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. Monster Hunter
    There’s a couple badass heroes with humongous swords, a few big scaly monstrosities, and frequently not much else. The minimalism is consistent with Anderson’s career-long devotion to delivering caloric content with an unlikely combo of classical unities and pounding, insta-dated electronic beats. The movie’s called Monster Hunter—what more could it reasonably need?
  2. Promising Young Woman
    Promising Young Woman fancies itself edgy, and relishes complicating the catharsis of something like the scene where Cassandra smashes some douchebag’s windshield with a tire iron after he yells at her on the road. But while the craft of the film is top-notch, and the writing razor-sharp, its nihilistic point of view isn’t as unprecedented as Fennell seems to think it is.
  3. News of the World
    It’s a true star vehicle, practically a tribute to his enduring appeal. Yet for as comforting as Hanks is in the role, and for as much as he sells the poignancy of the film’s bittersweet final stretch, the film feels almost too built around his signature nobility to ever gain much in the way of actual drama.
  4. Songbird
    It becomes clear early on that, despite its cheap thriller trappings, the film is headed only in the blandest direction, basically a love story of the kind traditionally told in commercials for tech companies and phones.
  5. Wild Mountain Thyme
    Take away the gorgeous setting, however, and you’re left with a romantic comedy that’s never romantic and only occasionally funny.
  6. The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart
    The doc’s examination of the band’s creative process contains some of its most riveting moments.
  7. Small Axe: Alex Wheatle
    A short coming-of-age film that works well within the Small Axe saga, Alex Wheatle has a a richness comparable to any long, drawn-out biopic that’s come from Hollywood of late, thanks to the the nuances McQueen layers into the story.
  8. Farewell Amor
    The film’s final moments suggest a benign American domesticity that its preceding scenes purposefully interrogate. But before that jarring ending, Farewell Amor is clever and unpredictable, using familiar tropes about assimilation to arrange demonstrations of honesty, regret, and love for its characters.
  9. The Midnight Sky
    Gradually, Midnight Sky becomes a nailbiter—not over the fate of the Earth or the astronauts so much as whether its two storylines will coalesce into something more meaningful. Somewhat surprisingly, they do (though others’ mileage may vary even more than usual).
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    40 Years a Prisoner
    Director Tommy Oliver’s gritty documentary 40 Years A Prisoner not only recounts the violent events that led up to the raid, mixing eyewitness testimony with gripping news footage, but in heartwarming fashion, also presents the tireless pursuit by a son to free his parents.
  11. Let Them All Talk
    Steven Soderbergh’s latest film boasts the relaxed, improvisational vibe of a temporary diversion—the sort of thing one might cook up to help pass the time during an extended voyage.
  12. Minari
    Minari is that rare slice-of-life drama that contains multitudes without needing to look beyond the borders of its highly specific story.
  13. Baby God
    Stories like these are why 23andMe has you sign a waiver when you send in that tube of saliva, and after watching it, you’ll never think about those tests—or a trip to the gynecologist’s office—the same way again.
  14. To the Ends of the Earth
    Beginning as an offbeat, fish-out-of-water travelogue, To The Ends Of The Earth gradually incorporates elements of an adventure movie, self-reflexive film shoot, and even musical melodrama. By the end, it’s no less than one of the most moving films Kurosawa has ever made.
  15. I'm Your Woman
    Hart’s isn’t the first movie to reframe the tough-guy crime movie from a woman’s perspective; in fact, the concept has become something of a theme over the past couple of years, producing both great films and ones that are, well, not so great. I’m Your Woman sails right down the middle.
  16. Another Round
    Another Round doesn’t quite come across like a cautionary tale, and that’s because Vinterberg takes a refreshingly, well, sober stance on the entwined pleasures and pitfalls of drinking. He’s made the rare movie about getting shitfaced that’s somehow neither a wallow in the gutter nor a fantasy of life without hangovers.
  17. All My Life
    All My Life is too passionless to earn even a begrudged sniffle. It’s all paint-by-numbers, from the requisite “screaming inside a car” shot expressing a character’s frustrations to the store-bought spontaneity of a couple jumping into a fountain fully clothed.
  18. 76 Days
    The overall impression 76 Days delivers is that of dedicated professionals coping with an unprecedented onslaught of emergencies to the best of their ability, grimly waiting for the curve to flatten.
  19. Godmothered
    What elevates Godmothered is an ending that manages to tie up the film’s familiar themes in a surprisingly moving way.
  20. Mayor
    If Mayor succeeds at conveying some of the awkward cringe comedy of running a community under occupation, it also captures the dread.
  21. Superintelligence
    The consistent failure of imagination is all that keeps the film’s scenes from feeling like a random selection.
  22. The Prom
    On stage, the contrivances might seem less glaring (although the songs truly are terrible). As a movie, The Prom is all-star, feel-good, zazzy nonsense. Long after Murphy’s film drops its cutesy cynicism, it still manages to accidentally produce a damning indictment of Broadway phoniness.
  23. Soul
    It’s overflowing, like a bright portal into a new reality, with gorgeous details. So what if they don’t quite add up to a deeper whole?
  24. Stardust
    As played by actor-musician Johnny Flynn, the Halloween-costume Bowie we meet in Stardust is a miserable, charmless wannabe. Which is to say that the film fails where a single photo of this most chameleonic of music legends would succeed: It makes Bowie boring.
  25. Uncle Frank
    Uncle Frank anchors itself to the war within Frank, but it’s the conflict within the film itself that’s most potent. That’s a fight no one wins, least of all the audience.
  26. Iron Mask
    Although it isn’t actually a comedy, Iron Mask qualifies, in substantial stretches, as one of the funniest films of the year.
  27. The Croods: A New Age
    With eleven different characters to serve—not counting several animal sidekicks—A New Age has a lot going on in terms of plot and action, with a litany of new alliances, betrayals, and team-ups. But the sequel is not as visually sophisticated as its predecessor.
  28. Belushi
    Cutler takes on the ambitious task of showing not only Belushi’s impact, but how that impact wound up leading to his own ruin.
  29. Vanguard
    The move from practical stuns to a discount VFX simulacrum (no real cars appear to have been wrecked in any of these chase scenes) has not flattered Tong’s amateurish direction.
  30. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
    It’s important to note that there would not even be a show to admire without the trailblazing career of Ma Rainey, which Davis recognizes and honors with her otherworldly portrayal. Still, this is undoubtedly Boseman’s show and will likely live on as his greatest work.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »