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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  1. The Double Hour
    Pretty to look at, making good use of the scenery in and around Turin; if nothing else, the runaway plot keeps the movie unpredictable.
  2. Armadillo
    For their part, the Danes are either having more of an adventure or covering up their trauma with chest-thumping braggadocio; almost to a man, they're ready to come back for more.
  3. Ceremony
    Trouble is, it feels like a film going through the motions, never finding mooring in believable human feelings.
  4. Rio
    Rio could use fresher ingredients and more spice.
  5. To Die Like a Man
    To Die Like A Man is powerfully controlled, and builds to a moving finale in which the characters are stripped down to their essences: no flowers, just stem.
  6. Blank City
    In the end, Blank City becomes not just a salute to the artistic adventurousness of a bygone New York, but a reminder that new strains of creativity keep emerging, just when the scene looks stalest.
  7. Henry's Crime
    A grating muddle.
  8. American: The Bill Hicks Story
    Like "Man In The Moon," American applies a thick gloss of reverence and sentimentality to the story of a comic pioneer who made his living challenging the kinds of neat, convenient, slickly packaged narratives presented here.
  9. Soul Surfer
    Unique as an inspirational personal-achievement film in the way it focuses on the protagonist not merely as a bastion of strength, but as part of a supportive community and family.
  10. In a Better World
    Bier allows her film to be buried by its own overwrought ambition.
  11. Meek's Cutoff
    Meticulous and immersive, Meek's Cutoff feels like history in three dimensions.
  12. Arthur
    Russell Brand steps into the role of Arthur Bach for the 2011 remake, and while it's one of the more reined-in performances of his short, busy big-screen career, Brand's unvarying onscreen persona just doesn't do soulful.
  13. Your Highness
    If Your Highness often feels like an inside joke, the principals neglected to let the audience in on the fun.
  14. Hanna
    Superficially exciting and handled with great aplomb. But the film is running to go nowhere.
  15. Circo
    Though Circo is pretty bleak, Schock doesn't skimp on the exotic wonder of a life on the road, surrounded by color and danger.
  16. Trust
    With a little tweaking, this easily could have veered into grindhouse exploitation or mindless wish-fulfillment, but Schwimmer's detached, theatrical approach to his material makes it is more cerebral than visceral, and more Steppenwolf Theatre than Charles Bronson.
  17. Super
    Super exists in the no-man's land between indie quirk and raw exploitation, and when it works, it's thrillingly off-balance.
  18. Hop
    Candy-coated or otherwise, crap's still crap.
  19. Insidious
    All calculation aside, scary is still scary, and Insidious makes up in old-fashioned tension what it sometimes lacks in originality.
  20. Source Code
    For a while it's the rare film that-in the mold of the first "Matrix" movie and "Inception," although on a more modest scale than either-mixes heady puzzles with gripping suspense.
  21. Cat Run
    Words like "smug," "derivative," and "shallow" could all be fairly applied to the film, but as a piece of late-night exploitation, it delivers the violence and nudity with the regularity of an IV drip, and some familiar faces in the cast help class it up.
  22. Rubber
    While it's admirably perverse for a "killer-tire movie" to be this snooty, it's about half as clever as it thinks it is.
  23. Queen to Play
    Queen To Play has a winning heroine, who fantasizes about being special and then works hard to make it happen. Too bad the rest of the movie is so common.
  24. The Four Times (Le Quattro Volte)
    It's a remote location, but Frammartino's canny eye, wry humor, and careful sense of rhythm make it feel like the best possible spot to observe the workings of the world, from ashes to ashes.
  25. Kill the Irishman
    It's just another gangster movie for the pile.
  26. Potiche
    Funny, twisty, and sometimes bittersweet, Potiche is a fluffy good time, but not entirely insubstantial.
  27. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules
    The sequel, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, isn't motivated to change the formula in the least, but it's ever-so-slightly more palatable, if only for being less of a total spazz.
  28. Sucker Punch
    Browning has wildly expressive eyes and body language, but she turns wooden when delivering Snyder and Steve Shibuya's alternately purple and stilted banter. Like the film, she seems to regard plot and dialogue as necessary evils.
  29. Bal
    Bal mingles the bitter and the sweet, but it gets mired in its own stickiness.
  30. My Perestroika
    My Perestroika is fairly foursquare as documentary filmmaking goes; it isn't stylistically snazzy, nor doggedly vérité. Its closest kin in the genre is Michael Apted's "Up" films, which are similarly focused on how people change over time.
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