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. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
    The first REALLY great mythic film of the summer has arrived.
  2. The Sum of All Fears
    Smartly directed, grown-up film of ideas -- with a debonair script by Paul Attanasio (Donny Brasco) and Daniel Pyne.
  3. Undercover Brother
    The film works no matter which side of the racial divide you're on, because nothing unites an audience quite like making fun of everyone.
  4. The Next Big Thing
    Spins a warm and fuzzy tale about love and happiness in the cutthroat art business.
  5. Elling
    Heartwarming here relies less on forced air than on Petter Næss’ delicate, clever direction -- and a wonderful, imaginative script by Axel Hellstenius.
  6. CQ
    CQ is modest, especially for something bearing the grandiose family name, and it possesses both a tenderness and a quiet intelligence.
  7. Master of the Flying Guillotine (re-release)
    Yu’s filmography includes dozens of pictures between 1965 and 1994, but with its nonstop flurry of fighting, ersatz bloodletting and incidental hilarity, this remains his signature work.
  8. Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
    The superb ensemble never plays for sympathy, and the movie isn't as depressing as it may sound. Its hushed, contemplative quality is oddly affecting.
  9. Enough
    Mechanical revenge fantasy that skirts every serious issue it raises along a slick, cynical trajectory.
  10. 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.
  11. Insomnia
    Nolan gets his two larger-than-life leads playing off each other in the same frame (which is something Michael Mann couldn't pull off in "Heat's" pairing of Pacino and De Niro) and coaxes a melancholy turn from Pacino, an icon of angst whose real strength has always been his capacity for eloquent silence.
  12. 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.
  13. The Importance of Being Earnest
    Mercifully, the supporting cast saves the day by grasping clearly that in a comedy of manners you have to act mannered, though not to the point of situation comedy.
  14. Late Marriage
    Late Marriage, though hardly dispassionate, assiduously avoids passing judgment on any of its characters, all of whom are desperately trying to bend the world into conformity with their own narratives and superstitions.
  15. About a Boy
    There's not much more to this adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel than charm -- effortless, pleasurable, featherweight charm.
  16. The Believer
    After its electric opening -- one of the few occasions where Bean advances his case cinematically, showing rather than just telling -- the film rapidly assumes the shape of a 100-minute debate, as Danny argues against the Jews and, in the same breath, for them.
  17. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    Attack of the Clones' high-definition surfaces are certainly impressive, but they offer no lifelight, nothing to put your arms around.
  18. Ultimate X: The Movie
    All of this looks great on the giant IMAX screen -- most things do -- but the filmmakers can't shake the sense that this is an inflated TV special.
  19. Blackwoods
    Whatever the cause, everyone involved takes this blend of slick Verhoeven sleaze and Deliverance-brand musk way too seriously.
  20. Unfaithful
    The irony is, it's his vulgarity, this mixture of the gaudy and the glossy, that distinguishes Lyne, that makes his work identifiable and, when the story's right, such a guilty pleasure.
  21. The New Guy
    Various actors deserving of better (including Zooey Deschanel, Eddie Griffin and Lyle Lovett) suffer through the undercooked material, while love interest Eliza Dushku gamely gets through both a bikini-modeling montage and a mechanical bull ride, but none of their efforts can save this film.
  22. Janice Beard
    Slight but charming comedy.
  23. The Lady and the Duke
    As always, conversation is the constant threading together Rohmer's stately pace and episodic structure, the thing he uses to show us who his characters are and what their friendship entails.
  24. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
    It works its magic with such exuberance and passion that the film's length becomes a part of its fun.
  25. Home Movie
    At 60 minutes, the film never stops feeling like a guided tour, while we're wishing it was a sleepover.
  26. Dirt Boy
    The film essentially grinds along in second gear. A promising debut, Dirt Boy nevertheless fails to fully deliver.
  27. Fleeing by Night
    That decade-spanning finale allows the three leads to age onscreen and demonstrate their impressive range, particularly Liu.
  28. A Shot at Glory
    Demonstrating yet again that he knows few limits as an actor, Duvall not only nails the accent, he inhabits the man's flinty, grudge-bearing contrariness with such a furious commitment that it brings out the best in the actors around him.
  29. The Mystic Masseur
    The film is being sold as a comedy, and it is amusing. Secretly, though, it's a romance, with Merchant's roving camera discerning the tempestuous love triangle at the heart of Naipaul's novel.
    • L.A. Weekly
  30. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
    Imamura has said that Warm Water Under a Red Bridge is a poem to the enduring strengths of women. It may also be the best sex comedy about environmental pollution ever made.
  31. Hollywood Ending
    It isn't only that there is a dearth of ideas in Hollywood Ending -- however hateful, "Deconstructing Harry" was at least about something -- it's that the whole thing is almost entirely devoid of pleasure.
  32. 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.
  33. The Other Brother
    The film needs strong characters and snappy dialogue to carry it through. It has neither.
