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. Possessor Uncut
    In the end, Possessor privileges the visceral over the cerebral. Which is not to deny that it lands somewhere rather provocative as a character study.
  2. Dick Johnson Is Dead
    That Johnson mostly pulls this off through the lens of black comedy, without succumbing to outright miserabilism, is an achievement. May we all have the opportunity to be present at our own funerals, surrounded by loved ones, before it’s too late.
  3. The Glorias
    The result is a choppy mix of timelines, color schemes, and differing levels of realism that’s too unfocused to really inspire.
  4. Save Yourselves!
    Save Yourselves! didn’t have the budget to pull off its ambitiously bizarre and essentially unresolved ending (which might not have been satisfying even had it been fully realized—it’s really way out there, quite literally), but it gets the small things just right, and that’s far more important.
  5. 12 Hour Shift
    The material is edgy and at times outrageously gory and chaotic, but Bettis gives Mandy an exhausted, fed-up quality that keeps the movie on track, even (or maybe especially) when she’s pissed off about having to do everything herself.
  6. Scare Me
    The idea that movies can easily lose 10 or 15 minutes of running time to curry favor with impatient audiences is often patently absurd, yet nearly every single scene in Scare Me feels some degree of overlong.
  7. Ava
    Ava is a napping-on-the-couch movie through and through, with recognizable names and a sexy premise but no distinct personality.
  8. On the Rocks
    There’s something a little tidy about the resolution, closing a movie of messy emotional confusion on a note of affirmation and maybe even a kind of surrender. But On The Rocks shines brighter in the context of a career, especially in indirect dialogue with Lost In Translation.
  9. The Boys in the Band
    Mantello is the first to tell people he hasn’t had a lot of experience directing movies (his last feature was the 1997 adaptation of his Broadway hit Love! Valour! Compassion!), yet his version of Boys fights its stage roots far more than Friedkin’s film.
  10. The Trial of the Chicago 7
    The Trial Of The Chicago 7 wants to bottle the revolutionary spirit of its setting—the take-to-the-streets idealism of the ’60s—but its snappy montage-glimpses of demonstrations verge on costume-party kitsch. The movie is at its best and most persuasive in the courtroom, when Sorkin can draw on the clashes of ideology and personality.
  11. Gunda
    You won’t learn much from Gunda. It’s an arty pastoral mood piece, not an educational tool. Which is not to imply it lacks a philosophy.
  12. The Calming
    The Calming ultimately might have benefitted from an animating tension—from something beyond its sustained mood of lovely but unvaried serenity.
  13. Malmkrog
    One is left to admire the literal and figurative wallpaper—to be blessedly distracted by the mise en scène and Puiu’s attempts to constantly vary how he’s filming each interaction.
  14. Kajillionaire
    The chemistry between Rodriguez and Wood is undeniable, and Rodriguez’s more naturalistic performance balances out her costar’s affected shuffling and deep, gravely monotone. Wood’s performance is sensitive, but it’s also silly at times.
  15. Enola Holmes
    Without much of a mystery to solve, this young Holmes comes across more like a junior-level Wonder Woman: intelligent and highly trained yet puzzled by this unfamiliar, unfair world of men.
  16. Shadow in the Cloud
    Pure popcorn entertainment, superimposing the dynamic synths and narrative efficiency of a John Carpenter movie onto the burnished metal and green fatigues of a World War II adventure.
  17. Joe Bell
    Wahlberg, delivering a performance that feels like community service, just isn’t up to driving a drama whose conflict is almost entirely internal; his default setting of sneering irritation is the wrong tool for the job. It leaves you wondering if this should have more fully been Jadin’s story, especially given the sensitivity of Miller’s turn.
  18. Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds
    This film is charming and educational enough, but it’s not especially profound; it flirts with big ideas about the origins of life and the twin cycles of creation and destruction but doesn’t really let them sink in.
  19. City Hall
    As always, Wiseman’s approach guarantees memorable encounters.
  20. 76 Days
    At times, we might be watching a deadpan workplace comedy; that it’s possible to laugh at this subject matter at all is a testament to its matter-of-fact presentation and maybe also to the extent that this virus has completely seeped into every corner of life.
  21. Small Axe: Lovers Rock
    McQueen has zoomed in on a very specific milieu, but he’s also tapped into the universal and suddenly inaccessible joy of an endless night of music and dance, a house party for the ages. You don’t have to know your reggae or have been born 40 years ago to long for the ache of communal fun on which Lovers Rock waxes nostalgic.
  22. Alone
    There’s something deeply appealing about an already stripped-down cat-and-mouse scenario that becomes dirtier and more elemental as it goes along, tracing a devolutionary arc from the rules of the road to primeval combat.
  23. The Father
    Hopkins methodically strips away every quality we’ve come to expect from him—the refinement, the silver tongue, the imposing intensity he lent Lecter and Nixon and Titus—until there’s nothing left but frailty and distress. In doing so, he helps convey the full tragedy and horror of dementia: the way it can make someone almost unrecognizable to themselves and their loved ones.
  24. I Care a Lot
    The film is arguably too long, with a mushy middle section that slows the momentum of its savage first third. But Pike’s performance remains sharp as her character’s blonde bob throughout, and the pleasures of watching her and Dinklage face off are significant.
  25. Concrete Cowboy
    It’s a little corny at times, but it looks good and has heart—and, let’s be honest, Black cowboys are pretty damn cool.
  26. MLK/FBI
    It’s a useful reminder not just that this American hero was a widely vilified figure during his lifetime but also that he accomplished everything he did despite nonstop resistance from intelligence agencies, the media, and the public alike.
  27. The Truffle Hunters
    The Truffle Hunters is more eccentric and lyrical than its logline might suggest.
  28. Shiva Baby
    The style of humor in Shiva Baby can best be described as “sex-positive cringe,” in which the secondhand embarrassment comes less from the sexual situations themselves than our heroine’s collision with polite, conservative society.
  29. New Order
    The film may upset and incense multiple sides of the political spectrum: those who see protestors as dangerous chaos agents and those who might be offended by a depiction of them that risks reflecting those fears. Ambivalence aside, it works as a kind of gripping apocalyptic horror movie. There are no zombies, but the rich get eaten.
  30. Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
    Preparations inspires intrigue, then curiously squanders it.
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