The A.V. Club's Scores

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:
10412 movie reviews
  1. Vincent N Roxxy, which suffers from many of the same shortcomings that plagued tough-talking Tarantino homages in the late ’90s but distinguishes itself with a satisfying climax.
  2. Dean turns out to be quite touching, in retrospect. If only it were funny, clever, or in any other way particularly inspired from moment to moment.
  3. Captain Underpants’ charm lies in its lighthearted and lightly scatological silliness, so it’s a shame that the movie sometimes overstuffs itself.
  4. The best thing about Wonder Woman, the overlong and intermittently enjoyable new DC superhero spectacular, is Wonder Woman herself.
  5. Adios serves as a loving tribute to their memory, but has little else to offer that the original film didn’t provide.
  6. Part of the charm of Hermia & Helena is in the way it freely and randomly plays with form, employing luxuriantly slow dissolves, unexpected snatches of superimposed text, and even a black-and-white film-within-the-film.
  7. This is the most bizarre lead performance of Pitt’s career, as he plays McMahon as a stroke victim doing the world’s worst impression of George Clooney.
  8. This tedious kidnapping drama doesn’t have anything especially insightful to say about Clare’s ordeal, which makes watching her go through it an even more trying experience.
  9. In spoofing something so forgettable, they’ve made something even less memorable.
  10. Waste enough of the audience’s time with the adventures of a couple of uncharismatic dinguses, and Depp’s stage-drunk, innuendo-laced, cabaret-emcee shtick starts to creep back into being funny.
  11. The brilliance of Long Strange Trip is that Bar-Lev allows for multiple interpretations.
  12. The film does have its charms. The outside world, when we do reach it, is as gorgeous for the audience as it must appear to someone seeing it for the first time.
  13. As for what all of this represents, Small Enough To Jail doesn’t draw any conclusions that its many interviewees aren’t willing to voice themselves.
  14. Here is the problem with making four movies about a middle-schooler who only ages a little and learns sitcom-ready lessons: After a while, it all starts to feel as repetitive and uninspired as any number of more ambitious franchises. The Long Haul has a chance to reimagine the series and only comes up with Vacation Junior.
  15. Rather than portray a turbulent group dynamic, the film focuses on the marital woes of one particular couple, squandering its novel milieu on a banal conflict that would play out similarly in just about any context.
  16. The film boasts one of Diaz’s most dramatically conventional, involving, and satisfying narratives.
  17. The Survivalist rewards with thoughtful cinematography — one fluid shot that effectively shifts the balance of power in a scene is especially noteworthy — and character development. But viewers looking for zombie attacks or thrilling chase scenes should go elsewhere.
  18. It’s a tale of what happens when male inadequacy runs rampant, starring a committed Bryan Cranston, but it’s ultimately hamstrung by its overwrought sensibilities.
  19. Afterimage suffers from a clunky script and an overdetermined formal palette.
  20. In its best moments, The Wall is just a movie, a tense and nasty black-box thriller that conveys its politics through the microcosmic stakes of its life-and-death scenario. Pity that when the characters open their mouths, they sometimes unleash some very heavy-handed artillery, their speech coated too often in cliché.
  21. This is Alien gone gothic.
  22. Hounds Of Love is a remarkable achievement in that it does exactly what it sets out to do, and what it sets out to do is traumatize the hell out of you. You just might not want to watch it twice.
  23. It stands apart from the majority of R-rated, coprolalic studio comedies simply by being fast-paced and, on occasion, pretty funny.
  24. Turns out that, every once in a while, wedding something old to something borrowed can make something new.
  25. The franchise-hungry tentpole-itis of the present studio model has produced oh-so-many dumb rehashes of classic myths and fairy tales, but this is the first that is always funny on purpose.
  26. Each of Blanchett’s characters exists in a complete environment, and Rosefeldt’s camera is keen to reveal the gags and treasures contained within each.
  27. As the movie pulls over to look at museum fabrics in vain search of a groove, it turns the audience into its impatient child, threatening to start kicking the back of the car seat any minute now.
  28. The movie is more interested in him as a lovable loser, a working-class palooka who stumbled briefly into the spotlight, and Schreiber — bulked up, mustachioed, having a grand time — leans enjoyably into his hangdog mediocrity.
  29. The Dinner wants to chill bloodstreams by revealing what decent, civilized people — the kind that adopt children from other countries, consider their politics liberal, and wine and dine in high class — are truly capable of. But as food for thought goes, that’s pretty lukewarm.
  30. It’s a patchy and seemingly unfinished film.

Top Trailers