The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Crank: High Voltage
    It'd be silly to call Crank: High Voltage over the top: The top is so far below that it isn't even visible. But at this mostly unexplored altitude--only 2007's inferior "Shoot 'Em Up" comes close.
  2. Every Little Step
    It's a huge improvement over the Attenborough film; given the film’s non-fiction roots, it seems poetically apt that a documentary take is much more satisfying and engaging than the Hollywood treatment.
  3. Is Anybody There?
    The script is always shakier than the performers trying to bring it across, and by the third act, it lets them down completely.
  4. Lemon Tree
    This story--or stories like it--has been told and re-told too often. Lemon Tree works best when Riklis cuts out the predictable melodrama and trusts the fertility of his central metaphor.
  5. Anvil! The Story of Anvil
    Yet in his despair, there's something Kudlow misses, and it's what makes Anvil! as moving as it is hilarious.
  6. Dragonball: Evolution
    The film is crammed with treats for old-school "Dragonball" fans, from the inclusion of all these characters (who don't actually do much) to the moment when spiky-haired Goku dons his orange gi. For everyone else, this amounts to another seen-it-before, probably-willing-to-see-it-again distraction.
  7. Hannah Montana: The Movie
    The only folks Montana is interested in pleasing are prepubescent girls and Disney stockholders.
  8. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
    Only Sarsgaard shows a pulse, creating a self-destructive, omnisexual rogue who, for all his faults, would probably be great company. The same can't be said for the film around him.
  9. Observe and Report
    Something of a cross between the formalist whimsy of Wes Anderson and the God's-lonely-man psychosis of "Taxi Driver," the film breaks all the rules, but the tonal schizophrenia that results isn't an accident.
  10. Adventureland
    Jesse Eisenberg stars as a kinder, gentler version of the insufferable faux intellectual he played in "The Squid And The Whale."
  11. Sugar
    Instead of hitting all the usual beats, Sugar just moseys in a mostly delightful way.
  12. Alien Trespass
    Even the movie's rubber monsters look tired.
  13. Fast & Furious
    The action scenes don't always get the balance between flash and danger right, but the movie remains agreeably dopey--presenting street-racing culture as a hotbed of colorful stereotypes and lipstick lesbianism--until a climax that just isn't there.
  14. Gigantic
    Any resemblance the film bears to real people and real situations is purely coincidental.
  15. Paris 36
    The overstuffed film lumbers across clichés of the heart and of history until it reaches a big, tune-filled climax that isn't worth the wait.
  16. The Song of Sparrows
    It's easier to find enjoyment in Sparrows on a moment-by-moment basis than to swallow its message whole, but that method squares just fine with Majidi's aesthetic, in which tiny, quiet joys are the best kind.
  17. Tulpan
    A beautifully choreographed and photographed story about tradition and modernity in rural Asia.
  18. Goodbye Solo
    What distinguishes Goodbye Solo, beyond Savané’s larger-than-life personality bumping up against West’s intractable curmudgeon, is the continued particularity of Bahrani’s work.
  19. Monsters vs Aliens
    On some level, the latest DreamWorks CGI project isn't a movie so much as a gag-delivery system wrapped in special effects. The story is crammed with incident, yet completely trifling; there are a ton of personalities, but no real characters.
  20. 12 Rounds
    There's something strangely charming about films that are all artifice, explosions, and naked calculation. 12 Rounds is at least honest trash: It never pretends to be anything other than manic schlock.
  21. American Swing
    American Swing could use the flair of similar portraits of disco-era debauchery like "Boogie Nights" or "Inside Deep Throat," but it’s even-handed in capturing the operation’s ambition and hubris. Just don’t bring an appetite.
  22. The Haunting in Connecticut
    As a piece of storytelling, The Haunting In Connecticut is pretty lazy. As a horror movie, it’s lazier still, bringing out every annoying shock-cut and disorienting sound-design trick of the last decade.
  23. Guest of Cindy Sherman
    It all begins to feel tawdry, especially since Paul H-O never seems to realize that even though he wants everyone to know who he is, he’s never given a good reason why we should.
  24. Shall We Kiss?
    The very definition of "breezy." It's a featherweight romantic comedy.
  25. Knowing
    Knowing frequently feels one Revelation quote away from turning into a chiding, fundamentalist-friendly end-of-the-world movie in the "Left Behind" mold.
  26. Sin Nombre
    Fukunaga paints better outside the lines, working with cinematographer Adriano Goldman to offer vivid shots of the poverty and despair cutting through Latin America, of gang rituals and territorial skirmishes, and of ordinary people taking dangerous routes to a better life that may be a mirage. Next time, a few rewrites please.
  27. I Love You, Man
    What saves I Love You, Man, at least partially, is the relaxed chemistry between Paul Rudd and Jason Segel, both very funny men who are genuine enough to push back against a premise that's often maddeningly artificial.
  28. Duplicity
    The female lead in Duplicity calls for the kind of atomic, glow-in-the-dark, Rita Hayworth-in-Gilda sexuality that is most assuredly out of Roberts' range. Angelina Jolie effortlessly conjures up that kind of fire-breathing sexiness. Roberts? Not so much.
  29. The Great Buck Howard
    Buck Howard has a nice feel for its tacky, second-rate show-business milieu--a rinky-dink world of telethons, small towns starved for entertainment, and entertainers whose careers have been in freefall since Hollywood Squares went off the air.
  30. Skills Like This
    Skills Like This is never great. But for its first half-hour, it's more fitfully amusing than a movie about a bank-robbing playwright ought to be.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »