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 Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros
    Nathan Lopez, armed with a diva's slinky cat walk and determination, is absolutely fantastic as Maximo.
  2. 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.
  3. I Heart Huckabees
    A fresh, buoyant, mischievous and rather jolly meditation - if that's the word for a movie as divinely nuts as this one is - on the meaning of life in an unhappy world.
  4. The Deep End
    A fetchingly improbable match of material and directors.
  5. Herod's Law
    A bracingly sarcastic political comedy -- it opens on a bound copy of Mexico's Constitution, stuffed with cash -- possessed of a baleful satiric eye for hypocrisy and greed, a delicious anti-clerical bent, and pitch-perfect comic timing.
  6. Final
    On the strength of such skillful pacing, and the pair's beautifully modulated performances (Leary's never been so warm or vulnerable), the film builds almost imperceptibly to a climax that's as moving as it is startling.
  7. Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy
    A refreshing antidote to those E! True Hollywood Story documentaries on adult-film figures like John Holmes, Savannah and Traci Lords.
  8. One Swallow Brought Spring
    The Girl From Paris may not have half the smooth technique of "Swimming Pool," but it has 10 times the heart and soul.
  9. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
    The movie is driven almost entirely by its exhilaratingly subversive characters.
  10. Colette
    As her marriage opens up, and Colette begins to take lovers of her own, Knightley summons up a moving sense of both relief and recklessness. This Colette is thrilled suddenly to have new options, but she’s committed to pushing for more.
  11. 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.
  12. Promises
    Proves too sincere to exploit its subjects and too honest to manipulate its audience.
  13. The Kindergarten Teacher
    The Kindergarten Teacher dares us to work out for ourselves, from moment to moment, whether Lisa is a hero, a monster or something in-between
  14. A Time for Drunken Horses
    A central work in the new, boldly politicized Iranian cinema.
  15. In the Bedroom
    Goes the distance to avoid banalizing the dilemma of a reasonable couple unhinged by unreasonable events.
  16. Boesman and Lena
    A labor of love -- a swan song repaying a lifetime of happy debts to the theater, by grace of two terrific performances.
  17. Alpha Dog
    In his best film to date, Nick Cassavetes directs with ferocious energy, taking scenes past their logical stopping points and pushing his actors (particularly Foster, who can be as terrifying as Edward Norton in "American History X") to, but never over, the precipice of absurdity.
  18. Jinn
    There’s nothing preachy about Jinn, even though Nijla Mu’min’s elegant debut feature is about a teenager coming to terms with her mother’s newly embraced religion.
  19. The Cockettes
    A fascinating, richly detailed documentary about the legendary queer collective based in San Francisco in the late '60s and early '70s.
  20. The Ignorant Fairies
    Moving and vibrant Italian-language film.
  21. Looney Tunes: Back in Action
    The movie looks like it cost a fortune, with Dean Cundey's glistening widescreen compositions and Bill Brzeski's towering, storybook sets providing the backdrop for seamless visual effects. What's more, it's equally rich in ideas.
  22. Jindabyne
    Jindabyne wears its class politics lightly, weaving them into a ghost story about the intimate connection between how we treat our living and our dead that will hover around your shoulders long after you leave the theater.
  23. Love & Basketball
    Although the writing and the directing are smart and purposeful, the movie takes flight on the strength of its performances.
  24. Pride and Prejudice
    Scottish director Andrew Black keeps the pace brisk and the images sunny, while screenwriters Anne Black (his wife), Jason Faller and Katherine Swigert afford lively dialogue that, without pressing the issue, hones in on some insightful parallels between the morals of Austen's society and those of contemporary Mormon culture.
  25. Dinner Rush
    It's fitting, then, that Dinner Rush boasts Hawks-ian virtues: fiery energy, swift, character-driven chitchat and a tough, upbeat sense of how the world works.
