music itself is unquestionable and captivating. Like Saudade Do Futuro, Cuba Feliz is somewhat unsatisfying, leaving too many questions unanswered in its stream-of-consciousness wanderings. But it also preserves ephemeral art that might otherwise be lost.
  24. Virgil Bliss
    First-time director Maggio has two enormous assets in his lead actors. It's just a shame that he betrays them with a silly ending that does much to diminish their efforts.
  25. Secret Society
    A feeble and self-congratulatory heart-warmer.
  26. Bad Company
    Company almost seems like the product of a post-Sept. 11 world. Like a cartoon version of a real threat, the villains are terrorists of a non-specific nationality with an ill-defined anti-American agenda and a tendency to spout complaints too clichéd to take seriously.
  27. Cherish
    In the end, it becomes the cinematic equivalent of one of the songs Tunney adores: enjoyable enough while it lasts, but so thin that its ingratiating charms seem as much a source of frustration as pleasure.
  28. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
    It reduces a large cast to an unwieldy collection of simpletons and caricatures.
  29. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
    Director Zacharias Kunuk captures that feeling well, but he never quite develops it into a theme epic enough to fill Atanarjuat's scope. His film is by turns mesmerizing and trying, with enough of the former to make the latter worthwhile.
  30. Kaaterskill Falls
    Testy characters don't really make for enjoyable viewing, and as game as the actors are, their arguing sounds forced, and they can't improvise their way around the contrivance of the story.
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