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. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Another Road Home
    Marvelously conciliatory film.
  5. Dancer in the Dark
    I was astonished to find myself weeping copiously over von Trier's latest, which is another parable of monomaniacal sainthood.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. Chronicles
    Writer-director Sebastian Cordero wrings nerve-racking suspense, and complex performances, from these dynamics.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. The Blair Witch Project
    It's a small film whose power is derived from its stripped-down scale.
  16. 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.
  17. Dogville
    A postmodern morality play stripped nearly bare by its precocious creator, until only its boldness, cutting insight, intermittent hilarity and bracing violence remain.
  18. 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.
  19. Metropolis
    This muscular anime melodrama is so visually splendid that on that level alone it qualifies as a breakthrough.
  20. Rize
    The film soars when the camera is trained on its young subjects in action.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  25. 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."
  26. 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.
  27. Sugar & Spice
    Any movie offering a Muzak version of the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop"warrants an immediate and unqualified recommendation.
  28. 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.
  29. Charlotte Gray
    Charlotte Gray is not a subtle movie, but it is an honorable and surprisingly gripping one.
  30. 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.
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