L.A. Weekly's Scores

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For 3,750 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 8.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 56
Highest review score: 100 A Bread Factory Part Two: Walk With Me a While
Lowest review score: 0 Deuces Wild
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,540 out of 3750
  2. Mixed: 1,542 out of 3750
  3. Negative: 668 out of 3750
3750 movie reviews
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  1. Four Brothers
    It's a finely tuned Motor City engine: The action, including a nighttime car chase through a blinding snowstorm, is fast, brutal and efficient; the Motown soundtrack never cuts out; and as a gangster called Sweet, the British-Nigerian actor Chiwetel Ejiofor gives an electrifying performance.
  2. The Great Raid
    The Great Raid cries out for the kind of B-movie industriousness that Dahl brought to his early, low-budget films noirs (Kill Me Again, Red Rock West and The Last Seduction), but instead it has dreams of sugarplum Oscars dancing in its head, and never stops mistaking spectacle for the truly spectacular.
  3. Asylum
    I hope to God that Patrick McGrath's novel Asylum, about a bunch of repressed Brits manipulating the stuffing out of one another in a 1950s psychiatric hospital, is better than the shallowly competent exercise in nastiness that British director David Mackenzie and screenwriter Patrick Marber have made of it.
  4. The Goebbles Experiment
    Brilliantly edited for drama and irony, The Goebbels Experiment juxtaposes little-seen German propaganda films with excerpts from Goebbels' diary.
  5. Grizzly Man
    While Grizzly Man is never less than a fascinating portrait of a troubled Peter Pan who couldn't function in human society and tried to remake the animal kingdom into his own private Hanna-Barbera cartoon, it fails to establish Treadwell as much more than a serious headcase, let alone a titanic figure.
  6. Pretty Persuasion
    This is a very funny film about a creepy, excruciatingly lonely world.
  7. Wasabi Tuna
    Fox does have a sharp sense of the absurd that comes out in silly subplots.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pulse
    Whether you take it as horror show or social commentary (or both), this is sublimely terrifying stuff.
  9. Clean
    The emotional truthfulness of Clean enters into our bloodstreams with its muted vigor, and we find ourselves getting hooked by this tale of getting unhooked.
  10. Chaos
    Writer-director David DeFalco's ugly, pointless and dishonest remake of Craven's remake.
  11. A State of Mind
    The stadiums and performance halls of Pyongyang become staging grounds for massive, highly choreographed political pageants that make the Nuremberg rallies look like dinner theater. You’ve never seen anything quite like these dazzling displays of groupthink.
  12. The Dukes of Hazzard
    Director Jay Chandrasekhar (Super Troopers, Club Dread) does a fine job with the car jumps. Just try to wake up whenever you hear "Yee-haw."
  13. Broken Flowers
    It's a romantic comedy in which both the romance and the comedy are turned to such muted levels that any lower would require closed captioning.
  14. 2046
    The result is a film chilly and externalized in all the ways that Mood was bottled up and woozily dreamlike.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    My Date with Drew
    What's most grating, though, is how the film pretends to be an inspiring story about one ordinary guy's pursuit of a quixotic dream to meet his muse, when in fact Herzlinger's adoration of Drew is considerably less heartfelt than his infatuation with himself.
  16. Saint Ralph
    In fairness, the movie isn't the absolute worst of its kind and there's a certain charm to Butcher's amiable, puppy-eyed performance. But Michael McGowan's direction is as flat as an asphalt road, and his script is gasping for air long before it enters the final stretch.
  17. Secuestro express
    Too often, though, Jakubowicz falls back on his relentlessly pirouetting DV camera, attention-deficient editing and ear-splitting sound effects as a substitute for real tension, or a more piercing inquiry into the bubbling tension between South America's haves and its poverty-stricken have-nots.
  18. Duma
    A drama of uncommon beauty and emotional resonance.
  19. The Chumscrubber
    Shrill, smug would-be satire.
  20. Junebug
    Ensemble casts like this are not easy to come by. Adams is something more than that -- a brilliant young comedian bursting into bloom.
  21. Darwin's Nightmare
    But for all its bleakness, Nightmare is a film that demands to be seen. In unflinching terms, it captures the hellish existence endured by the many so that the few may wallow in privilege.
  22. Must Love Dogs
    At once over- and under-written, and peppered with tiresome coincidences and misunderstandings, Goldberg’s mechanical, joke-one, joke-two, joke-three approach to ensemble screenwriting soon betrays his TV-sitcom roots.
  23. Sky High
    Kurt Russell is adorably self-mocking as the cluelessly enthusiastic dad in his dorky superhero uniform, and even the spiffy effects lack self-importance. "The Incredibles" it ain't, but Sky High will do nicely.
  24. Stealth
    Even Cohen can't dull the loony romanticism of the movie’s finale and, to his credit, stages one truly spectacular bit of action midway through, when Biel bails out behind enemy lines and narrates each harrowing moment of her earthward plummet.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Aristocrats
    Delicious fun, indeed, but it doesn't really require a large screen. Please send me a copy of the DVD.
  26. Tony Takitani
    This gossamer work is one of the loveliest examples of minimalist cinema I've seen in a long time.
  27. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    By turns merry, tough-minded and sweetly nostalgic.
  28. Hustle & Flow
    But while some may leave the theater tapping their toes and whistling the lyrics to such inimitable original ballads as "Hard for a Pimp" and "Whoop That Trick," they should hang their heads low and mourn the sorry state of the contemporary African-American movie.
  29. The Island
    Nary an original idea abounds in The Island.
  30. Bad News Bears
    There may be no other actor (Thornton)working today (or as frequently) who is this good each and every time out.
  31. The Devil's Rejects
    This film is lean, tight and irredeemably vile. People are gonna love it.
  32. The Edukators
    Put simply, this second feature by the young Austrian director Hans Weingartner is a put-on -- a glib anti-capitalist rant in which the rhetoric rarely rises above the you-too-can-save-a-child-for-less-than-the-price-of-coffee level.
  33. November
    To their great credit, writer Benjamin Brand and director Greg Harrison weave these contradictory variations into an effective puzzle, if one that doesn't quite transcend being a puzzle - it never becomes a mystery, like, say, "Mulholland Drive," or even "The Sixth Sense."
  34. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
    The first half of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a brilliant blend of the best of Burton and Dahl, with some unexpected input from Charles Dickens. In the second half, the contraptions take over, drowning whatever story remains...But it falls frustratingly short of the masterpiece it might have been.
  35. Wedding Crashers
    Most of the time Wedding Crashers is more genteel than it is outrageous (or funny), playing like an only slightly less benign spin on the tiresome fish-out-of-water farce that fueled the two Meet the Parents movies.
  36. God's Sandbox
    The pivotal secret of God's Sandbox is no secret minutes into the story, and director Doron Eran doesn't seem to know, or care much, whether he's making feminist agitprop or softcore porn. The two don't mix well.
  37. Happy Endings
    When all is said and done, Roos treats his characters and his audience to an unblushingly sentimental, conciliatory ending of the kind that ordinarily makes me feel as though I'm being played for a sucker. I wept on demand and went home happy.
  38. The Reception
    It's fine stuff, beautifully played, but there's no denying that viewers will have to be patient with this 80-minute chamber piece, the first third of which feels cold and false, only to suddenly shift into unexpectedly deep emotional territory.
  39. The Warrior
    Scaled like an epic but possessing the narrative simplicity of a fable, The Warrior unfolds over a brisk 85 minutes of screen time, keeping dialogue to a minimum as it celebrates the power of stories told through handcrafted, CGI-free images.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror
    Ungerman and Brohy spread themselves a little thin across the map of U.S. intrigue, abruptly losing sight of Iraq while retreading familiar ground about early American backing of the Taliban.
  41. On the Outs
    Well-meaning but mediocre.
  42. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
    Far too often, Douglas indulges his preference for the superficial over the substantive: The plentiful performance footage -- shot in overproduced, music-video fashion -- overwhelms the film, as do White’s purplish, faux-poetic musings.
  43. Dark Water
    The movie is prettily shot by Almodóvar collaborator Affonso Beato, but no amount of tastefully desaturated color or imaginary friends going whoo-whoo in the deserted apartment upstairs can save this lumbering echt-thriller from fatal tedium.
  44. Fantastic Four
    Directing seems an unduly elegant term for what Hollywood hack du jour Tim Story (Barbershop, Taxi) does here -- the action scenes are so choppily constructed that their excitement disappears faster than the Invisible Woman.
  45. Murderball
    A great sports drama first and a heart-wrenching triumph-over-adversity weepie almost never.
  46. Chronicles
    Writer-director Sebastian Cordero wrings nerve-racking suspense, and complex performances, from these dynamics.
