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 Saddest Music in the World
    The weirdest, freest-wheeling, most obsessively inventive motion picture you'll see this year. Parts are confusing, parts are berserk, parts are exasperatingly slow. But in a world of cookie-cutter movies, Maddin's movies are like nobody else's -- funny, Romantic, as deliriously overwrought as a drug lord's wedding.
  2. Free Solo
    To watch Honnold think through each ledge of his climbs can stop the heart; to watch him navigate human emotion might melt it.
  3. Brokeback Mountain
    Brokeback Mountain is at once the gayest and the least gay Hollywood film I've seen, which is another way of saying that Lee has a knack for culling universality from the most specific identities.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Office Space
    Mike Judge’s live-action directorial debut not only whittles the high-strung festering soul of ‘90s Orthodox Corporationism down to the quick and quintessential but wraps its veins around his fingers and flosses our teeth.
  5. MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A.
    With Matangi/Maya/M.I.A., Loveridge celebrates the mashup aesthetic that enabled the artist to find a voice, and reveals that reconciling contradictions — like an outrageous sense of humor and earnest political activism — is key to both Arulpragasam’s music and the life she’s constructed with audacity and wit.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    In the Loop
    Zooming back and forth between London and D.C., In the Loop hasn't any real plot -- it plays like a rather brilliant Brit-com stretched over 100 minutes, a collection of anecdotes and incidents.
  7. Head-On
    In its breathlessly claustrophobic way the movie is vital and passionate, and lit with a lyric beauty that washes over love scenes and violent acts alike.
  8. Bloody Sunday
    A scrupulously even-handed account, free of ideological or tribal partisanship, based on eyewitness accounts by survivors and the anonymous "Paras" themselves.
  9. 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.
  10. Traffic
    His (Soderbergh's) work has taken on echoes of a classier, bygone age of cinema, at once more literate and lighthearted.
  11. Va Savoir (Who Knows?)
    Va Savoir doesn't so much flow as wander, trailing off into drama one minute, slapstick the next; it tries your patience, but ever so gently, masterfully.
  12. The Simpsons Movie
    A 90-minute, years-in-the-making comic wind-up machine that begins by mocking its own audience for paying good money to see what it can watch at home for free and proceeds from there through the most wickedly funny arsenal of assaults on big government, organized religion and corporate America this side of "Borat."
  13. Innocence
    Cox's own directorial style is innocent, in the sense of being original without ever straining for effect.
  14. The Old Man & the Gun
    Rather than a tragic inevitability or a comic detachment, the final scenes have about them the whiff of resignation, possibly meaningful or possibly not.
  15. A Room for Romeo Brass
    Indeed, one of the nicest things about this jewel of a film is that there isn't much of a story at all -- just a handful of delicately drawn characters moving through life that is at once familiar and yet slightly elevated by a director who loves the good in people more than the bad.
  16. Charm City
    There’s still charm in Charm City, despite it all.
  17. Breach
    Here is one of the best American actors (Chris Cooper) in one of his best parts.
  18. Sylvia
    The excellent cast is headed by Gwyneth Paltrow in the mood-shifting title role and Daniel Craig as the helpless, not-so-happily philandering Hughes.
  19. It's All Gone Pete Tong
    The movie catches us up so profoundly in Frankie's self-destructive spiral (and gradual rehab), it's as though we’re seeing it all for the first time. I'd like to say that's because the story is true, only it isn't.
  20. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    This very funny, very British movie -- directed by newcomer Garth Jennings -- has sci-fi effects that are impressive yet appropriately cheesy.
  21. Tattoo
    Indulging his taste for Grand Guignol and the stylistically baroque, Schwentke never quite overplays his hand, though his occasional lapses into visual extravagance can be irritating, and the result is a nasty, intelligent and complex thriller.
  22. Tea with Mussolini
    This gets my vote as director Franco Zeffirelli’s finest film. Certainly, it’s his most personal.
