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. Coach Carter
    The corniness and predictability feel, if not quite fresh, then not so groaningly stale.
  2. Wall
    Bitton is Frederick Wiseman-obsessive about the practical details that make this horrific arrangement work, but she's also an unabashed polemicist.
  3. Snide and Prejudice
    The Marat/Sade irony of setting these scenes in a madhouse helps, but Macfadyen's volcanic magnetism and spot-on mimicry of Hitler's body language and speech patterns make insight flesh.
  4. Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
    Refreshingly laid-back romantic comedy.
  5. Animal Factory
    What enrich the film are its layers of detail -- moronic racial protocols, turf wars, pecking orders, men as livestock -- the authenticity of the dialogue and the rich range of characters.
  6. The Wedding Singer
    Sandler smirks a good deal less than he did in his last two movies, and with a couple of acting lessons, he might develop into a screen presence.
  7. Lucie Aubrac
    Aside from isolated flares of unchecked emotion ...Bouquet's Lucie is too far removed from our ken of romance and overriding purpose, or from Berri's for that matter, to be embraced entirely.
  8. American History X
    Director Tony Kaye may be reaching for opera, but screenwriter David McKenna has set his sights distinctly lower.
  9. Bulgarian Lovers
    For his first feature in 15 years, Spanish filmmaker Eloy de la Iglesia has made a witty, unsentimental class comedy.
  10. Sacred Planet
    Despite his obvious passion, Long never fully ties together the human and animal footage, and so the film feels disjointed, as if two different documentaries are being fused into one.
  11. Invincible
    A wonderful movie. For every misstep there are the sublime expressions of agony and ecstasy of which Herzog is a master.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Man on the Moon
    The sort of sick humor even Andy Kaufman would have recognized as well beyond the pale.
  13. Fidel
    It's a refreshing change from the self-interest and paranoia that shape most American representations of Castro. At the same time, Bravo anticipates that such a view will drive some nuts.
  14. The Rookie
    At its best, there's nothing gushy about Dennis Quaid's portrayal of Morris, and more than anything it's his beautifully modulated reserve that holds this film in emotional check.
  15. Where's the Party Yaar?
    Mathews has obvious storytelling chops, and a sharp eye for absurdity. But there are sacred cows in hip, progressive America, too, and the truly fearless satirist has to be a carnivore.
  16. Rosetta
    A portrait of dispossession so acute that it's caused a few critics to cry, Let her eat cake!
  17. Fight Club
    On a purely visual level, it's the most powerful and viscerally exciting movie to come out of Hollywood this year. Which doesn't mean that it's all good.
  18. Flickering Lights
    A hit in Denmark, this impressive debut feature from writer-director Anders Thom as Jensen is decidedly offbeat, with Jensen contrasting moments of brutal violence with the emerging gentleness of Torkild and his friends.
  19. Gattaca
    Although that's enough plot for two movies, Niccol proceeds to clog up his meticulously mounted story with a murder and a romance (hence Uma Thurman), allowing needless intrigue to distract from his ideas.
  20. Team America: World Police
    Accomplished yet uneven feature.
  21. 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.
  22. Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert
    She makes a perfectly fine role model, if you rate cheerful, sensible and chaste under the skinny tights and glow-in-the-dark tank tops.
  23. Creed II
    It’s a Rocky movie, just the latest go-round, its story more formulaic, its people less specific, its rhythms as wheezily familiar as a workout you should have changed up weeks ago. It’s a diminishment of Creed, a dumbing down, just as Rocky II was a diminishment of Rocky.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Final Season
    Formulaic but not cynical, The Final Season has some sweet, thoughtful passages in what is otherwise just one more well-meaning inspirational sports movie.
  25. Agent Cody Banks
    Unfortunately, two separate screenwriting teams...send Cody away from kid-resonant environs and off to exotic locales, culminating in an overproduced mountain-lair finale.
  26. Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust
    In the current flood of Holocaust documentaries, stories of righteous gentiles abound, but the singular beauty of Hiding and Seeking is its delicate but relentless probing of ambiguous motivation on the one hand, and its hearteningly conciliatory spirit on the other.
