The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,410 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 2.7 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: 5,569 out of 10410
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10410
  3. Negative: 1,106 out of 10410
10410 movie reviews
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  1. The Searchers
    By the time of The Searchers, Wayne had toughened to match Ford's darker vision. Redemption is still out there, but it has to be fought for, and sometimes winning it doesn't make anyone happier.
  2. Forbidden Planet
    Here was outer space as only the lavish production values of MGM could imagine it, a journey to an alien landscape painted in bold Eastmancolor and stretched across a CinemaScope frame.
  3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
    The film plays just as easily as a stand-in for the mob mentality that let Joseph McCarthy run amok in his attempt to sniff out every last American with communist sympathies—past, present, and future—until all had conformed to a rigid definition of the right thinking.
  4. Oklahoma!
    Both State Fair and Oklahoma! exemplify the composers' re-imagining of the musical form, which relied on more subtle vocal techniques, and songs that were catchy without always being hooky. The movies also catch the pair's unique version of nostalgia, which salutes provincial values while suggesting that they may not be enough to satisfy.
  5. To Catch a Thief
    Thief is giddy with eye candy, but the scenery is always secondary to the screenplay, which well serves the blinding star-power on display.
  6. Mister Roberts
    With no battles and a setting that primarily stays on the U.S.S. Reluctant, Mister Roberts still captivates, aided by some shimmering dialogue already polished to perfection by the Broadway version, along with the renegade hijinks of the crew.
  7. The Night of the Hunter
    Hunter is the stuff of nightmares, but it’s the stuff of dreams, too, and it beckons you to follow it downstream.
  8. Not as a Stranger
    Not As A Stranger taps into the raging fury and animal sexuality lurking underneath Mitchum’s quiet-storm demeanor; the film’s redemptive arc requires him to realize what he has in a good, wholesome woman like de Havilland, but Mitchum’s bedroom eyes and leering swagger suggest that he really belongs to a femme fatale like Grahame, who undoubtedly tumbled out of the womb clutching a cigarette in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other.
  9. Lady and the Tramp
    As in all things, Lady And The Tramp is far more interested in raising complicated questions than in providing easy answers.
  10. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
    Most vitally, the filmmakers never let the audience lose track of how cool it would be to cruise the bottom of the ocean in an elegantly appointed super-boat. The secret of good escapist fare, as Disney's crew knew, is giving the audience someplace remarkable to escape to.
  11. Rear Window
    In its perfect fusion of popular entertainment and high art, Rear Window ranks among Hitchcock's best.
  12. Magnificent Obsession
    It's one wacked-out melodrama, but it's wildly entertaining.
  13. Stalag 17
    Stalag 17's irreverence likely didn't revolutionize moviemaking for adults so much as it paved the way for the likes of M*A*S*H and Animal House. Then again, that alone is an achievement worth celebrating.
  14. House of Wax
    Characters are occasionally in physical danger (a young Charles Bronson, still billed as Charles Buchinsky, plays Jarrod’s mute muscle), but true horror derives from the juxtaposition of composed behavior and obscene acts. No one delivered that combination better than Vincent Price.
  15. Peter Pan
    Though Barrie's stories are about a rite of passage into adulthood, Disney's Peter Pan treats the issue superficially, retreating from the dark places of movies like Pinocchio in favor of amped-up tomfoolery.
  16. The Bad and the Beautiful
    This is studio-system product at its juiciest and most sophisticated, full of insights into the mess behind the art.
  17. Limelight
    In short, everything that sounds potentially magnificent about Limelight disappoints, while the aspect that sounds potentially dreary—Chaplin playing earnest life coach to a sickly ballerina—works like a charm. The man was full of surprises.
  18. The Quiet Man
    Shot partly on location in Ireland and designed in the lushest greens ever squeezed out of Technicolor, The Quiet Man is a movie that isn’t about a whole lot, but yet seems to contain so much—from Wayne’s easygoing charisma to the notoriously protracted climactic fight to the febrile, film-noir-like flashback to Sean’s boxing days.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Tales of Hoffmann
    This is art everyone can live for. And The Tales of Hoffmann makes it possible to live completely, gloriously within it.
  20. The Greatest Show on Earth
    There's not much juice to the movie's central romantic triangle between money-minded boss Charlton Heston and his two star attractions, dueling trapeze artists Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde. Still, Jimmy Stewart does some appealingly subtle work as a clown on the run from the law, and DeMille's narration has a charming, corny, true-life-adventure quality, as he hypes the circus as a life-and-death proposition.
  21. Singin' in the Rain
    Escapism raised to the level of art, Singin' In The Rain inventively satirizes the illusions of the filmmaking process while celebrating their life-affirming joy. Half parody, half homage, the movie became the apex of the splashy MGM musical, while showcasing the collaborative possibilities of the studio system.
  22. Rashomon
    Every element in the film, from the dense thicket of forest branches to master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa's deceptive framing and lighting design, is precisely calibrated to make the facts more difficult to discern.
  23. An American in Paris
    An American In Paris is muddled as an artistic statement, yet unsatisfying as conventional Hollywood product.
  24. The Lavender Hill Mob
    Though [Guinness's] performance may not immediately announce itself as his best, it's certainly one of his most representative, a thoroughly recognizable character of unseen depths and unexpected capabilities.
  25. La Ronde
    The characters are sketchy by design, but the set design is wondrously opulent, and Ophüls cleverly picks up on Schnitzler's central theme, about how sexual desire erases class distinctions.
  26. The Day the Earth Stood Still
    Working from a script by Edmund North (Patton), taken from a story by Harry Bates, Robert Wise directs the movie with a minimum of spectacle.
  27. A Streetcar Named Desire
    The movie Streetcar still seethes with lust, and retains so much of Williams’ florid dialogue and insinuation that it often feels like Kazan and his cast are getting away with something.
  28. Alice in Wonderland
    Little besides an endless stream of ditties—only a few of them memorable—carries the film from one scene to the next. For anyone not just coasting along with the visuals, it can start to feel like a movie to be gotten through more than enjoyed.
  29. Sunset Boulevard
    Although Billy Wilder's 1950 Hollywood noir Sunset Boulevard gets less attention as a travelogue, it's both an examination of the dark psychological landscape of out-of-fashion show-business types (as underlined by the title) and an actual trip through its physical environment.
  30. The Asphalt Jungle
    The Asphalt Jungle would be considered a heist picture if the mood didn't dictate otherwise. The standard "honor among thieves" theme applies, but dishonor gives the film its special noir flavor.
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