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. A Knight's Tale
    The skits are dreadful, the jokes suck.
  2. About Adam
    While the film strives to prove its cool, it's also built on the insufferably antique idea that some flattery and a good fuck are all any woman needs.
  3. Ed Gein
    Railsback and Snodgrass struggle against caricature in their own fine performances.
  4. Pavilion of Women
    So many romantic cliches it's laughable.
  5. Eureka
    Eerily compelling.
  6. Time and Tide
    Extraordinarily witty (nothing new for this director) while coming off as a taunt to anyone who'd dare to follow in his wake.
  7. Under the Sand
    Powerfully enigmatic study of the fundamental opacity of human relations.
  8. The Mummy Returns
    You can't see the movie for the footage, so thick is it with digital tricks and furious action.
  9. Nora
    We may not fully grasp what Nora saw in Joyce, but what he saw in her is made unmistakable, and worth seeing.
  10. Deuces Wild
    Astonishing isn't the word -- neither is incompetent, incoherent or just plain crap. Indeed, none of these words really gets at the very special type of badness that is Deuces Wild.
  11. 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.
  12. The Forsaken
    The film works, cleanly, without any tiresome reliance on computer graphics.
  13. 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.
  14. Town & Country
    This should have been Beatty's "Wonder Boys," but the filmmakers don't seem to realize they've sent their hero on a sexual adventure that neither his heart nor his dick needs to take.
  15. The Golden Bowl
    Seen in the bowl's metaphoric reflection, Nolte's Adam, with his patronizing wish to build a great art museum to "give something back" to the poor laborers who built his fortune, is a complex American monster.
  16. Driven
    Racing flick results in a wreck as horrifying as the film itself.
  17. Harry Is Here to Help
    Moll ratchets his suspense with impressive mastery, wringing a maximum of excruciating terror out of the humblest everyday materials.
  18. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles
    Despite the lack of zing in Hogan's frequently self-deprecating zingers, director Simon Wincer repeatedly lets scenes dribble on until an awkward silence engulfs everyone onscreen.
  19. The Luzhin Defence
    A smart, romantic, heartbreaking pleasure.
  20. The Low Down
    Thraves escapes formula by shaping the film around low-key incidents instead of speeches or overt lessons. There are plenty of side streets here.
  21. Freddy Got Fingered
    Lurches from one set-piece stomach-lurcher to the next with nary a nod to narrative coherence.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Center of the World
    We should be thankful for the courage of Wang and his cast in standing against a culture that nervously treats sex as either a prurient joke or a puritan crime.
  23. Lakeboat
    Mamet's fixation on language is, nonetheless, more effective onstage than onscreen, where the technical and visual requirements distract from the sounds of the words -- the heart of Mamet's work.
  24. Bridget Jones's Diary
    Bessed with a gleamingly polished, very funny script.
  25. The Body
    Mutates halfway through into a ham-fisted action movie that squanders the good will, and insults the intelligence, of its audience.
  26. The Circle
    A triumph of invisible craftsmanship that embraces so much specific detail that none of the women ever comes across as an emblem or an abstraction.
  27. Joe Dirt
    Rich with comic potential that goes unfulfilled, time after stupefying time.
  28. Josie and the Pussycats
    A surprisingly smart satire around the bubble-gum band that first found life in the pages of the Archie comic book series.
  29. Kingdom Come
    So many stars means so little room for character and plot.
  30. Chopper
    Grotesquely violent, horribly funny.
  31. Blow
    If as much thought had been expended on character and consequences as was lavished on bell-bottom diameters, collar widths and soundtrack selection, Blow might have been a richer, more intelligent experience, and much more Demme's movie than a carbon copy of other people's.
  32. Along Came a Spider
    By the time it hits you, you're worn out by all the dead ends and false trails the movie has put you through.
  33. Mau Mau Sex Sex
    There is too much rambling contemporary footage here and not enough juicy historical material.
  34. Beautiful Creatures
    Could it get any worse?
  35. The Day I Became a Woman
    Promising, if uneven, first feature.
  36. The Girl
    Like the film's characters, the city of Paris has been made faceless, as if it too were merely the pawn in a representational hell where light and color and shading are forbidden.