  23. A Tale of Two Sisters
    While all the pieces don't quite add up in the end, as memory, fantasy and delusion collide, the film succeeds again and again at pulling you to the edge of your seat and keeping you there.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Startup.com
    Startup.com goes from being a mildly interesting true story to a ripping good train wreck in the making.
  25. Spider-Man 2
    Molina is an actor of unusually elastic gifts, but unlike Willem Dafoe, who has only to bare his scary teeth to send us all scampering for the exits, there's no getting around the fact that Molina has the face of a kindly basset hound even when it's contorted into a deadly grimace.
  26. All the Rage
    This is a dream cast who practically sing screenwriter Keith Reddin's funny, literate dialogue.
  27. Open Range
    Here is a Western without irony or innovation, without any of the overt efforts toward “revisionism” we’ve come to expect even from Eastwood -- a movie that waxes elegiac about the end of the West, but remains sure that cowboys and cattle and ramshackle frontier towns will live on in perpetuity at the cinema.
  28. A Mighty Heart
    Michael Winterbottom has made an enormously moving document of the tense days between Pearl's capture and the news that he was dead.
  29. Last Resort
    The movie's a beauty.
  30. Young Adam
    The movie is another showcase for the underappreciated McGregor, who disappears into his character so discreetly that, even as his face lets us track Joe's every thought, you never feel you’re watching a Performance.
  31. Praise
    A surprisingly affecting mood piece.
  32. 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.
  33. The Good Thief
    Indeed, The Good Thief is a fairy tale, not just in the plotted fun of the heist and counterheist, or in the clever twist thrown in at the end, but in the grandiloquent myth, so passionately espoused by Melville, of the crook as a man of honor and elegance.
  34. Scarlet Diva
    This is such a dazzlingly self-assured directorial debut that it's hard to know what to praise first.
  35. 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.
  36. Last Life in the Universe
    A brilliantly atmospheric, sweetly nutty film.
  37. Happy Times
    Anchored by two fine performances, this bittersweet comedy about second chances just might signal a new beginning for the director as well.
  38. Stuart Little 2
    Returning director Rob Minkoff (The Lion King) and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost) have done a fine job of updating White's dry wit to a new age, led in no small measure by Lane, who could probably make the IRS code book sound funny.
  39. Summer Palace
    Jolting narrative ellipses sometimes threatens to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down. What never lessens is the movie's rapturous eroticism, and the exquisite longing in each one of Yu Hong's sideways glances.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Agronomist
    Although the film may be about 20 percent overweight, the human story of a man who -- for four decades -- spat in the eye of his tormentors and gleefully accepted his role as a latter-day Sisyphus commands the viewer's attention.
  41. The Ice Harvest
    Its jazzy rhythm and economy of form place it closer to a 1950s film noir, shot through with humor so dark you need a flashlight to see it.
  42. Mutual Appreciation
    As before, Bujalski's preference for nonprofessional actors, his ear for the rhythms of conversation among bright young 20-somethings and his adept use of a roving, hand-held camera (this time shooting in fuzzy black and white) lend the film an invigorating energy.
  43. The Barbarian Invasions
    A reunion movie, and while it's often very funny, it has none of the self-satisfied piety or strenuous jokiness of "The Big Chill." Its mood shifts between defiant exuberance and wistful contemplation, but it's never mawkish.
  44. The Inheritance
    Director Fly works with a delicate touch, probing the slow, insidious corruption of this fundamentally decent but weak man.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Better Living Through Circuitry
    Succeeds in articulating the fluid values and constituent parts of the "culture" even as that culture's subjects are at best mildly articulate.
  46. Hit and Runway
    Surprisingly smart film.
  47. 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.
  48. Solas
    As a tactfully quiet story of mother-daughter estrangement and psychic rescue, Solas can hardly fail to excite the longing so many of us have to right domestic wrongs.
  49. Chain Camera
    Hilarious, unnerving and remarkably intimate portrait of multiethnic adolescent life that lends vigorous new meaning to the term "teen movie."
