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. Solo: A Star Wars Story
    Perhaps because Lando was less explored than Han in the original films, Glover manages the tricky task of both paying homage to role originator Billy Dee Williams while adding his own spin to the character. Like Ehrenreich, his version goes comic without tipping into outright spoofery.
  2. Burning
    Burning simmers. For nearly two-and-a-half perfectly measured hours, it turns up the heat without boiling over: a drama becoming a thriller in slow motion, intensifying little by little minute by minute, until finally it reaches a shocking, powerful crescendo.
  3. Cold War
    Pawlikowski, who doesn’t waste a shot (nor compose one that isn’t a work of art on its lonesome), creates a gripping present tense from the clarity and efficiency of his storytelling: No matter how often he lurches us forward in time, we remain locked into the emotional sphere of his characters.
  4. Under the Silver Lake
    The pervasive but almost offhand menace is supplied by Mitchell’s impeccable, widescreen mise-en-scène; the ordinary dread he locates in an unglamorous, mundane L.A.; and the way even the film’s comedy seems perched on the edge of unease.
  5. The House That Jack Built
    The film lands somewhere between self-flagellation and apologia; however hard von Trier is on himself, he’s not above mounting defenses, and he spares plenty of punishment for us, too.
  6. Dark Crimes
    Here, a few words should be said about Carrey’s performance: It may be the worst dramatic acting of his career, a charmless cartoon of self-repression.
  7. BlacKkKlansman
    Although he’s made his most narratively entertaining movie in years, the filmmaker often still privileges polemical discourse over drama, grinding things to a halt for minutes-long speeches—he’s not so different from Godard in that way—and sometimes getting rather on-the-nose with the already exceptionally apparent contemporary echoes.
  8. On Chesil Beach
    On Chesil Beach is a minor story by design, one that uses a lovers’ quarrel to interrogate evolving social values, but sometimes it’s the most minor stories that contain some of the most overlooked ideas.
  9. Pope Francis - A Man of His Word
    The film’s appeal, predicated on its rare close-up look at a working Bishop Of Rome, will be limited primarily to the faithful; those hoping for a candid portrait of the man beneath the cassock will be sorely disappointed.
  10. Deadpool 2
    Though bringing in a bona fide action-cheese aesthete like David Leitch (Atomic Blonde, John Wick) to direct counts as a minor coup, Deadpool 2’s attempts to fight superhero fatigue with self-awareness and meta shock value can become exhausting. Indulgent and uneven, but in spots gruesomely funny, the new film badly lacks the basic momentum of the original’s formulaic plot.
  11. Book Club
    The script is so lazy and outdated in its humor, it condescends to the same audience it purports to empower.
  12. Ash Is Purest White
    It’s a surprisingly funny, even loopy film at times, with bursts of slapstick and screwball humor, plus a sporadic absurdism.
  13. 3 Faces
    Panahi has frequently blurred the line between cinema and reality; here, he builds the search for that line into the work itself, even flirting, playfully, with a self-critique.
  14. Arctic
    As a showcase for Mikkelsen’s commitment, it’s sometimes gripping...Mads gets to show an intense vulnerability for once. That’s worth seeing, though one wishes Arctic complicated its life-and-death ordeal a little more, or at least varied its obstacles. At a certain point, even raw, screaming endurance isn’t quite drama enough.
  15. Thunder Road
    One could argue that Thunder Road is more sympathetic than critical—which is to say, that it’s a movie that asks you to feel sorry for a white cop with serious women issues. If that’s an oversimplification, it’s because Cummings, who also wrote and directed the film, has delivered a remarkable tragicomic performance in the lead.
  16. Climax
    There’s a spontaneity to Climax—a naturalistic immediacy born of its exceptional, energetic cast of unknowns, firing off entirely improvised jokes and insults and threats.
  17. Breaking In
    The film’s sense of time lacks precision and urgency, and just having characters periodically point out that the clock is ticking doesn’t cut it.
  18. Filmworker
    Matthew Modine — who wrote about Vitali repeatedly in his published diaries of the hellish production of "Full Metal Jacket" and is also interviewed in Filmworker — echoes what seems to be a common sentiment about Vitali: that the guy is a friendly mystery, either a glutton for punishment or a saint.
  19. Life of the Party
    The movie portrays Deanna’s rediscovery of a pre-mom life, and how she squares that freedom with her identity as a loving mother, with a lot of warmth, and its refusal to gin up tired conflicts or mawkish lessons is admirable. That does, however, leave Life Of The Party without much comic momentum.
  20. Beast
    This psychodrama didn’t go exactly where I expected it would. It didn’t go anywhere particularly interesting either.
  21. Everybody Knows
    Quintessentially, and maybe to a fault, this is a Farhadi movie: another of the writer-director’s gripping studies of a family torn asunder by a compounding mess of deception and revelation.
  22. The Day After
    A lazy shoulder shrug of a movie that never bothers to work out who its characters are, what they want, or why their ostensible problems should be of interest to anyone else.
  23. The Seagull
    He’s (Mayer) assembled a terrific cast and mostly stayed out of their way, but the result still feels frustratingly arm’s-length, lacking the odd electricity of Louis Malle’s semi-staged "Vanya On 42nd Street."
  24. Sollers Point
    Sollers Point is easy to admire, abstractly and on principle. But you may still leave wondering if a little melodrama, a little bullshit, might have been preferable.
  25. Overboard
    The way the script pulls its punches is less offensive than simply toothless, giving Overboard the feel of a film written by a focus group, or maybe a script-writing robot programmed with the latest demographic trends.
  26. Manhunt
    With every overblown character introduction and goofy twist, it announces itself as intentionally cheesy guilty pleasure. With Woo, one expects a higher, more transcendent grade of cheese.
  27. Bad Samaritan
    This comparatively low-budget effort represents a marked improvement from Devlin’s debut theatrical feature, Geostorm, which was among last year’s very worst films. He’s graduated from painful tedium to an acceptable means of killing two hours. One step at a time.
  28. Racer and the Jailbird
    Despite Bibi’s need for speed, Racer And The Jailbird sputters more than it guns.
  29. The Guardians
    What starts out as a testament to female fortitude, reminding us that sacrifices were also made on the home front, gradually turns into high-toned soap opera.
  30. RBG
    Breathlessly superficial, school-presentation-ish documentary.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »