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. Rounders
    Though the movie looks gorgeous, glittering with the monochromatic beauty of noir transposed into the key of yellow, it chugs along like an overly responsible documentary, more the working out of an idea about the gambler's true nature than a story.
  2. Simon Birch
    A movie bloated with character cliches and a bullying score that bludgeons us into whatever emotion composer Marc Shaiman thinks we should be experiencing.
  3. Cube
    Although character arcs are a little too abruptly truncated as the story moves, Natali never fumbles the big picture.
  4. Knock Off
    A stunningly lethargic, uninvolving piece of crap.
  5. 54
    If it's difficult to pinpoint exactly where this maladroit drama about the infamous New York discotheque went wrong, it's because everything in the film is lousy: The writing, the directing, the acting, the casting (Neve Campbell?), the moral posturing, the Capote clone, the Andy lookalike, even the glitter that clings to Salma Hayek's lashes like tears.
  6. Blade
    Working from a script by David S. Goyer ("Dark City") that lacks any sense of humor or character, Snipes seems unsure if he should vamp it up or play it straight, while Dorff just plain sucks.
  7. Next Stop Wonderland
    Anderson and co-writer Lyn Vaus have a wonderfully light touch with dialogue both comic and sad, and Davis is the perfect mirror for the movie's gracefully shifting moods, and its soulful bossa nova score.
  8. Your Friends & Neighbors
    What is remarkable is the absolute cool with which LaBute charts his story: The director has the soul of an assassin.
  9. Dead Man on Campus
    The fault lies mostly with the writers, who consistently come up short on wit and imagination enough to finish, let alone flesh out or polish, a joke.
  10. The Avengers
    It's shockingly inert.
  11. Slums of Beverly Hills
    While Slums of Beverly Hills may sound like a downer, Jenkins tempers the family's downbeat circumstances with sympathetic humor, a quirky camera style and lo-fi retro flavor.
  12. How Stella Got Her Groove Back
    This upscale Harlequin fantasy film works much the same terrain as Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows, a '50s weepy about an affair between an older woman and a younger man, though without an iota of its wit or intelligence.
  13. Snake Eyes
    Not too long after the knockout opening, all that's left of Snake Eyes are Cage's wild eyes, the dregs of David Koepp's rotten script, and De Palma's restless, anxious camera, on the prowl for something, anything, to hang on to.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    BASEketball
    Some of the most heavy-handed, laughless, uninspired attempts at comedy since prime time. But I still dig “South Park.” Let’s forget this ever happened.
  15. The Governess
    As dull to listen to as it is gorgeous to look at.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Parent Trap
    The rewrite went well, and the crew did a fine job; but you insult us, Mein Disney, serving up leftovers on such expensive china.
  17. The Negotiator
    This tough, crackling thriller from director Gary Gray is one of those rare action movies with something on its mind other than moviestar sneers and incessant big bangs.
  18. Saving Private Ryan
    If Steven Spielberg's emotional intelligence matched his visual genius, his honorably flawed new film might qualify for one of the greatest-ever American WWII movies.
  19. Lolita
    Irons' doleful lassitude sucks the energy right out of the story and makes this listlessly directed adaptation droop all the more.
  20. The Mask of Zorro
    A screenplay that not only has a way with genre cliché, but manages to score some deviously witty political points
  21. There's Something About Mary
    Their taste is as bad as their timing is exquisite.
  22. Pi
    A triumph of low-end production design, shot in sizzling, solarized black and white, and driven by a propulsive, insinuating score, Pi is a horror movie that makes you think and an indie film that makes you squirm.
  23. Lethal Weapon 4
    The old hands still seem to be having a good time, so why the hell shouldnít we?
  24. Armageddon
    The movie is ridiculous, but since the special effects are really quite impressive, that seems a small point.
  25. Buffalo '66
    As naked and bitter and mesmerizing a display of self-pity as you've seen outside as Edward Albee play. By the end of this willfully grimy yet oddly beautiful movie, Billy and Layla have earned grudging sympathy.
  26. Smoke Signals
    The deeper strength of Smoke Signals rests on the sensitivity and truthfulness of Farmer’s performance as the ebullient, self-hating alcoholic father, and that of Irene Bedard as the young woman he knew in later life.
  27. Dr. Dolittle
    To his credit, Eddie Murphy knows it well enough to deliver a team-playing performance as the critter-phobic physician who reluctantly becomes the Albert Schweitzer of the animal kingdom.
  28. Out of Sight
    This isn't a profound film, or even an important one, but then it isn't trying to be. It's so diverting and so full of small satisfying pleasures, you don't realize how good it is until it's over.
  29. Mulan
    Mulan, like all the characters in this movie, is a cookie-cutter American prototype, lazily ripped off from the Disney boilerplate that fashioned Pocahontas et al.
  30. The X Files
    It's the brilliance of The X-Files to have turned Mulder's paranoid style into a function of cool. Mulder and Scully aren't just beautiful, smart, well-armed and seemingly impervious to the banalities of everyday life, such as cheap haircuts and ruinous love affairs--they're cool.
  31. Can't Hardly Wait
    The cast of mostly unknowns is agreeable if unnecessarily bland, not a Spicoli among them.
  32. High Art
    What makes High Art remarkable is Cholodenko's refusal to put her characters or story through a filter, her unblinking willingness to dive right in.
  33. Six Days Seven Nights
    Against the odds of this wheezy material and Michael Browning's fitfully funny script, director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Dave), a master of timing, contrives to spin a likable romantic comedy.
  34. The Truman Show
    Carrey is a genius at registering the rage behind television's sunny smile, while Laura Linney excels as his wife.
  35. Hope Floats
    Cloying, unoriginal stuff, rescued -- barely -- by the easy affection that courses between Bullock and Connick Jr., and by the lovely cinematography of Caleb Deschanel.
  36. The Opposite of Sex
    Sex holds in perfect tonal balance, and without cynicism, a brew of maliciously transgressive comedy and tender sympathy for its tortured characters, all gripped by terror of love, or sex, or both.
  37. Deep Impact
    Mimi Leder shows none of the vigor she exhibited when directing for E.R., and screenwriters Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin betray a real aptitude for hack work.
  38. Shooting Fish
    Shooting Fish wants to hang with the hip crowd--witness the vibrant colors, the flashy camera work and the stream of catchy pop songs--but its heart just isn't wild enough.
  39. The Big Hit
    The television commercials for the movie say something about this being the same team that brought you “Face/Off,” which is about as relevant to this picture as noting that Paul Thomas Anderson got Wahlberg to drop his pants in “Boogie Nights.”
  40. Two Girls and a Guy
    Two Girls and a Guy grooves on a provisional spirit that keeps the movie shifting in unexpected directions, tracking the exhilaration and horror of an open-ended game with high stakes to which no current rules apply.
  41. The Spanish Prisoner
    Everyone plays their role (and the roles within their roles) to perfection, and writer-director Mamet keeps us guessing what's what and who's who right up until the final minute.
  42. Lost in Space
    Director Stephen Hopkins (Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child) and writer Akiva Goldsman (Batman and Robin) layer a ridiculous time-travel tale with the story of a dysfunctional family Robinson, impressive special effects, and IKEA does Star Wars production design.
  43. The Newton Boys
    In his true-life film about four brothers who robbed banks out West during the late teens and early '20s, Richard Linklater seems to achieve the impossible: He makes Ethan Hawke bearable.
  44. 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.
  45. U.S. Marshals
    It's impossible to find an iota of aesthetic worth or an ounce of pleasure in this sludge.
  46. 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.
  47. Dark City
    [Proyas] hasn't yet learned how to enliven his characters as fully as his sets. Part of this is structural (somnolence is built into the script), but the greater fault lies with Proyas' direction of his performers, most of whom deliver their lines in a strangulated whisper.
  48. Senseless
    If you can be satisfied with only Wayans' Tourette's syndrome bit, or his perfect timing in the scene where he just kisses a girl and creams his pants, you'll go home happy.
  49. Palmetto
    Director Volker Schlöndorff is ponderously out of his depth with comic pulp, and fatally heavy-handed with his actors.
  50. The Wedding Singer
    Sandler smirks a good deal less than he did in his last two movies, and with a couple of acting lessons, he might develop into a screen presence.
