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. The Way Home
    A conventional if appealing tear-jerker, The Way Home would like to grandmother us all.
  2. 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.
  3. Ararat
    Egoyan has always constructed dense ensemble films, and here again the writer-director hopes to reinforce his themes by piling layer upon layer of character. Unfortunately, the layers end up cluttering the story.
  4. Half Past Dead
    The most exhilarating fight by far is an acrobatic wall climber between Ja Rule and Nia Peeples, choreographed by Hong Kong's Xin Xin Xong (The Musketeer) who, in terms of thrills per minute, is the movie's real star.
  5. Standing in the Shadows of Motown
    The film's energy is primarily due to the rich storytelling skills of the musicians, who trot out anecdotes and memories filled with humor and wry philosophizing.
  6. The Crime of Padre Amaro
    The tragic ending they tack on to the film reinforces the same fear-mongering notion of cause and effect that gives the Church its power to abuse and exploit, and the film winds up muffling its own powerful protest.
  7. Revolution #9
    So riddled with unanswered questions that it requires gargantuan leaps of faith just to watch it plod along, while McCann's overly broad strokes miss crucial details as he tries to mount an attack on both the power of the media and an indifferent medical profession.
  8. The Rising Place
    As a first-time filmmaker who juggles such duties as writing, directing, producing, even playing piano solos on the soundtrack, Rice is in over his head.
  9. 'R Xmas
    R Xmas offers a poetic and profane ambiguity that's vintage Ferrara. The drug dealers are community leaders, the cops are corrupt, and the materialistic wife has unimagined emotional reserves.
  10. The Flip Side
    An intriguing failure that promises more than it delivers.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dieu est grand, je suis toute petite
    Tatou evinces that innate self-possession in which Frenchwomen specialize, and lets it fly here. That, in turn, keeps this flawed movie aloft.
  12. Etoiles: Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet
    Tavernier's documentary about the famed Paris Opera Ballet is itself a graceful thing, a fleet-footed yet substantial examination of what it means to devote one's life to the art of dance.
  13. 8 Mile
    Eminem plays Rabbit with riveting, flamboyantly expressive intensity.
  14. Hush!
    Exchanges overheard in bars, crisp dialogue between characters and a wistful tone underscore both modern isolation and the age-old need for connection.
  15. Far From Heaven
    Not a campy movie. True, it has its ironies, but though you can read it ironically if you wish, Haynes' triumph is that it also plays beautifully straight.
  16. Femme Fatale
    I haven't admired a De Palma film since "Carrie," or even enjoyed one since "Scarface," so it must mean something that Femme Fatale gave me one of the best times at the movies I've had this year.
  17. Treasure Planet
    Give writer-director team John Musker and Ron Clements (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules) credit for trying to update the formula and grow with the kids weaned on their earlier hits, though it's doubtful the "tweens" they’re aiming at here still embrace Disney, and little kids don't care about back story.
  18. The Santa Clause 2
    While the film is not entirely successful, it still manages to string together enough charming moments to work.
  19. Santa vs. the Snowman
    If you're out shopping with the brood and need a 40-minute break, you could do worse.
  20. Love in the Time of Money
    The film ultimately offers nothing more than people in an urban jungle needing other people to survive. Kane's character observes that "We’re all connected by love" -- and that sounds familiar, too.
  21. Besotted
    The director and her capable cast appear to be caught in a heady whirl of New Age–inspired good intentions, but the spell they cast isn't the least bit mesmerizing.
  22. Daughter from Danang
    The film's almost unbearable portrait of sadness and grief transcends its specific story to speak to the ways in which need, history and presumption tangle, and sometimes destroy, blood ties.
  23. The Weight of Water
    Provides an unfulfilled promise of pleasure (providing one doesn't cave in to the spectacle of bare-chested Elizabeth Hurley sucking on an ice cube) in this heavy-handed exercise in time-vaulting literary pretension.
  24. Tully
    This is writer-director Hilary Birmingham's first film, and it's a lovely thing, as reserved and unfussy as its characters and, like them, full of surprises.