  27. Click
    After an hour of predictably sophomoric antics involving foulmouthed kids, compulsively self-pleasuring canines and the rampant objectification of women, Click turns into a surrealist death dream in which Sandler's masochistic impulses flower onscreen as never before.
  28. Left Luggage
    Manipulative filmmaking at its most gently persuasive.
  29. Walking Tall
    Johnny Knoxville has a few inspired bits as Vaughn's recovering-addict chum, and The Rock carries an effortlessly soft side in the nonviolent scenes, but Bray doesn't linger too long on anything that doesn't end in a thud or wallop.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America
    C.S.A. isn't subtle, but its undisguised indignation places it in the same bold polemical tradition as Peter Watkins' incendiary "Punishment Park" (1971), that nightmarish slice of speculative sci-fi about government-sanctioned manhunts for hippies and dissidents.
  31. About Adam
    While the film strives to prove its cool, it's also built on the insufferably antique idea that some flattery and a good fuck are all any woman needs.
  32. Final Destination 3
    Director James Wong and co-writer Glen Morgan seem, in this film's creaky first third, to be working on automatic pilot, but they gradually cut loose, staging one imaginative and gleefully gruesome death after another.
  33. Like Mike
    A solidly crafted family comedy.
  34. Where the Money Is
    The romance and sheer fun that Where the Money Is packs into its swift 89 minutes follow from the sweet surprise that neither is threatened by the other.
  35. Adam & Steve
    Adam & Steve is uneven, but it's a relief to see a gay romance that isn't about ab-perfect 20-year-olds, and which features lovers played by two long out-of-the-closet actors. Wonder of wonders.
  36. Beijing Bicycle
    Had Xiaoshuai trusted audience sympathies to stay with a slightly more forceful character, he'd likely have crafted the heart tugger that the film aims to be.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Meet Dave
    Meet Dave feels a little too cuddly and familiar to be more than a programmatic summer kids' movie -- better than average, but not worth phoning home about.
  38. Race to Witch Mountain
    A calculated bid to turn the Rock into a more family-friendly commodity. That calculation may be transparent, but it pays off: Cracking one-liners and alternating between world-weariness and growing affection for his charges, Johnson is wonderful -- much better than his material.
  39. Two Men Went to War
    More often than not, Two Men Went to War resembles a feature-length episode of "Hogan's Heroes," with the brave but clumsy Brits continually managing to outfox the even more bungling Nazis.
  40. Swimming
    On the surface, this coming-of-age tale feels slight and unremarkable, yet the director's final close-up of Frankie packs a punch -- a testament to the power of a gifted young actress happily lost inside her first big role.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Neo Ned
    The problem lies in the film's inability to decide whether such loaded images are funny in a Farrelly Brothers/Dave Chapelle kind of way or if they mean something deeper. The terrific lead performances only heighten this confusion.
  42. Beautiful Boxer
    It’s a good story, and Uekrongtham, making his feature debut, captures the camaraderie of camp life and the subsequent matches with the panache of a veteran studio hand, but the insights into Toom's psyche never extend past the fun he has applying powder and eyeliner.
  43. Evan Almighty
    What makes the film transcend its limitations is Carell, whose square, "Father Knows Best" demeanor belies a supreme comic self-confidence and whose implacability in the face of the movie's CGI-intensive animal antics can be marvelous to behold.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Lady in Question Is Charles Busch
    The downside to what is, in essence, an authorized biography is that the movie plays like an inflated "Today" show profile; the upside is that Busch has given Catania and Ignacio complete access to the old footage from his Limbo Lounge days.
  45. The Man from Elysian Fields
    Despite its dry wit and compassion, the film suffers from a philosophical emptiness and maddeningly sedate pacing, and, in the end, the only aspect of the movie that truly commands attention is Jagger's desperately inexpressive acting, which hasn’t improved one iota since "Ned Kelly."
    • 22 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Maniac
    A Freudian nightmare with a lead who looks like the guy who runs your local pizzeria, Maniac also features one of the great head explosions in cinema history.
  47. The Jacket
    The director's work is suitably unnerving, but leaves one feeling beaten senseless by reel two. When the hero's well-earned moment of clarity finally arrives, most will likely be too numbed out to care, despite the best efforts of Brody, an actor too vividly alive to be wasting his time playing dead.
  48. Hard Candy
    The more things drag on, the more monotonous they become and, by the end, Hard Candy has devolved into a rather transparent game of one-upmanship in which Hayley and Jeff come across in almost equally repellent measure, their behaviors driven less by organic impulses than by their need to satisfy the script's elaborate series of reversals and counter-reversals.
  49. Journey to the Sun
    Ustaoglu has made Mehmet unbelievably naive -- and the hardships piled upon him unintentionally evoke "The Perils of Pauline." That dilutes what should be a powerful protest film, and robs it of the emotional impact it aims for.
  50. Bad Reputation
    Bad Reputation comes off more as a fanboy’s declaration of reverence to the queen rather than an interrogation of one of the most iconic women in music.
  51. Laaga Chunari Mein Daag: Journey of a Woman
    The movie works so hard to transform its shocking subject into acceptable material for middlebrow melodrama that it never deals with it.
  52. Personal Velocity: Three Portraits
    Liberal use is made of freeze-frame and flashbacks as a kind of emotional chronology, yet it's precisely in this regard that the characters feel tentative and half-formed. I'm still trying to figure out why this perfectly serviceable movie won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance last year.
  53. What a Girl Wants
    Strictly for budding young ladies, though it does offer those who've already bloomed the grown-up pleasures of Firth, a great actor who graciously invites you to join him in the slow-burn romantic corner into which he's rapidly painting himself.
  54. God's Army
    A fine cast of unknowns in a story of faith -- lost, found and continually challenged -- that neither romanticizes nor condescends to its milieu.
  55. 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Last Night
    Strangely uplifting, a kind of ode to how on Earth we think we're passing the time.
  57. The Princess Diaries
    The director is Garry Marshall, but The Princess Diaries is no where near as nauseating a fairy tale as Marshall's "Pretty Woman."
  58. A Thousand Peace Clouds Encircle the Sky
    If first-time writer-director Julián Hernández lets his knotted narrative get away from him too often, he nevertheless shows a miraculous sense of style for a 31-year-old.
  59. High Fidelity
    High Fidelity wants to be hip, but it's comically square.
  60. Mostly Martha
    Nettelbeck's storytelling grace, however, only highlights her clumsy script, which drags the viewer through an all-too-predictable menu of catharsis and romance that can overpower the film’s subtler, more complex flavors.
  61. Bruce Almighty
    Carrey's schizophrenic new effort gives you both at once -- it drowns his hilarious physicality in an ocean of sap.
  62. 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.
  63. The Triumph of Love
    What is surprising, and what one takes away most deeply and happily from Triumph of Love, is a refreshed admiration for Mira Sorvino.
    • L.A. Weekly
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Last Samurai
    The only history that bears a real influence on The Last Samurai is the history of Hollywood moviemaking, and the unfortunate way it has of turning extraordinary stories into hopelessly ordinary ones.
  65. Crazy/Beautiful
    Crazy/beautiful has a leisurely local specificity, and Stockwell has a tender way with his actors.
  66. The Minus Man
    A film without attitude or mystery...an exquisitely executed, and exquisitely banal, treatise on the banality of evil.
  67. CQ
    CQ is modest, especially for something bearing the grandiose family name, and it possesses both a tenderness and a quiet intelligence.
  68. A Talking Picture
    As a political statement it is either a cry of despair or a grim acknowledgment that in the endless cycles of history, civilization will always have its saboteurs.
  69. King of the Jungle
    Overall, King of the Jungle never quite achieves a necessary, culminating insight about charity, or mercy -- though Leguizamo's performance puts one in reach.
  70. Strangers with Candy
    The film is never really more than a series of loosely connected riffs and set pieces. That'd be fine except much of it is slack and airless; the laughs are many but they're too spread out -- a far cry from the series' heyday of taut, rapid-fire lunacy. Still, it's worth catching the film just for Sedaris' performance.
  71. The Hours
    You can only cram so much of this stuff into a movie without putting your audience to sleep -- The movie sags badly in the middle, swirling around itself without making headway.
  72. Cradle Will Rock
    Robbins has made a drastically different film from the one Welles envisioned -- it's wacky where Welles is absurd, cynical where Welles is canny.
