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. Life as We Know It
    Pity any poor kid stuck in a house like that. Pity, too, anyone who has to stop by for a visit.
  2. Nowhere Boy
    It's a tender, but sometimes untended, portrait of the artist as a young man-and occasionally as a young asshole-that's handsome, dutiful, and finally, a little dull.
  3. My Soul to Take
    As for the 3-D, much ballyhooed in the film's advertisements, it's another muddy conversion that does little but make the film's unconvincing blood effects look a little darker. It's good, theoretically at least, to have Craven back. But why come back for this?
  4. Inside Job
    From an emotional standpoint, it's enormously satisfying, even cathartic to watch Ferguson "nail" some of the rogues behind the economic crisis with the unseemly zeal of Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report.
  5. Marwencol
    Jeff Malmberg's documentary Marwencol is at its best when it focuses on Hogancamp's little world, and lets the artist walk the viewer through his town's increasingly dense mythology.
  6. Case 39
    Zellweger has come an awful long way since Matthew McConaughey terrorized her in "Texas Chainsaw Masscare": The Next Generation, but not quite as far as she might like to imagine.
  7. The Social Network
    Zuckerberg's story ends up feeling bigger than his own life.
  8. Let Me In
    Let Me In is a beautiful redundancy.
  9. Freakonomics
    Like the 2005 bestseller that inspired it, the movie version of Freakonomics is fleet and accessible, an enjoyably light and lively pop artifact aimed at bringing some unusual economic theories to the masses.
  10. Barry Munday
    This sluggishly paced quirkfest is awfully sophomoric for a film all about giving up the facile thrills of youth for the responsibilities of adulthood.
  11. Douchebag
    At 70 minutes, Douchebag feels both rushed and way too slack, but the bigger problem is that the kind of characters and humor this movie traffics in can be found in a more compact, amusing package on the average FX show.
  12. Hatchet II
    Hatchet II is distinguished both by a funky, frisky sense of humor, and gore of great quality and quantity.
  13. Ip Man
    As a slice of history, Ip Man is disappointingly simplistic. Yip, Wong, and Yen never develop any real tension between Ip's true story and the exaggerated myth-making of a martial-arts movie. But as an exaggerated, myth-making martial-arts movie, Ip Man is often thrilling.
  14. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
    The first time around, Wall Street felt like a warning about the perils of excess just as excess started to exact its toll. This one's little more than a reminder that we all got, and remain, screwed. Noted.
  15. You Again
    Even the best performers can only do so much to elevate mediocre material. In the long run, good or bad, the material always wins.
  16. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
    Unfortunately, the story rarely rises above cookie-cutter kids'-fantasy tropes.
  17. Buried
    Buried is as much about dropped calls, getting sent to voicemail, and being openly lied to by our institutions as it about being buried alive by terrorists.
  18. Howl
    The trouble with the film is that it often feels too respectable for its own good, preserving the facts of yesterday's rebellion while leaving it firmly in the past. Happily, Ginsberg's words still cut recklessly through the years.
  19. Enter the Void
    Enter The Void is a trance-like experience, feeding the shimmering neon of Tokyo at night into a spectacular hallucinogenic head-trip.
  20. Waiting for 'Superman'
    Superman argues convincingly that everyone should have the right to a good education, not just folks lucky enough to score winning numbers: It should be a birthright, not a matter of chance.
  21. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
    Like the worst of late-period Allen, the film recycles character types from his previous work without inventing new reasons to summon them into existence. They're left stranded, seven characters in search of an author.
  22. Jack Goes Boating
    Jack Goes Boating tells a tender story reasonably well, but it rarely lets viewers feel the emotions instead of thoughtfully observing them.
  23. Easy A
    The film is at its best when it isn't afraid to be earnest.
  24. Devil
    Perhaps someday, in the greatest twist of all, Shyamalan will be remembered as the Hitchcock of the early 21st century. Until then, movies like Devil will be misunderstood as schlock.
  25. The Town
    The movie's exterior is solid, but it's hollow inside, like a safe filled with air.
  26. Catfish
    Catfish is absolutely riveting, and even nerve-wracking as Joost and the Schulmans get progressively closer to learning more about their "friends."
  27. Never Let Me Go
    Best approached with little to no advance information or expectations, which is the same way the film's characters experience their lives.
  28. Kings of Pastry
    In a pressure-cooker environment, Pennebaker and Hegedus' moderately engaging but ultimately unsatisfying documentary feels disappointingly lukewarm.
  29. Bran Nue Dae
    The movie builds goodwill doggedly, and then pays it all off with a farcical finale with a rousing message: We're all Aborigines! Who knew?
  30. Legendary
    It does strive for substance and meaning in a way that gives it an unmistakable Barton Fink feeling, if nothing close to a Barton Fink sensibility.
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