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. Particle Fever
    Particle Fever, to its great credit, is very rarely dry. There’s a palpable excitement throughout, even as the work moves slowly, and the physicists themselves are charming and straightforward enough (“We won’t know how, but it’s gonna change everything”) to make it a compelling, if sometimes difficult to follow, story.
  2. Bethlehem
    Superficially similar to Hany Abu-Assad’s Oscar-nominated Omar, it’s a considerably more complex and nuanced examination of the conflicted loyalties and dangerous relationships that characterize daily life in the Middle East, featuring remarkably strong, charismatic performances by a host of mostly non-professional actors.
  3. The Grand Budapest Hotel
    Anderson’s latest invention, The Grand Budapest Hotel, may be his most meticulously realized, beginning with the towering, fictional building for which it’s named.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Mr. Peabody & Sherman
    Unlike the whimsical, slapstick-driven shorts on which it’s based, this feature-length adaptation adds an obligatory emotional arc that feels at odds with the zany spirit of historical time-travel tales.
  5. Journey to the West
    Showcases Chow at his weirdest and most entertaining.
  6. 300: Rise of an Empire
    Murro doesn’t so much direct as frame and stage, placing the characters against digital desktop-wallpaper skies and constructing each battle scene as a showcase for the characters’ prowess and toughness.
  7. The Face of Love
    The Face Of Love provides itself with countless similar opportunities for emotional sweep, and squanders most of them by being workmanlike and unambitious, presuming that a story and a string score are enough to carry a movie.
  8. In Fear
    In Fear takes place almost entirely inside a moving car, severely limiting both the cast’s isolation (a big factor in Blair Witch’s strategy) and the extent to which they could wander off in an unexpected direction. Instead, the film simply goes in circles.
  9. Stalingrad
    The film calms down a bit in its second half, leaving more room for Bondarchuk’s striking wartime tableaux, making occasional use of its native 3-D cinematography. (The movie, a massive success in Russia last year, will screen primarily in IMAX 3D venues in the U.S.)
  10. Son of God
    It’s hard to think of another movie in which Jesus’ followers are so clearly shown as Jews themselves. There’s a quietly powerful post-Crucifixion scene in which the disciples say Kaddish for their fallen leader.
  11. The Bag Man
    The Bag Man plays like a film from the years right after "Pulp Fiction," when the indie market was suddenly flooded with quips, guns, and hollow affectation.
  12. Kids for Cash
    What May is really after, in other words, is a glimpse at a post-Columbine America, where punishments don’t always fit crimes, cures are often worse than diseases, and the courts are frequently being used as a catchall solution to very normal discipline problems.
  13. The Lunchbox
    The Lunchbox ultimately registers as a too-hesitant portrayal of hesitancy, and its pleasures are largely incidental.
  14. Odd Thomas
    Odd Thomas is at its best when it’s presenting — rather than commenting upon or explaining — juxtapositions of the wholesome and the supernatural.
  15. Non-Stop
    Part locked-room mystery, part political allegory, Non-Stop is one of the most purely enjoyable entries in the ongoing cycle of Liam Neeson action-thrillers.
  16. Ernest & Célestine
    Once upon a time, a movie like this would have seemed a minor pleasure, enjoyable, but unremarkable. Today, it looks more like a treasure.
  17. 3 Days to Kill
    Costner, by contrast, is too laidback to intimidate; he seems less battle-wearied than simply weary, nailing only half of the profitable “aging ass-kicker” equation. Firefights and car chases just don’t suit this movie star of advancing years.
  18. Pompeii
    Fortunately, Pompeii’s second half is tailor-made for Anderson’s established skill set, unfolding over a matter of hours, with many scenes set in and under a gladiatorial amphitheatre that recalls the arenas, subterranean tunnels, and cavernous vessels of Anderson’s best movies.
  19. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
    Director Chiemi Karasawa is on her best footing when she deals with Stritch not as a Broadway icon and occasional film and TV star, but rather as a woman approaching 90 and holding on thanks to lack of filtering and an indomitable will to perform.
  20. In Secret
    If it weren’t for the costumes, the basic plot could be mistaken for a 19th-century version of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" or "Double Indemnity."
  21. Omar
    Knotty and tense for most of its running time, Omar becomes muddled in its closing minutes, conflating personal and political treachery.
  22. Child's Pose
    Sporting a blonde dye job and a haughty, impervious manner, Gheorghiu makes Cornelia a consistently compelling figure, at once monstrous and pathetic.
  23. Jimmy P.
    Casting two great actors as doctor and patient helps a little.
  24. Winter's Tale
    Though viewers may have trouble watching any of this with a straight face, the movie’s goofy corniness becomes marginally endearing, in a hobbling-puppy sort of way.
  25. Date and Switch
    In effect, it feels a lot like the characters at its center — not terrible, just incomplete. A comic take on this premise and these themes feels like a necessity in 2014. Unfortunately, Date And Switch isn’t the movie this day and age needs.
  26. Endless Love
    The film also contains fleeting moments of authenticity. Most of these come courtesy of Robert Patrick, who plays David’s father, and Greenwood. Together, these two veteran actors turn could-be-thankless “good dad/bad dad” roles into credible depictions of wounded masculinity. Unfortunately, the movie isn’t about them.
  27. Easy Money: Hard to Kill
    True to its franchise roots, the film is atmospheric, well acted, and frustratingly intent on draining every last drop of pleasure from the genre-movie conventions it cannibalizes.
  28. About Last Night
    Despite a few deviations, About Last Night is basically the same sanitized rom-com, bearing the slightest hint of resemblance to its source material. In other words, most of the perversity of Perversity has again been excised — the Chicago too.
  29. The New Black
    The film largely lacks the urgency its subject demands. It’s an extended news segment in the form of a feature film.
  30. RoboCop
    This RoboCop earns its stripes, mostly for the seriousness with which it treats its Frankenstein story.
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