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 8.8 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 Fog
    Nothing comes together after the first ten minutes.
  2. Taxi
    The glitch, beyond the rote story, is that while she's an infectiously upbeat screen presence, Latifah is not, inherently, a major laugh generator, and neither, it would appear, is Fallon.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Perfect Sleep
    The movie layers its fatalistic drama with absurdist horseplay and a few moments of Lynch-ian mysticism, but it's an awkward mix at best; even when The Perfect Sleep is trying to be funny, it's far too self-conscious to really be much fun.
  4. The Musketeer
    Hyams ("End of Days," "Timecop"), who is his own cinematographer, has no idea how to shoot or compose Xiong's wired choreography.
  5. 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.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Norbit
    It's an astonishingly crass and vulgar film, crudely directed on a cut-rate budget by Brian Robbins, never more than almost funny or less than disturbing.
  7. Heartbreak Hospital
    Gerber has a sharp cast at hand -- All work furiously, yet the director, with his fake backdrops and stately pacing, never settles on a consistent tone. Surely the novel had more bite.
  8. The Trumpet of the Swan
    At times, both swans and humans appear oddly out of sync with their flat backgrounds, while the film's few musical flights of fancy never achieve visual liftoff.
  9. View from the Top
    Just lies there, poorly lit and tone-deaf.
  10. Simply Irresistible
    A betrayal of all things Buffy, not to mention a complete waste of Gellar’s strengths as a young actress. Even the most hardcore of her fans would do well to give it a miss.
  11. Twisted
    Insipid embarrassment.
  12. Little Man
    There's no question, though, that the Wayanses have dialed down the outrageousness to nearly sub-PG-13 levels.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Babylon A.D.
    If nothing else, it's nice to see an action movie that takes Europe, not America, as its grounding point.
  14. Echelon Conspiracy
    Given the passivity of computer use, the "hacker thriller" is film history's great running joke, but special attention should go to Echelon Conspiracy's authors for conceiving a climax that tries to juice tension out of someone using a search engine and staring at a download countdown.
  15. Trixie
    Director Alan Rudolph kills this promising film off with a combination of bad writing and wrong-headed direction.
  16. Dracula 2000
    Although it's not half bad -- which doesn't mean it's half good -- this horror cheapie comes equipped with a few ideas, a little atmosphere and a couple of serviceable scares.
  17. Van Wilder
    The film's sheer likability and very impressive gag-to-giggle ratio derive more from sweetness and sharpness than from shit jokes.
  18. Basic Instinct 2
    Basic Instinct 2 pushes diligently along in a murder-and-mayhem-stuffed effort to demonstrate that (a) a sillier and more hackneyed movie than "Basic Instinct" is possible and (b) that shrinks have ids too, by golly.
  19. Patch Adams
    Williams is a great clown, and Oedekirk and Shadyac give him room to really cut loose, and cure the movie. That’s as it should be.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tideland
    This Southern Gothic Alice in Wonderland is not for the faint-hearted, to be sure, yet amid the swaying chaff there are moments of piercing grace and beauty when we'e reminded of the lost, lonely child at the heart of this tale. If nothing else, it's liberating to see one of cinema's unrepentant fantasists going out on a limb like this and cutting loose.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Zoom
    Tim Allen gamely brings some humanity to the role of the retired, powerless hero Captain Zoom, but is thwarted at every turn by bad special effects, slapdash editing, interminable pop-song montages, and a goofy performance by Courteney Cox.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    A Night at the Roxbury
    That Amy Heckerling produced and, supposedly, had an uncredited hand in scripting this turkey is the saddest thing I've heard all year.
  23. Fish Without a Bicycle
    Though Green is engaging, the rest of the cast are unlikable and tediously self-involved, especially Mattison, who, not surprisingly, wrote this tripe.
  24. Supercross
    When huge chunks of character development and narrative exposition are relegated to a track announcer's running commentary, it can never be a good sign.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Angels with Angles
    Not even Gorshin's marvelously dead-on impression of Burns can save a movie that rewrites screwball comedy in the same way King Henry VIII rewrote Catholicism.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Objective
    It plays like a disastrous Sci-Fi Channel castoff, thanks in no small part to Myrick's odd decision to include incessant voice-over narration by Ball, which plays like a really terrible in-character DVD commentary track.
  27. River Runs Red
    The acting is stiff, the pacing sluggish, the framing uncertain, the music an intrusive mush and the scenario schematic. But it’s an interesting schematic, at least, complete with thoughtful/exhaustive discussion of the difference between justice, revenge and forgiveness.
  28. 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.
  29. Loco Love
    For a film that deals with adultery, racism, immigration and class struggle, Loco Love is a startlingly weightless work. It has the antiseptic look and feel of an Olsen Twins video.
  30. Gloria
    It’s hard to know what’s more depressing -- a senseless remake or the idea of a once-great director doing such shockingly slack work.
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