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. Whatever Works
    Though Clarkson acquits herself reasonably well in a terribly conceived role, her entrance interrupts David’s hilariously twisted mentorship of Wood and sends the movie careening in a far less promising direction.
  2. The Proposal
    It's the material that stinks, failing to give even an old pro like White more than a couple of modest laughs.
  3. Year One
    Year One isn't dreadful; it just isn't nearly as funny as it hopes to be.
  4. $9.99
    Keret’s alternately sweet and bitter sense of humor comes through clearly in $9.99, via warm voicework by vets like Geoffrey Rush and Anthony LaPaglia.
  5. Dead Snow
    The concept doesn't go much further than the wardrobe department--that is, until a deliriously over-the-top climax finally rouses the film from its "Evil Dead"-mimicking stupor.
  6. Under Our Skin
    Well-produced and engaging, but it’s also anecdotal and conspiratorial, and damnably non-confrontational.
  7. Moon
    Moon is enjoyable as much for its small scale and solid execution as for its crazy twists and creeping existential dread.
  8. Food, Inc.
    Like many social issue documentaries, Food, Inc. is better at addressing problems than offering solutions: its endorsement of organic food in particular feels a little flimsy. Nevertheless, it’s entertaining and fast-moving enough to make audiences intermittently forget they’re consuming cinematic health food.
  9. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
    Tony Scott’s bracingly awful remake/desecration of the classic ‘70s thriller.
  10. Imagine That
    Though he commits to a lot of embarrassing silliness, Murphy projects so little genuine warmth that his transformation barely registers.
  11. Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
    Love looks and sounds great, but in depicting N’Dour as a lofty symbol for music’s power to bridge worlds and inspire, it sometimes loses sight of the man.
  12. Tetro
    It's the product of a great dreamer and aesthete, rather than an authentic emotional experience--a gorgeous, crystalline bauble that really catches the light.
  13. The Hangover
    It's an agreeably unambitious comedy that might be called a romp, if that word didn't imply a little too much energy.
  14. Séraphine
    Séraphine is far more powerful when it lingers on Louis at work.
  15. Away We Go
    Though Away We Go lacks the screwball unpredictability of something like "Flirting With Disaster," it compensates with a unexpected depth of feeling, a novelist’s (or memoirist’s) sense of detail, and a panoramic view of what home means.
  16. Land of the Lost
    It doesn't help that neither Ferrell nor McBride bring their best material, with McBride offering yet another variation on an angry redneck, and Ferrell falling back on Ron Burgundy-like bluster and nonsense exclamations.
  17. My Life in Ruins
    Vardalos has brought back the tourist comedy and delivered the dumbed-down "If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" no one wanted.
  18. Downloading Nancy
    In short, this is a movie about bruised people bruising each other, and if Downloading Nancy had more of an openly pulpy sensibility, then the repugnant premise might’ve had some lasting impact.
  19. 24 City
    Mostly, 24 City falls into the same Jia trap of inadvertently drawing the viewers' gaze past his human subjects and to the poetic images of a country in painful metamorphosis.
  20. Unmistaken Child
    Baratz’s apparent willingness to accept everything at face value papers over some of the more troubling aspects of Tenzin’s mission, but Unmistaken Child allows the mysteries of the process to be preserved without judgment.
  21. Up
    Up is challenging, emotionally and narratively, but it trusts viewers to keep up; Pixar has never been interested in talking down to children or their parents.
  22. Drag Me to Hell
    Raimi’s new film feels distinctly unburdened and fun, happily frolicking in its own pulp silliness.
  23. Departures
    Here's a great way to start savoring life: Don't waste it on pat manipulations like this.
  24. Pontypool
    Primarily though, the film works as a tour de force for McHattie--a veteran character actor making the most of his character’s long, fluid monologues--and as a sly commentary on journalistic responsibility.
  25. What Goes Up
    What Goes Up has a one-of-a-kind character in Coogan, a cynic with a savior complex, who lies partly out of convenience, and partly because he knows--as Glatzer and Lawson know--that even a messy story can still inspire.
  26. The Girlfriend Experience
    The thinking behind Grey's casting, with its obvious sex-industry connections, lends the film a degree of verisimilitude, but it really pays off in a cameo by film critic Glenn Kenny, who brings a hilariously sleazy theatricality to the role of an "escort critic" who expects graft for his reviews.
  27. O'Horten
    O’Horten feels like a waking dream. It's a film of subtle, insinuating charm, a character study about an eminently sane, reasonable man unsteadily navigating an increasingly insane, unreasonable world.
  28. Easy Virtue
    Easy Virtue needs a strong center to justify its celebration of American effrontery, and Biel lacks that prideful edge.
  29. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
    It’s a busier and less coherent film, too, with a baffling master plot and a crowded pileup of special effects in search of something to do.
  30. Dance Flick
    It would be hard to imagine a film with less going for it than Dance Flick.
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