The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,435 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: 5,578 out of 10435
  2. Mixed: 3,745 out of 10435
  3. Negative: 1,112 out of 10435
10435 movie reviews
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  1. Walter
    Much of Walter’s behavior resembles, at very least, a movie version of mental illness, only to have the story reclassify it as a coping mechanism. This unwittingly makes the character seem as affected as any Sundance stereotype—and the movie disturbing for all the wrong reasons.
  2. Home Sweet Hell
    Katherine Heigl has exactly one funny moment in the dire black comedy Home Sweet Hell, which is still one more than anybody else has.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Wrecking Crew
    As a love letter to the director’s late father, The Wrecking Crew sparkles. As a potentially comprehensive, context-rich chronicle of one of pop music’s most inspired engines of rhythm and melody, it mostly sticks to one note.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    3 Hearts
    While the controlling deities might have found some amusement in this narrative, in Jacquot’s hands the tale is more bland than tragic.
  5. Seymour: An Introduction
    The biggest problem with Seymour, though, is that Hawke can’t quite find a structure or rhythm for the movie as a whole. It’s only 81 minutes long, and never remotely boring, but the feeling that it’s due to end at any moment kicks in around the midpoint and persists right up until it actually does end, like the documentary equivalent of "The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King."
    • 54 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Cymbeline
    Almereyda tackles one of the Bard’s lesser-regarded later works, the plot-heavy tragicomedy Cymbeline, and again unearths untold depths.
  7. The Cobbler
    Maudlin when it’s not being offensive, The Cobbler belongs to that special class of comedy that seems to get worse with every new (mis)step it takes.
  8. It Follows
    Fans of early John Carpenter will immediately identify the master’s influence — on the voyeuristic slink of the camera, the synth pulse of Rich Vreeland’s throwback score, and the transformation of “safe,” warmly lit residential environments into landscapes of dread.
  9. Cinderella
    Clothed in a colorful mishmash of historical fashions and scored to sweeping strings, the movie is like an antique cut-crystal vase: gorgeous, fragile, empty.
  10. Run All Night
    Even though he never gets a grip on the over-complicated plot, the director hasn’t lost his knack for those elemental qualities that make a good action flick.
  11. Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau
    The film is at its best when cutting between delicious stories... It doesn’t make for the strongest film, but it does work like a case of people swapping outrageous war stories over a few beers.
  12. Chappie
    Like "Elysium," this rusty A.I. story is basically just "District 9" with a new coat of paint; it’s distinguished only by the jabbering, irritating personality of its title character.
  13. These Final Hours
    Incoherent and pointless as it is, These Final Hours moves with commendable swiftness.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Kidnapping Mr. Heineken
    Much like the lager that gives the film its name, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is bland on the palette and best pissed away.
  15. X/Y
    It’s just that the quality of Williams’ script varies wildly, from superb to dire.
  16. Unfinished Business
    A once-energetic comic talent (and underrated serious actor) slows down to a pace he must feel matches his audience these days.
  17. Faults
    He’s (Riley Stearns) fashioned a movie that undergoes a slow, captivating metamorphosis, scene by scene, though who’s the caterpillar and who’s the cocoon remains unclear until the very end.
  18. Two Men in Town
    The result is a movie of complicated interpersonal and cross-cultural tensions.
  19. Buzzard
    Think Vampire’s Kiss on a DIY scale, with motels and basement rec rooms in place of brownstones and nightclubs and a bladed Power Glove in place of plastic fangs. That’s Buzzard in a nutshell.
  20. Merchants of Doubt
    There’s a reason folks like Singer and Morano are able to affect public policy with specious data, and it’s because they’re good at playing characters and cracking self-deprecating jokes and generally being interesting on camera, and real climate scientists aren’t.
  21. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    True to its title, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is a mildly inferior sequel, diluting the modest charms of its predecessor. Said charms do remain, however.
  22. The Lesson
    In exploring how an honest person might compromise her integrity in the face of insurmountable obstacles, The Lesson compromises its own sense of reality; the movie just keeps piling on the misfortune, pushing past believability into what feels like questionably intentional comedy.
  23. The Lazarus Effect
    Like too many horror films, this one seems targeted at a hypothetical audience using only 10 percent of its brainpower.
  24. My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
    My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn, Liv Corfixen’s behind-the-scenes look at the production of "Only God Forgives," has a clear precedent in "Hearts Of Darkness," Eleanor Coppola’s behind-the-scenes look at the production of "Apocalypse Now."
  25. Bluebird
    Earnestly well-intentioned and doggedly uncommercial, this is the kind of film that’s worth rooting for in principle, but a solid cast and evocative 35 mm photography can’t compensate for its slightly stultifying familiarity.
  26. Everly
    Alternating patches of violence with sticky sentiment between Everly and her mother and/or daughter, the film isn’t particularly convincing either as a rousing anthology of bloodsport set pieces or a deeply felt portrait of revenge and reunion.
  27. The Salvation
    The Salvation never come across as a pastiche; the world of the spaghetti Western — that desertscape where filthy gunmen leer into frame and life is punctuated by sadism — doesn’t need winks or references to be appreciated, and Levring doesn’t offer any.
  28. The Hunting Ground
    It’s a testament to the wealth of this material that the point is a passing one — just one incidence of institutional hypocrisy among many.
  29. '71
    The setting may be Belfast ’71, but Demange’s sensibility — first-rate suspense coupled with black-and-white politics — is much more James Cameron ’86.
  30. Maps to the Stars
    It’s a movie you’ve seen many times before, just never in the perverse key of Cronenberg.
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