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. A Bug's Life
    Smashing family entertainment: The whole thing is quick-witted, fast-paced, and loaded with clever sight gags and colorful, engaging supporting characters.
  2. Babe: Pig in the City
    Maybe it could have worked had the movie found a story worth telling, but it simply drifts from depressing incident to depressing incident, resembling the nightmare of an adorable but deeply emotionally scarred pig. Anyone with fond memories of Babe ought to avoid this mirthless, dispiriting sequel.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Waking Ned Devine
    This slight movie gets by on its grungy charm, if not its class.
  4. Celebrity
    Celebrity is a waste, a tedious and depressingly routine film by a filmmaker on a steep, possibly permanent artistic decline.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Central Station
    While the cinematography is gorgeous and the script extremely sharp, Central Station owes much of its strength to its two mismatched leads.
  6. The Rugrats Movie
    Rugrats: The Movie gets off to a good start, with some amusing, albeit tame, satire revolving around the status-conscious, materialistic lives of the toddlers' parents. But after the Rugrats get lost, the filmmakers focus almost exclusively on the irritating little brats, and the film devolves into an interminable episode of the show, albeit one in which things periodically slow down for forgettable songs.
  7. Meet Joe Black
    It's probably not the year's worst film, but it would be difficult to imagine three more interminable, snooze-inducing hours of film than you'll find watching this narcoleptic dinosaur.
  8. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
    There's gore aplenty here, but precious little suspense or terror.
  9. Velvet Goldmine
    There are moments when Velvet Goldmine threatens to collapse under the weight of writer/director Todd Haynes' (Poison, Safe) ambition. But, sometimes amazingly, it doesn't, becoming in the process one of the year's freshest, most exciting films.
  10. The Siege
    As a nail-biting thriller, The Siege is too confusing, and as a thought-provoking social drama, too confused.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Waterboy
    A mess of bad timing, bad jokes, and bad ideas so lame that even Sandler's idiot man-child mugging can't enliven the proceedings.
  12. Elizabeth
    But much of it, like its subject, is so cryptic, distractingly stylish, and impenetrably posed that it's rough going most of the way.
  13. Gods and Monsters
    While McKellen's sharp performance provides the main attraction, the film wouldn't work without both Fraser, who brings something extra to a character who could easily have been a mere lunk, and director Bill Condon's careful integration of larger themes.
  14. Belly
    Part incomprehensible GoodFellas rip-off and part feature-length music video, Belly is a millennial head film that subscribes to the sort of logic usually found only in acid trips, nightmares, and big-budget music videos.
  15. Living Out Loud
    LaGravenese lets real-life messiness keep it off a straight track, coming up with an unexpected and touching portrait of platonic friendship.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Vampires
    Profoundly disappointing--though Carpenter's score is, as usual, good fun.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American History X
    There may be much to like about his movie, but it's all been done before to more challenging degrees of moral ambiguity. That's a pretty fatal flaw.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Life Is Beautiful
    The concept is not so much nihilistic as it is realistic, and the fact that Benigni has made such fine distinctions so powerfully clear is amazing and moving.
  19. Pleasantville
    To concentrate on the minor faults of a fable as beautiful and unusual as Pleasantville would be missing the point.
  20. Apt Pupil
    McKellen is fine, of course, but the film as a whole offers about as much insight into evil as Ming The Merciless in a “Flash Gordon” serial.
  21. Orgazmo
    The film too closely resembles what it's attempting to spoof--minus the obvious payoffs, of course.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Last Days
    The stories these five people tell are disturbing, powerful, and brave, and the footage discovered by the filmmakers absolutely shocking.
  23. Happiness
    Thoroughly realized characters and relationships and Solondz's masterful ability to switch the tone from comic to tragic within the same scene help make Happiness a better film than it might have been otherwise. Much better, in fact.
  24. Beloved
    Beloved has an almost gut-wrenching quality to it. But the same can't be said for the movie overall--it's a noble, ambitious failure, but a failure nonetheless.
  25. Practical Magic
    Its flat whimsy, VH1-ready musical montage sequences, and less-than-magic magic realism will probably not be enough to hold the attention of all but the most undiscriminating fans of witches and Stockard Channing.
  26. Bride of Chucky
    Bride Of Chucky is pretty f.cking stupid, but it's also oddly effective in its sheer audaciousness and contempt for good taste. It probably won't win a lot of converts, but for Child's Play fans, horror geeks, and stoners, it should seem like manna from heaven.
  27. The Sentinel
    While La Sentinelle doesn't end with a conventionally satisfying payoff, Desplechin's thoughtful and meticulously detailed direction offers many other rewards.
  28. Holy Man
    A pleasant piece of commercial filmmaking, but as a satirical comedy, it's devoid of laughs and insight.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Slam
    The powerful, natural acting is right out of a documentary, and the open-ended conclusion is an equally challenging statement about the sad futility of sending young people to jail.
  30. Flowers of Shanghai
    Flowers Of Shanghai is concerned with the commodification of sex and its hurtful consequences, but Hou leaves the perversion and beatings off-screen. What remains is a succession of tableaux so vividly realized in purely cinematic terms that the emotions seem to waft from the screen like smoke.
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