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. To End All Wars
    The dialogue and voice-over narration (by Gordon) are homily-heavy, and the staging sometimes awkward. The prison extras in particular are often left to stare blankly at the gut-wrenching action before them, with many, including Sutherland, looking awfully fit for men who've been starving for years.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Divorce: The Musical
    Dworman's comic style dangles in the abyss somewhere between sub-Woody Allen and Mel Brooks (his script borrows too heavily from both).
  3. Charly
    It simply takes faith for granted as a motivating factor, and thus pulls off the neat trick of never making us feel we’re being preached at -- Yet, as directed by first-timer Adam Anderegg, from Jack Weyland's 1980 novel, the movie is too amateurishly square to make the most of its own ironic implications.
  4. Suddenly Naked
    In this lively romantic comedy from Canada, actors Wendy Crewson and Joe Cobden give off sparks -- in bed and out.
  5. The Big Empty
    More amiable than laugh-out-loud funny, the film pokes along, buoyed by the motel's bright Hawaiian color scheme, and a moonlit desert finale that's awfully pretty.
  6. Blindness
    As a calling card for the stylistic talents of a new filmmaker, writer-director Anna Chi's first feature is a success. As drama, it's a dud.
  7. Man of the Year
    Bad improv is bad improv, and it’s a potent virus.
  8. Hotel Room
    Judging by the stilted nature of both the dialogue and acting, that's what this film is -- a thesis project better suited to a grad-night exhibition.
  9. What Boys Like
    And like, the movie's got all these bright colors and shit, so it's not some fuckin' boring art film, and the new wave soundtrack is awesome.
  10. Tube
    Korean cinema may be a rising force in Asia, but Tube isn’t the place to take your first ride.
  11. Close Call
    Lee has heaped so many social ills on his heroine that it's difficult to buy any of it, especially when the story slips into silliness involving bad guys and missing drugs.
  12. 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.
  13. After Freedom
    The filmmaker shares with Martin Scorsese an obsession with that classic male triangle of hard man, soft heart and childlike loser, but where so many Scorsese wannabes jettison sociology in favor of mayhem, Babaian burrows into the hearts of these first- and second-generation immigrants.
  14. Bought & Sold
    Straight off the streets of Jersey City, writer-director Michael Tolajian’s affable debut charms with its scruffy characters and nuanced multiculturalism.
  15. Big Girls Don't Cry
    Sleek, not-quite-trashy-enough melodrama.
  16. Vlad
    It all adds up to pleasantly nonsensical mayhem.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Missing Young Woman
    The film is shocking, and, for better or worse, Portillo's refusal to offer solace kindles a potent rage that's not easily forgotten.
  18. Ambush
    Director Olli Saarela, who co-wrote the script with Antti Tuuri, offers up a trembling romanticism that gradually hardens -- like Eero's consciousness -- with exposure to the horrors of war.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hard Luck
    Though the effect is Bergman esque, Rubio doesn't always sustain the necessary gravity his story requires.
  20. One More Round
    As producer, writer and star of his first movie, Ray Jahangard gets points for confidence and nerve, but at the end of the day, it must be said that not everyone is meant to work in the movies.
  21. Sex Sells: The Making of 'Touché'
    Tiresome, and with no discernable edge or wit, Sex Sells is most powerful when it dawns on us we're watching Barnes, the leggy replacement for Suzanne Somers on "Three's Company," and Zmed, the beefcake cop from "T.J. Hooker," arrive at this point in their careers.
  22. Window Theory
    This film looks so good, thanks to some impressive production work (nice rainstorm) as well as Andrew Huebscher's vibrant cinematography, that one wonders, as one dull scene after another rolls by, why director Andrew Putschoegl - and co-writers Large and Kyle Kramer - didn't lavish half as much attention on the script.
  23. Black Cloud
    A determinedly old-fashioned boxing/coming-of-age film, only perfunctorily hitting its marks.
  24. Fabled
    Quickly reveals itself to be a hyper-stylized flick (lots of odd angles and studied production design in the service of flashbacks and dream sequences), but the glossy sum effect is that of a film student straining for a weightiness he can't pull off.
  25. Lost
    Writer-director Darren Lemke's likable thriller shows surprising smarts for a low-budget debut, cribbing from all the right sources.
  26. Wasabi Tuna
    Fox does have a sharp sense of the absurd that comes out in silly subplots.
  27. America Brown
    Director Black is competent with the camera, but he seems to have instructed the entire cast to deliver their lines in hushed tones and pauses pregnant with hoped-for meaning -- except for Kwanten, whose overenthusiastic impersonation of a red-state rube is as grating as horseshoes on a blackboard.
  28. Undertaking Betty
    It's rarely a good sign when a movie feels obliged to add the words "a fable" beneath its main title -- and Undertaking Betty is no exception.
  29. Neal 'N' Nikki
    Nepotism can't account for the movie's stylistic horrors. Writer-director Arjun Sablok, a TV veteran with visual ADD, has pitched the candy-colored cuteness at a frenzy that verges on hysteria.
  30. FAQs
    The dialogue is blunter, and harder for his amateur cast to pull off, while Lewis' stridency, however justified, ultimately jars against the film's tender, all-is-love fantasia.
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