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 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.
  2. The Rules of the Game
    Far from muting the satire, Renoir's hearty characterization complicates it and gives it life, which is rare among broadsides at the bourgeoisie.
  3. Gun Crazy
    Joseph H. Lewis’ kinetic, psychosexual B-movie laid many of the creative foundations of the American cinema of the 1970s, though it took a round trip to Europe for the movie to develop a reputation at home.
  4. Adam's Rib
    George Cukor employs an unusually large number of long takes, often allowing the inspired spats between his leads to play out in unbroken real time. But the much more likely explanation for the film’s enduring popularity has to be the way it took the gender politics underlying many of the duo’s collaborations and made them the full-fledged focus.
  5. They Live by Night
    It's a strikingly poetic first feature, more about the naïve romance between young hoodlum Granger and his reluctant nursemaid Cathy O'Donnell than it is about robbing banks and dodging cops.
  6. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
    Fort Apache and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon both dwell on the problems of leadership, balancing out a respect for classic American frontier virtues with a less generous assessment of how those virtues were applied.
  7. The Third Man
    A sharp, exciting thriller that beautifully captures a dispirited Europe nowhere near recovered from WWII, Carol Reed's The Third Man is one of those miraculous films that work on every level.
  8. White Heat
    Cagney's magnetism stems from his note-perfect combination of broad gestures and subtle shifts of posture, but the keen eyes of his directors are what make his gangster pictures classics.
  9. A Canterbury Tale
    A Canterbury Tale is a strange little movie, overlong and even shrill at times, but with a point to make that belies its slightness.
  10. 3 Godfathers
    The fairy-tale-like 3 Godfathers casts Wayne as one of a trio of outlaws charged with caring for a baby, and discovering responsibility and perhaps his soul (the two go hand-in-hand for Ford) in the process.
  11. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
    The incongruous pairing—the late-’40s equivalent of dropping the American Pie gang into a Saw movie—really shouldn’t have worked, but it resulted in a highly entertaining film that became a huge hit and breathed new life into the comedy team’s career, while providing a convenient tombstone for the monsters, who faded from screens.
  12. Melody Time
    Though not the masterpiece Disney's marketing would indicate, it is a charming, imaginative anthology of cartoon shorts set to music by the likes of such '40s favorites as Roy Rogers and The Andrews Sisters.
  13. The Naked City
    Perhaps the best thing about Naked City is that it does justice to that source material. At times, it rivals Weegee's best work in its harsh, unsentimental portrayal of New York as a city with a dark side the size of the Hudson River.
  14. Black Narcissus
    It remains a rapturous, near-indescribable work of cinematic art, spun from a simple story about nuns who travel to the Himalayas to start a school and a hospital, only to have mountain winds and native mysticism weaken their confidence and their faith.
  15. Out of the Past
    Quintessential noir.
  16. Fun & Fancy Free
    Fun And Fancy Free is a mixed bag with more than enough interesting material to make it worth seeing, even if it falls short of Disney's shameless self-praise.
  17. Dark Passage
    Dark Passage is usually ranked as the least of the four Bogart-Bacall collaborations, but it's a practically perfect little noir exercise, with Bogart as a prison escapee tracking his wife's killer.
  18. Brute Force
    Brilliantly photographed by William H. Daniels, Brute Force is both a humanistic personal drama and a bravura piece of genre filmmaking.
  19. Miracle on 34th Street
    In the battle of the classic Hollywood Christmas movies, It's A Wonderful Life feels charmingly ancient, fixed in an early-20th-century America that scarcely anyone today remembers first-hand. Miracle On 34th Street feels more modern, with slangy dialogue and naturalistic asides, and a general awareness of how Christmas has become about the intertwined stresses of shopping and selling.
  20. I Know Where I'm Going!
    The film isn't as deep or ambitious as some of the Powell-Pressburger films that followed, but it's still a delightful love story, blessed with attractive leads, lovely locations, and witty dialogue.
  21. Brief Encounter
    Encounter remains the definition of timeless, a beautifully shot, heartbreakingly acted, minutely detailed illustration of thoroughly recognizable human frailty.
  22. They Were Expendable
    The liberal Ford and the conservative Wayne had nothing in common politically, but artistically, they're perfectly in sync.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mildred Pierce
    A masterful weepie adapted from a James M. Cain novel.
  24. Christmas in Connecticut
    A thoroughly wacky 1945 screwball comedy that also doubles as a fascinatingly subversive commentary on conventional gender roles. It’s a bit of a hidden gem in the Christmas canon.
  25. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1945)
    Powell and Pressburger bring their combination of good humor, visual flair, and unflinching insight to the three telling episodes that make up the film's 160-minute run time.
  26. The Three Caballeros
    Where the prequel is weighed down with noble intentions, Caballeros boasts a breezy, exhilarating lightness and a refreshing undercurrent of perversity.
  27. Meet Me in St. Louis
    An ambitious nostalgia piece with a broad emotional palette.
  28. Lifeboat
    The roots of reality TV can be found here, but unlike most reality TV, Hitchcock shows a genuine (though characteristically distant) interest in people.
  29. Saludos Amigos
    Amigos sandwiches four pedestrian animated shorts—two featuring Donald Duck, one featuring a Gaucho Goofy, and the fourth starring a family of anthropomorphic planes—inside agonizingly dull travelogue footage of Disney writers, artists, and musicians on a research trip, exploring all that Latin and South America have to offer. The stale, joy-killing odor of the classroom hangs heavy over Saludos Amigos: it aspires to educate and entertain, but fails on both counts.
  30. Cat People
    The horror is fueled by sexual frustration, repressed passion, and the everyday anxieties of marriage and urban life, and it plays out in a noir-lit New York filled with everyday people. No fan of gothic castles, Lewton brought horror home with Cat People.
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