  50. Miracle
    At the movie's core, disguised with pitch-perfect Minnesota accent and bushy comb-over hairdo, the perpetually underrated Kurt Russell (as the late coach Herb Brooks) delivers a brilliant performance of immaculate control.
  51. The Dinner Game
    The fun is in getting there, and in the mechanics, charted by writer-director Francis Veber.
  52. Made
    Made may look like a Wong Kar-Wai movie -- the cinematographer, Chris Doyle, has brought to the film the dark, rich romanticism of the movies he's shot for the Hong Kong prodigy -- but the sensibility is Woody Allen, only sweeter.
  53. You Can Count on Me
    (Linney and Ruffalo) are just beautiful enough, in fact, to be in the movies and still remain convincing as authentic folk, and their performances are tremendously moving.
  54. Princesas
    Aranoa's bleak yet warmly humanistic Princesas deftly and sympathetically ponders the interlocked destinies of two Madrid prostitutes.
  55. Japanese Story
    The quiet and intimacy of what is essentially a two-character piece are well juxtaposed by Brooks against the vast desert expanses of her home country, captured in sumptuous wide-screen cinematography by the great Ian Baker.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Occupation: Dreamland
    Superb documentary.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    La Ciudad (The City)
    Lovely.
  58. 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.
  59. Ya lyublyu tebya
    Though the progress of this ill-matched love triangle is fun to follow in its self-consciously wacky way, the movie's chief pleasures, at least to a Western eye, are anthropological.
  60. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
    The story proceeds, by minuscule tonal shifts and barely perceptible changes in the atmospheric temperature, from touches of ghoulish comedy -- to the creepy stillness of death that pervades the house.
  61. Chalk
    Though Akel and Mass share writing credit, Chalk was actually shot in a loose, improvisational manner in the mode of Christopher Guest's films, and its best set pieces are like devastatingly effective pinpricks puncturing the Hollywood hot-air balloon of inspirational teacher/coach melodramas.
  62. The Count of Monte Cristo
    Reynolds, working in close harmony with cinematographer Andrew Dunn (Gosford Park), brings an infectious brio and an occasional sweeping grace to the classic trappings of Dumas.
  63. My Architect
    What makes it enthralling is the younger Kahn's openness to a range of emotional responses (his own and others') to his father's life above and below board, and his readiness to turn his own predicament into both entertainment and a provisional kind of puckish wisdom.
  64. The Constant Gardener
    A smart, beautiful piece of storytelling, attentive to Le Carré's broad intent, while boldly taking a knife to his more egregious longueurs.
  65. Unleashed
    The most enjoyable film Besson has had his name on in eons.
  66. Pola X
    The film is at once breathtaking and ridiculous, and it's the tension between these two extremes, as well as Carax's own intoxicating style, that makes it essential viewing.
  67. A Mighty Wind
    Freshened immensely by pitch-perfect song parodies, a batch of hilarious faux album covers, nimble improv from the ever-marvelous cast, and a palpable love for the subject matter.
  68. The Weather Man
    The Weather Man begs to be taken seriously and can't easily be dismissed; it kicks around in your mind for a good long while after you've seen it. Cage, who does his finest work since "Leaving Las Vegas," has stripped himself bare of the patented tics and mannerisms he honed in one Jerry Bruckheimer movie too many.
  69. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
    If you can't think of a crisis in your life that's tied to a Leonard Cohen song, then Canadian director Lian Lunson's velvety, exuberantly hagiographic film of a 2005 Sydney tribute concert to the Prince of Pain may not be the movie for you.
  70. Carnage
    Carnage is a film about the violence of living, of finding and keeping a place in the world, and though it's a work of preternaturally sophisticated philosophy from a director who's barely out of her 20s, this beautiful, bizarre movie could function quite well without its capable screenplay.
  71. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
    Cloudy is smart, insightful on a host of relationship dynamics, and filled with fast-paced action.
