The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,456 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: 5,593 out of 10456
  2. Mixed: 3,748 out of 10456
  3. Negative: 1,115 out of 10456
10456 movie reviews
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  1. Medieval
    Jákl’s film is precisely as generic as its title would suggest, and what little there is to recommend is buried under a mountain of tedium
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Love in the Villa
    Admittedly, this film is to romantic comedies what Olive Garden is to Italian cuisine. But like a bowl of pasta the size of your head and unlimited breadsticks, sometimes copious portions of something completely straightforward manages to deliver exactly the experience you want.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Burial
    After lots of inconsequential talking that should have been streamlined, the film’s payoff—various shootouts and chases and showdowns—proves boring. Consequently, Parker’s film never fully recovers from its meandering build-up.
  4. Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
    At its most powerful, Adamma Ebo’s film is an empathetic indictment of a culture that has evolved—and perhaps mutated— from intercommunity support toward the asphyxiating glorification of gaudy figureheads.
  5. Gigi & Nate
    For a solid portion of its running time, Gigi & Nate at least delivers what it promises: a young man and his monkey—to be more specific, a young, newly quadriplegic man and his service monkey.
  6. The Invitation
    Emmanuel makes for an empathetic audience stand-in and charming heroine; it’s easy to see how she’s pivoted from thankless Game Of Thrones and Fast And Furious roles to leading lady status. If The Invitation proves nothing else, it’s that she belongs at the top of the call sheet.
  7. Me Time
    It’s not just that more timely humor would do better; it’s that most comedy fans would probably rather be watching MacGruber again. Instead of sitting down for Me Time, do that, and hope that Hart and Wahlberg figure out a proper story next time that gives their chemistry somewhere to go.
  8. Three Thousand Years of Longing
    Three Thousand Years Of Longing unfortunately undercuts its own effectiveness as a singular piece, presenting less as a unified vision of an auteur director than a scattershot assemblage of motifs, philosophies, and themes in search of a spine to hold them together.
  9. Samaritan
    It’s both ironic and fitting that while Samaritan positions itself as fresh territory for the actor, it’s only entertaining once it belatedly refashions itself as a throwback to vintage Stallone fare.
  10. Breaking
    Breaking is a noble and deeply sensitive effort that aims to commemorate an honorable veteran who was failed by the dysfunctional and racist country that he bravely served. But despite a committed cast, and a well-staged and devastatingly truthful finale, Corbin fails to break this story out of its predictable mold.
  11. Funny Pages
    The first feature from Owen Kline, Funny Pages is not a dramatic masterpiece, but its setting, tone, look, feel, and casting would send real comic book geeks off doing cartwheels—if only we possessed the coordination. Instead, it will have to suffice to sit there, mouths open with the typical drool, thinking “I feel seen.”
  12. Get Away If You Can
    One hopes the entire process made for great couples therapy, because watching it certainly doesn’t.
  13. Beast
    For a singularly outlandish and specific premise, this is a film that lets its audience experience the horror right along with the characters on screen. This is cinema as spectacle distilled down to its rawest form, where basic storytelling leads directly to visceral and emotional catharsis.
  14. Delia's Gone
    James does a decent job with what he’s been given, but it’s never clear exactly what the movie hopes to do with his character. Is this just another crime and punishment retread? Or is it meant to serve as a metaphor for dealing with grief while disabled? It’s too broad to work as the latter, and too unhurried for the former.
  15. The Immaculate Room
    Despite its thrilling central performances and its sleek production design, The Immaculate Room has more ideas than it can hold together, and emerges, quite ironically it must be said, as quite a muddled mess.
  16. Three Minutes: A Lengthening
    The imagery runs backward and forward, gets freeze-framed, goes through different filters, and is blown up, reduced, diced, and re-assembled like playing cards. But director Bianca Stigter fully commits to this formalist dare—and it pays off tremendously.
  17. Spin Me Round
    Spin Me Round is a nice-try attempt at a shapeshifting, fish-out-of-water rom-com that was probably funny in the room—but in the end, it doesn’t quite come together as a movie.
  18. Orphan: First Kill
    Offering the winning combination of a subversive spin on a well-established villain, Orphan: First Kill is a gnarly, wild and absolutely demented ride.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Day Shift
    Suffice it to say that Day Shift is not exactly breaking new ground, but it’s a damn good time for a night at home on the couch: sometimes all you need is Jamie Foxx in a Hawaiian shirt and Snoop Dogg as a black cowboy, slaughtering hundreds of vampires with swords, shotguns, gatling guns, garlic grenades, and decapitating roundhouse kicks.
  20. Emily the Criminal
    Here Plaza sacrifices her signature irreverence for a bone-deep frustration that feels all too relatable, even ordinary, resulting in the most true-to-life performance of her career.
  21. Mack & Rita
    Visually, fusing the story with a warm, contemporary aesthetic makes it a pleasant enough affair. But ultimately, Mack & Rita is a passable work at best for Aselton (Black Rock and The Freebie serve as better showcases for her creative voice), and consequently, it’s unlikely to lead to her soon swapping chairs with the director of the next big-budget blockbuster.
  22. Fall
    Even on the couch, with the ability to hit pause, it reaches heights (ha!) of quintessential B-movie greatness, causing exactly the kind of discomfort that elicits verbal rebukes.
  23. Summering
    Summering may be a breezy little trip through the nostalgia of youth, but its stabs at deeper meaning are woefully immature.
  24. Secret Headquarters
    Between all the cool gadgets—a vintage VW van serving as The Guard’s G-Mobile being the best of them—a devoted cast and a well-meaning spirit, you desperately want Secret Headquarters to be a fun and swift adventure like the one Joost and Schulman clearly conceived on paper. But that imaginary film is unfortunately trapped somewhere inside this clumsy wreck, waiting for its superpowers to be restored.
  25. Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story
    Despite briefly losing its balance, Stay On Board sticks the landing, crafting a story of self-love and determined self-actualization that many pre-transition queer folks will find aspirational.
  26. Luck
    The movie’s slipshod reasoning and grating rhythms suggest strongly that Lasseter’s ignominious professional defenestration (he was driven from his perch in 2017-18 amidst allegations of sexual misconduct) has impacted his storytelling judgment, the expertise and skill level of people who wish to work with him, or both
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Prey
    Trachtenberg strips the Predator franchise back down to its core elements—the ruthlessness of this alien species and the ingenuity of humanity when confronted with nearly impossible odds. In concentrating on character and location, he backs off of the world-changing repercussions of the franchise’s immediate predecessors, creating an involving and tense character-driven experience whose strengths rely on narrative simplicity and a compelling lead in Midthunder.
  28. Easter Sunday
    Easter Sunday, for all its faults, is still nominally watchable, but it’s a wasteland of unfocused potential.
  29. They/Them
    The moments when it succeeds at commenting on continuing anti-LGBT travesties feel like a landmark of queer cinema, proudly planting a pride flag in the horror genre’s fertile fields. Unfortunately, They/Them’s biggest stumbles come from a crisis of identity—not in its characters or queer themes, but in the genre conventions it employs, misunderstanding the opportunities its storytelling affords.
  30. Bodies Bodies Bodies
    Reijn, whose last directing effort was Instinct, the Netherland’s 2019 Best International Feature Film Oscar submission, directs with a loose, improvisational energy. If she keeps too loose a grip on the reigns, occasionally letting scenes meander, there’s another surprise or biting line of dialogue to get things back on track. While there’s plenty of blood and nasty kills, Reijn is not here to provide a true horror film experience.
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