L.A. Weekly's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Rabbit-Proof Fence
    Noyce wants us to feel the joy of the homecoming, but he's honest enough to show, in a coda that tells what happened to the girls after their break for home, how Rabbit Proof Fence finally must be more a tale of courage than of victory.
  2. Prisoner of Paradise
    An extraordinary documentary about the German entertainer Kurt Gerron, has been timed to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Week, but the film would also fit snugly on a double bill with "My Architect."
  3. Osama
    At the center...lies the stunning Golbahari, a nonprofessional who recalls some of Bresson's most haunting model-actors in her intense, anguished grace.
  4. Everything Put Together
    Mitchell -- gives a harrowing, beautifully conceived performance, the depth and arc of which can't be fully appreciated until the film's final scene.
  5. The Host
    The Host is a miracle of breathless play with form and tone that also seethes with attitude and ideas, from pure movie love to pointed sociopolitical commentary to a bleak existentialism about the inherent cruelty of our world.
  6. Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time
    Very few art documentaries are as deeply in tune with the spirit of their subjects, and the implications are enormous, since Goldsworthy is the rare contemporary art star whose work (what a radical notion) is actually about something.
  7. Friday Night Lights
    Country singer and sometime actor Tim McGraw excels as the bitter, besotted ex-Panther who can't cut his kid enough slack to follow his own game plan.
  8. 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.
  9. The Yes Men
    An uproarious and appalling piece of consciousness-raising.
  10. The Wind Will Carry Us
    "Nothing happening" is everything happening between the lines, in the gap created between what is unstated onscreen and what we bring to the story ourselves.
    • L.A. Weekly
  11. 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.
  12. The Filth and the Fury
    The Sex Pistols themselves were bloody magnificent.
  13. From Hell
    Their discretion makes From Hell less a horror movie than a classical film noir.
  14. Under the City's Skin
    Under the Skin is distinguished, like so much contemporary Iranian cinema, by the way its striking visuals and strategic use of sound tell the underlying story.
  15. La Ciénaga
    Martel's off-the-cuff candor and intelligent eye for the quietly telling detail charts the progressive rot not only of a family, but of an entire social class.
  16. Women Without Men
    Neshat employs dialogue that is often didactic, but that weakness is forgiven in the face of stellar acting from the ensemble and gorgeously composed and shot images.
  17. Urbania
    The story of what happens when everything dies but love. It's a simple story, artfully told.
  18. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
    A haunting tale of the physical survival and emotional confusion of children who were simultaneously required to build a new life and hold fast to the memory of an old one, in the hope of resuming it after the war.
    • L.A. Weekly
  19. Erleuchtung garantiert
    Enlightenment Guaranteed is a parable of alienation and rediscovery told with such affection, insight and visual elegance, it could never be taken as preachy or stern.
  20. Bubble Boy
    Playfully quirky film takes equal-time potshots at its many easy targets -- fundamentalism, intolerance, ethnic stereotypes.
  21. Three Monkeys
    Ceylan’s departure from his moody sonatas "Distant" and "Climates" into more plotted film noir is equal parts Bresson and Buñuel, a merciless etching of the indiscreet charmlessness of the Turkish bourgeoisie, which sharply raises the stakes on that class’s petty hypocrisy and serial betrayals.
  22. 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.
  23. United Skates
    Often, a scene-survey doc that takes on so much — cultural history, present-day portraiture, regional distinctions, celebrity interviews, fly-on-the-wall reportage — can play as scattershot. That’s not so with United Skates. Round and round it flows — why not jump on in?
  24. Touch the Sound: A Sound Journey with Evelyn Glennie
    The film's discretion short-circuits any impulse we might have to regard Glennie as a handicapped person who has “overcome.” Instead, we're led to experience her life as she does - as an adventure in which setbacks are not challenges, but illuminations of untracked paths.
  25. The Magdalene Sisters
    Grim, grueling and triumphantly powerful.
  26. The Mothman Prophecies
    Pellington's sharp, fastball compositions and nerve-splintering cutting style are of a piece with such intelligence, devilishly mixing shock with optimism.
  27. Nurse Betty
    This delightful and compassionate romp achieves precisely that rare quality -- grace -- that sets Betty apart from the pack.
  28. American Beauty
    Surprises you with a kind of hardheaded romanticism.
  29. One
    Barbieri is a natural filmmaker, with an eye for film space and a gift for pacing. Both of his leads are wonderful, but it's Picoy who will break your heart.
  30. The Faculty
    A tight blend of self-awareness, humor and fear.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Scanner Darkly
    As they (Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson) bicker and banter, threaten one another with small household objects, and try (unsuccessfully) to determine the number of gears on a bicycle, they display a combination of irritability and incompetence that is the soul of comedy.
  32. The Day After Tomorrow
    This highly entertaining spin on eco-catastrophe could turn the most meteorologically challenged among us into Weather Channel freaks.
  33. Rock Star
    Wahlberg has turned into one of the most sympathetic and persuasive young actors around, and while his new movie remains safely, even shrewdly, in the middle of the road, he rocks.
  34. Amen.
    Subtle distinctions have not been Costa-Gavras' long suit, but urgency becomes him in this forceful and intelligent evocation.
  35. Man on the Train
    Far from a spontaneous movie -- the passage of this relationship is mapped from the get-go -- but it is warm and deep, and its visual style bespeaks a new maturity in Leconte.
  36. Divan
    Gluck, an oral historian, has the magpie eye of a born collector of objects, people and ideas, a cheeky appreciation for the ironies life drops on us, and enough of an open mind to let her odyssey lead her where it may.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chicago
    Chicago is that rare thing: a nutritious hard candy.
  38. Hamlet
    Cast for fun, and the whimsy is enjoyable both for its parody of heavy-handed "relevant" updates of the play.
  39. New York Doll
    Overall, Whitely's debut film may just fill you with an unexpectedly deep elation.
  40. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    Results in moments of real beauty that make you grateful Chappelle chose an aesthete for directing chores. And yet, in terms of content, the film doesn't quite reach the bar set by its historic predecessor (Wattstax).
  41. Heavy Trip
    In their feature debut, co-writers/directors Juuso Laatio and Jukka Vidgren and co-writers Aleksi Puranen and Jari Olavi Rantala reach for absurdist comedy — the reindeer-blood accident, the projectile-vomit bit, the grave-robbing incident — with a touch so light that the general nuttiness comes to seem a central (and essential) component of Finnish rural life.
  42. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    It's a testimony to the integrity and poignancy of Tammy Faye herself that she comes off as a cool, even complex, woman.
  43. Ocean's Eleven
    The most purely entertaining movie to come out of Hollywood so far this year, and if that doesn't seem worthy of Soderbergh's talents, it's worthy enough for a night's amusement.
  44. Another Road Home
    Marvelously conciliatory film.
  45. Dancer in the Dark
    I was astonished to find myself weeping copiously over von Trier's latest, which is another parable of monomaniacal sainthood.
  46. Sir! No Sir!
    Zeiger's superb documentary about the Vietnam War era's GI protest movement is jammed with incident and anecdote and moves with nearly as much breathless momentum as the movement itself.
  47. I Will Follow
    The entire cast is in fine form (Omari Hardwick, as Maye's maybe-suitor, pushes the sexual heat through the roof), but White's blistering performance sears the screen.
  48. Willard
    It's one of many references to the movie-wise, but a resonant one, for Glover's performance turns out to be shockingly emotional, drawn as daringly close to the bone -- within this story's limited thematic range -- as Anthony Perkins' work in Hitchcock's seminal film.
  49. 12:08 East of Bucharest
    This brilliantly caustic movie -- easily the best in a burgeoning and fertile effort to come to grips with post-Soviet malaise in Central and Eastern Europe -- offers living proof that when it comes to politics, comedy is the sincerest form of dissidence.
  50. In the Realms of the Unreal
    Yu has transferred to her superb film, the hushed awe she must have felt the day she walked into the room - and, in a sense, the mind - of this strange, singular individual.
  51. Chronicles
    Writer-director Sebastian Cordero wrings nerve-racking suspense, and complex performances, from these dynamics.
