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. Festival in Cannes
    Even when better members of Jaglom's cast make connections, the atmosphere remains one of dull chaos.
  2. The Time Machine
    Machine makes its look-to-the-future-not-the-past message as clear as a Grammy acceptance speech, but as an exploration of regret and the elusive quality of time, it falls well short of "Memento," another film starring a sad-eyed Pearce.
  3. Esther Kahn
    Summer Phoenix has a screen presence that's simultaneously distancing and transfixing, an inscrutability that makes her seem either mysterious or a complete blank.
  4. Stolen Summer
    Beyond fulfilling the dreams of a seemingly nice fellow, the whole venture is a victory of hype over substance, loudly accomplishing nothing.
  5. Borstal Boy
    Shows an unusual degree of generosity toward all its characters, and its tenderness yields some affecting moments, even if they don't ring entirely true.
  6. We Were Soldiers
    Leaves all the real risks to the young warriors at Ia Drang and collects easy dividends on their bravery. In the end, it honors them by paying tribute to itself.
  7. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    Runs more smoothly and stylishly than the average teen comedy.
  8. How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog
    A pathetic wallow, first in misanthropy and later in sentimentality.
  9. The Cherry Orchard
    Cacoyannis errs on the side of genteel respectability, sacrificing emotion and verve at the altar of good taste.
  10. Big Bad Love
    The junk-shop surrealism ultimately gets the better of everyone's good intentions.
  11. Maryam
    Maryam is absorbing and insightful when Serry focuses on the subtleties of a family's generational and cultural conflict, but the film veers regularly into Movie Of The Week (or even Afterschool Special) "big moments" that play like forced attempts to tell a personal story while insecurely adhering to a commercial formula.
  12. Mean Machine
    While competently staged and punched up by Lock, Stock's changing camera speeds, it doesn't have the wit or intrigue to sustain its half-length.
  13. Monsoon Wedding
    A sight worth seeing.
  14. Dragonfly
    Awash in cheap shocks and corny sentiment, Dragonfly aspires to be an inspirational thriller about one man's spiritual journey, but it takes little time for him to reach his destination. All that's left for him and the audience to do is solve a riddle unfit for the back of a cereal box.
  15. Queen of the Damned
    A surreal piece of silliness.
  16. Return to Never Land
    The film crawls to a halt, its pace further marred by anemic, time-wasting pop songs. Even at 72 minutes, Never Land feels padded, while the animators make Never Land so unmagical that war-torn London seems preferable by comparison.
  17. Scratch
    It's a doozy of a story, too, about a group of musicians who use the technology of the present and the mindset of the future to make a delicious hash out of the best parts of the past.
  18. The Last Man
    By the time Arnott's whining monologues begin to number in the dozens, the notion of a swift apocalypse seems like a good idea.
  19. Wendigo
    A skillfully acted and psychologically well-crafted but ultimately disappointing thriller.
  20. Hart's War
    In its amalgam of classic Hollywood war movies and courtroom dramas, Hart's War takes the audience to a place that never existed in order to teach it a lesson it already knows.
  21. Crossroads
    Spears is filmed and costumed in such a harsh, unflattering manner that it looks like Christina Aguilera bribed the crew to make her rival look as hideous as possible. Spears' ubiquity has spawned an inevitable backlash, but the awful Crossroads ought to do more harm to her career than even the most powerful Britney-basher.
  22. Super Troopers
    With no greater ambition than reworking the Police Academy movies, Broken Lizard comes up with a winning formula: one part laughs to two parts goodwill.
  23. John Q
    Plays less like an exposé than a piece of exploitation, its clear divide between good and evil allowing no breathing room for real drama.
  24. Scotland, Pa.
    Shakespeare hasn't had it this rough since Lemmy from Motörhead performed the opening soliloquy in "Tromeo And Juliet."
  25. Rollerball
    Only those attracted to "Waterworld" or "Last Action Hero" level big-budget disasters need bother with this one.
  26. Big Fat Liar
    Big Fat Liar's screenplay, co-written by Robbins and fellow Head Of The Class alumnus Dan Schneider, is a model of comic inefficiency. Like a Rube Goldberg contraption, it goes to excruciating, wildly implausible lengths for the flimsiest of payoffs.
  27. Collateral Damage
    In a way, Collateral Damage is redeemed by its implausibility, because the closer it comes to reality, the more disturbing it gets. For once, viewers have reason to be grateful for having their intelligence insulted.
  28. Swiri
    An oddly effective mixture of technical prowess, well-executed cliché, and unexpected political poignancy.
  29. Birthday Girl
    Nicole Kidman -- continuing the string of remarkable performances that have followed "Eyes Wide Shut" -- finds plenty of fodder in the long-delayed Birthday Girl. A grimy thriller with a wicked streak of humor.
  30. Slackers
    Schwartzman steals Slackers without much effort, but it's not worth the theft.
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