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. Ta Ra Rum Pum
    The film is so single-mindedly determined to be light and comfortable, to not raise a sweat, that it forgoes even the mildest surprises. The only things that get heavy here are the viewer's eyelids.
  2. Nabbeun namja
    Ghastly.
  3. Guess Who
    Has surprising depth and charm, descriptors never before ascribed to a movie starring Ashton Kutcher.
  4. Daddy's Little Girls
    Perry has great casting instincts, and in Elba and Union he's matched two gifted, equally gorgeous actors, both of whom seem ready to make sparks fly. If only their director would let them.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    S1m0ne
    Niccol gives audiences a very amusing puzzle about authenticity, fraud, and the uses and abuses of technology. That is a fine and funny feat. The very folks responsible for our obsession with celebrity will likely love it. And in loving it, they will no doubt let themselves off the hook.
  6. Addicted to Love
    It's a tribute to Robert Gordon's nifty screenplay and Dunne's cheerful way with digression that Addicted to Love, even as it broadens into screwball, also deepens into a character study full of surprising left turns.
  7. 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.
  8. Lucky You
    Always good with actors, Hanson brings out a beaten-down charm in Bana that works nicely against the hotheaded authority the actor shows in the gambling scenes, while Duvall is, like the veteran card shark he plays, a master of subtle gestures. The low card here is Barrymore, somewhat awkwardly shoehorned into this boys' club to provide some romantic relief.
  9. Clifford's Really Big Movie
    The sketchy, poorly colored, outsourced animation is dispiriting, but it's the only display of blatant crudeness, and in that, an obliging parent may find relief.
  10. The Good German
    Sumptuous, clever and cold.
  11. Mystery, Alaska
    Thoroughly mediocre.
  12. Jackpot
    The mood is hermetic to the point of claustrophobia, embellished with a sense of everyday surrealism indebted to David Lynch.
  13. Paid in Full
    Lazily directed by Charles Stone III (the man behind Budweiser's "Whassup?!" campaign) from a leaden script by Matthew Cirulnick and novelist Thulani Davis.
  14. The Reckoning
    The Reckoning proceeds with such leaden literal-mindedness that it never seems more than a stodgy (and, at times, blatantly silly) paperback affair.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Al Franken: God Spoke
    Throughout God Spoke, Franken comes off as passionate and funny, with an impressive ability to muster facts and an absence of smugness.
  16. Queens
    Although not quite as uproarious or as wickedly subversive as Pedro Almodóvar's more substantial body of work, Queens is content to scamper gaily in the wake of his achievements -- and to offer one more reason for old Franco to roll anew in his grave.
  17. Auggie Rose
    None of it rings true, and it distracts from the film's real heart, which, on its own, would have made for a strikingly original first film.
  18. Sidewalks of New York
    Burns, who made a career out of his mildly charming Irish-American rogue persona, has, with his latest and fourth feature, finally sloughed off the remaining traces of that charm, along with, apparently, the vestiges of a personality.
  19. The 6th Day
    Achieves a level of hypocrisy astounding less for its brazenness than for its sheer stupidity.
  20. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
    A soulless affair.
  21. Tycoon: A New Russian
    Lounguine’s biopic is chilly and convoluted, too eventful to be boring, but never taking the time to immerse us emotionally in Makovski's world.
  22. Nicotina
    Self-satisfied, incoherently busy farce.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Turning Green
    Turning Green is, if nothing else, the world’s loneliest teen sex comedy.
  24. The High Cost of Living
    The cast is uniformly good, but Isabelle Blais especially stands out as Natalie.
  25. The Sentinel
    Sentinel works overtime to suggest what a thrill-a-minute world its characters inhabit; but only during the last 20 minutes does the movie's pulse (or ours) raise above a flatline. The actors look uniformly unhappy to be there - except for Basinger, who seems lost in a lithium haze.
  26. Big Bad Love
    Held together by the blues -- Brown's prose and Howard's performance, Big Bad Love is a mess, but it's a sincere mess, beautifully shot by Paul Ryan and faithfully adapted by screenwriter James Howard.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Way of the Gun
    Isn't a bad film, but as we watch it we're constantly rewriting it in our minds to make it a better one.
  28. The Hidden Half
    Ultimately, The Hidden Half is shopworn feminist soap opera, enacted in a political echo chamber.
  29. The Business of Fancydancing
    While The Business of Fancydancing is a thoughtful and complex work of sound and vision, it doesn't seem quite right to call it a film, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it is plainly, if crisply, shot on video, with a bright, shiny surface that fairly screams low-rent. Second, the whole business is strangely non-cinematic.
  30. Good Boy!
    This latest offering from the Jim Henson stable puts a cheerfully broad new spin on the boy-and-his-dog franchise.
  31. Benji: Off the Leash!
    Yes, Joe Camp has gone meta. It's hard to not feel a measure of warmth for the determined optimism of his enterprise, especially since he hasn't lost the touch for cute dog antics.
  32. The Grudge
    Isn't art, but as date-night fright flicks go, it's effective.
  33. The Mummy
    A near miss overall, but enjoyable in its littler particulars.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bohemian Rhapsody
    As with a concert or favorite record, sometimes it's best not to overthink things but simply let the visceral power take over. That is what made Queen and Freddie Mercury so special and that is why Bohemian Rhapsody will rock you, if you let it.
  35. Hancock
    Doesn't seem to quite know what it is or where it's headed. So it goes anywhere it can while treading thematic water.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Favor
    The Favor ultimately takes itself too seriously and ends up stranded in an unconvincing no man's land of cute bleakness.
  37. Callas Forever
    Ardant gives in this film the performance of her life, lip-synching to the voice of the real Callas.
  38. 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.
  39. Flannel Pajamas
    The results are far from perfect: For one thing, Lipsky is so far from being a fluid visual storyteller that the garishly lit, appallingly composed Flannel Pajamas makes another two-hander talkfest Lipsky famously distributed -- "My Dinner With Andre" -- seem like "Lawrence of Arabia" by comparison.
  40. The Man Who Copied
    An enjoyable ride.
  41. Bedazzled
    It's nowhere near as funny, largely because of an exhaustingly hyperactive performance by Elizabeth Hurley.
  42. Harvard Man
    As with most of Toback's films, there are Big Ideas being bandied about that never quite coalesce, a failing that, this time at least, mirrors his hero's own hyped-out search for meaning.
  43. China: The Panda Adventure
    The true star of the film -- areas whose mind-boggling size and immense beauty are still too overwhelming to be fully captured by the supersize IMAX screen.
  44. Harrison's Flowers
    A premise so patently absurd, so implausible, they might as well have pitched it to the Oxygen channel.
  45. Mobile Homes
    In Vladimir de Fontenay’s Mobile Homes, Imogen Poots gives a performance of such multifaceted distinction that it might be hard to believe you’re watching the same actress from frame to frame.
  46. 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.
  47. Tristan and Isolde
    The film's one indisputably great performance comes from Sewell, whose Marke is no mere cuckold, but a good, honorable man caught up in circumstances beyond his ken, and ultimately this Tristan & Isolde's most tragic figure.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Men in Black II
    Smith and Jones sometimes have to paddle hard to keep their heads above the toilet water in which screenwriters Robert Gordon (Galaxy Quest) and Barry Fanaro (Kingpin) occasionally dunk them. But if the presence of Smith and Jones is indeed the tinker-proof ingredient of the Men in Black formula, little else seems to have survived the production unaltered.
  49. Green Dragon
    The characters are put through worn-out cinematic paces, making both them and their tales tedious. Green Dragon plays as hollow catharsis, with lots of tears but very little in the way of insights.
  50. The Monkey's Mask
    What makes the film compelling is the filmmakers' ability to blend a studied (occasionally academic) dissection of cultural and sexual decadence with a potboiler plot.
  51. Dead or Alive
    Not for the squeamish (a guy rips out his own arm, for goodness' sake), the film is nevertheless more than just a gonzo gross-out. But not by much.
  52. Around the World in 80 Days
    Despite the rush to get everyone from place to place, director Frank Coraci (The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy) luxuriates in colorful visual detail and gives the locals their due.
  53. The Flying Scotsman
    It has a terminal case of the cutes crossed with the labored earnestness of a disease-of-the-week melodrama.
  54. The Black Dahlia
    Swank's character and her performance are good enough to merit a movie of their own, instead of serving as fourth wheel to this lifeless ménage à trois.
  55. An Unfinished Life
    The 68-year-old actor (Redford) segues into full-blown irascible-old-man mode, and though the transformation isn't quite as compelling as it sounds, it's easily the best thing going for this Lasse Hallstrom–directed, Wyoming-set weepie.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Imagine Me & You
    But while the film's tasty London settings add a whiff of elegance, Parker's confection collapses because we never believe Rachel and Luce as destined soul mates. The blame rests entirely with Perabo's meager performance.
  57. The Family That Preys
    What's memorable here is the sparkling chemistry between Bates and Woodard, whose scenes together are a pleasure to watch, even as one thinks that their next outing should be to co-teach a master class entitled, "How To Rise Above Cliché."
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Azumi
    Failing in its attempts at Zhang Yimou–like poetry, Azumi calls to mind a long, blood-splattered director's cut of a Power Rangers episode.
    • 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.
  60. Glamour
    Most of the movie is observant and level-headed, a tip of the hat to ordinary schlubs entangled in vast events, people who would otherwise be background victims in a conventional historical drama.
  61. Me, Myself & Irene
    For all their foul jokes and embarrassments, the brothers have a talent for creating characters whose goodness, and lack of ironic self-consciousness, shield them against life's insults.
  62. Zhou Yu de huo che
    If Zhou Yu’s Train is finally no more than whimsy, it’s classy, delicate whimsy, a testament to the way romantic love, however unsatisfied, continues to drive itself.
  63. Preaching to the Choir
    Formulaic but innocuous little movie's one clever moment, a sing-off between choirs standing on their respective church steps, trying to lure in Sunday-morning worshippers.
  64. The Man in the Iron Mask
    Going down with the Titanic was a picnic compared to what Leonardo DiCaprio has to weather (an Alice in Wonderland hairdo, for starters) as Louis XIV in this unwittingly nutso adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' 1850 novel.
  65. Hart's War
    A decent thriller trying to overcome a rather preposterous premise.
  66. K-PAX
    Manipulative, feel-good drivel wrapped around a cloying performance by Kevin Spacey.
  67. 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."
  68. Jeepers Creepers
    Salva falls back on dull, jumbled action and an awkward subplot as he lurches toward a sequel.
  69. Dr. Dolittle 2
    The best that the good doctor (Murphy) can do, encumbered as he is by Larry Levin's screenplay and its low joke quotient, is discipline the dog, lay into the lizard and shtick it to the bear.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Greater Good
    The pace of the film remains fairly brisk, in no small part because what's being said is staggering, especially if you don't know too much about the science of and politics behind vaccines.
  71. Scary Movie 3
    As in the late-period works of Mel Brooks, the very structure of the film feels irreparably fatigued.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pitch Black
    This is damaged goods from the opening Poly Gram logo.
  73. Romance
    There's never been a movie director like Catherine Breillat, a fearless visionary and one hell of a woman.
  74. Scotland, Pa.
    It's a setup so easy it borders on facile, but keeping the film from cheap-shot mediocrity is its crack cast.
  75. Down and Out with the Dolls
    Like a good punk tune, the filmmaker's focused energy distracts from compositional flaws, all the better to enjoy visceral pleasures such as a spot-on Zoë Pouledouris as preening singer Fauna.