  52. Holy Smoke
    What transpires is so rich that I've seen this movie three times. The joy of being involved with two wholly truthful (if colorfully fucked up) characters is that exhilarating.
  53. Happy Accidents
    Looks drab and doesn't take very good advantage of its New York locations, but the neurotic intensity and emotional honesty of its two leads more than make up for it.
  54. Sweet Sixteen
    It's not a happy film, but there's much incidental, quotidian happiness in it. Like Lynne Ramsay's lovely "Ratcatcher," the movie is far from sentimental about children.
  55. The Blair Witch Project
    It's a small film whose power is derived from its stripped-down scale.
  56. The English Patient
    The two films bursting out of The English Patient (a chamber piece and a David Lean dune epic) require a juggling of tone, pace and scale that might easily defeat a director more seasoned than Minghella.
  57. Dogville
    A postmodern morality play stripped nearly bare by its precocious creator, until only its boldness, cutting insight, intermittent hilarity and bracing violence remain.
  58. Stupid Boy
    Composed of artfully used split-screen, lots of hand-held camera, and expertly honed dialogue, the film floats on currents of sadness and understated humor. It also makes Loic's existential ache almost palpable.
  59. Metropolis
    This muscular anime melodrama is so visually splendid that on that level alone it qualifies as a breakthrough.
  60. Rize
    The film soars when the camera is trained on its young subjects in action.
  61. Edmond
    It manages, in the course of a single tersely delineated story, to say more about the dark pathology of American racism than any five character arcs in "Crash." So go, by all means, but be prepared to take a beating.
  62. The Last Waltz
    To see the film in this meticulously restored and remixed version is like watching it for the first time, so clear is the sound, so vivid the sights.
  63. Knocked Up
    Line for line, Knocked Up isn't quite as funny as "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," which got most of its laughs from the friction between prissy Carell and his sex-crazed stoner co-workers. But it is equally good as a nutty anthropology of marginal living and as an illustration of how much energy it takes to do nothing in a work-obsessed society.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Halloween (2007)
    Horrific as it is, Halloween isn’t so much a horror film as a biopic, and a superb one at that.
  65. Punch-Drunk Love
    The movie winds up being his sunniest, for Anderson takes care to keep their love sweet, daffy and punch-drunk. This is a film in which that modern obsession, frequent-flier mileage, becomes proof of fidelity, and true intimacy is portrayed by a man telling his lover, "I'm sorry I beat up the bathroom."
  66. Notre musique
    Strikes me as one of Godard's most accessible works - one in which the graying, stubbly maestro, who turns 74 today, presents himself and his ideas to the audience in a less combative way than he sometimes has in the past.
  67. Sugar & Spice
    Any movie offering a Muzak version of the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop"warrants an immediate and unqualified recommendation.
  68. Slither
    It's the kind of movie that used to be called "trashy good fun," only there's nothing trashy about it: Gunn, who scripted the 2004 "Dawn of the Dead" remake, is clearly punch-drunk with horror-movie love; Slither is, among other things, a freewheeling homage to "The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and just about everything by George Romero.
  69. Charlotte Gray
    Charlotte Gray is not a subtle movie, but it is an honorable and surprisingly gripping one.
  70. The Big Bounce
    It's Wilson who's the score here. Quick, scruffy and completely at ease, he takes on Jack's let-it-ride charms and foibles as if he were tossing a Frisbee with friends, and it's impossible to watch him without wanting in on the game.
  71. Dig!
    The no-frills documentary also makes it clear that Newcombe is the real deal -- both supremely gifted and organically nuts.
  72. Fixing Frank
    Boasts one of the most entertaining and bitterly astute screenplays I've had the pleasure of listening to in a while, with its lengthening spirals of deceit, mendacity and one-upmanship, and its elegant linguistic dances around difficult truths.
  73. The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John
    It aims simply to relate a great and enveloping story -- one that may lead us to ponder the things that unite (rather than distance) peoples of differing belief systems, and may compel us to marvel at the many wonderful and horrible endeavors undertaken in the name of religion.
  74. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
    Who could resist a movie in which a garden gnome holds the front line in high-tech home security?
