The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Breathe In
    The result puts a handful of good actors on autopilot, maneuvering around Intro To Screenwriting character beats, occasionally accompanied by sappy piano music.
  2. Cheap Thrills
    Even if Cheap Thrills isn’t always plausible, though, it’s still a fair amount of twisted fun, thanks mostly to a surprisingly, effectively low-key turn by Koechner as the game’s emcee.
  3. The Raid 2
    The Raid 2 takes a substantially different tack from that of its 2011 predecessor, adding a convoluted plot and only intermittently attending to the sort of acrobatic ass-kicking for which the original became a global smash.
  4. Cesar Chavez
    What Cesar Chavez critically lacks is a unique, complicated, or personal perspective on its world-famous subject. As is often the problem with portraits of influential firebrands, the film never quite sees past the movement to the man leading it.
  5. Sabotage
    David Ayer’s latest, Sabotage, is a sloppy DEA whodunit, distinguished by its scatological humor and gore.
  6. God's Not Dead
    Even by the rather lax standards of the Christian film industry, God’s Not Dead is a disaster.
  7. Nymphomaniac: Volume II
    Taken as a whole, with volumes one and two in concert, Nymphomaniac looks like nothing less than a career overview, touring each era of the director’s development.
  8. It Felt Like Love
    By the end, audiences may end up craving a more charitable, less dour study of teenage mating habits — one, like the less “realistic” Raising Victor Vargas, that doesn’t portend trauma for any sapling trying to blossom too soon.
  9. Rob the Mob
    The scowling Pitt proves no match for the Tony-winning Arianda, whose brassy, thick-accented positivity could probably cut down the gangsters as mercilessly as any gun. While the pair is robbing the mob, she’s stealing the movie.
  10. Maladies
    All of the actors, including Franco, do excellent work, given the limitations imposed upon them by a scenario that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Were he a struggling up-and-comer rather than a movie star, the perception of an ambitious misfire like this one would probably be quite different. It’s not a good movie, but it deserves better than mockery.
  11. Blood Ties
    With his English-language debut, Blood Ties, Canet takes on material of even less interest to today’s big studios, constructing something much more ambitious than a straight thriller — a sprawling familial crime drama, heavier on relationships than chases or shoot-outs.
  12. Jodorowsky's Dune
    While it’s heartbreaking that the movie never got made (son Brontis Jodorowsky, who would have played Paul Atreides, is particularly poignant imagining his alternate life as a superstar), Jodorowsky’s Dune posits that the raw materials nevertheless left an enduring mark on cinematic sci-fi, providing the basis for famous aspects of "Alien," "Star Wars," and "Contact."
  13. Anita
    The problems with Anita start with director Freida Lee Mock’s attempt to fit this story into the template of a generic empowerment narrative.
  14. Muppets Most Wanted
    The Muppets are creatures of indulgence, and their sense of humor is one of excess. Muppets Most Wanted is a mess of a movie, but anything tidier would be a poor fit.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Divergent
    The ultimate irony is that a series predicated on diverse individuals rising up against totalitarian regiment falls so completely in lock step with all other post-apocalyptic young-adult franchises.
  16. Enemy
    Enemy dives into material Villeneuve has described as “personal.” But it’s hard to see much more than platitudes in the metaphoric muddle of its plot.
  17. Tyler Perry's The Single Moms Club
    Partway through the film, a viewer may begin to yearn for Perry’s usual schizoid shtick, the cacophony of screeches and sobs.
  18. The Cold Lands
    Burdened with tangential musings, The Cold Lands is at its most effective when grappling with those who believe themselves so self-reliant that they refuse help from anyone—be it government, charity, or just a well-meaning friend.
  19. Need For Speed
    Need For Speed’s dialogue-centric scenes are often clunky, and its comic relief is at times embarrassingly unfunny, but whenever Waugh shifts his focus to figuring out how to best convey an ingenious practical stunt with the camera, the movie comes alive.
  20. The Missing Picture
    The Missing Picture might have felt academic, even coldly removed, were it not for its scathing narration, penned by Panh (with Christophe Bataille) and read by Randal Douc.
  21. The Art of the Steal
    Buried underneath the movie’s many layers of pulp fluff and knucklehead comedy is a compelling take on why people are drawn to familiar, generic pleasures—self-aware caper comedies, for instance. Perhaps it’s buried too deeply for its own good.
  22. Teenage
    Like adolescence itself, Teenage is educational, scattered, and over much too quickly.
  23. Dark House
    Director Victor Salva tries very hard to make this seem creepy, but there’s just nothing about chatting with central heating that’s gonna prompt gooseflesh.
  24. Bad Words
    Even when Bad Words is bad in the wrong way, it tends to be bad in the right way, too.
  25. Veronica Mars
    For the most part, Veronica Mars plays like a very solid episode of the series, the kind unlikely to rank among fan favorites. It could, however, serve as fine fuel for a sequel, one that wouldn’t find Veronica resisting — for half of her time on screen — the urge to do what she does best. Keep your hearts (and wallets) open, marshmallows.
  26. On My Way
    This isn’t the kind of movie that’s in a hurry to get anywhere in particular. Still, there’s no need for the journey to be quite so blah.
  27. Le Week-End
    The end of Le Week-End reveals it to be the thoroughly ordinary melodrama a description suggests — a portrait of former ’60s fire-starters who are perfectly happy to settle for embers.
  28. Haunt
    In Haunt, scares are scarce and tropes are liberally lifted from better movies.
  29. Grand Piano
    For all its virtuosic showboating, the film belongs as much to its screenwriter, Damien Chazelle, as it does to its director, Eugenio Mira.
  30. Nymphomaniac: Volume I
    The most shocking thing about Nymphomaniac, with its cock-shot montages and frankly descriptive narration, is how flat-out funny it often is.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »