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. This Film Is Not Yet Rated
    Unlike the object of its scathing attention, Kirby Dick's documentary about the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board is merry and bright and loads of fun.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. On the Run
    Though technically sleek and assured, On the Run offers much more than the exercise in style that weakens so much contemporary neo-noir. The movie is an unflinchingly intelligent probe into far-left monomania and the brutish power of ideology divorced from ordinary empathy.
  5. Waitress
    Washed in a honeyed 1950s glow, Waitress has a mildly puckish way with outlandish baked goods and pert dialogue, but the movie is memorable largely for the contrast between its innocent sweetness and the savagery of its maker's premature death.
  6. Sicko
    The movie is a great piece of populist outrage and a dangerously good comedy about a looming American tragedy.
  7. Monster
    This gifted actress (Charlize Theron), who hasn't always chosen her roles well, treats this as her big chance to show what she can do, and she's convincing enough that you're not constantly looking for a Hollywood star of more than average pulchritude under all the cosmetic baggage.
  8. The Lady and the Duke
    As always, conversation is the constant threading together Rohmer's stately pace and episodic structure, the thing he uses to show us who his characters are and what their friendship entails.
  9. Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys
    The kind of art film that's rarely seen anymore -- the kind that trusts the audience to be as intelligent as the director.
  10. Black Hawk Down
    In the end, neither the appealing cast -- nor the force of Scott's stunning imagery is enough to make us understand why these men died.
  11. Divine Intervention
    As pristine a distillation of Palestinian rage as I've seen outside the evening news.
  12. Rize
    The film soars when the camera is trained on its young subjects in action.
  13. The Ground Truth
    Immensely moving.
  14. 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shakespeare Behind Bars
    Albeit a tad repetitive, Shakespeare Behind Bars succeeds in humanizing men we might too easily label as monsters, and provides a solid argument in favor of prisons that place rehabilitation above retribution.
  16. The Sea Inside
    What makes The Sea Inside such a riveting drama is that none of these relationships is sufficient to make Ramón want to go on living.
  17. The Others
    Isn't much more than a proficient gothic mystery with a final twist that offers a satisfying little frisson before you start counting how many times it's been used before.
  18. Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
    The superb ensemble never plays for sympathy, and the movie isn't as depressing as it may sound. Its hushed, contemplative quality is oddly affecting.
  19. Duck Season
    Duck Season is not (yet) the work of a great filmmaker, but it's the kind of movie in which a fledgling director traps his talent in a bottle and saves it for next time.
  20. Serenity
    It's the zippy chatter among the Serenity's wised-up space pirates that gives the film most of its punch, but with only serviceable action sequences and largely cookie-cutter effects, you can still sense the void just outside.
  21. Cast Away
    Solid and inspiring will do nicely for Christmas, but it ought not to be good enough for the Oscar nominations that will almost certainly rain upon this movie's adequate head.
  22. After Innocence
    Rousing, quietly outraged documentary.
  23. The Orphanage
    There’s not really a bogeyman in The Orphanage and not much blood; just insane intensity and a building sense of bad vibes.
  24. Joe Gould's Secret
    The alchemy of good acting under the pressure of sublime film sense makes for a miracle in the hearts of the audience.
  25. 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    End of the Century
    It does pry much deeper into the band’s unexpectedly complex and contradictory personalities.
  27. 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.
  28. Wonder Boys
    It's striking on several counts.
  29. 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.
  30. Mysterious Skin
    A warped, but beautiful and strangely hopeful, coming-of-age tale.
  31. Mean Creek
    Estes never really completes a thought about this sorry group's moral dilemmas.
  32. Munich
    Munich is at best a muddled prayer for peace whose weakness stems not from its politics but from the misconception of its main character. Avner is not just a fictional character, but an absurdly improbable expression of Spielbergian schmaltz.
  33. 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.
  34. Millions
    Millions is an intelligent children’s film that may prove to be a guilty pleasure for adults.
  35. The Legend of Drunken Master
    A half-baked classic.
  36. Judy Berlin
    Where "American Beauty" was smug and obvious in its dissection of suburban life, Judy Berlin is hilarious, heartbreaking and -- in its graciousness -- unlike any American film we've seen in a long time.