  25. I Spy
    Between spy training and sensitivity training, the two (Murphy/Wilson) prove nicely matched comic foils.
  26. All the Queen's Men
    Bad in such a bizarre way that it's almost worth seeing, if only to witness the crazy confluence of purpose and taste.
  27. Roger Dodger
    I was with Roger Dodger all the way until its vile hero had an 11th-hour burst of insight that defied all belief. I didn't buy it, but I do want his therapist's phone number.
    • L.A. Weekly
  28. Looking Through Lillian
    Torem drifts into formula and his initially promising film goes unbearably soft.
  29. Waking Up in Reno
    Director Jordan Brady achieves the remarkable feat of squandering a topnotch foursome of actors -- particularly Theron, a very game and able comedienne -- by shoving them into every clichéd white-trash situation imaginable.
  30. The Truth About Charlie
    The story itself falls to earth with a thud, not least because of a casting catastrophe. The boyish, goofily smiling Wahlberg is egregiously out of place as the kind of charming-ambiguous dreamboat you'd have to be Cary Grant to pull off.
  31. Food of Love
    Crushingly airless film -- Food chokes on its own depiction of upper-crust decorum.
  32. Frida
    There's something oddly moving about the film purely as a love story between two people who were more alike than was good for them, yet somehow stuck it out. What we see in Frida is not Kahlo the painter, but Kahlo the love of Rivera's life, as he was of hers.
  33. The Bank
    Like "Wall Street" before it, The Bank never amounts to more than a glossy comic book, and first-time writer-director Robert Connolly stumbles with his plotting and his direction of Wenham.
  34. 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.
  35. Ghost Ship
    If you take your ghost stories garnished with a dressing of sadism, sanctimony and silliness, go ahead and squander the nine bucks.
  36. Jackass: The Movie
    The Jackass boys achieve true genius, however, when they take their penance public. Before stunned, inert onlookers, these skate-punk Situationists transform official zones of work and leisure -- office parks, golf courses, bowling alleys -- into arenas of dangerous stupidity to remind us that, in the end, we’re all just meat.
  37. All or Nothing
    It's a strangely stirring experience that finds warmth in the coldest environment and makes each crumb of emotional comfort feel like a 10-course banquet.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Derrida
    The result is fascinating, whether you're smitten by him or his work, or simply intrigued by contemporary thought.
  39. Goyangileul butaghae
    Captivating coming-of-age story.
  40. Le bossu
    The film is never less than lovely to gaze upon, shot in saturated colors, richly appointed in period trappings and peopled only by the very beautiful. But it is also, by its end, too silly to take seriously.
  41. White Boy
    Here, Lohman's luminous presence rises above the badly directed violence and mayhem -- even if the movie's a dud, she's a star.
  42. Under the Moonlight
    A flat, middlebrow variation on some of the central themes of recent Iranian cinema.
  43. Abandon
    Aiming to elicit a last-minute shiver from the audience, Gaghan is likely to get instead a mood-destroying giggle.
  44. The Grey Zone
    It's grim stuff indeed, but somehow the horror never quite overwhelms Nelson's sure-footed approach to raising all manner of frankly unanswerable questions -- in particular, what would or could one have done in such circumstances?
  45. Hansel & Gretel
    For trashing a classic, Tunnicliffe and his writing cohorts deserve a Grimm-style fate -- perhaps a long, slow boil in the witch’s vat?
  46. Real Women Have Curves
    Accomplished and invigorating debut feature from Colombian-born director Patricia Cardoso that took both the Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance this year.
  47. Formula 51
    A waste of the filmmakers' time and ours, and offering further evidence that, outside the art house, much British cinema has its head jammed tightly up its own arse.
  48. Naqoyqatsi
    Incoherence reigns.
  49. The Ring
    In the final reel, the tension dissipates with a flabby hiss, as the film devolves into a banal, conventional ghost story.
  50. Auto Focus
    Certainly the movie is one of Schrader's most accomplished, and most entertaining, but there's something cold and unforgiving about his vision, delivered with a severity that only a bred-in-the-bone Calvinist could muster.
  51. 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.
  52. 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.
