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. Irreversible
    Noé calls Irreversible his "Eyes Wide Shut," though it's really more like "A Clockwork Orange."
  2. Ten
    One of the year's finest movies, it's not quite the masterpiece that some of Kiarostami's cultists want it to be.
  3. Dischord
    A disappointing hodgepodge that fails to tie up its conflicting strands of family drama and suspense thriller.
  4. Poolhall Junkies
    Callahan's feature debut is a one-way ticket to Palookaville.
  5. Cradle 2 the Grave
    Relentless, infantile and impossible to dislike.
  6. Horns and Halos
    Unexpectedly moving documentary.
  7. Lawless Heart
    For these gifted directors and their fine ensemble, the notion that every life forms into a mosaic of intimate, largely unobserved details is the story most worth telling.
  8. Open Hearts
    A very good new Dogme by Danish director Susanne Bier, begins with several lives in excellent working order, and proceeds by way of domestic tragedy to a full-court emotional train wreck.
  9. Dark Blue
    My own view is that, like me, the LAPD was defeated by the movie's incestuously proliferating plots. I've seen Dark Blue twice, and I still don't have a handle on all its comings and goings.
  10. Till Human Voices Wake Us
    I can find nothing nice to note about this excruciatingly slow, overly tasteful piece of whimsy.
  11. Old School
    The 1978 frat-house classic "Animal House," starring the late, great John Belushi, is the model for testosterone-mad comedies such as this, and while it hasn't that film's scope or finesse, Old School does have Ferrell, a man clearly in touch with his inner Belushi.
  12. The Life of David Gale
    The movie's one unalloyed pleasure is a funny Goth Girl, played by Melissa McCarthy, who grasps, as Parker apparently doesn't, that the script is energetic rubbish, not The Greatest Story Ever Told.
  13. Gods and Generals
    By highlighting the human costs of slavery to everyone BUT the enslaved -- here, relations between African-American domestics and their owners are cordial, even respectful, on both sides -- Maxwell risks being pilloried as an apologist for that institution.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Missing Young Woman
    The film is shocking, and, for better or worse, Portillo's refusal to offer solace kindles a potent rage that's not easily forgotten.
  15. 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.
  16. Ordinary Sinner
    What really hamstrings Sinner, though, is the hetero narcissism beneath its enlightened posturing.
  17. All the Real Girls
    Green is essentially a poet of moods rather than a teller of tales, and he adorns the movie with stylistic touches influenced by Terrence Malick.
  18. Gerry
    Van Sant ultimately reveals so little about this odd couple that we frankly don't give a damn what happens to them. Nor, apparently, does he.
  19. Painted Fire
    A beautiful and exhilaratingly clear-eyed new film by the equally celebrated South Korean director Im Kwon-Taek.
  20. The Jungle Book 2
    Bounces through the bush in search of good will and comes up with recycled charm as it reintroduces most of the original's major characters.
  21. Daredevil
    Johnson clearly digs the idea of Daredevil as an agonized hero, slathering the screen with gloomy lighting and Catholic imagery, yet the movie has far less emotional weight than, say, "Spider-Man" (whose building-hopping pyrotechnics it often appears to be copying).
  22. He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not
    Mercifully there's more Hitchcock than Lacan in this slickly enjoyable little number, which cannily plays off the ingénue image of "Amélie's" Audrey Tautou.
  23. Stone Reader
    To anyone whose soul lives or dies by reading or writing or both, the movie is a total thrill, and not just as a debate on the nature of the one-shot writer or the decline of publishing.
  24. America So Beautiful
    The film staggers under its own didacticism. Too often we're told of men who were professionals back home and are here reduced to driving cabs, waiting tables or vending ice cream.
  25. Shanghai Knights
    Turns out to be that rarest of Hollywood creatures: a sequel that one-ups the original…These two smart, happy movie stars prove that silliness doesn’t have to be moronic.
  26. Deliver Us from Eva
    Hardwick doesn't have the chops yet to give the movie the caffeinated zip that it needs to really fly. There are too many dull, flat stretches…(however) the soundtrack kicks ass.
  27. May
    The inventive and unpredictable May is exactly the kind of unexpected delight one hopes for every time the lights go down.
  28. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
    Directed by Donald Petrie ("Miss Congeniality") with about as much substance and style as a ham sandwich. It's a heavy hand that damps down such airy creatures as Hudson and McConaughey.
  29. The Guru
    By the time a Bollywood production number segues into the finale from "Grease," the transition not only makes perfect sense, it sparkles.
  30. Lost in La Mancha
    Too bad for Gilliam and everyone involved, but in the departments of spectacle and schadenfreude, great fun for us.
  31. Biker Boyz
    Orlando Jones, buff and commanding, steals the film as Soul Train, a lawyer-biker, while Lisa Bonet, a sexy, enigmatic earth mother, is stranded in a movie that has no idea what to do with her.
  32. The Recruit
    Visibly uninspired, Pacino gives a perfunctory performance -- though surely he must have looked over at Farrell and been reminded of himself 30 years ago, all jacked-up and beautiful, like a stallion at the gate.
  33. Suddenly Naked
    In this lively romantic comedy from Canada, actors Wendy Crewson and Joe Cobden give off sparks -- in bed and out.
  34. Final Destination 2
    The cast of the original looks Shakespearean in comparison to Cook and her hapless cohorts, but to be fair, those first dead ducks had a real script to explore, which this bunch does not.
  35. Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary
    Junge's testimony about the last days in Hitler's bunker will fascinate the layperson, but it adds little to what is already known by historians.
  36. Amen.
    Subtle distinctions have not been Costa-Gavras' long suit, but urgency becomes him in this forceful and intelligent evocation.
  37. Darkness Falls
    Black cats, ill-timed power outages and children in peril are just a few of the hoary scare tactics ineffectively rendered in the style of so many films buried in the dark recesses of January.
  38. Charly
    It simply takes faith for granted as a motivating factor, and thus pulls off the neat trick of never making us feel we’re being preached at -- Yet, as directed by first-timer Adam Anderegg, from Jack Weyland's 1980 novel, the movie is too amateurishly square to make the most of its own ironic implications.
  39. A Guy Thing
    Transcends its video-box-shelf-filler pedigree only when it's actually indulging in guy stuff, mostly of the frat-boy, beer-commercial variety.
  40. National Security
    The career of the lovably tense Zahn may benefit more from this movie than that of Lawrence, who’s funny, here and there, but who appears to be working at half speed.
  41. Kangaroo Jack
    Bruckheimer shifts from high-concept historical romance "Pearl Harbor" and high-concept T&A "Coyote Ugly" to a first attempt at high-concept light comedy, yet only his fondness for dragging acting talent down with him carries over.
  42. Divine Intervention
    As pristine a distillation of Palestinian rage as I've seen outside the evening news.
  43. P.S. Your Cat Is Dead!
    It's Boyar who’s the find here, though, a gently magnetic presence who's all the more impressive for being thoroughly riveting despite spending most of the movie face-down on a counter.
  44. City of God
    But if City of God whirs with energy for nearly its full 130-minute running time, it is oddly lacking in emotional heft for a work that aspires to the epic -- it is essentially a tarted-up exploitation picture whose business is to make ghastly things fun.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Crimson Gold
    The result is the work of a funereal yet darkly funny neorealist, sounding the rallying cry against the inflexible maxim casually delivered by one of his own film's characters.
  46. WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3
    The two encounters with the beast WXIII -- first in a darkened factory, and later in an empty stadium, to the strains of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in G Minor (Pathétique) -- elevate the disappointingly flat animation into a vivid fable of monster and morality.
  47. Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
    Melville seems to peer out from behind the camera with a reassuring wink and nod. Le Cercle Rouge is the most self-consciously cool of his famously underheated films noirs.
  48. The Son
    Makes no attempt to entertain us. Much of this extraordinarily tactful movie, like "Rosetta," is shot in close-up, focusing on the back of Olivier's neck, as if inviting us to see the world as he does.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Just Married
    As long on violent slapstick as a Three Stooges retrospective.
  50. The Slaughter Rule
    This bleak debut feature from writer-directors Alex and Andrew Smith would be all but impossible to sit through if it weren’t for Ryan Gosling and Clea Duvall.
  51. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
    Ultimately just another celebrity bio-pic, and far less trenchant than, say, the more conventional "Auto Focus." For all their whirring ingenuity, Kaufman's scripts require a director who will tether his cleverness to reality.
  52. Love Liza
    Quirkily sad, unexpectedly funny -- and just a tad repetitive.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chicago
    Chicago is that rare thing: a nutritious hard candy.
  54. Sonny
    Preposterous and tedious, Sonny is spiked with unintentional laughter that, unfortunately, occurs too infrequently to make the film even a guilty pleasure.
  55. The Pianist
    Polanski, wisely, doesn't interpret or explain. He seems to have decided that in the face of such meticulously planned horror, the best one can do is get the details right.
  56. Max
    Suggests that had young Adolf Hitler managed to get his art show, the Holocaust might never have happened. This seems absurd, not to say insensitive.
  57. Nicholas Nickleby
    In his capable, yet only mildly exciting, adaptation of Charles Dickens’ third novel, Douglas McGrath (Emma) keeps reminding us that what we’re seeing is theater. This feels gratuitous.
  58. 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.
  59. Catch Me If You Can
    As an actor DiCaprio has long been known for his ardor, not to mention his tiresome self-seriousness, but working for Spielberg, he plays his scenes with a comic deftness I thought he didn't have in him.
  60. Pinocchio
    Visually sumptuous but intellectually stultifying.
  61. Smokers Only
    There is a great divide between a film about people in the throes of aimless, meandering lives and a film that is simply aimless and meandering. Smokers Only never acknowledges, let alone bridges, that gap.
  62. The Wild Thornberrys Movie
    Surprisingly engaging, as is the Paul Simon theme song, and the film is enlivened by flashes of humor just rude enough to delight older children.
  63. Morvern Callar
    A strange and beautiful film.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Two Weeks Notice
    It's not a horrible film -- and it's a fuckload better than some other oops-we-fell-in-love comedies in recent years (e.g., J. Lo's doggy "The Wedding Planner"). It's just not very smart. Deeply rentable.
  65. Narc
    Taut and well-acted, faltering only when the filmmaker loses faith in the power of his story.
  66. Gangs of New York
    Scorsese and his writers have saddled their dream with a corny plot apparently lifted from some old 1930s Warner Bros. film starring Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien.
  67. Spider
    Deliciously wicked, strangely poetic portrait (adapted by Patrick McGrath from his own novel) of a schizophrenic man at once tyrannized and elevated by oedipal terrors.
  68. Antwone Fisher
    The film offers an impressive melding of quietly radical images and ideas with, yes, an old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing holiday tearjerker.
  69. 25th Hour
    Just about the only good thing you can say about Spike Lee's pointless, didactic The 25th Hour is that it's filled with strong performances, albeit of stock characters.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
    Falters precisely because there's not enough stumbling, and far too much striding gallantly forward.
  71. The Guys
    The Australian actor taps into something miraculous here -- LaPaglia's ability to convey grief and hope works with Weaver's sensitive reactions to make this a two-actor master class.
  72. Maid in Manhattan
    It's a case of persona overwhelming presence, and the butterscotch smoothness that was such an asset opposite George Clooney's glittering cool in "Out of Sight" is all but lost in the sheen of this high-gloss production.
  73. The Hot Chick
    Marks no discernible improvement on its predecessors "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" and "The Animal," though the sight of the deeply unprepossessing Schneider all dolled up for girlie business is good for a few shallow chuckles.
  74. Evelyn
    The movie has a script (by Paul Pender) made of wood, and it's relentlessly folksy, a procession of stagy set pieces stacked with binary oppositions.
  75. About Schmidt
    The bleakness and poignancy are inescapable in About Schmidt, a character study that has the emotional richness of the great Italian and Eastern European films of the 1960s, in which humor and pathos rode up and down on the seesaw together.
  76. Drumline
    It's like a musical with no big numbers, or an action film withholding the explosions.
  77. Intact
    The story is bound together with gaming set pieces that are strange, inventive and mesmerizing.
  78. Star Trek: Nemesis
    Nemesis never feels true to itself, its energy never fully engaged. Even with Earth on the line in its climactic space battle, the film seems embarrassed that it couldn't have found a better way to work through its issues.
  79. Empire
    Reyes' fast-paced tale soars on the pedigree of its cast, all of whom are clearly having a ball -- Both poignant and wickedly amusing, Empire sets high standards for a subgenre that's rarely had any.
  80. Analyze That
    It's clever, vulgar and fully committed to making us howl with laughter. If only all sequels were this much fun.
  81. Soap Girl
    Silly and pretentious would-be romance.
  82. To End All Wars
    The dialogue and voice-over narration (by Gordon) are homily-heavy, and the staging sometimes awkward. The prison extras in particular are often left to stare blankly at the gut-wrenching action before them, with many, including Sutherland, looking awfully fit for men who've been starving for years.
  83. My Kingdom
    A baffling subplot involving smuggling drugs inside Danish cows falls flat, and if you're going to alter the Bard's ending, you’d better have a good alternative. Boyd does not.
  84. Adaptation.
    Adaptation is hardly profound, but it's one of the most soulful and loopily romantic movies I've seen all year.
  85. Equilibrium
    The fun here is not so much in the solid if stolid performances from Bale and co-stars Taye Diggs and Emily Watson (gussied up to resemble the Jefferson Airplane–era Grace Slick) or in Wimmer's overpolished plot devices as it is in the production values.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Russian Ark
    High art, low comedy, hard labor and royal prerogative are here thrown together in an elegant unity, a breathtaking demonstration of Russian cinematic -- hence artistic -- brilliance.
  87. Rabbit-Proof Fence
    Noyce wants us to feel the joy of the homecoming, but he's honest enough to show, in a coda that tells what happened to the girls after their break for home, how Rabbit Proof Fence finally must be more a tale of courage than of victory.
  88. Eight Crazy Nights
    In the end it's only "The Chanukah Song, Part 3," playing over the closing credits, that manages to capture the joy of the season.
  89. Solaris
    While I could tell the love story was supposed to be moving, I kept feeling the characters' passion struggling against the virtuosity of Soderbergh's direction, which is so tight, so gorgeously lit, so worked that even when he wants scenes to be emotionally incandescent, they wind up detached, even chilly.
  90. They
    The film stinks from start to finish, like a wet burlap sack of gloom.
  91. The Emperor's Club
    This likable but utterly conventional movie works harder than is necessary to unpack for us Ethan Canin’s short story "The Palace Thief."
  92. Die Another Day
    The result is the niftiest Bond movie in years -- fresh, funny, and jammed to the rafters with demented stunts, Boys'-Own gadgetry and brazen promiscuity.
  93. Friday After Next
    Loud, chaotic and largely unfunny (veteran actors John Witherspoon and Anna Maria Horsford seem at best indifferent to the material), Friday After Next is the graceless sodomizing of a cult classic.
  94. Phantom
    First-time director João Pedro Rodrigues' unwillingness to define his hero’s background or motivations becomes more and more frustrating as the film goes on.
  95. Talk to Her
    Talk to Her is as melodramatic -- and, sporadically, as funny -- as any Almodóvar comedy, but its mood is one of muted, aching loneliness, while the color scheme leans less to hot reds and magentas than to rich, elegant shades of ochre.
  96. The Quiet American
    Noyce has made a good-looking, intelligent stab at the novel, mildly undermined by a tendency to seek contemporary relevance.
  97. 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.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times
    Plays more like a disjointed radio show with pictures -- The power of Chomsky's intellect and message are poorly served when pigeonholed by the hagiography of some of his supporters.
  99. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    Columbus' sequel is faster, livelier and a good deal funnier than his original, due to the presence of some new characters.
  100. Interview with the Assassin
    Burger at first toys with his unlikely premise, panning through the streets of this stuccoed suburbia as if meditating on the banality of evil, and indeed, our first few encounters with the assassin.
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