  34. Rain
    Jeffs' meticulous framing nicely counterpoints all the messy turmoil, and her screenplay flows with the cadences of life -- its awkward eruptions and long, hurtful silences -- but she never pulls you deep enough into her characters.
  35. Circuit
    Mostly, Shafer and co-writer Gregory Hinton lack a strong-minded viewpoint, or a sense of humor, about a world in which the DJ has the power to unify, if only for a night, men of godlike beauty and the mortals who worship them.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sex with Strangers
    The effect is so riveting, and the cameras so psychologically penetrating, you may be left breathless -- but satisfied.
  37. Life or Something Like It
    Jolie hogs the spotlight as usual, leaving romantic interest Ed Burns struggling to register and only Shaloub -- fetid, dirty, soulful -- with his dignity intact.
  38. Dogtown and Z-Boys
    Enormously enjoyable, high-adrenaline documentary.
  39. Night at the Golden Eagle
    The director pulls back from the hotel, placing it against the skyline of our beautiful city, which appears to be waiting, patiently, for a more original exploration of its inhabitants.
  40. Jason X
    The film has spunk. Unfortunately, the gore comes with brutal regularity, so that, despite Farmer and Isaac's attempts to liven things up, the film still just wears you down.
  41. The Salton Sea
    The Salton Sea isn't without interest or ideas, though some of the better ones are cribbed from David Fincher and, especially, Martin Scorsese.
    • 5 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Vulgar
    First-time director Bryan Johnson's failure to resolve the film’s two moods -- psychopathic sexual brutality and light social satire -- proves fatal.
  43. Some Body
    Any resemblance to Cassavetes, intentional or not, only makes the film's flaws all the more apparent.
  44. Enigma
    It's all part of a larger calculus that the filmmakers hope will translate into a thinking person's thriller. If only they themselves knew how to figure it.
  45. Girls Can't Swim
    The film's intimate camera work and searing performances pull us deep into the girls' confusion and pain as they struggle tragically to comprehend the chasm of knowledge that's opened between them.
  46. Chelsea Walls
    Pretension, in its own way, is a form of bravery. For this reason and this reason only -- the power of its own steadfast, hoity-toity convictions -- Chelsea Walls deserves a medal.
  47. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
    Vardalos is a pleasing mix of Elaine May and Bonnie Hunt; in other words, she's not a sex kitten, but she's funny and smart.
  48. The Scorpion King
    Director Chuck Russell ("The Mask") keeps the computer effects to a minimum, emphasizing instead the essential ingredients of a Saturday-afternoon serial, namely, venom-tipped arrows, pissed-off cobras and a buxom babe.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Divorce: The Musical
    Dworman's comic style dangles in the abyss somewhere between sub-Woody Allen and Mel Brooks (his script borrows too heavily from both).
  50. Murder by Numbers
    Even as the psychological interdependencies of the two boys take the foreground, the movie gets more and more crowded with fun-house surprises and cliffhanging set pieces.
  51. Nine Queens
    Writer-director Fabián Bielinsky's devilish Nine Queens serves as further evidence that Argentina's film industry is at the forefront of a resurgent Latin American cinema.
  52. World Traveler
    The gorgeous Crudup is talented, but this charming asshole (more asshole than charming) is old hat for him, little more than another of the blank-eyed-loser-on-a-spiritual-quest roles in which he's been trafficking lately.
  53. Murderous Maids
    A true rarity, Murderous Maids is an intelligent, moral shocker.
  54. Mutant Aliens
    When Plympton isn't indulging his manias, the film just sort of nods off, and nothing much happens -- either visually or storywise -- for what seems like ages.
  55. Space Station 3D
    You may as well watch the movie too, if only so that another of life's astonishing possibilities won't have entirely passed you by.
  56. 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
  57. Human Nature
    Although a few moments are hilarious, this would-be romp remains laboriously earthbound when it should be swinging gaily through the trees.
  58. New Best Friend
    This movie could have easily been shot as porn, a transition that would have given it a modicum of respectability and, better still, true social purpose.
  59. Quo Vadis?
    The film should also wow fans of Herbert Wise's "I, Claudius" and Franco Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth" alike.
  60. Outta Time
    All the while, director Lorena David labors to keep implausibility and bad acting from sinking a ship that never should have left port.
  61. Changing Lanes
    Although what ensues is generally unsurprising and as pro forma down-and-dirty as the genre dictates, it's also on occasion rather affecting.
  62. Frailty
    Audiences are destined to debate the film's final scenes, where Hanley piles on plot twists, leading to a coda that turns a creepily ambiguous story about God and the terrifying power of paternal love into something closer to an X-File.
  63. The Cat's Meow
    An inert, respectable bore.
  64. The Sweetest Thing
    So badly written, so poorly directed and performed, and so garishly visualized -- attention Kmart shoppers! -- it defies explanation.
  65. The Other Side of Heaven
    A fine specimen of clean-cut Mormon family entertainment, but it may also be a step in the wrong direction for the fledgling production company.
