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 Burning Plain
    The characters in The Burning Plain are so narrowly defined by tragedy that they reveal no other facets of humanity.
  2. Disgrace
    After a compelling opening act and some shocking late-film developments, the film feels disengaged from the action at hand and the issues raised.
  3. Bright Star
    It’s a studied movie that gives itself over to bursts of intensity, and between them sometimes threatens to become as spellbound by its subjects as they become with each other.
  4. 35 Shots of Rum
    The film evolves into a simple, intimate, acutely emotional portrait of a family reaching a painful crossroads.
  5. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
    It’s a fascinating story, it doesn’t always make for a fascinating documentary.
  6. I Can Do Bad All by Myself
    With Bad, Perry is savvy enough to let riveting musical numbers by ringers like Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige--along with Henson’s deeply empathetic performance--carry the film’s feverish emotions more than his characteristically ham-fisted screenplay.
  7. No Impact Man: The Documentary
    The value of No Impact Man, a compelling and suitably exasperating documentary about one family’s attempt to not harm the environment for a year, is that it forces viewers to reflect on their own casual consumption and waste.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Sorority Row
    Sorority Row might be utterly lacking in suspense, surprises, and wit, but nobody can say it doesn’t have a hero.
  9. 9
    It’s a perfectly functional, fairly scary kids’ film, with plenty of craft and creativity to keep adults occupied. But with a story as sophisticated as its visuals, it could have been much more.
  10. Crude
    Crude is so crammed with facts and figures that it can be a little dizzying, but what’s more important is what Berlinger records between all the talking-head interviews and vérité footage.
  11. Walt & El Grupo
    Hardcore Disney fans will appreciate how serious-minded and intimate this movie is, but for others, Walt & El Grupo might feel like an expensive vacation slide show, assembled by strangers.
  12. Gamer
    The trouble with Gamer is that it’s weird, but not weird enough for the long haul.
  13. All About Steve
    How do you make a movie about a protagonist so profoundly irritating that even her loved ones barely tolerate her? And how do you avoid annoying audiences to the point of distraction in the process?
  14. Black Dynamite
    Sometimes feels like an all-time classic short film stretched to feature length, but it’s blissfully short, and it peaks at the end with a groovy cartoon during the closing credits.
  15. Extract
    Nobody is better at capturing the crushing banality of everyday life than Judge.
  16. Amreeka
    Amreeka lacks the sense of humor that set "Aliens In America" apart--and frankly, it’s rarely as insightful about the biases and strengths either of Arab émigrés or of sheltered Midwesterners.
  17. American Casino
    The film doesn’t come to life until too late in the game.
  18. The Final Destination
    The whole movie is just one increasingly dull roll downhill. The same could be said for this once-fresh franchise.
  19. The September Issue
    A fascinating, frustrating documentary.
  20. We Live in Public
    We Live In Public doesn’t show that Harris was a genius so much as that he was a mentally and emotionally unstable egotist, trying to force a revolution in self-broadcasting and connectivity that later happened more naturally.
  21. At the Edge of the World
    Plays like an extended episode of "Deadliest Catch" with eco-warriors as the stars--in fact, the Animal Planet show "Whale Wars," now in its second season, follows Sea Shepherd’s exploits--and it’s frequently a rousing adventure.
  22. Big Fan
    Because the audience isn’t privy to the hero’s thoughts, the final 15 minutes or so of Big Fan are white-knuckle.
  23. Wolke Neun
    Ultimately though, apart from the ages of the protagonists, Cloud 9 is a standard-issue infidelity story.
  24. Halloween II (2009)
    Halloween II provides ample spotlights for Zombie’s visual gifts, but—apart from some striking Oedipal fantasy sequences featuring Sheri Moon Zombie as the spirit of Myers’ mother—we saw most of this last time around, and a lot of promising material leads to dead ends.
  25. Taking Woodstock
    Lee’s movie is pleasant enough, but it’s too swept up in the spirit it’s celebrating to ask the relevant questions.
  26. Inglourious Basterds
    its moments of greatness--and there are more than a couple--feel weirdly disconnected, stuck in a movie that doesn’t know how to put them together, or find a good way to move from one to the next.
  27. World's Greatest Dad
    With Dad and his last writer-director effort, "Sleeping Dogs Lie," Goldthwait has accomplished the formidable feat of making wry, tender, fundamentally sweet comedies about the human condition that just happen to center on acts of autoerotic asphyxiation and bestiality, respectively. That isn't easy.
  28. Post Grad
    When a film whose cast includes Michael Keaton, Jane Lynch, Fred Armisen, Craig Robinson, Demetri Martin, and the now rarely seen Carol Burnett can’t scare up more than a smattering of laughs, the patient was never meant to live in the first place.
  29. Shorts
    Jon Cryer and Leslie Mann have a couple of sly moments as overworked career people, and Spader again proves he learned a lot by working with William Shatner for so long. But the bottomless slapstick and silly effects quickly grow wearying, as does a cast of young actors whose work can politely be called energetic.
  30. Fifty Dead Men Walking
    What makes Fifty Dead Men work is the story’s sheer moral complexity, which dares viewers to sympathize with anyone onscreen for more than a few minutes at a time.
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