  26. Dirty Dancing
    Above all, you've got Jennifer Grey, as a rich girl summering in the Catskills and falling for her working-class dance instructor, played by Patrick Swayze. The chemistry between them is red-hot, and they're wonderful dancers.
  27. The Reception
    It's fine stuff, beautifully played, but there's no denying that viewers will have to be patient with this 80-minute chamber piece, the first third of which feels cold and false, only to suddenly shift into unexpectedly deep emotional territory.
  28. Iron Island
    A thrilling example of the cunning political allegory woven into vivid concretism that invigorates contemporary Iranian cinema, Mohammad Rasoulof's Iron Island takes as its monumental central image a sinking ship, symbol of decaying autocracy and the faint hope of liberation.
  29. Die Another Day
    The result is the niftiest Bond movie in years -- fresh, funny, and jammed to the rafters with demented stunts, Boys'-Own gadgetry and brazen promiscuity.
  30. Look at Me
    Directed by Agnès Jaoui, who made the equally delightful "The Taste of Others," this comedy of manners with a serious purpose centers on a group of loosely connected neurotics, all working in the rarefied worlds of amateur chorales.
    • 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.
  32. Not One Less
    Zhang's work is always worth watching, but this is the first of his films in which the sorrows are so heart-rending, its many comic moments so laugh-out-loud human.
  33. The Proposition
    The Proposition is a very hard and harsh movie, but it also has a hypnotic, lyrical velocity. As Arthur, Huston exudes dead charisma.
  34. Millennium Mambo
    Jean-Luc Godard famously declared that all it takes to make a movie is a girl and a gun. Both turn up in Millennium Mambo, a ravishing bauble about la dolce vita in Taiwan, but frankly, the gun's an afterthought. This is a movie about the girl.
  35. Biandan, guniang
    So moving and so timely.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Crimson Gold
    The result is the work of a funereal yet darkly funny neorealist, sounding the rallying cry against the inflexible maxim casually delivered by one of his own film's characters.
  37. Hotel Rwanda
    Hotel Rwanda, based on real lives and events, aims unequivocally to break your heart.
  38. Inside Man
    The heist at the heart of Inside Man is brilliant, and so is the movie.
  39. Secret Things
    Though his work has been little seen outside of France, writer-director Jean-Claude Brisseau's reputation as one of the most terribles of his country's filmmaking enfants precedes him. This 2002 film offers ample evidence as to why.
  40. Mobile Homes
    In Vladimir de Fontenay’s Mobile Homes, Imogen Poots gives a performance of such multifaceted distinction that it might be hard to believe you’re watching the same actress from frame to frame.
  41. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
    If you liked "Love, Actually," you'll love this too, another small jewel in the crown of unabashedly commercial, cheerfully middlebrow, eminently exportable British fluff.
  42. Twin Falls Idaho
    Proves that it's possible for a movie to be reckless and adventurous merely by being sedate, unhurried and contemplative.
  43. Laura Smiles
    It casts an increasingly hypnotic spell, thanks in no small measure to Wright -- a fearless actress (and the real-life wife of writer-director Ruscio) who brings this sometimes despicable, often heartbreaking character to life with every atom of her being.
  44. Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy
    Recut and reassembled at just a little over two hours, the new version of the film is a staggering and bracing object, stylistically bold and hypnotically captivating.
  45. The Fluffer
    Saturated with deep, rich color and low-key visual wit, and graced with sympathetic performances.
  46. A Matter of Taste
    Rapp's creepy, ghoulishly funny and, finally, touching new film.
  47. Divided We Fall
    Divided We Fall briskly, often hilariously, forbids us to wallow in the specious comfort of untainted local heroes or irredeemable villains.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eden Lake
    As a thriller, Eden Lake absolutely works, but feel-good entertainment it isn’t. Don’t bring a date.
  49. Lost in La Mancha
    Too bad for Gilliam and everyone involved, but in the departments of spectacle and schadenfreude, great fun for us.
  50. Aberdeen
    Writer-director Hans Petter Moland (The Last Lieutenant, Zero Kelvin) has a fine eye for landscapes, but an even surer touch with actors.
  51. Under The Wire
    The film unfolds as a sort of first-person procedural, a vivid step-by-step account of a reporting trip to hell.
  52. Divine Intervention
    As pristine a distillation of Palestinian rage as I've seen outside the evening news.
  53. Tony Takitani
    This gossamer work is one of the loveliest examples of minimalist cinema I've seen in a long time.
  54. The Gleaners & I
    It's both surreal -- and wholly accessible.
  55. Sex and Lucia
    Climaxes in a flood of revelations that, like so much of the film, take us where we least expect to go.
  56. The Transporter
    Immensely exciting and funny.
  57. Billy the Kid
    But what you ultimately take from the film is the awareness that this smart, self-aware, uncensored kid has been playing to a camera in his own head since well before Venditti came along.
  58. Margot at the Wedding
    Margot at the Wedding gives its characters (and us) something to laugh about.
  59. The Manchurian Candidate
    If Demme's version lacks the wallop of its predecessor, it is more likely to be popular with contemporary audiences, who will enjoy not only its labyrinthine twists but its stars' burnished professionalism.
  60. The Score
    You begin to wonder whether a story is ever going to show up. When it does, it's worth the wait for a long and well-turned set piece coordinating the heist, and two lovely flips in the plot.
  61. Forgiving Dr. Mengele
    It's hard to know whether to be impressed or appalled by Eva Mozes Kor, the Holocaust survivor in Bob Hercules and Cheri Pugh's fascinating documentary who has made forgiving the Nazis her life's work.
  62. Saw III
    That may not exactly thrill those who admire the Saw films only for their splatter quotient, but all told, this is a more affecting study in grief, guilt and human frailty than "Babel."
  63. Shrek
    Shrek's first 20 minutes are so devilishly funny that letting go of pure belief doesn't seem like such a bad thing.
  64. American Wedding
    The movie is enormously, convulsively funny, and it never lets up -- it has no shame.
  65. Bandits
    Equal parts big-house B-feature, hammer-down road movie, post-feminist consciousness-raiser and rock & roll pipe dream.
  66. Find Me Guilty
    Shot quickly and cheaply in high-definition video and almost entirely on one set, the movie has almost zero visual energy, but it teems with snappy dialogue and the same carnival anarchy Lumet brought to "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Network."
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Cherry Orchard
    Cacoyannis lays on the atmosphere a bit thick with multiple repetitions of a lyrical Tchaikovsky motif underscoring unrequited love, one that is nonetheless beautifully rendered by pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy.
  68. Charlotte Sometimes
    Lovely ensemble piece.
  69. Khab-e sefid
    The movie often seems as innocent and goodhearted as its subject. Still, Jebeli is possessed of an impish visual sense. He also has the Iranian gift for bringing to vivid life people we wouldn't give a second glance.
  70. Shall We Kiss?
    Witty, insightful portraits of hyperverbal, self-conscious young people falling in and out of love.
  71. A Prairie Home Companion
    For a film about death and endings, A Prairie Home Companion is a cracking good time - a warm, golden bauble within which to shelter, like the radio show that inspired it, from the misery and ennui that engulf us in and out of the multiplex.
  72. Girls Will Be Girls
    By the end of this likely cult classic (only 80 minutes long), when Evie has an amphetamine-induced meltdown during her cable-access comeback show, these divas are as recognizably human as you and me, only sluttier, and with cattier one-liners.
  73. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    Amusing, beautifully drawn one-hour film.
  74. Space Cowboys
    It's a rare pleasure to see these senior citizens given so much screen time, droopy butts and all.
  75. Irreversible
    Noé calls Irreversible his "Eyes Wide Shut," though it's really more like "A Clockwork Orange."