  76. Rosenstrasse
    Von Trotta and co-writer Pamela Katz can't resist cutting, again and again, to Hannah and her airless musings on the story's meaning. These interludes stop the movie in its tracks and, counter no doubt to von Trotta's intentions, do a disservice to the Rosenstrasse women themselves, who shouldn't have to fight for screen time.
  77. Return to Never Land
    Cleverly structured, fast-paced, funny, even moving.
  78. Scoop
    The direction is lazy and the script thoroughly witless, from its token Bergman references to dialogue that suggests a night in borscht-belt hell.
  79. A Lot Like Love
    Peet is triumphant as the beguiling object of desire with wounded-bird eyes and devilish smile -- sexy and tart, then, in the space of a breath, totally, tenderly tragic. Like Oliver, we'd happily follow her anywhere.
  80. 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.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Titan A.E.
    An overproduced cartoon without a freeze-dried ounce of wit.
  82. The Banger Sisters
    Sarandon's motherly sexiness is appealing, but it's Hawn, in a warm and deep performance as the hapless but free-spirited Suzette, who walks away with the movie.
  83. Charlotte Gray
    Charlotte Gray is not a subtle movie, but it is an honorable and surprisingly gripping one.
  84. Scarlet Diva
    This is such a dazzlingly self-assured directorial debut that it's hard to know what to praise first.
  85. Remember the Titans
    Bruckheimer's latest is in some crucial respects worse than those earlier blockbuster bids ("Gone in 60 Seconds" and "Coyote Ugly") -- certainly it's more fraudulent -- because unlike those films, which don't claim to be about anything other than thrills and tits, Remember the Titans means to be about race.
  86. Kingdom Come
    So many stars means so little room for character and plot.
  87. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
    Can't sustain its manic pitch, or work the McMiracle needed to overcome a script (credited to three writers, though more were no doubt afoot) that's less a story than a sales pitch.
  88. Death Defying Acts
    This won't be remembered as one of the prodigiously talented Armstrong's great films (My Brilliant Career, High Tide, Little Women), but it's still 90 percent better than everything else out there.
  89. The Real Blonde
    Cute and smarmy are nothing new for writer-director Tom DiCillo; what is new is the crushingly unfunny fusion of the two he's hit upon for this film.
  90. Bartleby
    While Parker and co-writer Catherine di Napoli are faithful to Melville’s plotline, they and a fully engaged supporting cast — have made the old boy's characters more quick-witted than any English Lit major would have thought possible.
  91. My First Mister
    Christine Lahti, making her directorial debut, wrings good laughs and strong emotion throughout, largely through the performances.
  92. Brother Bear
    Today's street-smart moviegoing kids don't need to be so shamelessly pandered to.
  93. Bush's Brain
    A tad dry but never boring.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Glee: The 3D Concert Movie
    It's merely a trivial footnote to the popular franchise - though one that will no doubt satisfy rabid gleeks.
  95. Saw III
    That may not exactly thrill those who admire the Saw films only for their splatter quotient, but all told, this is a more affecting study in grief, guilt and human frailty than "Babel."
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Trudell
    How could a movie about someone with one of the nation's longest FBI files be this dull?
    • 48 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Spanglish
    Spanglish is Brooks' unqualified kitchen disaster - a desperate, shapeless, overreaching big-screen sitcom of a movie that just wants to be loved. Is that so wrong? In a word, yes.
  98. Lucky Break
    The end result is like cold porridge with only the odd enjoyably chewy lump.
  99. Taxman
    Writer-director Avi Nesher and co-screenwriter Roger Berger -- upon whose real-life investigations the film is based -- deliver on the hard-boiled promise of this low-key thriller with plenty of gritty twists and turns.
  100. Tears of the Sun
    Despite the busy camera work, bombastic score and rapt attention to violence, director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) can't mask the script's white-savior paternalism.
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