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. The Stepfather
    Appreciating what’s special about The Stepfather involves accepting—or at least tolerating—some clunky moments.
  2. River's Edge
    It’s sloppily written, heavy-handed, and tonally inconsistent—but it remains striking for its bleakness and a smattering of bizarre, unhinged performances from Crispin Glover, Daniel Roebuck, and Dennis Hopper.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Evil Dead II
    But Evil Dead 2's rampant inventiveness and manic energy have ensured that it will endure as a cult classic.
  4. Lethal Weapon
    For his first produced screenplay, Black took the best clichés from his favorite movies and honed them until they cut. Lethal Weapon’s heroes were edgier. And thanks in large part to the all-in commitment of director Richard Donner and producer Joel Silver, its chases and shoot-outs were more destructive. This one modestly budgeted genre exercise pumped hot blood back into a stiffening body.
  5. Over the Top
    With Over The Top, Stallone had clearly exploited the Rocky formula once too often and audiences rebelled against its condescending family melodrama and heavy-handed working-class trappings.
  6. King Kong Lives
    King Kong Lives is a terrible film, alternately boring and fascinatingly misguided. But it’s ragingly inessential more than anything else.
  7. The Wraith
    The Wraith’s plot is predictable and its genre nods skimpy (primarily limited to The Mystery Racer’s ability to resurrect himself after crashes), but Marvin directs with real energy and wit.
  8. The Decline of the American Empire
    With nothing at stake dramatically, much less cinematically, Arcand leans heavily on brow-raising repartee to carry the load, but his naked contempt throws a wet blanket over all the frank sexual anecdotes and observations.
  9. Sid and Nancy
    For a while, the tension powers the film. And when it doesn’t, the lead performances by Oldman and Webb pick up the slack.
  10. The Sacrifice
    Though bookended by extraordinarily powerful scenes that play off a potent religious metaphor, the middle section sinks into a morass of ill-defined relationships and uneven performances, which may be blamed in part on culture clash.
  11. The Color of Money
    I happen to think the film is woefully underrated, but it’s hard to imagine even its most ardent critics being able to find much fault with the way Scorsese and screenwriter Richard Price ease us into Fast Eddie’s world, expanding our view bit by tantalizing bit while making us wonder what’s happening just outside the frame.
  12. Deadly Friend
    Remains a mesmerizing time-capsule portrait of ’80s-era hopes and fears about computers.
  13. Down by Law
    Jarmusch's superb Down By Law can be described as many things–a minimalist fairytale, a modern twist on '30s prison dramas, an existential comedy–but it's memorable first and foremost as a richly textured look at old New Orleans and the enchanted bayou surrounding it.
  14. Shanghai Surprise
    Limply, tardily trying to cash in on the success of the Indiana Jones movies.
  15. Manhunter
    Mann takes all the instincts he learned as a Miami Vice producer and trims them of their excesses, and the result is an unsettling thriller whose detached style perfectly complements its psychological intensity.
  16. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
    Hooper's abrasive satire on yuppiedom and excess, centering on a brilliantly deranged Dennis Hopper as a Texas ranger looking to avenge the death of his invalid brother, stands out for its unbridled gore and comic mayhem. It just isn't terribly fun to watch.
  17. Night of the Creeps
    Night Of The Creeps has all the ingredients of a top-notch cult movie, yet Dekker too often ends up recycling clichés rather than subverting or spoofing them.
  18. She's Gotta Have It
    From the jump, She's Gotta Have It announced that it wasn't going to define black life in terms of crime and poverty, just as it wasn't going to bind independent filmmaking to moribund realism.
  19. The Transformers: The Movie
    As an '80s curio and perhaps the only film to feature the voices of both Welles and That Guy From The Micro Machines Ad Who Talks Real Fast, it possesses a kitschy, low-budget charm.
  20. Howard the Duck
    Howard The Duck has several jokes, really, they're all just desperately unfunny.
  21. Big Trouble in Little China
    Big Trouble is plenty conscious of its silliness, which it embraces fully. It sets up its own parameters of ridiculousness and then runs with them, winking a little, but sticking to its story.
  22. Under the Cherry Moon
    There are elementary school playgrounds with substantially higher levels of verbal wit and intellectual discourse than Under The Cherry Room.
  23. The Manhattan Project
    Though the writing gets unforgivably club-fisted and implausible toward the end, The Manhattan Project shows surprising nuance in dealing with Collet and Lithgow, who are both slow to figure out that there are limits to scientific inquiry.
  24. Mona Lisa
    His vision is most immediately reminiscent of from the hellish New York of Scorsese's Taxi Driver, but Hoskins provides the crucial difference, spiking the nihilism by emerging from the abyss with a glimmer of hope instead of a thousand-yard stare.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Never Too Young to Die
    While the film may not have led to a desired franchise or any sort of success for anyone involved, it has certainly left an indelible mark on many hearts of those who love cheesy action flicks.
  26. Big Trouble
    I went into Big Trouble with exceedingly low expectations and was pleasantly surprised...Much of what makes the film so unexpectedly endearing is that Falk's incorrigible drifter seems motivated less by greed than by a boyish spirit of adventure gone horribly awry.
  27. Demons
    It owes much too much to Argento pal George Romero's zombie movies, but without enough of the suspense or metaphorical weight. That said, it still has more imagination and style going for it than most horror films.
  28. Legend
    Fascinating in the way only a wrongheaded film by a great filmmaker can be, Legend lends beauty to such imagery, but the story keeps dragging it back to the mystical land of kitsch.
  29. My Beautiful Laundrette
    The movie has elements of a coming-of-age saga, a gay romance, a drug-smuggling thriller, and a redemption tale, but it works first and foremost as a portrait of a milieu that had previously been all but invisible onscreen, and that remains so to this day.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Money Pit
    It’s not high art or sophisticated humor, but there are just enough clever turns in its physical comedy and insight into relationships to give it a bit of cult status.
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