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. The Righteous
    It’s steeped in a grave sense of portentousness that burrows under your skin. The issue is the weighty script, bleak and heavy with apocalyptic consequence, which contains undeniably intriguing notions that are often not satisfactorily explored or don’t quite cohere.
  2. The Phantom of the Open
    Directed by Craig Roberts, this achingly British offering (its opening lines involve the request for a cup of tea—no milk, six sugars) is a pleasant movie of smaller stakes that, for better or worse, sidesteps inspiration in favor of more laidback reflection.
  3. Hustle
    While not a total slam dunk, Hustle plays admirably with a lot of passion, artistry, and intelligence.
  4. After Blue (Dirty Paradise)
    It’s a film that is functioning on a very specific artistic wavelength that requires one to buy into it completely in order to fully appreciate its delights. Whether that specific frequency is too obtuse for all but the most hardcore enthusiasts for ’70s sci-fi is up for debate, but the curious would best be served to experience this strange new world for themselves.
  5. Neptune Frost
    There’s little about it that is realistic, but it has points to make about the real world.
  6. Fire Island
    As much a documentary-like depiction of the titular queer haven as it is a real-deal romantic comedy, Fire Island’s real love letter is to the experience that is Fire Island.
  7. Benediction
    There’s nothing about this film that is uplifting, but Davies’ handling of the material is so exquisite that the overbearing melancholy becomes, in the end, a work of poetry.
  8. Watcher
    Without spoiling, this is one movie where it’d be extremely interesting to know what happens five minutes after the final scene. But while the subsequent events may be up for vigorous debate, the film’s message is crystal clear: Screw you if you ever doubted a woman afraid for her safety.
  9. A Chiara
    Though the path to its conclusions is at times more plodding than meditative, the finale is a subtle, emotional twist of the knife that makes the journey worth taking.
  10. Crimes of the Future
    Nothing about it makes a lick of sense, but there’s a surreal flow to it all that, in the moment, carries you from scene to scene.
  11. The Bob's Burgers Movie
    The Bob’s Burgers Movie can’t functionally change too much about the characters’ inside the animated snow globe that is its serialized namesake, so instead it picks them up, plays with them, and then puts them back like you would a Kuchi Kopi or Horselain.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Lux Æterna
    Cinephiles will grin at Noé’s references to Dreyer, Godard, and Ranier Werner Fassbinder, and everyone with functioning eyesight will stare agape at the closing lightshow, but the experience won’t lead to substantive post-movie conversations as Irreversible and Climax did.
  13. Downton Abbey: A New Era
    Downtonians will likely feel all too happy to visit this cast of characters again, and here Fellowes reminds us how we got so invested in their lives in the first place.
  14. Emergency
    It’s easy to imagine Williams taking this story and crafting either a boisterously funny, obstacle-filled mad dash to the hospital or an indignant, op-ed baiting thesis on post-George Floyd America. Instead, he turns down the heat and blends the two, creating a buddy comedy of errors shot through with an ever-darkening undercurrent of racial commentary.
  15. Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers
    Rather than major fits of laughter, chuckles of acknowledgement pepper the audience’s viewing experience, at least for folks over the age of 25.
  16. Hold Your Fire
    Forbes’ film is a fine tribute to him, and a fascinating glimpse at a different, but not distant, past.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Firestarter
    The best thing that can be said about this new iteration of Firestarter is that it at least gave us a new score by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel A. Davies. The rest feels like a waste of a talented cast and crew that somehow, against all odds, makes the 1984 film seem like a staggering achievement in the realm of King adaptations.
  18. Senior Year
    Painfully simplistic in its execution, which frequently undervalues its clever set-up, and featuring unlikeable, poorly drawn characters, the movie works overtime to make the audience actively dislike it.
  19. Monstrous
    Unfortunately, it’s hard to imagine a more stillborn finished product, an exercise in tedium which checks the barest boxes of “completed movie” and possibly delivers unknown benefits for some of those executive producers, but otherwise offers nothing that might engage an audience.
  20. The Innocents
    Childhood is hard, and childhood grudges run harder. The Innocents pulls no punches in turning that fact into horror.
  21. Pleasure
    “Shocking” is a word that gets thrown around too frequently. But it’s all too fitting for Swedish director Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure, a graphic, gripping, and unflinching drama charting the rocky rise of an ambitious newcomer to the adult film industry.
  22. Top Gun: Maverick
    Joe Kosinski (Tron: Legacy) matches his well-established architectural precision with suitably nostalgic but never pandering emotionality, while Cruise commands the screen in a performance that leverages his multimillion-dollar star wattage to brighten the entire film.
  23. On the Count of Three
    On The Count Of Three is not didactic, and thank goodness the filmmakers at least have the good sense to recognize that preachiness helps no one and solves nothing. But the film dumbs down a complex and taboo topic by placing blame squarely on bogeymen like bullies and abusers.
  24. Montana Story
    This is a deeply felt work anchored by two earthy performances that stay small-scaled no matter how melodramatic the slowly revealed secrets become.
  25. Homebound
    A film that leans on withheld information to drive a mystery but lacks anything for viewers to latch onto emotionally.
  26. Men
    To put it in a way the kids do: Men is vibes.
  27. Operation Mincemeat
    It’s also shot through with a humanizing sense of uncertainty, moral complication, and even wistfulness about the manner in which this work weighs upon its practitioners, for an altogether rewarding experience even for those viewers who traditionally eschew wartime dramas.
  28. Happening
    The real reason Happening manages to be so persuasive is because it tells such a vivid, intimate and relatable story, whether as a viewer it has happened to you or someone in your life, or your biggest fear is that it will.
  29. The Twin
    Generally speaking, the best kinds of story surprises illuminate the material; the worst simply laugh at you for falling for red herrings. Much of what happens in The Twin bounces back and forth between those ends of the spectrum.
  30. The Ravine
    The Ravine spends more than an hour telegraphing that this is a story about the perplexing feelings that arise from a close friend’s dark and sudden turn. Then it swiftly brushes aside those layers in favor of a mystically clean explanation, and the result is narratively dull, emotionally ungratifying, and intellectually insulting.
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