  76. Forty Shades of Blue
    This is still powerful, undiluted stuff -- a jolt of backwoods moonshine whiskey injected into the veins of the atrophied American relationship drama.
  77. Millions
    Millions is an intelligent children’s film that may prove to be a guilty pleasure for adults.
  78. Girl on the Bridge
    Leaves you with a bland message -- titillation may get your wicky-wack going but love and partnership stay the course -- but the way it gets you there is divine.
  79. The Town Is Quiet
    Leaves you reeling from the force of the humanity it captures and -- in its own gut-wrenching way -- honors.
  80. 51 Birch Street
    Open-minded, probing but never prurient, 51 Birch Street is much more than a portrait of suburban ennui. It's a loving, painful map of the gulf between thought and word, between word and deed, that props up good marriages, and sends bad ones to hell.
  81. The Real Dirt on Farmer John
    It’s fascinating that this portrait of the rise, fall and rise of Midwestern organic farmer John Peterson can be read in so many different ways, only some of which appear intentionally in Taggart Siegel’s sympathetic documentary about his friend and fellow artist.
  82. My Grandmother's House
    An accomplished miniaturist's documentary -- 80 finely wrought minutes in alternating increments of wonder and loss.
  83. Gunner Palace
    Sensational viewing.
  84. Water
    Hitches some of the most irresistible conventions of Hindi movie melodrama to an earnest agenda of social protest.
  85. Mid90s
    Mid90s, for all its darkness, is uplifted by its hilarious moments and joyous skating shots.
  86. The Lookout
    The Lookout is funny, tender and littered with elegantly written characters played by actors cast for goodness of fit rather than star wattage.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Earth
    State-of-the-art camera equipment captures images of startling clarity and proximity. There isn't one frame of CGI.
  88. Sweet and Lowdown
    Funny and light, all the more potent for seeming so effortless.
  89. 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.
  90. Pretty Persuasion
    This is a very funny film about a creepy, excruciatingly lonely world.
  91. Innocent Voices
    Chilean-born actress Leonor Varela (TV's Cleopatra, a few seasons back) plays Chavo's mother, who, in her rage to see her children survive, powerfully embodies the film's moral center.
  92. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
    Snappy, fun and outrageously irreverent, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the work of someone with nothing to lose, which is only to the audience's gain.
  93. The Guys
    The Australian actor taps into something miraculous here -- LaPaglia's ability to convey grief and hope works with Weaver's sensitive reactions to make this a two-actor master class.
  94. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
    Much of the film is as strange and oddly beautiful as one of Arbus' own photographs, bold in its attempt to find new ways of cracking the biopic chestnut and sensitive in its portrayal of a 1950s woman who, like so many of her contemporaries, finds herself imprisoned in a "Good Housekeeping" nightmare.
  95. Sunset Story
    It's the cinematic equivalent of glancing up at the sky and taking a good deep breath.
  96. Jackass Number Two
    As merry pranksters they have no match, and as they age (Knoxville is 35 now), they only grow in appeal. As they proudly hurl their tattooed (by ink and battle scars) bodies into harm's way, a devilish glint in their eyes, it's as if they've discovered the fountain of youth, and its name is Jackass.
  97. Bubba Ho-tep
    Campbell is flat-out great, muting his beloved Sam Raimi shtick in favor of a genuine character turn, an act of transformation that makes you wonder why he's never been called on to interpret Elvis before.
  98. Carandiru
    Babenco's kindly, concerned eye seeks out the humanity in even the worst of his characters, and by the time he re-creates the massacre, with shocking power and force, one has been equally captivated and appalled at the world he shows. The result is one of the richest prison movies in years.
  99. Spring Forward
    A resonance that is moving beyond all measure.
  100. Plunkett & Macleane
    Lewd, crude and occasionally too brutal to take, it's also gorgeous, heartfelt.
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