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. Oswald's Ghost
    Late in the film, Stone interviews Norman Mailer, a one-time conspiracy-believer who eventually wrote a book that tried to get inside Oswald's head, explaining how Oswald's story is America's story. In less than a minute, Mailer describes the documentary Stone should've made.
  2. Protagonist
    Offers four fairly interesting monologues, undercut by ominous music, stylistic frippery, and a structure that all but guarantees the audience will be able to predict where the stories will go.
  3. The Savages
    The frequent outbursts of comedy help alleviate a tone that's appropriately muted and sad, and Jenkins should be credited for refusing to tack smiley-faces onto a tough, possibly lose-lose situation.
  4. Starting Out in the Evening
    Wagner and company fail to follow Langella's primary rule of storytelling: "Follow the characters around until they do something interesting."
  5. August Rush
    Simultaneously swooningly romantic and transcendently idiotic.
  6. Enchanted
    Adams' winning performance and the light touch director Kevin Lima (a veteran of animation and live action) brings to scenes not tasked with advancing the plot all suggest that, silly as they may look once you take it apart, irony-free, romantic fantasy--animated and otherwise--still has a place on the big screen.
  7. Hitman
    By the time Olyphant leaves an enemy in the most ridiculous deathtrap since the '60s "Batman," just because it looks kinda neat, the whole project has started to feel like "Ultraviolet 2: The Further Stupidening."
  8. I'm Not There.
    An ingenious, maddening film inspired by the "many lives of Bob Dylan."
  9. The Mist
    What is surprising is how he (Darabont) rebounds from his weak, awkwardly compressed opening to produce one of the scariest King films since Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."
  10. This Christmas
    "Christmas" won't wow anyone with its audacity or originality, but it's bound to make plenty of people happy with its slick, crowd-pleasing familiarity.
  11. Beowulf
    Ten years from now, Beowulf may look like the groundbreaking project that helped kill live-action movies, but for the moment, its uncomfortable jokes and fakey rendering of life leave it wedged firmly in the uncanny valley. (Insert your own joke about Jolie's astonishing animated anatomy here.)
  12. Love in the Time of Cholera
    Newell's film arrives loaded with problems. The most superficial, but undeniably distracting, involves the way characters age at different rates and under makeup of varying believability.
  13. Margot at the Wedding
    Margot has a kitchen-sink realism that's genuinely unsettling, like a John Cassavetes movie populated by the hyper-articulate. If nothing else, Baumbach deserves credit for refusing to cozy up to the audience.
  14. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
    The idea of a toy store as a living, responsive being is a good one, but Helm doesn't take that idea to imaginative places.
  15. Redacted
    As an expression of from-the-gut anti-war rage, Redacted is admirable, but as art, it's undercooked.
  16. Smiley Face
    It's a fittingly loose, shambling little nothing of a comedy that's occasionally inspired, but at least a draft or two short of its potential. Still, it's a pleasure to watch Faris--a gifted, likeable comedian who tends to be the best element of many terrible movies.
  17. What Would Jesus Buy?
    It's neither conceptually bold nor slyly satirical when Billy dresses up as a Southern evangelical and sings made-up hymns about "the shopacalypse."
  18. Southland Tales
    The further Kelly bends his funhouse mirror, the more he loses sight of what it was supposed to reflect. By the end, the image has twisted beyond coherence.
  19. No Country for Old Men
    The ultimate vision here is of a hard world in which civilization is the aberration, and the things we fear are always waiting for an excuse to make life normal again.
  20. Fred Claus
    Leave it to Giamatti to bring gravitas to the fat guy in the red suit; he's naturally the straight man in the sibling duo, but whenever Fred Claus goes for the heartstrings, he's the only one capable of plucking in tune.
  21. Lions for Lambs
    All talk and zero characterization, it doesn't even feel like a real movie.
  22. The Life of Reilly
    Spellbinding.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Steal a Pencil for Me
    There's incredible feeling behind Steal A Pencil For Me--enough to sustain two lives throughout unimaginable hardship--but the film doesn't bring much of it to the surface.
  24. Fat Girls
    In the words of his own character, this young filmmaker hasn't found his "inner fat girl."
  25. American Gangster
    Only Washington stands out; he's charming, intense, and charismatic as ever.
  26. Bee Movie
    It's good to have Seinfeld back, even in this watered-down form.
  27. Darfur Now
    It's a heartbreaking tale, a sliver of a tragic history still unfolding, but one that Braun largely leaves others to document.
  28. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
    Temple introduces viewers to Strummer the punster, Strummer the womanizer, and Strummer the poseur, whom his mates could only really talk to when no one else was around.
  29. Martian Child
    It's hard to say what, aside from novelty, is gained by having the boy believe he's from Mars, because the core emotion in the film comes from the simple, common premise of an adoptive father and son trying to forge a life together.
  30. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    Ultimately, the film is just a smart caper picture with some good performances, but at times it's VERY smart, and Hoffman's performance in particular is one of the most natural and unexpectedly affecting that he's given in years.
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