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. Iron Island
    Iron Island is at its most compelling early, as Rasoulof explores his human-scaled ant farm, detailing how people make lives for themselves in cramped quarters, using cardboard partitions and jerry-rigged appliances.
  2. Drawing Restraint 9
    It's hard to shake the sense that there's less here than meets the eye, but what meets the eye burns with a rare intensity.
  3. Inside Man
    With juicy supporting roles for Chiwetel Ejiofor and Willem Dafoe as Washington's fellow officers, the film works best when the characters are just sitting back and shooting the breeze, which is what they're doing much of the time. Here, puzzling out a robbery is more fun than stopping it.
  4. Stay Alive
    A laughable would-be fright-fest that's as strikingly inept as a Boll movie, but nowhere near as much guilty fun.
  5. The Beauty Academy of Kabul
    Mermin presents all this without editorial comment, and her film would be worth watching if only for its look at a profound culture-clash. But it goes one better, and delves into one of those clashing cultures, capturing it in a moment of change that goes far beyond one beauty academy's superficial concerns.
  6. Lonesome Jim
    It finds some fine comedic moments when it stops focusing on Affleck's never-ending angst and starts exploring small-town oddness.
  7. L'Enfant (The Child)
    L'Enfant is intended as a pointed critique of pop culture's celebration of arrested adolescence. The title could refer to Renier's baby, Renier himself, or even the gang of schoolboy robbers that he's gathered around himself.
  8. Stoned
    Apart from Considine, the actors all deliver superficial performances beneath several layers of slathered-on Summer Of Love drag, and Woolley's use of multiple film stocks and flash-cut editing jumbles together a bunch of '60s filmmaking clichés without putting them to any particular use.
  9. Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector
    Laughing at this turkey might not necessarily make you a redneck, but it sure does make you easily amused.
  10. American Gun
    The Sutherland segments are the most bothersome, because they never really reach a resolution, and because they're betrayed by Avelino's uni-faceted approach.
    • The A.V. Club
  11. V for Vendetta
    Mostly, it's content to remain a compelling, visually striking political mystery with some big ideas woven into it--subversive notions about integrity, liberty, and political change.
  12. Find Me Guilty
    A new courtroom comedy that finds Diesel chewing scenery in a role originally intended, and seemingly custom-made, for Joe Pesci.
  13. She's the Man
    Bynes appears in practically every scene, and the film seems to have been designed as a showcase for her comedic skills, which she apparently left behind in the trailer.
  14. Thank You for Smoking
    Much like his father Ivan (Ghostbusters), first-time director Jason Reitman has a broad, anything-goes comedic sensibility that allows silly gags and incidental humor to sneak in alongside the satirical barbs.
  15. Take My Eyes
    Take My Eyes might look and sound like an earnest message movie, but its bone-deep understanding of the tricky psychology of abuse feels effortlessly authentic.
  16. Don't Come Knocking
    It's a beautiful mess, but it's a mess all the same.
  17. The Devil's Miner
    So polished that it might pass for a scripted narrative feature, but that's not a bad thing. They found a remarkable spokesman in Bolivian teenager Basilio Vargas, and while his cogent, organized descriptions of his life, beliefs, history, and ambitions sometimes seem too calculated, at least they're calculated to communicate efficiently and appealingly.
  18. Iluzija
    Ristovski wants the plight of a bullied moppet to serve as a sweeping metaphor for Macedonian struggle, but his miserablist excesses have the effect of converting realism into a graphic cartoon.
  19. Failure to Launch
    The only bright spot--beyond McConaughey's boyish Southern charm and a pleasant soundtrack--is Zooey Deschanel as Parker's acid-tongued roommate, whose quirks include alcoholism and nihilism. Someone really should tell Deschanel that she's already too big and too good for thankless Eve Arden roles.
  20. The Hills Have Eyes
    Thanks to assured direction and a fine cast, Hills isn't terrible, only terribly unnecessary.
  21. The Shaggy Dog
    Okay, so when does the fun start?
  22. Ask the Dust
    Ask The Dust may find Towne a little past his prime, but after so much time in the Hollywood wilderness, it's good to see him trying again.
  23. Duck Season
    Mexican writer-director Fernando Eimbcke got his start in short films and documentaries, and his first feature reveals a gift for concision: It doesn't overexert itself trying to come to big conclusions about these characters, and even the comedic scenes settle for gentle quirks over broad guffaws.
  24. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
    The Heart Is Deceitful has a daring that's hard to dismiss, even when it only amounts to Argento shamelessly getting off on human rot.
  25. Evil
    It's more about giving rich bullies the same comeuppance afforded to sneering wardens with bullwhips, and on those superficial grounds, it's reasonably gripping.
  26. Game 6
    Hoffman makes impressive use of his low budget, thanks to a talented cast, an atmospheric soundtrack by Yo La Tengo, and the general feeling of confidence that a veteran director can bring to a project. But too much of Game 6 is designed to seem deeper than it really is.
  27. 16 Blocks
    Richard Wenk's familiar screenplay laboriously establishes Willis as an exhausted, limping shell of a man rotting internally from decades of alcoholism and self-hatred. Yet whenever the film requires it, Willis magically morphs into a super-cop with the lightning-fast reflexes of an 18-year-old Navy SEAL.
  28. Aquamarine
    Adapted (and significantly reshaped) from a young-adult book by novelist Alice Hoffman, Aquamarine has the tossed-off quality of an ABC Family TV movie. Its lessons come pre-digested.
  29. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    Block Party is largely a giant love-fest, which is fitting given the staggering amount of simpatico musical and comic talent on display, though some conflict surfaces nevertheless.
  30. Ultraviolet
    Underdeveloped antagonist Nick Chinlund sums up the entire film during one of his rants about Jovovich's latest casual, offhand slaughter: "One woman against 14 men! It's ridiculous!" Well, yeah.
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