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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    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Nutty Professor
    The film is otherwise plastic; the supporting players stink and a few too many fart jokes exist where wit belonged.
  2. Striptease
    I don't know that Striptease could ever have been anything more than second-rate Elmore Leonard, but Moore's dour lead performance sabotages the film from the get-go.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lone Star
    A strange and thoughtful story, told in unhurried conversations and artful flashbacks. The things people keep from themselves are just as important to this mystery as the things they keep from each other, and that transforms Lone Star from a mere mystery into something much richer.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Hunchback of Notre Dame
    A remarkably faithful adaptation of Victor Hugo's epic 1831 novel about a lovable, golden-voiced hunchback and his trio of zany, wise-cracking gargoyle sidekicks, The Hunchback of Notre Dame should please both Disney fans and 19th century French romanticists alike.
  5. The Cable Guy
    The Cable Guy works best as a movie about how damn hard it is tell someone that you’re really not interested in getting to know them better.
  6. The Phantom
    A second-rate film about a third-rate superhero played by a C-list actor.
    • The A.V. Club
  7. Heavy
    Heavy is the kind of deliberately slow-paced character study that allows carefully realized performances to shine.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dead Man
    Jarmusch's trademark quiet irony, affinity for the outcast and oddball, and moonscape visuals suit the Western genre well.
  9. Butterfly Kiss
    The final effect is less haunting than was probably intended, but Butterfly Kiss is worth a look.
  10. Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
    I wish the film had made its points a little more artfully and implicitly, rather than simply sticking them in McDonald and McKinney’s mouths, but Brain Candy has an overarching satirical vision that makes it much more than just an assemblage of mostly funny running gags and stand-alone bits.
  11. James and the Giant Peach
    At least there’s plenty to look at among Selick’s beautifully detailed characters, who each have expressive bodies and their own ways of moving.
  12. Dekalog (1988)
    The Decalogue finds Kieslowski and co-scenarist Krzysztof Piesiewicz turning a delicate cycle of intimate, funny, heartbreaking, and compassionate works into a symphony of human fallibility.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Restoration
    Downey seems subdued in the film's central role, as if he's out of his league when it comes to dramatically stretching as an actor. Even when all decked out in foppish finery, looking absolutely ridiculous to the objective eye, he can't find a way to focus your attention on him. Instead, in looking at him, all you can do is wonder: How much did those duds cost?
  14. Pom Poko
    For all its goodhearted cheer, Pom Poko is a glum indictment of modern Japan's disjunction from the natural and spiritual world. But it strikes a positive final note by implying that those worlds still exist, just out of sight, waiting and flourishing.
  15. I Am Cuba
    I Am Cuba is still propaganda of the first order, a beautiful and sensually overwhelming tribute to the land and its people.
  16. Home for the Holidays
    The result is a movie that feels both fussed-over and meaninglessly cruel.
  17. Strange Days
    A film that's prescient and mind-bogglingly ill-conceived in roughly equal measures...Strange Days is the cinematic equivalent of trip-hop, a shadowy realm of atmosphere, mood and suggestion with a decidedly drugged-up, post-apocalyptic feel. But the many things Strange Days gets right are negated by the things it gets wrong.
  18. Empire Records
    The film exists for its shots of telegenic youngsters busting loose to a bankable soundtrack, and it's the cheesy dialogue, overstuffed plot, and predictable character arcs that come across as superfluous.
  19. River of Grass
    If one were to watch this jagged, restless movie with no knowledge of who made it, guessing that it sprung from the same mind that created "Old Joy" or "Meek’s Cutoff" would be impossible. Intuiting that this gifted novice filmmaker would go on to bigger and better things, however, would be child’s play.
  20. Village of the Damned
    Village Of The Damned is probably the worst movie John Carpenter ever directed: hokey, miscast, devoid of tension and atmosphere.
  21. 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up
    While the third film has a little more narrative coherence—involving corporate pollution on a Native American tribe’s land—it’s also lazy in a way that’s hard to look past.
  22. Tank Girl
    Sure Tank Girl has a lot of energy but then so does a Pixie Stix-addled eleven-year-old screaming in your ear about the intricacies of Pokemon for hours at a time during a cross-country road trip. That doesn't mean either ordeal should be experienced by any reasonable human except perhaps as a form of torture.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Heavyweights
    The lovable losers get one over the pretty people, making incremental improvements to their lives without fundamentally changing what makes them unique—a hallmark of Apatow films to come that’s a decent fit for a family movie.
  24. Death and the Maiden
    Weaver's overacting and Dorfman's bold-faced dialogue oversell the scenario. Only Kingsley's sly turn gives Death And The Maiden any real feeling of disquiet.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Professional
    Few action films can claim such complexities without conceding the bang-bang stuff that brings in the big money.
  26. Benny's Video (1992)
    Haneke's schoolmarm tendencies come to the surface in Benny's Video, which implicates the media for desensitizing people to violence.
  27. Love Affair
    Rather than put a new twist on an old tale, Love Affair adds a chapter to a real-life romance.
  28. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
    A slightly above-average slasher film that's only partially redeemed by small but endearingly loopy shreds of black humor.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    What Happened Was...
    A haunting, expressionistic portrait of two lonely souls who have reached out for companionship and instead found themselves on a proving ground, where they are mercilessly denuded of their protective lies and self-deception.
  30. It's Pat: The Movie
    It's simultaneously intriguing and repulsive, a would-be cult curio not even the most indulgent cult could love.
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