The A.V. Club's Scores

Select another publication »
For 10,419 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: 5,574 out of 10419
  2. Mixed: 3,737 out of 10419
  3. Negative: 1,108 out of 10419
10419 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Mean Girls
    The film lacks the discipline to stay on point all the time, but Fey and director Mark S. Waters (Freaky Friday) have fun with offbeat throwaway touches.
  2. People Say I'm Crazy
    What's so remarkable about the movie is how matter-of-fact it is.
  3. The Agronomist
    Driven by Dominique's personal magnetism, The Agronomist is a haunting, inspirational valentine to free speech and human resilience.
  4. MC5*: A True Testimonial
    MC5's mix of showmanship, hippie idealism, and brawling Detroit muscle makes it tough to categorize, and A True Testimonial carefully moves through each step of the progression.
  5. Man on Fire
    Scott's latest exercise in assaultive excess nevertheless lingers for two and a half hours, like a drunken houseguest who won't leave.
  6. The Twilight Samurai
    The film is a bit of a slog, but in the end, it's a slog worth taking, thanks to a strange, moving ending that reduces the samurai era's codes of warfare, class, and honor down to two men meeting face to face.
  7. 13 Going on 30
    Cheers and many happy returns to Garner as she makes her first starring film role. She's the real deal. But jeers to every other aspect of 13 Going On 30.
  8. This So-Called Disaster: Sam Shepard Directs the Late Henry Moss
    The scattered insights in This So-Called Disaster aren't worth the sifting it takes to find them.
  9. Annie Get Your Gun (re-release)
    Though the film suffers from Sidney's point-and-shoot approach to the Robert Alton-staged musical numbers, it's buoyed nicely by the songs themselves, a clever script, crisp Technicolor cinematography, and Hutton's spirited performance.
  10. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
    The film succeeds by expertly melding the two stages of Tarantino's career. The rambling Tarantino of "Jackie Brown" and "Pulp Fiction" is evident in every lovingly crafted and delivered monologue, each leisurely paced scene and long take. The more action-oriented, fight-intensive Tarantino reappears in the viscerally exciting bursts of ultra-violence that punctuate the stretches of dialogue.
  11. The Punisher
    Sadly, The Punisher is about little more than bullets hitting bone, and how good it might feel to be on the right end of a gun.
  12. Gypsy 83
    The outsider road picture Gypsy 83 means well, but writer-director Todd Stephens can't keep his aesthetic out of the way.
  13. Connie and Carla
    Seems as much an imposter in the drag-queen world as its heroines; it fronts the sort of safely asexual gay characters found on network TV.
  14. Young Adam
    In this long, slow fall from grace, unceremonious nudity and half-hearted sex begin to look like a mockery of a paradise lost.
  15. A Thousand Peace Clouds Encircle the Sky
    Ultimately, the film is the kind of neither-fish-nor-fowl work unlikely to satisfy anyone: There's not enough hot-and-heavy action for thrill-seekers, and not enough substance for those looking for above-the-waistline kicks.
  16. The Middle of the World
    When they (the family) arrive at their destination, the story arrives at an ending that's neither obvious nor interesting, kind of like the film leading up to it.
  17. Twentynine Palms
    For most of the way, the film is perceptive about the hot-and-cold volatility of wounded relationships, when couples are struggling to communicate yet familiar enough to exploit each other's weaknesses.
  18. The Girl Next Door
    It sputters whenever it has to move the story along, and it too often forgets to pay attention to Cuthbert; it makes a point about the mistake of treating women as sex objects, but it's perfectly content to use her as a plot device for the second and third acts.
  19. The Whole Ten Yards
    The least necessary sequel since "Agent Cody Banks" embarked on a London mission a few weeks ago.
  20. I'm Not Scared
    Cinematographer Italo Petriccione gives the film a dramatic look, but that never compensates for the lack of actual drama; when so much of the conflict concerns Cristiano's reluctance to betray his father, it might have helped to spend more time on exploring that relationship than on capturing what light looks like when it pours in from a cellar door.
  21. The Alamo
    Turns into an edited-for-TV version of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch"--flat, bloodless, and utterly bereft of period grit.
  22. Ella Enchanted
    None of it would work without Hathaway, whose self-possession and lack of irony represents a throwback to old-fashioned Hollywood wholesomeness and glamour.
  23. Johnson Family Vacation
    It's a sign of trouble when watching a movie prompts nostalgia for the movie it's ripping off, particularly when that movie wasn't any good. But walking out of Johnson Family Vacation, it's hard not to feel misty-eyed for the urine-soaked-sandwich gags, incest jokes, and other refined comic elements of "National Lampoon's Vacation."
  24. The Blonds
    Grapples with tough subject matter, and earns a little leeway in its approach.
  25. Walking Tall
    To its credit, the new Walking Tall is a good half-hour shorter than its predecessor, but even at 86 minutes, sitting through it is a chore.
  26. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
    It IS a little obvious, but that's the way it goes with spiritual enlightenment. The film's lessons are plain--spoken aloud, even--and deal with the close relationship between what can be shed in this life and what binds people to the world in spite of their best efforts to purify.
  27. The Prince and Me
    Few actresses exude restless intelligence as effortlessly as Stiles, which is fortunate, since Martha Coolidge's film relies on that forceful charisma to make it past awful dialogue, contrived situations, and hokey use of Disney-style butterflies.
  28. Adored
    Adored stands at the crossroads where Telemundo and beefcake magazines collide, but for strangers to that intersection, the film's camp value is exceeded only by its tedium.
  29. Hellboy
    Pretty much impossible not to like a little, but it's also hard to like a lot. There's a fantastic film to be made from this material, but now, the burden of making it falls to a sequel.
  30. Home on the Range
    A sweet, raucously funny, comic Western that corrects a glaring historical injustice by finally surveying the Old West through the eyes of cows rather than cowboys.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »