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 8.9 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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    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
    Mincing around like a bored old glam rocker and hissing threats from behind electric neon eyes, Nighy seems to be the only person on set who found a glint of amusement in his part. He fares better than poor Sheen, a scraggly Wolverine who made a more credible vampire-slayer opposite Frank Langella’s Nixon.
  2. The Prince of Egypt
    Thou shalt not covet any thing that is thy neighbor's. Maybe DreamWorks should stop trying to be Disney.
  3. Hide and Seek
    While the final revelation is laughably absurd, DeNiro and Fanning are so far inside their roles that one can't giggle for long.
  4. Kamikaze Girls
    For this viewer, the climactic scooter-gang rumble, heavy on plot twists and empowerment speeches, felt eternal, but for many, the happy silliness of the film's first half should carry the day.
  5. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
    A movie that's nearly as good as its publicity campaign.
  6. Bánk bán
    Where Káel stumbles is in having his stars lip-synch, sometimes poorly, to a recording. It's a devil's bargain that allows for more natural staging, but that fails to convey that an opera's power lies less in cinematic shadings of character than in raw emotions refined by the spectacular art of a rigorously trained human voice.
  7. 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."
  8. She's the Man
    She’s the Man amounts to little more than softcore porn for the tween set, with aesthetics ripped from the pages of the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog and virtually every scene revolving around Viola/Sebastian’s crafty escape from some impromptu disrobing.
  9. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
    Rather exciting, rendered in a bright sunset palette and a mixture of expressive, boldly drawn traditional animation and fluid computer-generated imagery.
  10. Birth
    Birth may be the most futile application of cinematic and acting skill I've seen all year. A little "Twilight Zone" flummery would have livened up the proceedings to no end.
  11. Flawless
    An appallingly crude film, with dialogue lifted off bumper stickers, characters stitched together from shorthand clichés (the brassy black drag queen; the fiery little Latin number) and a plot that's on cruise control from the opening credits.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cheaper by the Dozen 2
    What keeps the film afloat (barely) is the sheer charisma of Eugene Levy and the young Alyson Stoner, who manage to find emotion and laughs in the tritest of dialogue and the flimsiest of scenarios.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dinosaur
    There are plenty of gorgeous real-life vistas for adults to look at while stuffing popcorn in their ears to avoid the oversignifyin' music and the hurtin' dialogue.
  14. Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
    The bloom is off the rose due to cynical rehash.
  15. World Trade Center
    World Trade Center is fatally benign -- an unexceptionable and therefore unexceptional heroic narrative that does little to further the tentative creep of our pop culture toward parsing the significance of that catastrophic day.
  16. Someone Like You...
    In supporting roles, Ellen Barkin and Marisa Tomei are marvelously light-footed.
  17. Aaja Nachle
    Both in subject matter and form, this 25-minute music drama within the film tips its hat to the roots of Bollywood cinema’s most distinctive conventions -- with the inestimable assistance of its most seductive modern axiom.
  18. White Chicks
    Wisely, the filmmakers don't try to reform the real rich-bitch divas -- some cultural icons are beyond redemption.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Moog
    Largely, you get to watch a nice old guy waxing philosophical in his beloved vegetable garden, in his workshop or amid city traffic. If that switches you on, then plug in.
  20. Typhoon
    The movie is executed by director Kwak Kyung-Taek with flair, technical polish and tumescent firepower that the shriveled cinemas of Hong Kong and Japan can no longer match. But every gesture feels synthetic, from the back story about North-South separation to massage the emotions of the home audience, to the 24-style globe-hopping nuclear-terrorism premise.
  21. Two Ninas
    Peet and Poor make strong impressions in smaller roles, but then again, edgy and sexy is easier to make compelling than decent and nice.
  22. Spider-Man
    Perhaps the real question, then, isn't how you update Spider-Man but why you would even try. Introduced in 1962, the original superhero helped to initiate the age of modern comics. Raimi hasn't figured out how to reconfigure him for the blockbuster age, and there are suggestions.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Obsessed
    Isn't half as dramatic as what probably went down after she (Beyoncé Knowles) kicked LaTavia and LaToya out of Destiny's Child.
  24. Chasing Liberty
    The movie's saving grace is newcomer Goode, who has what they used to call smoldering good looks, and who can, not so incidentally, actually act.
  25. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    This often gripping but also unremittingly grim and drab account of these events is a "Taxi Driver" without the cathartic finale.
  26. From the Edge of the City
    An impressive work that's ultimately undone by its excessive style.
  27. Gridiron Gang
    In a true-life sports tale like the recent "Invincible," you buy into all the inspirational clichés because the characters have inner lives and the movie is about something bigger; here, you keep hoping for something bad to happen to somebody just for the sake of balance.
  28. The Medallion
    While the premise does lead to a few moments of inspired physical comedy -- the movie repeatedly falls back on poorly staged, choppily edited fight scenes between Chan and a gloomy, power-mad villain.
  29. Blade II
    Even Del Toro can't raise the conceptually dead.
  30. Paranormal Activity 2
    Where "The Last Exorcism" was sustained by artfully balanced skepticism and a feel for character, Paranormal 2, putatively directed by Tod Williams, can only hold an audience with the understood promise of big jolts around the corner.
  31. Life as a House
    There's nothing particularly wrong with this movie, except that it's too nice for words.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Freshman Orientation
    It isn’t particularly funny. Mocking lesbians for bad bongo-beating poetry, for instance, just ain’t fresh, interesting or even especially offensive.
    • L.A. Weekly
  33. Man on Fire
    A schizophrenic outing from habitually hysterical director Tony Scott (True Romance, The Fan), Man on Fire is a movie of two unreconcilable halves.
  34. Orwell Rolls in His Grave
    Even though he refuses to excise about 15 to 20 minutes of unnecessary material, Pappas is nonetheless a steady editor who, less intrepid than dogged, pieces together a sustainably intriguing, suitably distressing exposé.
  35. Washington Heights
    Promising yet problematic.
  36. Klimt
    Ruiz is so intent on harnessing the painter to his own -- here, rather arid -- relativism that he never manages to convey the unfettered eros that brings crowds flocking to exhibitions of Klimt’s work, even as critics hold their noses.
  37. The Alamo
    Pinned down and smelling death, the men grow into fully realized human beings, which makes for some fine performances, but doesn't exactly propel this epic, richly detailed film forward. The battle, when it finally comes, is brief, admirably non-gory and rather dull.
  38. NASCAR: The IMAX Experience
    Disappointing that the film's modern-day race sequences -- which follow quick glimpses of computer-run car factories and pit-crew practice sessions -- fail to excite the senses.
  39. Girlfight
    Kusama leads with feminist empowerment, but her sucker punch is a sappy romance.
  40. Wimbledon
    Director Richard Loncraine (Richard III) moves things right along, but during the final tennis match, his pacing is undone by sports-movie convention, particularly the witless color commentary offered by tennis legends John McEnroe and Chris Evert.
  41. Monkeybone
    Like so many movies that depend on effects for effect, plot comes in a poor second to spectacle. That leaves the Fraser, funny and sexy as hell, left with little chance to prove it.
  42. Solomon & Gaenor
    First-time writer-director Paul Morrison has a gift for evoking a time and place.
  43. Dracula 2000
    Although it's not half bad -- which doesn't mean it's half good -- this horror cheapie comes equipped with a few ideas, a little atmosphere and a couple of serviceable scares.
  44. Intolerable Cruelty
    Intolerable Cruelty seems the kind of movie that results from two essentially erudite, anarchic talents playing down to the masses.
  45. The Polar Express
    The result is another powerful children's story dulled into mediocrity by the worship of technology.
  46. Sleeping Dogs Lie
    A movie with a premise and an ad campaign promising sexual outrageousness, Sleeping Dogs Lie turns out to be rather tame.
  47. Wasabi Tuna
    Fox does have a sharp sense of the absurd that comes out in silly subplots.
  48. Kill the Irishman
    Though director Jonathan Hensleigh (The Punisher) perks up when filming violence, the atmosphere throughout is past-prime, stymieing any strut.
  49. Music from the Inside Out
    The result is 90 minutes in the company of some of the nicest and most boring people you can imagine ever having a movie made about them.
  50. The Whore's Son
    In the end, Sturminger's virginal insistence on draining the mother-son relationship of all eros also drains it of interest.
  51. 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.
  52. FAQs
    The dialogue is blunter, and harder for his amateur cast to pull off, while Lewis' stridency, however justified, ultimately jars against the film's tender, all-is-love fantasia.
  53. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
    Few surprises lie in store for connoisseurs of torture cinema, though unlike its 2003 predecessor, this Massacre owes less to Bay’s attention-deficient aesthetics than to the measured, Georgia O’Keefe-on-acid sensibility that guided Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel’s much-cannibalized original.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Astro Boy
    Corny but goodhearted, the film tries hard not to annoy parents, with animation more fizzy than frantic and nerdy references.
  55. In My Country
    In My Country stands closest to "Hotel Rwanda," a similarly clumsy yet inescapably moving effort to confront the brutal consequences of colonial oppression.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Darshan: The Embrace
    Unless you're already a true believer, Amma comes across in Darshan as a perfect angel, a frustrating enigma and a rather dull cinematic subject.
  57. The Replacements
    Although this movie doesn't have an ounce of depth, it's so thoroughly amiable and upbeat that you'd have to be in a fighting mood to find fault with it.
  58. Bulletproof Monk
    It’s a testament to Chow's star power that, even with an accent more than casually reminiscent of Elmer Fudd's, he comes off charming, handsome and cool in a movie as ridiculous as Bulletproof Monk.
  59. The Ballad of Bering Strait
    While the film frequently concentrates on the wrong story, the humanity of the musicians comes through in their own words and actions.
  60. Vampires
    There's a surprising amount to relish about this gleefully self-conscious, disposable romp through horror's sexiest subgenre, mainly the film's grasp of its own terms.
  61. Voices in Wartime
    The film's self-limiting pacifism precludes a closer look at the poetry of war, which is not synonymous with poetry against war.
  62. American Dreamz
    As in his previous "In Good Company," Weitz wants too much to like all of his characters, and he wants us to like them too. The result is a movie devoid of any threat, or many laughs, with barn door–broad performances.
  63. Black Christmas
    The flashbacks are wittily gothic, and the present-day murder scenes have the absurdist, chain-reaction intricacy of the "Final Destination" deaths.
  64. P.S.
    This sappy stuff gets better direction by Kidd (who made the far superior Roger Dodger) than it deserves, and Linney gives a wonderfully wistful portrayal of urban loneliness.
  65. Because of Winn-Dixie
    Jeff Daniels is a compelling-enough actor to lift almost any film out of mediocrity, but even he has his work cut out for him.
  66. Amy
    If Tass had found a way to include more playfulness, her film would be more endearing. Instead, she accents the easy bathos of David Parker's script, from the problems of the shrill, cliched neighbors to a finale that plays like a movie of the week.
  67. Into the Blue
    Into the Blue is a likable bimbo of a movie, all surface and -- despite breathtaking underwater photography and a marked resemblance to Peter Yates' "The Deep" -- zero depth.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Baxter
    A movie filled with cardboard cutouts where the interesting characters ought to be. As a result, The Baxter is less engaging than the '40s screwball comedies (like The Philadelphia Story) that it's supposedly sending up, and not nearly as effervescent.
  69. One Night at McCool's
    The drawback is Tyler, who lacks the vigor and energy her part requires in order to transcend charges of misogyny.
  70. Princesa
    By the time Princesa finally slides into halfhearted melodrama in its last quarter, we're only too happy to follow Fernanda back to the rim and a little excitement.
  71. Loverboy
    actor-turned-director Kevin Bacon (Sedgwick's husband) can't seem to decide if he's making a film about a loving eccentric or a sociopath.
  72. Mousehunt
    The movie's real charms lie in its surprisingly dark atmosphere and its almost subversive sense of humor.
  73. Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling
    Leitman has unearthed a terrific collection of vintage footage - yet, as if doubtful about holding our interest, she skims too quickly over the historical background.
  74. Angela's Ashes
    140 minutes of flat vignette, as dreary and uninvolving as the driving rain that never lets up on the benighted streets of Limerick.
  75. Mickey Blue Eyes
    An abbondanza of busy, situation comedy twists that snip one's suspended disbelief and send it crashing like a chandelier.
  76. Moulin Rouge!
    Drowns in baroque mise en scène camp, frenetic musical numbers and a precious dialogue conceit that wears out its welcome very fast.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Melinda and Melinda
    From its austere opening credits to its screechy women, this 35th film by Woody Allen looks and sounds like a dozen other Allen movies.
  78. Rounders
    Though the movie looks gorgeous, glittering with the monochromatic beauty of noir transposed into the key of yellow, it chugs along like an overly responsible documentary, more the working out of an idea about the gambler's true nature than a story.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Protector
    Jaa has the skills for the job, and shows them off in numerous fight scenes; it's just a shame that the movie he's in is barely acceptable in any other respect.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Inni
    The result is a hazy, shoegazy visual tone that is both elegiac and eulogistic - that is, at once meditative and funereal.
  81. Stealing Harvard
    Whenever Green shows up to do his semi-improvised, non-acting shtick (detaching pit bulls from testicles, kamikaze wheelchair rides, etc.), this otherwise sprightly and intermittently amusing movie suddenly feels like a ship dragging its anchor.
  82. Flight of the Phoenix
    But, in the end, it may be that man against sand isn't as thrilling as it was back in the day.
  83. Heartthrob
    Apart from an extended scene-setting flashback that takes the form of a lavish Farah Khan song-and-dance montage, most of the running time is devoted to wearying flop-sweat farce.
  84. Latter Days
    Though the film covers familiar queer-cinema ground, Latter Days' finely observed truths about the painful costs of being yourself make even the contrivance of its happy ending forgivable.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Man of the Century
    Though the story is often silly to the point of ridiculous, its goofy tone and charming characters, especially Frazier's Johnny, create a lovely idealization of a long-gone era.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Yours, Mine and Ours
    Likable (if not especially funny).
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Deal
    When you're working with clearly conventional material, it helps to attack it from a cockeyed angle or at least adopt a gritty, lived-in urgency, but Deal is fatally earnest.
  88. Can't Hardly Wait
    The cast of mostly unknowns is agreeable if unnecessarily bland, not a Spicoli among them.
  89. The Road to Guantanamo
    By inviting us to take on trust the Tipton Three's accounts of what they were doing in Afghanistan, Guantánamo falls into a familiar trap of agitprop filmmaking - turning the victim into a hero. The movie gives us no particular reason to believe that they were up to anything nefarious - or that they weren't.
  90. U-571
    A story as creaky as the sub that gives the film its name.
  91. À Tout de Suite (Right Now)
    Jacquot seems unwilling to either shape his story or offer commentary, a standard New Wave strategy that, in this instance, makes for a tale as vague as it is nouvelle.
  92. The Island
    Nary an original idea abounds in The Island.
  93. Walking on the Sky
    But Walking, which is well-acted and fast-moving, takes a tumble from which it never fully recovers once Josh's diary is found, and the rest of the film is spent tending to spilled secrets and their collateral damage.
  94. Chicken Little
    Chicken Little is a clunky, arbitrarily plotted, over-caffeinated spritz that, despite colorfully visualizing a world of suburbanized animals, shifts from social-outcast comedy to underdog clichés to War of the Worlds mayhem as if the filmmakers were an improv troupe slamming through genre requests.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Open Season
    On the plus side, Open Season enjoys a clear narrative, real rooting interest and good interspecies rapport. On the downside, there’s a surfeit of cruel bunny-rabbit gags.
  96. Heist
    Can he do the thing? Well, yes and no. He -- Mamet, David, celebrated celebrity playwright and less-certain maker of movies -- can do some of the things, like assemble a cast sleek as a cat.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Alexander
    What Stone has delivered instead is no folie de grandeur, but rather the last thing one would have expected from him: an honorable failure.
  98. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
    Game Over provides no answers.
  99. Love & Sex
    Janssen proves herself an actress of delightful range.
  100. Die, Mommie, Die!
    Predictably, the jokes are raunchy, yet they're few in number, as if the writer's sleaze well is running dry. First-time director Mark Rucker has a nice feel for period detailing but fails to build on his star's rare flashes of high energy.
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