  72. War of the Worlds
    The imagery is startling not just for its symbolic resonances, but for the breathless intensity with which it sears the screen.
  73. Last Holiday
    Queen Latifah gives a spectacular performance in this hugely enjoyable wish-fulfillment fantasy.
  74. Jump Tomorrow
    One of the sweetest comedies in a long time, which doesn't mean it's sugary or fey.
  75. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
    Not just the funniest but the smartest comedy around by a mile.
  76. Lan Yu
    The complex narrative counterpoint is anchored by a rock-solid performance by one of the world's great actors, the Beijing theater veteran Hu Jun.
  77. Beautiful People
    Dizdar maintains a knife-edged balance in tone throughout the film
  78. Saving Grace
    It's a fresh installment in what appears to be a self-perpetuating sitcom of British life.
  79. Schultze Gets the Blues
    Michael Schorr's delightfully deadpan comedy debut blew away the German box office, and once you let yourself sink into its gentle rhythms, as slow and deliberate as those of its protagonist and inflected with tiny but significant shifts of pace and tone, you'll see why.
  80. Kingdom of Heaven
    In its depiction of a fleeting, but nevertheless factual, peace in the Middle East, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven may seem a more quixotic Hollywood fantasy than all six Star Wars movies lumped together.
  81. Our Song
    So gently told, so deceptively simple a story, that its considerable emotional power sneaks up on you.
  82. The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack
    A kind of folktale, rooted in poignant personal experience.
  83. 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.
  84. Eve's Bayou
    Writer-director Kasi Lemmons works fast, and the world she conjures is powerfully realized.
  85. Quills
    Remarkable energy and wit, and is probably the most purely enjoyable entry in Kaufman's suboeuvre of literary excursions.
  86. The Other Side of the Street
    A smart, quietly moving film.
  87. Sling Blade
    A remarkably moving and disturbing film about the possibility of belonging and the genealogy of violence.
  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 Weather Underground
    Through masterful editing, nimble music selection and smart use of documentary materials, the filmmakers shake the dust off cultural clichés to provide a provocative survey of the past. It’s a subversively sleek enterprise.
  90. The Goebbles Experiment
    Brilliantly edited for drama and irony, The Goebbels Experiment juxtaposes little-seen German propaganda films with excerpts from Goebbels' diary.
  91. Rocky Balboa
    What gives Rocky Balboa its unexpected pathos is the titanic humility of Stallone's performance, the earnestness with which he plays a man knocked down (but not out) by the ravages of time.
  92. Return to Never Land
    Cleverly structured, fast-paced, funny, even moving.
  93. Joy Ride
    Director John Dahl ("Red Rock West," "The Last Seduction") has a pronounced knack for snap reversals and out-of-the-blue shocks.
  94. Ghosts of Mars
    It's cheap thrills all the way, served up with the kind of situational purity that only Carpenter seems to care for these days. It's that simple and that much fun.
  95. Stage Beauty
    The movie blows a fresh wind of disrespect, high drama and lush romanticism through that stolidly middlebrow subgenre, the period drama.
  96. Black Cat, White Cat
    Kusturica's always masterful orchestration of chaos, coincidence and caricature really pays off as a sweet, soulful celebration of old friends, new loves and the mad scramble of life at the fringe.
  97. The Upside of Anger
    One senses that this is an intensely personal project for Binder, who is not as forgiving as he might be toward the mercurial mother. Still, the film is carried by Costner and Allen, who project a chemistry so incrementally built on reluctant camaraderie, they almost seem like siblings.
  98. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
    The Messenger may be a caricature of theology, but then Besson is a cartoonist of genius.
  99. 16 Blocks
    This is some of the best filmmaking ever done by director Richard Donner, a longtime Hollywood journeyman known more for his proficient deployment of three long-running movie franchises (The Omen, Superman and Lethal Weapon) than for his lyricism.
  100. Such a Long Journey
    True to its source material, this is a movie with the dense, rich texture of a good novel.
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