  37. East Is East
    The proceedings are leavened also with a carefree sense of humor -- including some clever, jokey camera work -- and given depth by a cache of marvelous performances.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Commune
    A nice counterpoint is the soundtrack, with psychedelic trip music and bottleneck blues by noted wild-ass guitarist Elliott Sharp. It’s good to hear people talking about openheartedness without irony.
  39. 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.
  40. Liam
    At once a heartfelt story about a family undone by violence and an overburdened allegory of fascism.
  41. Little Otik
    Magnificently twisted black comedy.
    • L.A. Weekly
  42. 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.
  43. Go
    Entertaining and slight, topical and cannily familiar.
  44. Genesis
    The story is as wonderful in the showing as it is in the telling, by an African griot (oral historian) who stirs our tragicomic passage from birth to death, into a simple clay pot.
  45. The Dish
    Surprisingly moving -- prompting lumps in the throat over what was, after all, a historic moment of the most luminous hope.
  46. The Hurricane
    This is the deepest of Jewison's three racially themed films, the other two being "In the Heat of the Night" and "A Soldier's Story."
  47. Billy Elliot
    Good, colorful fun, and by virtue of its emphasis on escape through individual initiative rather than class solidarity, more likely to succeed with American audience.s
  48. Violet Perfume: No One Is Listening
    This powerfully rough slice of neo-realism, hitched to soapy melodrama, puts a heartbreakingly human face on the widespread problem of sexual assault in Mexico.
  49. 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.
  50. 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.
  51. Breakdown
    Breakdown recalls so many good movies, in such unpredictable order, that by the end it simply stands on its own, a solid, logical, edge-of-the-seat sluiceway of escape and pursuit.
  52. 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.
  53. Place Vendôme
    It's all about having your intelligence -- emotional, spiritual, cerebral -- respected. Garcia does that; Place Vendôme does that.
  54. The Duchess of Langeais
    If anything, as it lathers up into an abortive attempt at scarlet-woman branding and a goofy siege on the nunnery where a dazed and confused Antoinette has holed up, The Duchess of Langeais works best as the comic bondage fantasy implied in its deliciously sly French title: "Don't Touch the Axe."
  55. Sin City
    After half an hour spent drooling over its visual splendors, I found the movie every bit as sickening as its creators intended it to be, minus the kicks they so palpably got out of making it.
  56. My Country, My Country
    Perhaps the most telling image in this remarkable movie is that of a relative intently swatting flies in Riyadh's house, while fighting rages outside.
  57. 7 Days in September
    The film may be rife with emotional declarations, but rather than the studied sentiments of news anchors and politicians, these ruminations have the quotidian ring of real people struggling with a standard vocabulary to describe something unthinkably new.
  58. A Matter of Taste
    Rapp's creepy, ghoulishly funny and, finally, touching new film.
  59. Such a Long Journey
    True to its source material, this is a movie with the dense, rich texture of a good novel.
  60. Shower
    Pretty good going for a ton of moisture.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    Uncomfortable fun.
  62. Teacher's Pet
    This mouthy express train of a movie has giddy charm to burn, due in major part to the frantic charisma of Nathan Lane.
  63. Breach
    Here is one of the best American actors (Chris Cooper) in one of his best parts.
  64. Tully
    This is writer-director Hilary Birmingham's first film, and it's a lovely thing, as reserved and unfussy as its characters and, like them, full of surprises.
  65. 28 Days Later...
    The movie is mercifully uncontaminated by the smarty-pants self-reflexiveness that has sucked the lifeblood from nearly all post-"Scream" horror pictures. Clever enough not to be too clever, Boyle and Garland play their story straight -- they just want to give you the creeps -- and, by so doing, bring the undead back to cinematic life.
  66. 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.
    • 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.
  68. The Dinner Game
    The fun is in getting there, and in the mechanics, charted by writer-director Francis Veber.
  69. The Limey
    A disappointed meditation on the '60s.
  70. Behind the Sun
    That tragedy looms heavily in Behind the Sun only makes its life-affirming moments -- resonate more deeply and powerfully in a film that is one of the year's best.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Inland Empire
    It is Lynch's most experimental endeavor in the 30 years since "Eraserhead," that it will do nothing to draw new fans to the director's work and that, after two viewings, I cannot wait to see it again.
  72. All About Lily Chou-Chou
    One of the most haunting, viciously honest coming-of-age films in recent memory.
  73. Wordplay
    Wordplay offers a running tutorial in how crosswords are created - lessons that are enhanced by the onscreen graphics of designer Brian Oakes, which, come tournament time, allow moviegoers to see the clues and grids the contestants are working on, theoretically allowing us to solve the puzzles along with them.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Derrida
    The result is fascinating, whether you're smitten by him or his work, or simply intrigued by contemporary thought.
  75. The Son's Room
    The film portrays a family undone by grief over the death of a loved one; that, in any event, is its plot synopsis. More accurately, the film is a wallow of authorial narcissism, and a tedious, unrelenting, uninteresting wallow at that.
  76. Himalaya
    Captured extraordinary performances from a cast of non-actors, as well as magnificent images of a vast landscape.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Man Who Wasn't There
    The Coens have resurrected a hardscrabble California of wooden porches and gravel driveways, of rolling, oak-wreathed hills and one-lane roads, and of a restless people whose meager dreams are wrecked the moment money, sex or a bottle get in the way. Never has the past seemed so familiar.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Bourne Supremacy
    In Supremacy, Damon is left to play basically one droning, humorless note, which, unfortunately, he does with his eyes closed.
  79. 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.
  80. Les Destinées
    An exquisite metaphor for the high cost and higher returns of an enduring marriage.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    See What I'm Saying: The Deaf Entertainers Documentary
    An involving new documentary by Hilari Scarl, uncovers an interesting entertainment subculture of deaf comedians, actors and musicians.
  82. Somersault
    This remarkable film from Australia, the debut feature of writer-director Cate Shortland, moves to the lyrical rhythms and unhurried pace of a 1970s road movie.
  83. Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul
    This sensational documentary, which follows German avant-garde musician Alexander Hacke around the city with his mobile recording studio, crosses all kinds of bridges.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?
    Both the documentary and the candidate lose their naiveté along the way without abandoning the idealism that inspired the endeavor in the first place.
  85. Cuban Rafters
    What's fresh for these people is, frankly, old news for anyone who has seen even one or two documentaries on similar subject matter.
  86. Urbania
    The story of what happens when everything dies but love. It's a simple story, artfully told.
  87. 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.
  88. Spider-Man
    Perhaps the real question, then, isn't how you update Spider-Man but why you would even try. Introduced in 1962, the original superhero helped to initiate the age of modern comics. Raimi hasn't figured out how to reconfigure him for the blockbuster age, and there are suggestions.
  89. 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.
  90. The Cave of the Yellow Dog
    The Cave of the Yellow Dog has an abundance of gentle humor, much of it provided by an adorably scruffy toddler, but there's also impressive strength and wisdom in the family's uncomplaining, shoulder-to-the-wheel approach to the world.
  91. The Memory of a Killer
    Director Erik Van Looy has filmmaking chops to spare, and while he has created a sharply shot and crisply paced film, he isn't able to make it all cohere.
  92. Meet the Parents
    While Stiller and De Niro can play hilariously off one another, the film -- despite its happy ending -- feels unresolved.
  93. The Matrix
    Bill Pope's swooping, noir-inflected cinematography is wonderfully complemented by Owen Paterson's inventive production design, a great soundtrack and the best fight choreography this side of Hong Kong. And even if this isn't "Blade Runner," it is very cool shit.
  94. After the Life
    This overcrowded, overheated scenario, with many scenes repeated from the first two films, keeps us so busy tracking all the overlapping storylines, we have no time to imagine what they might mean.
  95. Super Size Me
    The speed with which a healthy, relatively young stud can morph into a tub of lard is as horrifying as it is entertaining to watch.
  96. Last Life in the Universe
    A brilliantly atmospheric, sweetly nutty film.
  97. Heading South
    An absorbing extension of Cantet's abiding obsession with the seeding of political inequality in intimate relations.
  98. 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.
  99. Cold Mountain
    Zellweger looks like a big movie star roughing it à la Paris Hilton, and as if this weren't distracting enough, the hills are alive with big acting names from both sides of the Atlantic who pop up as help or hindrance to Inman's pilgrim's progress while straining, with variable success, for credible Southern twangs.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beyond the Mat
    Blaustein's journey seems not to have shaken his convictions; he still embraces pro wrestling, warts and all.
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