The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,436 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 10436
  2. Mixed: 3,746 out of 10436
  3. Negative: 1,112 out of 10436
10436 movie reviews
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    • 56 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Citizen Gangster
    It feels like Morlando is juggling two movies at a time. And only one of them works really well-the one about a disaffected workaday vet avenging himself on the banality of his daily grind.
  2. Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
    At two and a half hours, Warriors Of The Rainbow has the shape of something weightier than the simplified good-vs.-evil movie it actually is.
  3. Headhunters
    Headhunters' title rapidly turns literal, and what seemed like a lightweight heist thriller careens into a bloody-minded game of cat and mouse.
  4. The Giant Mechanical Man
    Fischer at least has personal and romantic reasons to be involved with this film, but audiences are unencumbered by such obligations, and should heed the title's warning sign and opt out of Kirk, Fischer, and Messina's fruitless little circle of pain.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Elles
    Elles is racy and often sexy, but underneath that simmers an old-school feminist anger.
  6. Bernie
    Though the lightness of Bernie can get disconcerting at times, even cartoonish, Linklater approaches the story with a bemused curiosity that seems about right under the circumstances.
  7. The Five-Year Engagement
    A lovely, sweet, funny, romantic, and supremely worthwhile endeavor that unfortunately takes longer to wrap up than it should.
  8. Fightville
    The dramatic stakes are high in Fightville, and Epperlein and Tucker shine a little light on the margins of this marginalized sport.
  9. Oki's Movie
    As always with Hong's films, Oki's Movie goes through stretches where it seems aimless and self-indulgent, followed by stretches where it's sharp, funny, and poetic.
  10. The Day He Arrives
    The Day He Arrives is a talky movie, full of long, boozy scenes and cosmic coincidences - and in that it echoes Allen, as well as Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, and the best of British kitchen-sink drama.
  11. The Moth Diaries
    Writer-director Mary Harron, a supremely intelligent adaptor who did wonders with the screen version of Bret Easton Ellis' "American Psycho," simply doesn't have the chops to give this story the florid kick it needs.
  12. Chimpanzee
    It isn't easy to insult the intelligence of preschoolers, but Chimpanzee's insistence on turning the two gangs into the Sharks and the Jets does the job long before Allen lapses into his Home Improvement grunting.
  13. Marley
    That's a lot for any film to unpack, and "The Last King Of Scotland" director Kevin MacDonald deserves a lot of credit simply for keeping the narrative coherent.
  14. Think Like a Man
    An insanely overlong infomercial for the book.
  15. Goodbye First Love
    The result is a movie that's poignant, bittersweet, and true.
  16. The Lucky One
    As a pretty, low-stakes bayou romance The Lucky One works well enough. When asked to carry any kind of dramatic weight, however, it collapses.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Monsieur Lazhar
    More than a class full of convincing child actors and a genuinely affecting performance by Fellag, Falardeau offers a film as believably wrenching, and finally cathartic, as the grieving process itself.
  18. Lockout
    More than any masculine heroics, Pearce's primary job is maintaining the tone: smug, irreverent, and giddily punch-drunk.
  19. Life Happens
    The indie rom-com/sitcom L!fe Happens is a case study in how bad movies can turn an ordinary, relatable situation into a grotesque distortion with only a passing resemblance to the way actual human beings live and interact with each other.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Late Bloomers
    As a portrait of aging, Late Bloomers is a little too easy, but its cast makes it worth a look, even so.
  21. The Lady
    This is an inspiring and important story, but worthiness doesn't automatically equal quality. Had Besson looked for unexpected ways into Suu Kyi's life, or even had he indulged his old impulses and made a slick, surface-y Luc Besson movie, then The Lady might've been more memorable.
  22. How to Grow a Band
    Thile has the charisma, presence, and emotional transparency of a great documentary subject, but How To Grow A Band maintains a respectable distance from its subject that ultimately doesn't work in its favor.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Hit So Hard
    Hit So Hard offers glimpses of the ragged heyday of grunge that are so compelling, it's a shame the film didn't stay with them instead of continuing along a standard story of a rock 'n' roll downfall by way of drug addiction followed by a slow recovery.
  24. Here
    There's a weary soul to HERE, embodied by Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal as two loners who meet in a café and impulsively decide to travel the country together, prompted more by mutual intuition than any meaningful exchange of words.
  25. Detention
    Detention is ballsy, audacious, and uncompromising, but the overall effect of Kahn's Hellzapoppin-meets-Twitter aesthetic is exhausting rather than energizing. It's an ice-cream headache of a movie-movie that's so relentlessly "fun," it's borderline obnoxious.
  26. The Cabin in the Woods
    It's an exercise in metafiction that, while providing grisly fun, never distances viewers. And it's entertaining, while asking the same question of viewers and characters alike: Why come to a place you knew all along was going to be so dark and dangerous?
  27. Blue Like Jazz
    For all its low-key charms, the coming-of-age story risks being too Christian for secular audiences and too secular and colorful for Christian audiences: Like its spiritual seeker of a protagonist, it's caught between worlds.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Three Stooges
    The Three Stooges isn't very funny, but it is, like last year's far superior "The Muppets," a sincere act of fandom on an epic scale.
  29. Touchback
    Entering the minor canon of movies named after sports regulations - move over, "Offside!" - Don Handfield's Touchback takes a handoff from "Peggy Sue Got Married" and "It's A Wonderful Life" and runs it up the middle for a modest gain.
  30. Post Mortem
    Larrain crafts Post Mortem as a slow, quiet character study, narrowing in on Castro in his home and office while the world outside descends into madness.
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