  47. Rebound
    Rebound is a sports comedy so by-the-numbers that you don't really have to watch it -- you can just check in on it every once in a while between trips to the concession stand and the bathroom.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Undead
    Flesh-eating fish notwithstanding, Peter and Michael Spierig's low-budget schlock-horror parody brings precious little new to the undead genre.
  49. The World
    The comic, tragic and monumentally beautiful new film by writer-director Jia Zhangke (Platform).
  50. Twist of Faith
    Doesn't offer much new in the way of news or analysis. What it does offer is inspiration from an unlikely source, via an unsparing look at one such victim.
  51. War of the Worlds
    The imagery is startling not just for its symbolic resonances, but for the breathless intensity with which it sears the screen.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bewitched
    The film's funny for 15 minutes as it skewers Hollywood and prowls block after block of familiar L.A. scenery.
  53. Rize
    The film soars when the camera is trained on its young subjects in action.
  54. March of the Penguins
    Thrilling documentary.
  55. Lila Says
    Vahina Giocante oozes a killer blend of purring, lascivious innocence and little-girl-lost vulnerability as Lila.
  56. The Last Mogul
    Love him or loathe him, Avrich proposes, Wasserman mattered -- which is a lot more than can be said for most of the multinationals and their MBA-bearing surrogates who came to run the studios in his wake.
  57. Herbie Fully Loaded
    Adds up to little more than a cynical marriage of marketable commodities -- Lohan, NASCAR and the durably profitable Bug himself.
  58. Waging a Living
    The lack of cohesion and conviction is disconcerting, and it allows the movie to veer dangerously close to exploitation. Its subjects -- and its viewers -- deserve more.
  59. The Deal
    Although the dialogue initially flakes with awkward exposition, writer Ruth Epstein and director Harvey Kahn have fashioned a riveting thriller full of good scares and learned, muckraking insight into the global labyrinth of oil and politics.
  60. Pure
    Real kudos goes to Molly Parker, searing as a heroin-addicted mother immobilized by the death of her husband, and to a poised little boy named Harry Eden, who's astonishingly good as the 10-year-old son desperately trying to hold her to the straight and narrow.
  61. The Perfect Man
    Rosman and Wendkos run dry of ideas in the film's inert, overextended finale, when the "Believe in yourself" speeches grow so thick that even the Duff-devoted may start rolling their eyes.
  62. The Great Water
    The Great Water hangs heavy with sepia photography and Christ-like symbolism -- I felt as though I were watching it from the inside of a dank Russian Orthodox church.
  63. Heights
    The acting is uniformly superb.
  64. Me and You and Everyone We Know
    By turns comic and tender, tragic and absurd. But throughout, it gives off what is surely one of the greatest of moviegoing pleasures -- the sense of an artist seeing the world from some private vantage that is as original as it is truthful.
  65. The Talent Given Us
    A painful, hilarious and immensely moving rumination on mid-life angst.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Ethan Mao
    Nobody onscreen seems to realize that this deadeningly self-serious treatment of family dysfunction is so overwrought that it becomes a spot-on satire of low-budget ineptitude.
  67. King of the Corner
    I've never quite figured out what the poker-faced Peter Riegert does as an actor, but his matter-of-fact minimalism is always funny and affecting.
  68. Batman Begins
    Of course, a Batman movie is nothing without a Bruce Wayne, and, by a mile, Bale is the best of a lot that has ranged from the square-jawed slapstick of Adam West to the more dedbonair stylings of Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney.
  69. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    Jolie has a gangly inelegance that suggests a giraffe trying to hang wallpaper -- but the entire movie is predicated on a spark between its prettier-than-thou stars that seems to have bypassed the screen and ignited in the tabloids instead.
  70. The Honeymooners
    This appalling multiculti upgrade of the ’50s sitcom is about as funny as a bus accident.
  71. High Tension
    While the acting is fine and the direction accomplished, the real stars of the film are editor Baxter and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre. Forfeiting a gold star is whoever haphazardly dubbed the film, simply giving up about halfway through.
  72. The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D
    Slight but immensely enjoyable charmer.
  73. Howl's Moving Castle
    Another soulful gem from the peerless Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.
  74. Slutty Summer
    The drama is unintentionally humorous, the humor incredibly labored and the acting rarely better than one might find in a Chi Chi LaRue XXX production.
  75. Wild Side
    Though Lifshitz's attitude toward sex and sexuality ranks among the most progressive in contemporary movies, he doesn't belabor it; seen through his eyes, Wild Side is a love story in which love is unrestrained by matters of gender or sexual orientation or even the number of lovers.
