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. Plan B
    Though this particular trip hits a few creative speed bumps along the way, it’s buoyed by great comedic specificity and two (hopefully) star-making performances.
  2. F9: The Fast Saga
    The movie’s deference to Diesel’s whims, sincerity, and ego all at once is part of its charm—though perhaps a smaller share of it here than in the past.
  3. Oslo
    What results is a very Western-specific view of this conflict and of the Oslo Accords that doesn’t embody the “both sides” approach the film ostensibly intends to provide.
  4. In the Heights
    In The Heights’ irrepressible energy—transmitted by a big cast of rising stars and veteran performers—is the perfect note on which to kick off this summer’s blockbuster season.
  5. Dream Horse
    The film avoids every potential area of deeper interest: the economic conditions in Jan’s tiny ex-coal-mining community; the mid-to-late 2000s period setting; any nitty-gritty details about what it takes to train or race a steeplechase horse.
  6. Spring Blossom
    In creating material so close to her lived experience, Lindon is able to avoid the common clichés of teenage stories.
  7. Seance
    When it comes to shock and delight, Seance doesn’t quite live up to Barrett’s work with other directors. It’s tough being a legacy.
  8. New Order
    If nothing else, New Order demonstrates that the line that separates festival-lauded arthouse films from crass exploitation fare can be very thin indeed.
  9. P!nk: All I Know So Far
    If only the documentary following the start of her European tour were half as adventurous as the artist herself. Especially in light of the rollicking aerial pyrotechnics and vocal gymnastics provided by its subject, P!nk: All I Know So Far comes across as downright staid by comparison.
  10. A Quiet Place Part II
    At just 97 minutes (only a hair longer than the first Quiet Place), his sequel feels pared down to a fault, with no room to further flesh out this world or its occupants. As a piece of storytelling, it’s skimpy and vaguely unsatisfying. As a series of fight, flight, or bite-your-tongue set pieces, it delivers.
  11. The Woman in the Window
    Watching the overqualified likes of Adams, Moore, Leigh, Henry, Oldman, et al. get tangled up in this gaslighting mystery is, admittedly, one of the pleasures of The Woman In The Window.
  12. Those Who Wish Me Dead
    Agreeably straightforward, Those Who Wish Me Dead is also thin as kindling: It threatens to disperse into embers as you watch it. And there are limits to its ruthless economy. For as unsentimental as Sheridan’s approach looks from a distance, everything with Jolie’s anguished Hannah feels hoary and even a touch maudlin.
  13. There Is No Evil
    The film’s as compassionate as it is unsettling, and as provocative as it is poignant.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. Profile
    No matter where he goes, even when he’s working in a subgenre he helped build, Bekmambetov loses himself in the pixels.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. Here Today
    A deadly combination of enfeebled comedy and maudlin melodrama.
  26. 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.
  27. Cliff Walkers
    Every scene in Cliff Walkers will feel familiar: the close calls, the dead drops, the car chases, the poor man’s Hitchcockisms.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. 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.
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