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 8.9 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. Rocky Balboa
    What gives Rocky Balboa its unexpected pathos is the titanic humility of Stallone's performance, the earnestness with which he plays a man knocked down (but not out) by the ravages of time.
  2. Return to Never Land
    Cleverly structured, fast-paced, funny, even moving.
  3. Joy Ride
    Director John Dahl ("Red Rock West," "The Last Seduction") has a pronounced knack for snap reversals and out-of-the-blue shocks.
  4. Ghosts of Mars
    It's cheap thrills all the way, served up with the kind of situational purity that only Carpenter seems to care for these days. It's that simple and that much fun.
  5. Stage Beauty
    The movie blows a fresh wind of disrespect, high drama and lush romanticism through that stolidly middlebrow subgenre, the period drama.
  6. 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.
  7. The Upside of Anger
    One senses that this is an intensely personal project for Binder, who is not as forgiving as he might be toward the mercurial mother. Still, the film is carried by Costner and Allen, who project a chemistry so incrementally built on reluctant camaraderie, they almost seem like siblings.
  8. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
    The Messenger may be a caricature of theology, but then Besson is a cartoonist of genius.
  9. 16 Blocks
    This is some of the best filmmaking ever done by director Richard Donner, a longtime Hollywood journeyman known more for his proficient deployment of three long-running movie franchises (The Omen, Superman and Lethal Weapon) than for his lyricism.
  10. Such a Long Journey
    True to its source material, this is a movie with the dense, rich texture of a good novel.
  11. The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros
    Nathan Lopez, armed with a diva's slinky cat walk and determination, is absolutely fantastic as Maximo.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. The Deep End
    A fetchingly improbable match of material and directors.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
    The movie is driven almost entirely by its exhilaratingly subversive characters.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. Promises
    Proves too sincere to exploit its subjects and too honest to manipulate its audience.
  23. 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
  24. A Time for Drunken Horses
    A central work in the new, boldly politicized Iranian cinema.
  25. In the Bedroom
    Goes the distance to avoid banalizing the dilemma of a reasonable couple unhinged by unreasonable events.
  26. 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.
  27. 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.
  28. 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.
  29. The Cockettes
    A fascinating, richly detailed documentary about the legendary queer collective based in San Francisco in the late '60s and early '70s.
  30. The Ignorant Fairies
    Moving and vibrant Italian-language film.
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