  51. Sphere
    While the length and ridiculous finale are a drag, the only thing that stinks about Sphere is its pervasive boys-club snarkiness, especially since Stone is actually good. Levinson has always been a better director of men, but it would be nice if Attanasio could learn how to write a role for a woman that wasn't an embarrassment as well as an insult.
  52. The Replacement Killers
    Pure junk.
  53. Phantoms
    Since neither (Chapelle nor Koontz) seems to have any idea as to how to make an actual movie, they abandon form and reason and throw every stock trick in the book at the screen to see what sticks. And what sticks is the murky goo of storytelling gone bad.
  54. Half Baked
    The film's deadly lulls outweigh its infrequent highs.
  55. Hard Rain
    A nearly affectless Christian Slater, who carries a co-producing credit and seems to have lost his charisma along with his sneer, plays Tom, an armored-car guard who plays hide-and-seek with a gang of thieves, all of whom, outside of ringleader Jim (Morgan Freeman), are instantly forgettable.
  56. Oscar and Lucinda
    As to be expected, it's all very beautiful; too bad it's also often annoying, save for a heartbreaking final half-hour.
  57. Afterglow
    It's a first-rate chamber piece for actors, but Julie Christie brings a particularly layered depth to what could have been a very flat role; a combination of bereaved mother and castaway wife. Her torment and her intermittent joys are so fully communicated that they anchor the film.
  58. The Postman
    But since Costner canít save his movie, it's something of a stretch to think he might be able to save the world.
  59. As Good as It Gets
    As funny as it's got all year. Manipulative and calculating? Sure. Submit! Enjoy!
  60. Tomorrow Never Dies
    The hardware explodes just fine, all the right people die, and Pierce Brosnan, suave and likable as ever but no Sean Connery, not in a million years, gets the job done.
  61. Mousehunt
    The movie's real charms lie in its surprisingly dark atmosphere and its almost subversive sense of humor.
  62. The Apostle
    An effortlessly complex portrayal that relishes the contradictions and complexities of someone capable of both exalted and debased behavior, a shape-shifter it is possible to be fascinated, repelled and compelled by, all at the same time.
  63. Scream 2
    The less ticklish bad joke of Scream 2 is that self-referentiality has its limits.
  64. Deconstructing Harry
    Increasingly, reviewing the latest Woody Allen movie has taken on the feel of a dreaded ritual, an annual excursion into careless filmmaking, desperate shtick, and vainglorious misanthropy disguised as cuddly neurosis.
  65. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
    The film is consummately professional but phlegmatic, a slow fizzle.
  66. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
    It's cynical and it's depressing, and I would lock a child in a room before I'd show him Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
  67. The Jackal
    Scottish director Michael Caton-Jones continues to fritter away the last traces of his talent with this ugly variant on Fred Zinnemann's 1973 original, The Day of the Jackal.
  68. The Wings of the Dove
    Softley starts out a little awkwardly, as he tries to capture turn-of-the-century flux by opening several London scenes from disorienting, too-obvious camera positions.
  69. Bean
    This is not comedy - it's mugging. And there's no excuse for making Bean cuddly; he only works with an evil edge.
  70. Eve's Bayou
    Writer-director Kasi Lemmons works fast, and the world she conjures is powerfully realized.
  71. Mad City
    The great, and given Costa-Gavras' previous m.o., inevitable irony of Mad City is that even as it condemns the media for exploiting the situation, it's busy doing the very same.
  72. Gattaca
    Although that's enough plot for two movies, Niccol proceeds to clog up his meticulously mounted story with a murder and a romance (hence Uma Thurman), allowing needless intrigue to distract from his ideas.
  73. I Know What You Did Last Summer
    There's no doubting that Williamson is a man who knows and loves his genre, and all the scary, screaming, sniggering fun continues here.
  74. The Devil's Advocate
    Subtlety was never Taylor Hackford's long suit, but that's an asset in this mischievously fortissimo poke at lawyering and capitalist competition.
  75. The House of Yes
    What follows doesn't much surprise, since every emotional detail, accompanied by a noisy storm and then a black-out, arrives well in advance of its execution.
  76. The Peacemaker
    If I were a grief-stricken Sarajevan I'd take offense.
  77. Soul Food
    But if you go in knowing this, the payoff is considerable - the film delivers on its feel-good promise.
  78. In & Out
    Kline, Debbie Reynolds (as his mom) and Tom Selleck are all wonderful. But it's the always amazing Cusack, playing the baffled Emily, who steals the film in a smooth transition from wide-eyed fiancée to possibly wronged woman, a role she essays with a perfect balance of wounded-ness and comedic aplomb.
  79. The Myth of Fingerprints
    An overly mannered film drowning in the symptoms of dysfunction but unable to tap the root causes of this WASPish clan's pain except in the most oblique and cursory ways. This might be Freundlich's point, considering this family deals with its problems through avoidance.
  80. Hoodlum
    Too long by about 20 minutes, the film drags a bit, but the acting--fine throughout--carries the whole thing.
  81. Event Horizon
    The worst thing about Event Horizon--written by Philip Eisner, directed by Paul Anderson--isn't all the gore decorating the 21st-century space ship that gives the movie its name, but the filmmakers' reliance on shock edits and headache-inducing sound F/X to obscure the fact that this is one of the most derivative movies to hit screens in memory.
  82. The Full Monty
    Genuinely touching.
  83. Conspiracy Theory
    The film isn't really about much and so feels patchy and forced, with elements more calculated than inspired, more urgent than exciting.
  84. In the Company of Men
    A provocative, timely script full of gasp-inducing lines and scenes.
  85. Picture Perfect
    Director Glenn Gordon Carron's movie is far more bearable when Kate is spinning lies and sticking her tongue in Kevin Bacon's desiccated bad boy.
  86. Spawn
    If Spawn had anything close to a script, it would be a pretty nifty fantasy about conspiracy, apocalypse and a fat killer clown.
  87. Air Force One
    The first 20 minutes of Wolfgang Petersen’s new action adventure, Air Force One, are so thrillingly choreographed (and so very, very loud), it’s all the more disappointing that the balance of the movie tends to move less like a Stealth bomber and more like a jalopy — jerking fitfully from plot hole to plot hole, only occasionally finding momentum.
  88. Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown
    Despite its Scottish scenery and period frocks, Madden's film proves a pallid creature indeed compared to the hanky-panky leaking out of Buckingham Palace of late.
  89. Kiss Me, Guido
    That crack in Vitale's storytelling foundation would be forgivable if the writing, acting and character epiphanies . . . well, existed. As it is, not even Scotti's formidable lips can blow life into this stillborn flick.
  90. George of the Jungle
    This bit of fluff overflows with so much honest charm it barely matters that it's one in a seemingly endless succession of Tarzan retreads.
  91. Contact
    What's most frustrating about the movie isn't that it thinks so little of its heroine that it can't let her figure out the moral of her own story, but that it thinks so little of us as to suggest that, after a couple millennia of human struggle, it's indeed possible to answer the unanswerable.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    4 Little Girls
    The film is artfully made, its occasional excesses of style moderated by the plain force of the content and the passion of the testimony.
  93. Men in Black
    A great goof of a film...However daftly amusing, and periodically inspired, Men in Black is distinctly short on character and plot, even for a cartoon.
  94. Face/Off
    Yet the movie, distilling into purest form the blend of viciousness and sentimentality that informs all Woo's work, winds up as emotionally bogus as it is viscerally overwhelming.
  95. Batman & Robin
    There's so much happening in the movie that it feels like nothing is happening at all. Which leaves you free to gaze, slack-jawed, on the true glory of Batman & Robin -- its fabulously color-coded set design.
  96. My Best Friend's Wedding
    As [Roberts'] gay best friend, Rupert Everett is the only one with any backbone, any sense of humor or any decent lines.
  97. Speed 2: Cruise Control
    The last half-hour is a decent enough ride, with Dafoe controlling the ship by Powerbook and product placement, while Bullock and Patric demonstrate the triumph of American gumption over high tech, the better to save all hands on deck.
  98. Ulee's Gold
    Nunez is a master at rendering emotionally complex, ordinary folk into the kind of unassuming heroes that don't much appear in American films anymore.
  99. Con Air
    Con Air is entertaining in an extravagantly decadent sort of way. It just isn't a movie.
  100. 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.
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