  37. Booye kafoor, atre yas
    At times the picture feels like an affectionate parody of recent Iranian films.
  38. All Access: Front Row. Backstage. Live!
    Less about music than about the possibilities of the IMAX system itself.
  39. Just Visiting
    A happy vulgarity still reigns.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Pokémon 3: The Movie
    Equally as brainless, shrill and calculated as its two predecessors.
  41. Shadow Magic
    Shadow Magic is rich with detail.
  42. The Tailor of Panama
    The movie is crudely jokey and, finally, a wimpy betrayal of its source.
  43. Amores Perros
    There's something overly studied, almost clinical, in how it all pulls together.
  44. Spy Kids
    It's whiz-bang, techno fun, with a touch of Latino flavor.
  45. Tomcats
    Grotesque and ugly.
  46. Someone Like You...
    In supporting roles, Ellen Barkin and Marisa Tomei are marvelously light-footed.
  47. Too Much Sleep
    Maquiling offers us the unexpected pleasures of taking the side streets in a film about how even minor-key adventures can make a life stuck in low gear something to look back on.
  48. The Brothers
    If it registers at all, it'll likely be more because of the fuckability of Morris Chestnut -- a star waiting for a worthy film -- than any insights or memorable moments from the movie itself.
  49. Heartbreakers
    Although the film is a tad long, Mirkin ("Romy and Michele's High School Reunion") has managed to pull off a classy, gently funny movie in which no one throws up, a rare blessing these days.
  50. Say It Isn't So
    The humor stays on one low level throughout, and thus fades fast.
  51. Exit Wounds
    Silver, manages the deft balance of making Seagal seem both genuinely courageous and charmingly blockheaded.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
    The Shapiros, whose film is intercut with hilarious clips from vintage TV interviews with Mike Douglas and Charlie Rose, ultimately reveal a frail but mentally robust old man.
  53. Enemy at the Gates
    Despite the success of these action sequences, Annaud and his ultraserious cast are so determined (admirably) to keep war from seeming romantic that we are never quite pulled into the movie.
  54. Memento
    If nothing else, Memento is a savvy comment on the queasy uncertainties of the postmodern condition, in which history goes no further back than yesterday's news, and knowledge is supplanted by "information" from a tumult of spin-controlled, unreliable narrators.
  55. The Dish
    Surprisingly moving -- prompting lumps in the throat over what was, after all, a historic moment of the most luminous hope.
  56. Kissing Jessica Stein
    These women are smart, funny and wonderfully real, traits that one might safely attribute to Westfeldt and Juergensen, who also wrote the screenplay.
  57. When Brendan Met Trudy
    Struggles to achieve a giddy eccentricity that never fully emerges.
  58. Long Night's Journey Into Day
    Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffman's heart-stopping, Oscar-nominated documentary about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is narrow in focus, but broad in its reach for insight into the power of public drama.
  59. Simon Magus
    Unfortunately, it's our knowledge of what's actually to come that puts much of the chill and complexity in Hopkins' rather formulaic script.
  60. Biandan, guniang
    So moving and so timely.
  61. Get Over It
    A lobotomized updating of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
  62. 15 Minutes
    Isn't just rotten -- badly acted, badly written, badly conceived -- it's dead inside.
  63. The Gleaners & I
    It's both surreal -- and wholly accessible.
  64. Blow Dry
    There are gruelingly unfunny gags, an unspeakable soundtrack featuring BTO and Billy Ocean, and Victoria's Secret mannequin Heidi Klum as a model who demands that her pussy hair be styled into a bushy red heart.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Carman: The Champion
    Drags through one tough-love moment after another without much energy or originality from its single-monikered star.
  66. The Caveman's Valentine
    Especially disappointing that Lemmons, who in "Eve's Bayou" gave us insightful glimpses into the emotional world of black adults, has lost her balance, elevating formula over revelation.
  67. Series 7: The Contenders
    As with "The Blair Witch Project," one must swallow one's irritation at paying yet again for big-screen video -- but even so, the spectacle of an America falling apart is acutely and hilariously embodied by Dawn.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Me You Them
    Skirting overt politics, Waddington opts instead for a subtle portrait of emotions, and a story that's told through glances, languorous pacing and breathtaking landscapes.
  69. See Spot Run
    It's finally a hilarious and cuddly flashback from the dog's point of view, to his training as a pup, that marks the moment when the film finds its sweetly moronic legs.
  70. Hit and Runway
    Surprisingly smart film.
  71. The Mexican
    Undisciplined and overstuffed with enough surplus plot twists to make your neck ache, The Mexican affects the tousled look of a self-conscious indie.
  72. 3000 Miles to Graceland
    A mean-spirited, hyperviolent, stupid movie.
  73. 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.
  74. Last Resort
    The movie's a beauty.
  75. The Widow of Saint-Pierre
    As stunning to look at as "Girl on the Bridge" or indeed any of his others, but it lacks the distilled intensity — and, surprisingly for Leconte, the wit.
  76. Down to Earth
    The film seems to argue that Rock's real-life manipulation of the race card is little more than exploitation, rather than the essence of his incendiary comic critique.
  77. Company Man
    Unfunny comedy. Nearly everyone is terrible except for Cumming, who just does what comes naturally and steals his every scene.
  78. Recess: School's Out
    It boasts none of the studio's high-gloss animation. That said, Recess is not without its charms.
  79. Sweet November
    This feeble remake offers little more than two pretty and willing leads who nonetheless can't hide their embarrassment over being set up as distractions to hide the film's thorough lack of coherence and appeal.
  80. Downward Angel
    Screams straight-to-video.
  81. The Taste of Others
    It's the dialogue -- wisecracking and wistful in equal measure -- that plays out the tyrannical illogic of romantic attraction, and so endears us to this ensemble of bruised souls that when, as in life, not everyone gets what they have come to deserve, it feels, as in life, like an injustice.
  82. Journey to the Sun
    Ustaoglu has made Mehmet unbelievably naive -- and the hardships piled upon him unintentionally evoke "The Perils of Pauline." That dilutes what should be a powerful protest film, and robs it of the emotional impact it aims for.
  83. Signs & Wonders
    Beautifully acted film remains deeply intelligent and always fascinating.
  84. Saving Silverman
    This is harmless stuff, and sometimes it's actually pretty funny, too.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bad Company
    Refreshingly complex teen drama.
  86. Hannibal
    The flabbiest of cop-outs. Moore gives a flat, spiritless performance, almost matched by that of Anthony Hopkins, who, notwithstanding the Armani threads, shuffles around like a pensioner in bedroom slippers.
  87. In the Mood for Love
    It is undeniable in its poignancy, an ecstatic vision of what might have been, though as much for its story as for the fact that the whole thing dissolves like a paper fan in rain, an evanescent masterwork.
  88. Fever
    Excellent performances.
  89. The Invisible Circus
    Something there is about the '60s that undoes the most intelligent of filmmakers.
  90. Nico and Dani
    Filled with the kind of frank, nonsensational sensuality that eludes American filmmakers, this movie proves again that the most interesting cinema about teenage life -- gay and otherwise -- is being made far from our provincial shores.
    • L.A. Weekly
  91. The Million Dollar Hotel
    How this hopelessly muddled and tedious dirge got released -- unless it was through the clout of Mel Gibson, who's grafted on as an FBI agent in a neck brace, with no discernible connection to the action -- is the real mystery.
  92. Valentine
    Highly reductive and deathly dull slasher flick.
  93. Head Over Heels
    Although rumor and marketing indicate that this is meant to be a comedy, there's little that's funny here.
  94. Sugar & Spice
    Any movie offering a Muzak version of the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop"warrants an immediate and unqualified recommendation.
  95. 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.
  96. Trolösa
    Bergman's collaboration with Ullmann began when he directed her in "Persona" (1966). Here, with the roles nearly reversed, she shows herself as great an interpreter behind the camera.
  97. 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.
  98. 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.
  99. The Wedding Planner
    Director Shankman has diligently studied the forms and reproduced the moves of the screwball romances he so clearly loves, but he simply hasn't the chops to put together even a decent rip-off of those glittering jewels of the '30s and '40s, which depend on great writing, classy situation comedy and, above all, chemistry.
  100. The Pledge
    Penn's own gifts as an actor seem, in turn, to bring out the best in Nicholson, as well as the rest of the cast.
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