The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. There Is No Evil
    The film’s as compassionate as it is unsettling, and as provocative as it is poignant.
  2. The Killing of Two Lovers
    Ultimately, a movie like this succeeds or fails largely on the strength of its lead actors, and Machoian cast his well.
  3. Spiral: From the Book of Saw
    It’s not a waste of a concept, exactly, but it’s not the reinvention that the franchise needs, either. Rock’s involvement brings some new blood to Spiral, but after a promising start it ends up becoming a pretty okay Saw movie with some bigger names than usual.
  4. Profile
    No matter where he goes, even when he’s working in a subgenre he helped build, Bekmambetov loses himself in the pixels.
  5. The Perfect Candidate
    There’s a dramatic neatness here more indicative of a parable or fairy tale than an intimate family drama. Add in a swelling, sports-movie score and The Perfect Candidate would sit comfortably on the shelf along other feel-good underdog stories. (Think Rudy, but with municipal elections and lots of oud.) Yet Al-Mansour and her able cast supply a richer texture than such a description might suggest.
  6. Oxygen
    As one might expect, much of the responsibility for keeping Oxygen compelling rests on Laurent, who runs through all the stages of grief, from denial to acceptance, as she thrashes against her high-tech prison. She’s supported by ingenious filmmaking.
  7. Riders of Justice
    A scattered but likable jumble, the film has a thoughtful manner more than it has actual thoughts, much like the trio of quasi-intellectuals joining forces with Markus.
  8. Army of the Dead
    In a way, this B-movie on an A budget gets closer to the values of George Romero, the godfather of zombie cinema, than Snyder’s actual, hyper-adrenalized remake of Romero’s masterpiece.
  9. Mainstream
    The problem with Mainstream is it isn’t plugged deep enough into the culture it’s satirizing to really even know what its target is, let alone how to hit it.
  10. Monster
    There’s plenty of complexity to be mined from a scenario in which perception carries more weight than the truth, but director Anthony Mandler, a music video and commercial veteran making his feature debut, takes a broad-strokes approach to Steve’s plight.
  11. Wrath of Man
    Wrath is also fun, after a fashion, only with the grim undercurrent of a movie more interested in generating violence than truly motivating it. This is especially true in the second half, when Ritchie offers solutions to a mystery that never really had any viable suspects.
  12. Above Suspicion
    For all the star’s efforts, though, Above Suspicion will mostly just appeal to the crowd that found Hillbilly Elegy compelling. Everyone else will be left wishing they could see Khaleesi fly high and free again.
  13. Here Today
    A deadly combination of enfeebled comedy and maudlin melodrama.
  14. The Mitchells vs. The Machines
    Whether through experience or intuition, Rianda and Rowe clearly understand animated comedy from the inside out; the gags stretch and snap as readily as the family tensions.
  15. Cliff Walkers
    Every scene in Cliff Walkers will feel familiar: the close calls, the dead drops, the car chases, the poor man’s Hitchcockisms.
  16. Separation
    The film’s lone value may be setting up the perfect answer to that “improve a movie with one letter” challenge: Add an indefinite article to the front of its title, and you’re left with one of the great films of the new millennium—and, incidentally, a much more unnerving portrait of a marriage on the rocks.
  17. Things Heard & Seen
    Like many Netflix originals, Things Heard And Seen is the cinematic equivalent of a mass-market paperback, neither good enough to haunt the viewer nor bad enough to haunt the résumés of its cast and crew.
  18. The County
    Hákonarson alternates between crowd-pleasing defiance . . . and a downbeat assessment of how much change is realistically possible, never fully committing to either mode. The result feels less complex than just wishy-washy.
  19. Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse
    The movie’s attempts at ruthless pulp manipulation don’t land; cruelly offing a character whose entire personality is “pregnant” is a cheap bid for John Wick stakes.
  20. About Endlessness
    While Andersson has continued in his signature style for this coda, erecting pallid beige-and-grey backlot dioramas with a painterly eye for crowded composition, he repurposes the technique toward a newfound elegiac, gentle register.
  21. What Drives Us
    The film works better as a casual glimpse behind the curtain of big-name acts, exuding a voyeuristic appeal in the footage and anecdotes of beloved musicians opening up about their pasts. It’s breezy fun, if a little forgettable, spending 90 minutes with charismatic performers who have a knack for a good yarn.
  22. Limbo
    The narrowness of the frame forces us closer to what is caught within it, and the result is often bracing or achingly tender.
  23. Mortal Kombat
    This is supposed to be a world of fighters with bizarre outfits and combat abilities, but a lot of the time, the viewer will just find themselves staring at a screen that’s mostly rocks.
  24. Stowaway
    The film is strongest when simply exploring the terrible notion of triage among the healthy, with everyone involved fully aware of which individual will be deemed the most expendable.
  25. Together Together
    It’s an ode to the way that even impermanent relationships can be profoundly meaningful.
  26. Jakob's Wife
    Despite the conviction Crampton and Fessenden bring to their onscreen relationship, however, Jakob’s Wife is more successful as a gleeful bloodbath than it is as a character-driven horror-drama.
  27. In the Earth
    In The Earth feeds the indiscriminate appetites of gorehounds and bong-rippers alike. Everyone else may find it as ghastly boring as the violence is just plain ghastly.
  28. The Banishing
    While it’s admirable that this isn’t just another haunted house movie that relies solely on atmosphere and a handful of jump-scares, The Banishing is, in the end, a bit too much: Watching it is akin to sitting through a supercut of highlights from a season of American Horror Story (subtitle: British Countryside). There’s fun to be had, but too little of it can be un-ironically admired.
  29. Thunder Force
    Overall, the comedy in Thunder Force is apathetic and airless, no matter how hard McCarthy tries.
  30. The Columnist
    Overall, this is a sophisticated take on over-the-top material, arch but not quite Serial Mom-style campy.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »