The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,413 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: 5,571 out of 10413
  2. Mixed: 3,735 out of 10413
  3. Negative: 1,107 out of 10413
10413 movie reviews
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  1. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
    In a sense, what we’re watching is a classic con-artist movie, built around someone who plies his shady trade not for money but esteem—the feeling that he matters, that his name carries weight.
  2. The Case for Christ
    The Case For Christ is pretty slow going, tedious rather than offensive, with Strobel repeatedly whiteboarding out the evidence as callback voice-overs add up all the pieces until he’s convinced. “All right, God,” he finally says. “You win.”
  3. Going in Style
    It’s probably worth noting that the whippersnapper behind the camera is none other than one-time sitcom star and indie darling Zach Braff. Did he owe someone a favor, or is this his attempt to break into the studio system he scorned with his last feature, the gooey Kickstarted passion project "Wish I Was Here"?
  4. Gifted
    Call it a dumbed-down "Good Will Hunting."
  5. Graduation
    In the end, it’s the hard questions that linger, disquietingly unanswered.
  6. Smurfs: The Lost Village
    An inoffensive children’s film with an above-average voice cast, competent animation, and no product placement. This is enough to make it the finest film ever made about the Smurfs.
  7. Queen of the Desert
    Whatever imprint Queen Of The Desert makes belongs mostly to Kidman, who stresses Bell’s compassion, her fearlessness, her eponymous regality.
  8. Aftermath
    In fact, Aftermath only becomes interesting if considered as a dour subversion of the daughter-and-wife revenge scenarios of Schwarzenegger’s action movies — as star text, in other words.
  9. Your Name.
    There’s admittedly a certain pleasure in the deft fake-out that Shinkai executes here—most viewers will automatically make an assumption that’s ultimately proven wrong—but it comes at the cost of overall narrative incoherence.
  10. Win It All
    There’s enough disreputable behavior bookending the righteousness, and enough solid jokes along the way, to make the effort moderately entertaining.
  11. The Assignment
    It has no clue what it’s going for.
  12. Colossal
    Monster movies aren’t generally known for their subtlety, but leave it to Nacho Vigalondo to make one that keeps surprising its audience until the very end.
  13. Their Finest
    But if Their Finest is a little stodgy and tasteful, it also possesses Scherfig’s trademark wistfulness.
  14. Ghost in the Shell
    It is in its designs, more so than in its generic corporate-conspiracy plot, that this new Ghost In The Shell finds tantalizing expressions of theme.
  15. The Death of Louis XIV
    It’s such a conceptually fertile film that one wishes that it weren’t also a bore.
  16. The Boss Baby
    Basically, this movie is exceedingly clever until it isn’t, finding creative ways to explain outrageous plot points until it gets tired and starts bombarding its young target audience with chase sequences instead.
  17. The Blackcoat's Daughter
    The Blackcoat’s Daughter is a clammy hand on the back of the neck, a chill running down the spine, a shot of ice water straight to the veins. Every moment, almost every shot, has been carefully calibrated to stand hairs on end.
  18. The Zookeeper's Wife
    The Holocaust drama The Zookeeper’s Wife is handsomely made, well-acted, and lacking in much nuance.
  19. The Discovery
    At the very least, its central mystery keeps you guessing, right up until a final turn that’s nearly as clever as it is convoluted.
  20. Cézanne et Moi
    Intensive research has killed many a biopic, but Cézanne Et Moi, which recounts the tempestuous lifelong friendship between Paul Cézanne and Émile Zola, labors even more tediously than most to accommodate personal details, whether or not those details serve the narrative.
  21. All This Panic
    Gage leans on the bright personalities of her subjects, while using roving handheld camerawork, smears of big-city color, and a shallow depth of field to capture some of the romantic grandeur they see in the world. All This Panic feels like a gift from her to them. Fortunately, we get to enjoy it, too.
  22. David Lynch: The Art Life
    Where The Art Life proves most informative to longtime Lynch fans is in its closely observed depiction of his creative process, glimpsed here as he putters around his home studio in the Hollywood Hills, his adorable toddler daughter in tow, creating paintings, sculptures, music, or whatever else strikes his fancy.
  23. Karl Marx City
    Karl Marx City is at heart a psychological family drama—the story of a tightly knit household that outlived an oppressive society, only to find itself faced with a doubt about the past that amounts to an existential quandary.
  24. Slamma Jamma
    It’s a lazy, crappy film, and perhaps even a cynical one, but its ineptitude is charming.
  25. CHIPS
    Given the alternative between the big-screen CHIPS and an antiquated, low-stakes episode of the original TV series, we’d pick the latter in a heartbeat.
  26. Saban's Power Rangers
    When it comes time to morph and break out the Zords to the sound of “Go, Go, Power Rangers,” the film groans and shuffles, like a sulky teen who’s been told that they have to finish the dishes before they can borrow the minivan.
  27. Life
    Life is a B movie on an A budget, an old-fashioned creature feature that delivers its cheap thrills expensively.
  28. American Anarchist
    It’s only thanks to Powell’s own rhetorical waffling that the movie succeeds to the degree it does.
  29. Prevenge
    A wryly misanthropic slasher comedy about a woman whose fetus commands her to kill.
  30. Dig Two Graves
    The movie looks superb, especially for its minuscule budget. While Adams is clearly a very promising director, however, his screenwriting chops aren’t so advanced. This is one clunky amalgam of mystery and guilt.
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