  53. Brown Sugar
    Despite crisp photography and the director's gift for building a scene, the film doesn't click until the third act, when Mos Def's performance as Dre's protégé appears to energize everyone around him.
  54. Below
    Twohy moves effortlessly between conventions of the sub and horror genres, with long tracking shots and masterful sound design, shock cuts and mismatched mirrors and reflections.
  55. The Rules of Attraction
    It's so playful, wicked and unseemly, by the time you realize that the actual plot of this brilliantly sordid satire hasn't started, the party is already over.
  56. Knockaround Guys
    Koppelman and Lieven's toneless, generic direction style is slack, not slick, and they handle actors like livestock. Only John Malkovich, as Matty's psychotic uncle, retains his dignity.
  57. Bowling for Columbine
    It seems to have been made to delight European intellectuals and anyone else who believes that America is a land of bloodthirsty yet comical barbarians.
  58. The Transporter
    Immensely exciting and funny.
  59. Safe Conduct
    Alternately frustrating and rewarding film.
  60. Tuck Everlasting
    Tuck Everlasting is a wise and beautiful poem to the idea that the fundamental human tragedy is not death, but the unlived life.
  61. Comedian
    Has moments of real interest, but they require wading through a lot of dead air.
  62. Pokémon 4: The Movie
    It's animated cockfighting for children.
  63. Swept Away
    Suggests that we're supposed to take this love story as something more than farce. Please. Tom Hanks fucking that volleyball would have been more convincing.
  64. White Oleander
    With its open, spontaneous elasticity, White Oleander is that rare Hollywood film -- an attempt to understand, without judgment, a world on its own terms.
  65. Punch-Drunk Love
    The movie winds up being his sunniest, for Anderson takes care to keep their love sweet, daffy and punch-drunk. This is a film in which that modern obsession, frequent-flier mileage, becomes proof of fidelity, and true intimacy is portrayed by a man telling his lover, "I'm sorry I beat up the bathroom."
  66. Family Fundamentals
    It's potentially strong material, but the film is so determined not to demonize the conservatives that it winds up being an inadvertent profile in the banality of bigotry.
  67. How to Draw a Bunny
    Unlike most documentaries about arty types, John Walter's wonderfully capricious, wittily edited film about Johnson seeks to make precise all the different ways in which the artist managed to remain opaque.
  68. Welcome to Collinwood
    With a dream cast that also includes Patricia Clarkson and, in a cameo, a tattooed George Clooney, fullness of narrative may not have struck the filmmakers as key, and their film feels slight, as if it were an extended short, albeit one made by the smartest kids in class.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heaven
    The final product is so eccentric and resolutely uncommercial -- and so faithful to the spirit of Kieslowski's oeuvre -- that it's hard to doubt the purity of Tykwer's intentions.
  70. Pipe Dream
    Does have its charms.
  71. Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
    Whether on the high seas or in the Holy Land, the film exhibits a colorful, bouncy sense of the epic (the whale's Jaws-inspired arrival even elicits a few chills), while its saving grace is a consistent sense of its own absurdity.
  72. Bloody Sunday
    A scrupulously even-handed account, free of ideological or tribal partisanship, based on eyewitness accounts by survivors and the anonymous "Paras" themselves.
  73. Red Dragon
    What Ratner brings to the proceedings is an awareness that what worked for "Silence" -- namely screenwriter Ted Tally, production designer Kristi Zea and, of course, Anthony Hopkins as Lecter -- will work overtime here, to enhance the project at hand and provide a seamless connection back to Jonathan Demme's multiple-Oscar winner.
  74. Captain Pantoja and the Special Services
    Roaming freely between comedy (which mostly works) and drama (which mostly doesn't) before settling on trite sentimentality, the film may not be an altogether unpleasant way to pass the time, but, ultimately, the innocuous Captain Pantoja doesn't earn its stripes.
  75. Just a Kiss
    A twisted black comedy -- The accomplished ensemble meshes nicely, but the actors all look pale and exhausted, an effect that may be a byproduct of the film’s photography, which is terrible.