  66. Lucky Break
    The end result is like cold porridge with only the odd enjoyably chewy lump.
  67. The Komediant
    Slight but enjoyable documentary.
  68. Les Destinées
    An exquisite metaphor for the high cost and higher returns of an enduring marriage.
  69. High Crimes
    While its blowout finale is telegraphed long before the first act ends, and too much else is just as obvious and bland, Judd, Freeman and Franklin never stop adding filigree. The big picture isn't much to look at, but the detailing isn't bad.
  70. Big Trouble
    Lazy, infinitely silly cartoon.
  71. American Chai
    Chai's structure and pacing are disconcertingly slack. Missing the loose ends and ambiguities of actual conversation, the dialogue makes characters sound like they're delivering speeches rather than interacting.
  72. Van Wilder
    The film's sheer likability and very impressive gag-to-giggle ratio derive more from sweetness and sharpness than from shit jokes.
  73. 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.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hard Luck
    Though the effect is Bergman esque, Rubio doesn't always sustain the necessary gravity his story requires.
  75. Crush
    What’s striking about John McKay's feature debut is how much contempt toward his female characters the writer-director manages to pack into 115 minutes.
  76. 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.
  77. No Such Thing
    Fails in so many respects, even die-hard constituents may have trouble learning to like it.
  78. The Piano Teacher
    At once an emotional thriller and a domestic horror movie -- a woman's picture with a vengeance, in which the bloodletting is kept to a minimum, and ends up all the more powerful and profound for it.
    • L.A. Weekly
  79. Death to Smoochy
    A broad, braying yuk fest that revels in coarse jokes, lacks the courage of its own cynicism (things keep wavering into sentimentality) and refuses to develop its own premise.
  80. Clockstoppers
    Intermittently fun, but mostly just efficiently passable.
  81. Panic Room
    Always adept at hitting emotional cues cleanly, Foster in this role also lets herself get lost in the moment, which is something she hasn't often allowed herself to do since "The Silence of the Lambs."
  82. Teddy Bears' Picnic
    A satirist such as Shearer should need a license to go hunting on terrain so rich with easy targets; he tries to bag them all, and it leaves the film to founder in aimlessness.
  83. Blade II
    Even Del Toro can't raise the conceptually dead.
  84. Sorority Boys
    If only they had the courage of their crassness.
  85. Very Annie Mary
    Annoyingly fourth-hand -- scraped from the shoes of "The Full Monty," mixed with Michael Caine's "Little Voice" hair-smarm and salted with "Billy Elliot's" dandruff.
  86. Son of the Bride
    Although it's better written and directed than the average Nora Ephron bagatelle, it's easy to imagine Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan slipping into a remake of Son of the Bride.
  87. Margarita Happy Hour
    Breaks in the film's otherwise smooth continuum, however, are bridged by Hutchins' soulful performance, and by Chaiken's excellent feel for the grace notes and steady tempo of native New York life, the sacredness of female friendship, and the precarious balance between love for oneself and for others.
  88. Pauline and Paulette
    The film's plainness, and the understated force of van der Groen and Petersen's performances, sharpen its complexity of feeling until all mawkishness is cut away.
  89. Promises
    Proves too sincere to exploit its subjects and too honest to manipulate its audience.
  90. Resident Evil
    The interchangeable males all resemble Freddie Prinze Jr., and Anderson's direction is no less anemic, making one yearn for an Escape/Quit button that, sadly, doesn't exist in this medium.
  91. Showtime
    Showtime is better than the fourth "Lethal Weapon," which was pretty bad, but not as good as the original "Lethal Weapon" or the superior "48HRS."
  92. Harrison's Flowers
    A premise so patently absurd, so implausible, they might as well have pitched it to the Oxygen channel.
  93. Ice Age
    It's a shame no one gave the three voice stars of this appealing animation -- Ray Romano, John Legui zamo and Denis Leary -- a shot at the script.
  94. Festival in Cannes
    This isn't a terrible film by any means, but it's also far from being a realized work. Jaglom has said that he “writes” his films in the editing room, but for Festival in Cannes he must have been using a crayon.
  95. The Time Machine
    In the new film, it's personal tragedy that provokes the journey, not social upheaval or even scientific curiosity -- which, predictably, makes for a story that's at once more familiar and less interesting.
  96. All About the Benjamins
    This is high school fantasy straight outta Compton. As such, it has a certain compelling enthusiasm.
  97. We Were Soldiers
    It was a hellish encounter, as well as a portent of the 10 years to come, and as such deserves far better than Mel Gibson's glower and writer-director Randall Wallace's guns-and-Moses platitudes.
  98. Esther Kahn
    Brilliantly edited and gorgeously shot, Esther Kahn is a dream to look at and, courtesy of Howard Shore's minor chords and high-strung strings, definitely something to hear.
  99. Borstal Boy
    Overall Sheridan keeps both "Oirishry" and sentimentality in check. He captures the book's evenhanded sense.
  100. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    Hartnett's pitch-perfect sexual panic can be hilariously funny.
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