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. Charlie Countryman
    In a film this hapless, it’s hardly a surprise that no one can keep Bucharest and Budapest straight.
  2. Nebraska
    Payne, who never met pathos he didn’t feel inclined to puncture with slapstick humor, has somehow made his best drama and his worst comedy rolled into one.
  3. The Best Man Holiday
    While The Best Man Holiday doesn’t have anything especially original to say on the subject, it’s still refreshing to see a reunion movie set aside the usual themes of aging and reconciliation to focus on how a group deals with death.
  4. Birth of the Living Dead
    Birth briefly staggers to life when the topic of race comes up — not because that angle on Night hasn’t been covered ad nauseam, too, but simply because it seems to inspire the most provocative discussion.
  5. Ass Backwards
    Although some of the road-trip clichés are unavoidable, Ass Backwards overcomes the obvious beats with clever, occasionally dark jokes that reveal the sharpness of its stars’ writing.
  6. How I Live Now
    Ronan acquits herself nicely. Believable as both a smitten leading lady and a resourceful action heroine, she’s the ideal young-adult starlet — though after this and "The Host," maybe it’s time the actress lent her piercing baby blues to a plain old adult project again.
  7. Go for Sisters
    Like much of the later work by writer-director John Sayles, Go For Sisters is overlong, style-less, and dramatically undercooked.
  8. At Berkeley
    An exhilarating, four-hour immersion in life at the University Of California campus.
  9. Great Expectations
    In the end, a thoroughly needless rehash.
  10. The Armstrong Lie
    Those who want to see Armstrong sweat may leave disappointed. Calm and seemingly well rehearsed in interviews, Armstrong shrugs off years of public statements without ever seeming truly remorseful.
  11. The Book Thief
    "Life Is Beautiful" may or may not have set a benchmark for tackiness in Holocaust cinema, but The Book Thief offers a hypothetical way in which the former might have been worse: At least it wasn’t narrated by Death.
  12. The Wind Rises
    While The Wind Rises isn’t top-shelf Miyazaki, it features more than enough gorgeous imagery to make his loss feel acute. Studio Ghibli will surely continue without him, but it’ll never be the same.
  13. Thor: The Dark World
    Forget the fairy-tale romance between Jane and her hammer-wielding hunk. The real emotional center of the Thor series is this sibling rivalry, more compelling than any climactic battle royale or winking teaser for the next chapter.
  14. A Case of You
    The movie is about as generic as modern romantic comedies get.
  15. Diana
    There’s a germ of a smart biopic in Diana; the problem is that it’s tucked away behind a clunky structure and even clunkier dialogue.
  16. Dallas Buyers Club
    There’s something undeniably affecting about that trajectory, which allows McConaughey to turn his character into an empathetic figure — one whose prejudice fades as his fighting spirit intensifies — without sacrificing his rapscallion spirit. He’s the same loudmouthed macho braggart at the end of the movie than he was at the beginning, but now he’s a loudmouthed macho braggart with purpose.
  17. The Broken Circle Breakdown
    Once viewers adjust to the cognitive dissonance between intense Flemish dialogue and English performances of country and bluegrass songs,The Broken Circle Breakdown is a film that will likely stick with them long after the credits roll.
  18. Mr. Nobody
    As philosophy, Mr. Nobody seems sillier than it is profound. But in a parallel reality, more movies would have this degree of insane ambition.
  19. Last Love
    Unfortunately, Nettelbeck also strives to make Last Love a genuinely complex drama rooted in recognizable human behavior, and fails utterly in that effort.
  20. Sal
    Despite its modest proportions and chilling finale, Sal is foremost an affectionate tribute, conjuring ample warmth out of relatively little.
  21. Big Sur
    Nobody’s given the opportunity to do much more than brood prettily and occasionally shout carpe diembromides into the pounding surf.
  22. Man of Tai Chi
    For fans of wushu flicks — or action movies in general — Man Of Tai Chi presents a rare appreciation for the art of conveying movement on screen, while also serving as an impressive physical showcase for its star, stuntman Tiger Chen.
  23. About Time
    The movie is written and directed by the British filmmaker Richard Curtis, who specializes in fantasies — the dozen intersecting rom-coms of "Love Actually" the fairy-tale courtship of "Notting Hill", the endless receptions of "Four Weddings And A Funeral." At a glance, About Time appears to be of a piece with those crowd-pleasers.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Free Birds
    The best moments are jokes that feel grafted onto a film that was probably close to completion before anyone involved realized they were portraying a fight between turkeys and English settlers as the largest conflict in the European colonization of North America.
  25. Last Vegas
    The high point of Last Vegas is also arguably the low point of Robert De Niro’s career.
  26. Ender's Game
    Though it can’t overcome the source material’s problematic themes — namely, Card’s intentionalist morality, which prizes a character’s ideals over their actions — or its all-too-convenient characterizations, the film manages a sustained sense of momentum and tone that is rare for a contemporary, big-budget movie.
  27. Spinning Plates
    As separate snapshots of three fascinating businesses, it’s vivid and engaging.
  28. Capital
    The imagery is cliché, and therefore ineffective; the characters don’t seem to operate in the world of finance, but in the world of financial thrillers.
  29. The Square
    There’s a sense in which The Square feels incomplete, like the first part of a much longer effort. It’s hard to blame Noujaim for presenting it to the public now, but the decision to do so is primarily political, not artistic.
  30. Bastards
    This as one of the director’s most pitiless visions—a drama as pitch black as the night that envelops its characters.
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