  75. Gods and Monsters
    Curiously, one of the film's stranger effects is that it's more convincing as a meditation on desire and Hollywood than as a biographical exploration.
  76. The Wild Thornberrys Movie
    Surprisingly engaging, as is the Paul Simon theme song, and the film is enlivened by flashes of humor just rude enough to delight older children.
  77. Red Lights
    The true mystery, Red Lights' real thrill ride -- and what seems to interest Kahn most, despite his skill at arranging the trappings of suspense -- is marriage.
  78. The Misfortunates
    Deftly mixing the visual exuberance of “Trainspotting” with the familial pathos of “Angela’s Ashes,” the gifted van Groeningen offers gleeful depictions of drinking contests and naked bicycle races that gradually give way to a sense of moral peril for young Gunther.
  79. The Truman Show
    Carrey is a genius at registering the rage behind television's sunny smile, while Laura Linney excels as his wife.
  80. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
    The overall effect of the film is a case study in how dispassionate leaders sow mistrust in their most needy citizens.
  81. 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.
  82. Sexy Beast
    Glazer shoots with the dreamy impressionism much favored in his principal line of work, all floaty slo-mos and in-your-face close-ups punctuated by a hard-driving rock score.
  83. Read My Lips
    Improbably, Read My Lips escapes the cynicism of much contemporary neo-noir, if only by a hair, by ending as a love story of delightful crackpot idealism, in which Paul has made a crook and a hussy out of Carla, and she's made a gentleman out of him.
  84. Aimee & Jaguar
    A sophisticated and beautiful feature debut.
  85. Coffee and Cigarettes
    It's worth fidgeting through the mediocre stuff to get to three good pieces. In one, Cate Blanchett turns in a tour de force as both herself and her aggressive, resentful Aussie cousin in an awkward encounter that captures the pathological relationship between ordinary people and celebrities.
  86. Heights
    The acting is uniformly superb.
  87. Tumbleweeds
    McTeer's performance -- one of the best you'll see this year -- makes you realize anew how rare it is to see a female character this complex in American film.
  88. The Keys to the House
    There is nothing obvious about this subtle yet powerfully subversive look into the emotional toll and confusion of dealing with a disabled child.
  89. Factotum
    This is also an acidly funny work, even if the humor is that of a man who drinks to stave off the pain and madness of sobriety. In his finest performance since "Drugstore Cowboy," Dillon plays Chinanski with funereal grandiosity.
  90. Walk on Water
    Its suggestion that Israel, of all nations, should know better than to persecute minorities within and across its borders, give the film a thrilling universal appeal.
  91. Mysterious Skin
    A warped, but beautiful and strangely hopeful, coming-of-age tale.
  92. Bridget Jones's Diary
    Bessed with a gleamingly polished, very funny script.
  93. The Squid and the Whale
    Baumbach weds his verbal gifts to a fresh visual acuity that brings layers of rich detail to a portrait of a family coping, poorly, with self-inflicted change.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Luminous Motion
    The elegant gambol through ideas, combined with Gordon's clear love of luminous motion -- literally -- is a welcome treat.
  95. In the Company of Men
    A provocative, timely script full of gasp-inducing lines and scenes.
  96. Clean
    The emotional truthfulness of Clean enters into our bloodstreams with its muted vigor, and we find ourselves getting hooked by this tale of getting unhooked.
  97. Paradise Now
    Abu-Assad, who made the lovely 2002 film "Rana's Wedding," is a far more gifted observer of the everyday than he is an action director, which is why, in Paradise Now, he productively sidetracks into a persuasive and often very funny portrait of the irrationalities of life under occupation.
  98. Transsiberian
    Anderson and his very fine cast keep things chugging along at a breathless pace, complete with a midfilm reversal of fortune nearly as unexpected as "Psycho's" shower scene. All aboard!
  99. Hellboy
    One of the sturdier superhero movies of the last couple of years, with monsters and effects and diabolical baddies to spare, a heart as big as a house and a love story that actually gets its hooks in you.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D
    Unapologetically dopey and undeniably ingratiating, the supersized Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D makes a surprisingly convincing argument for big, dumb likability.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »