The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
For 10,412 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: 5,570 out of 10412
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10412
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10412
10412 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. The Christmas Chronicles
    Close inspection reveals that The Christmas Chronicles suffers from the same acute condition as one of Freddy’s or Jason’s lesser vehicles. The film doesn’t know how to get out of its own way and foreground what’s working, namely the dynamo of screen presence placed more prominently in the advertising than the feature itself.
  2. Roma
    I reserve the right—as I do at every festival, where I tend to hedge my bets and temper my praise—to decide that, never mind, everyone’s right, this is a masterpiece. For now, what I see is staggering formal prowess that is maybe just a little at odds with the small, even modest character drama it’s supporting.
  3. Green Book
    No wonder Green Book, which is like an inverted "Driving Miss Daisy" by way of "Rain Man’s" mismatched-buddy road trip, is already earning ovations: Intentionally or not, it flatters the delusion that racism, in its ugliest form, is more of a past-tense problem.
  4. Creed II
    Ultimately, Creed II feels a little muffled by its workmanlike touches, especially when it gets in the ring. Just as Rocky was too low-key and charming to spawn a fully worthy successor for several decades, Creed so elevates its franchise roots that even a pretty good sequel can’t land with the same impact. Then again, a 2018 movie called Creed II expanding on Rocky IV to become one of the better Rocky movies may be another minor miracle on its own.
  5. Jinn
    Equally importantly, it shows how much an artist like Mu’min can bring to otherwise well-trod material, and how valuable underrepresented points of view like hers really are.
  6. Wreck-It Ralph
    Twice now Reilly and Silverman have helped to give a cartoon’s happy ending real emotional depth. And twice now, they’ve made their characters so endearing that some fans may feel oddly conflicted about the prospect of undoing those endings just to see them again.
  7. Ralph Breaks the Internet
    Like a lot of memes, Ralph Breaks The Internet appears proud both of its clear place within a system and its ability to stand outside and poke fun at that system.
  8. Instant Family
    Instant Family balances its sitcom tone with some real, unexpected heart.
  9. Shoah: Four Sisters
    Perhaps Four Sisters is best considered a parting gesture from Lanzmann, ensuring that, in his body of work at least, these four “sisters” should endure as more than just a footnote.
  10. At Eternity's Gate
    Does At Eternity’s Gate have anything new or innovative to share about perhaps the most comprehensively documented painter who’s ever lived? Does the world need another van Gogh biopic? Not really.
  11. Cam
    Mazzei’s script and Goldhaber’s direction complement each other beautifully, with true-to-life details like the tacky dollar-store carpet that decorates Alice’s camming room and the pink taser she keeps in her car playing off of—and enhancing—the naturalistic dialogue.
  12. Overlord
    It’s reasonably good, creepy fun, provided you’re not troubled by fleeting, uncomfortable thoughts like “Hey, that screaming bloodthirsty mutant monster could theoretically be a reanimated Anne Frank.”
  13. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
    Harry Potter, for all his nice-kid incorruptibility, looks downright four-dimensional compared to Redmayne’s milquetoast Newt—an impossibly twee soul with few discernible flaws or even particularly interesting characteristics.
  14. Blue My Mind
    In many ways, the film is reminiscent of last year’s arthouse horror hit Raw, using monstrous transformation as a metaphor for puberty and sexual awakening. It’s not as extreme as Raw in its content, though, nor as skillful in its technique.
  15. The Grinch
    If anything, this is a more meager, timid iteration of Seuss’ story, starting with the characterization of its famous antihero.
  16. The Girl in the Spider's Web
    While Alvarez acquits himself with thrilling action sequences and breakneck pacing, the overall impression left by this “New Dragon Tattoo Story” is one of a razor-sharp blade dulled by the demands of franchise filmmaking.
  17. Infinite Football
    This is rich material, sharply developed. It’s also touchingly optimistic about man’s capacity for incremental change.
  18. The Front Runner
    It’s a feature-length whine of frustrated entitlement. A movie less suited to its cultural moment would be hard to imagine.
  19. The Grief of Others
    It’s every bit as human-scaled as the filmmaker’s other work — but also, in its noble restraint, a little less involving.
  20. Nobody's Fool
    When his zany cast of characters (many but not all played by Perry himself) takes leave of his material, as in Nobody’s Fool, his movie’s faults start to look more congruent with less auteur-driven studio comedies.
  21. The Other Side of the Wind
    The Other Side Of The Wind is ultimately about an artist’s fear of seeing a reflection of his own sublimated desires — the way that art hides as much as it reveals about its maker. We’ll be debating it, defending it, reappraising it for a long time to come.
  22. Bodied
    Simultaneously entertaining, overwhelming, compelling, and grating, Bodied raises its hand and talks until words mean nothing and everything.
  23. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
    Every aspect of of the movie feels as if it’s been determined by algorithm, workshopped and test-marketed into a state of pleasant, fleeting dullness.
  24. Searching for Ingmar Bergman
    Ultimately, the search here isn’t so much for Bergman as it is for a thesis and conclusion. Those who know nothing about the subject will learn a little. Those who know a lot will learn very little.
  25. Boy Erased
    For all of the effort invested in limning the specific contours of Jared’s struggle, Boy Erased stops just short of its core.
  26. A Bread Factory Part One: For the Sake of Gold
    Despite Wang’s habit of casual stylistic quotation (riffing on Ingmar Bergman’s compressed close-ups here, Wes Anderson’s whip pans there), A Bread Factory remains stubbornly its own thing.
  27. A Bread Factory Part Two: Walk With Me a While
    For Wang, the strictly personal is the building block for everything else—whether it’s the well-worn groove of a long-term relationship or a Chekhov pastiche performed by a woman wearing a samovar as a hat.
  28. Hunter Killer
    The problem with this sort of Hungry-Man dinner theater is that it needs a true believer or at least a testosterone junkie behind the camera to rise above the lowest-common-denominator appeal of watching men yell at and rescue each other. Donovan Marsh is neither; his direction is perfunctory, unable to evoke even something as basic as the claustrophobia of a submarine’s interior. Perhaps he’s just following orders.
  29. Border
    Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes Border. A thematically rich and deeply strange blend of romantic drama, magical-realist fantasy, and crime thriller, Sweden’s official entry to this year’s Academy Awards splits the difference between the highbrow cringe comedy of "Toni Erdmann" and the lowbrow cop fantasy "Bright."
  30. Shirkers
    The original "Shirkers" might be a product of a bygone era of pop culture, but its new nonfiction form scans as a second attempt to reach those fellow weirdos who are desperate to make something real, established structures be damned.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »