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. When it’s all done, More and Morgan remain ciphers, and not the type whose intangibility is evocative of something greater. All we have are the known facts, and that is all that I Called Him Morgan provides in the end.
  2. It’s a gamble, building a comedy around a character this boorish.
  3. Byrne adds a twist by appealing to a growing and under-represented segment of the extreme art forms’ shared fan base: parents.
  4. The quartet of actors lends Song To Song somewhat more focus, but it still finds ways to sprawl.
  5. The Belko Experiment teeters between “fun,” gory brutality and a more seriously disturbing variety — the latter epitomized by the film’s centerpiece, a chillingly organized process of elimination that echoes mass shootings and historic Final Solutions in equal measure.
  6. It teeters on the edge of relapse, aimless and at a loss as to how it can motivate its returning ensemble of former and current lowlifes, who only ever needed one thing to get them from scene to scene.
  7. Shiny but not exactly new, Bill Condon’s live-action Beauty And The Beast is a curious nostalgia object, synthetically engineered to reproduce all the same sensations as a 26-year-old movie.
  8. An exercise in mellowness, right down to the snatches of tinkly-twinkly sentimental music.
  9. Beer and Niney do solid work, but their sensitive efforts can’t quite breathe life into a story that no longer seems terribly relevant.
  10. The entire movie consists of this same delayed-gratification tactic, as significant events from Tony’s past are first teased and then revealed a bit at a time, via numerous flashbacks. A little of that sort of thing can be invigorating. Push it too far, however, and it starts to feel like a pointless game of narrative Keep Away.
  11. Raw
    The film gained an unfortunate reputation as a gross-out cannibal shocker on the festival circuit, and while that categorization is not entirely, technically incorrect — this is a piece of body horror, and an intensely visceral one — it detracts from the striking imagery and layered symbolism of Ducournau’s uncommonly assured debut feature.
  12. Stewart makes the scenes of her character’s day-to-day life seem unrehearsed and intimate, as though the movie were peering in on someone whose thoughts were always someplace else.
  13. It’s a clever but self-defeating exercise: a meta-fictional cautionary tale about itself.
  14. This stunt-driven nonfiction project rearranges the well-reported dirt on the church, placing it into the context of something considerably less useful: a documentary about how hard it is to make a documentary about Scientology.
  15. Skull Island has a lot of globe-trotting fun assembling its team of expendables.
  16. Pellington, a music video veteran who was once known for inconsistent-but-diverting thrillers like The Mothman Prophecies and Arlington Road, doesn’t show much interest in making either of movie’s central relationships work, leaning on the brittle, snappy MacLaine to carry almost every scene.
  17. There’s nothing about this unconscionably long movie (it runs a whopping 132 minutes) that suggests anyone involved ever watched it from start to finish. But it looks nice enough, like a Nicholas Sparks adaptation, with lots of flowers and flannel.
  18. And yes, it’s as tired as “The Breakfast Club remade with adults” implies.
  19. In more ways than one, Catfight lives down to its title. This is a spectacularly petty and mean-spirited comedy that pivots around, yes, two women beating the shit out of each other.
  20. What really stinks about Before I Fall is that it zaps all the fun and humor out of its time-bending premise, leaving behind a lot of moping to randomly selected pop cues.
  21. Most of the cast does a fine job of turning this hooey into something serviceable.
  22. The film’s gradual shift from broad yuk-fest toward something closer to indie drama (while still striving to be funny) isn’t wholly successful; it’s difficult to achieve the catharsis of, say, Kelly Reichardt’s "Old Joy" when you start out like "Napoleon Dynamite." But at least Avedisian tried.
  23. Give Blair time. He may have a Green Room-grade corker in him yet.
  24. What’s special about Logan is that it manages to deliver the visceral goods, all the hardcore Wolverine action its fans could desire, while still functioning as a surprisingly thoughtful, even poignant drama—a terrific movie, no “comic-book” qualifier required.
  25. Like a distracted driver constantly missing his highway exit, Collide keeps passing on opportunities for action in favor of patience-straining exposition.
  26. With a product this generic, one at least expects it to do what it says on the tin.
  27. Never does it sound much like something grunge fans might like.
  28. Starts off strong but dilutes its impact with every consecutive reveal.
  29. Wildly entertaining.
  30. The movie is a pleasure to look at, and often genuinely sweet, but it’s also akin to scaring the crap out of a little kid for 30 seconds and then smothering her with cotton candy for an hour. Skip the first part and you don’t need the second part, either.

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