  76. 5x2
    There’s precious little character development forward or backward.
  77. Chrystal
    McKinnon's direction is nothing if not atmospheric -- his best scenes unfold with a pungent languor that suggests the power of the backwoods to turn hours into days and days into years. If only the sum total were a movie more "In the Bedroom" than it is everything-but-the-kitchen-sink.
  78. The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam
    Though the story hardly lacks for event as it traces Khayyam's ascension from the peasantry to the royal court, the period costumes and sets look to be on loan from Medieval Times, as do most of the actors, and the boxy, harshly lit compositions make everything feel even more cardboard.
  79. Cinderella Man
    The movie is calamitously miscast.
  80. Lords of Dogtown
    Unfortunately, whenever Ledger isn't onscreen, Lords of Dogtown takes a spill.
  81. Rock School
    You root for the kids, who are utterly captivating, but Green is another story. His shtick -- a combo of insufferable stage-parent and unbearable rock geek -- is exhausting.
  82. Apres Vous (After You)
    The best that can be said for this excitable, harmless romantic comedy is that it is smoothly directed by Pierre Salvadori.
  83. Deep Blue
    Deep Blue runs just shy of 90 minutes, and this pathetic landlubber of a movie critic must confess to growing restless here and there, an example of how quickly awestruck wonder can turn to apathy.
  84. Milwaukee, Minnesota
    More predictable than its makers seem aware, its emotional hooks much too dull to pull us in.
  85. Caterina va in città
    Director Paolo Virzi (who co-wrote the script with Francesco Bruni) errs badly by creating totems and types in lieu of characters.
  86. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    The finale goes on and on, but the movie is nicely photographed (by John Bailey) and duly empowering, and should please the vast teen-girl audience for which it's intended.
  87. Or
    Doggedly refusing artifice as if cinematic beauty were a filthy capitalist plot, Yedaya drowns her characters in realist grit, a colorless screenplay and no score to speak of, rendering this open book of a movie alienating in all the wrong ways.
  88. A Wake in Providence
    The best news here is Adrienne Barbeau, the 1970s TV star and B-movie queen (Swamp Thing), who invests the role of Anthony's aunt with a worldly-wise sensuality that suggests a long-lost cousin of Tony Soprano.
  89. The Longest Yard
    Peter Segal's film, a predictable, choppy affair at best, boasts an understated, likable performance by Sandler, but here we never feel, as we did with the original, invested in the outcome of the final game, or convinced of the redeemability of the movie's sordid protagonist.
  90. Madagascar
    Anemic.
  91. Bomb the System
    As Bomb snakes its way toward tragedy, it grates rather than entices. The actors come off more as poseurs than as characters, and the film's political and cultural insights are superficial and old hat.
  92. The Ninth Day
    A morally complex and emotionally satisfying drama about the vagaries of Catholic response to the Third Reich.
  93. A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
    The movie is affectionate without exactly being infectious, and Browne, who begins his film with the Michael Moore–esque revelation that Americans bowl in greater numbers than they vote, disappoints by not devoting more attention to bowling in its amateur incarnations.
  94. Saving Face
    In her charming debut feature, writer-director Alice Wu works hard to sidestep both pathos and antic comedy, an admirable ambition that makes for a relentlessly low-key film that nonetheless builds to a third act rich in surprising turns of character.
  95. Genesis
    The story is as wonderful in the showing as it is in the telling, by an African griot (oral historian) who stirs our tragicomic passage from birth to death, into a simple clay pot.
  96. Sex, Politics & Cocktails
    This peculiar little comedy, shot on digital video, gets points for editorial pizzazz, but earns a big zero for content.
  97. Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
    The strengths of Dominion, however, have been little diminished by its long shelf life and, in fact, may have grown stronger with age.
  98. Fixing Frank
    Boasts one of the most entertaining and bitterly astute screenplays I've had the pleasure of listening to in a while, with its lengthening spirals of deceit, mendacity and one-upmanship, and its elegant linguistic dances around difficult truths.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Second Best
    It tries too hard for sincerity, when it's actually more sincere when cynical. Filmed in 17 days with hand-held cameras that give it a home-movie feel, the movie takes blue-collar pride in its own hopelessness.
  100. Stolen Childhoods
    A serious work of analysis, rooting the resistance to reform in Third World government corruption and Western profiteering.
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