  73. Escaflowne: The Movie
    A smoothly structured, earth-toned and well-drawn Japanese anime.
  74. CyberWorld
    Until the IMAX 3-D format is used to produce effects that are not trivial, it will never be anything more than what it is right now: a grandiose amusement park attraction.
  75. Hoot
    Hoot is flatly directed by talk-show-host-turned-sitcom-director Wil Shriner, but the young actors are spirited and appealing, and the movie's low-key anti-establishment posture is vastly preferable to the knee-jerk fulminations of a Michael Moore.
  76. Ted Bundy
    Has the crisp pace and bright-eyed facetious tone of a blackout-comedy sex farce.
  77. Exit Wounds
    Silver, manages the deft balance of making Seagal seem both genuinely courageous and charmingly blockheaded.
  78. Km. 0 - Kilometer Zero
    There's lots of half-naked flesh on display, and an enticing sense of hot action afoot (especially between the two gay guys), but the directors seem timid about sex, and really, what's the point of being Spanish if you're afraid to show the good stuff?
  79. Gandhi, My Father
    Gandhi, My Father radiates sincerity. It’s a beautifully shot and staged period reconstruction, and is at times impressively acted, at least in the secondary roles. What it lacks is fresh insight.
  80. The Big Tease
    How nice to see a new comic lead (Ferguson) with the confidence not to hog the screen.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Absolute Wilson
    Wilson is articulate and ironic, and Otto-Bernstein mostly shields us from his tantrums and critics.
  82. Bush's Brain
    A tad dry but never boring.
  83. Cadillac Records
    Director Darnell Martin (I Like it Like That) races through the script's bullet points with a brisk superficiality that leaves crucial plot points underdeveloped and unresolved, and refuses to engage the dark side of Leonard Chess’ paternalism.
  84. Firewall
    We spend too much time with the kidnappers - a veritable Geek Squad of undifferentiated techies - as each successive escape attempt is foiled and our eyes are warped by abundant shots of computer screens and grainy surveillance-camera footage.
  85. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
    The film is consummately professional but phlegmatic, a slow fizzle.
  86. Mean Creek
    Estes never really completes a thought about this sorry group's moral dilemmas.
  87. Swing Vote
    The longer Swing Vote hangs around, the more engaging it becomes. It's twice as smart as you have any reason to expect but still only half as smart as you wish it were.
  88. The Night Listener
    As a performer, Robin Williams has a wonderfully volatile range; as an actor, he commutes uneasily between over-sincere and over-sinister. Both modes are on full monochromatic display in this stolid noir thriller.
  89. House on Haunted Hill
    Low-budget, high-camp.
  90. Jumper
    It's a feature-length teaser for a never-to-be sci-fi franchise.
  91. The Notorious Bettie Page
    While it's true that most of us make our way through life without a plan, the studied arbitrariness of Page's accommodating ramble from Hicksville to Smutsville doesn't make for thrilling cinema.
  92. Racing Stripes
    Sweet, innocuous and about as fresh as yesterday's lettuce.
  93. Cinderella Man
    The movie is calamitously miscast.
  94. A Galaxy Far, Far Away
    Jalil penetrates a carnivalesque subculture of self-reinvention and obsession, emotional need and materialist greed, with a camera that is, by turns, cruel, kind and incisive.
  95. Nico and Dani
    Filled with the kind of frank, nonsensational sensuality that eludes American filmmakers, this movie proves again that the most interesting cinema about teenage life -- gay and otherwise -- is being made far from our provincial shores.
    • L.A. Weekly
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bridge
    The result is an attractive, well-intentioned film that is surprisingly dull and uninvolving.
  97. Clash of the Titans
    "Transporter" director Louis Leterrier is sure-footed when battling Gorgons and giant scorpions, but he muddles the comic-grotesque opportunity of the Stygian Witches.
  98. Ambush
    Director Olli Saarela, who co-wrote the script with Antti Tuuri, offers up a trembling romanticism that gradually hardens -- like Eero's consciousness -- with exposure to the horrors of war.
  99. 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.
  100. The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland
    The film is nothing if not benign, but its merits are moot for those above 7 or so.
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