  76. Wasabi
    The film lapses too often into sugary sentiment and withholds delivery on the pell-mell pyrotechnics its punchy style promises.
  77. Crazy as Hell
    It could have been a hoot in a bad-movie way if the laborious pacing and endless exposition had been tightened. As it is, only LaSalle's sizzling performance makes Crazy more than a by-the-numbers psycho-horror thriller.
  78. Skins
    The sharpness of Eyre's opening, however, ebbs away when he takes up the story of Rudy (Eric Schweig) and Mogie (Graham Greene), two brothers with neatly opposed responses to the reservation grind.
  79. 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."
  80. The Lonely Affair of the Heart
    A tedious viewing experience.
  81. Shanghai Ghetto
    One of the most fascinating and least documented tributaries of the Jewish experience in World War II.
  82. The Tuxedo
    The film is ultimately more labored than inspired. A cameo by James Brown is amusing, but it can't keep The Tuxedo from earning the distinction of being Chan's worst Hollywood film to date.
  83. Biggie and Tupac
    Deceptively rambling, shrewdly ragtag documentary.
  84. Sweet Home Alabama
    To call the film contrived would imply that some sort of effort had been made, when Sweet Home Alabama is nothing but dead lazy and slow — y'all.
  85. Moonlight Mile
    Both funny and telling about the messy passages of grief.
  86. The Trials of Henry Kissinger
    To explore seriously the question of Kissinger's crimes wouldn't merely take hours, it would require the patient, unblinking vision of a Frederick Wiseman or Marcel Ophuls. Gibney and Jarecki just want to string the bastard up.
  87. The Mesmerist
    The actors do what they can with direction, from Gil Cates Jr., that calls for yelling, flailing and rapid-fire delivery of stale bons mots, but none of the film is as funny or clever as Cates and screenwriters Ron Marasco and Michael Goorjian (adapting Edgar Allan Poe's short story) seem to think.
  88. Trapped
    Mandoki's a pro, but a juiceless one, with only enough energy to reach the finish line, which becomes the viewer's goal as well.
  89. The Ignorant Fairies
    Moving and vibrant Italian-language film.
  90. 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.
  91. The Four Feathers
    A mindless muddle.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Secretary
    Secretary's treatment of female sexuality is as matter-of-fact as its handling of self-mutilation, and the key to both is Gyllenhaal's remarkable performance.
  93. Invincible
    A wonderful movie. For every misstep there are the sublime expressions of agony and ecstasy of which Herzog is a master.
  94. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
    Thai director Kaos (a.k.a. Wych Kaosayananda), making his inauspicious Hollywood debut, still can't breathe any life into it. You'll just want to get back to your Game Boy.
  95. 8 Women
    Without its cast -- the cream of France's female acting elite -- François Ozon's ambivalent musical-comedy homage to the 1950s wouldn't be much.
  96. Spirited Away
    Does full honor to Miyazaki’s teeming and often unsettling landscape, and to the conflicted complexity of his characters: Not a single frame was cut, and the voice casting and performances are uniformly excellent.
  97. The Experiment
    Too much of a mess to say anything with assurance, pieced together as it is from mismatched institutional movies such as "Cool Hand Luke" and "Shock Corridor" -- with "Lord of the Flies" thrown in for good measure -- and turning on plot points that simply don't wash.
  98. Elvira's Haunted Hills
    Peterson and her longtime writing partner, John Paragon, as well as director Sam Irvin, clearly worship the Poe-inspired Roger Corman/Vincent Price films of the 1960s, so of course there’s a pit and a pendulum in that dungeon, but who’d have expected it to be so beautifully designed?
  99. Low Heights
    Hatamikia isn't just a button pusher; he's a skilled craftsman with a dynamic wide-screen shooting style, who draws us into the story with visceral devices such as speedy tracking shots and gliding slow motion -- flashy elements the fastidious new wavers wouldn't touch.
  100. Alias Betty
    The last-minute details of plot can't compete with the frightening intensity of Kiberlain's and Garcia's performances, which trace, with brilliant precision, the exhausting mix of brutality and grace inherent in the mother-daughter relationship.
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