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. Bad Santa
    Gets stuck in a rut. Hearing Santa say “f---” isn't nearly as funny the 50th time as it is the first 49.
  2. District B13
    Go for the dazzling, if repetitive, human stunt work. Endure the appallingly simplistic politics.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    I.O.U.S.A.
    One graphic that I.O.U.S.A. doesn't include is a national balance sheet of our assets and liabilities, which would illustrate that the former is more than double the latter. We're in the black, and a film this deep in the red isn't something to be scared of at all -- or taken seriously.
  4. Strayed
    There's no emotional weight to either character, or to this far-from-dangerous liaison. All you can do is watch the slight story sputter, and try to figure out whether Bèart's formidable lips were made by God or man.
  5. Chalk
    Though Akel and Mass share writing credit, Chalk was actually shot in a loose, improvisational manner in the mode of Christopher Guest's films, and its best set pieces are like devastatingly effective pinpricks puncturing the Hollywood hot-air balloon of inspirational teacher/coach melodramas.
  6. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
    Imamura has said that Warm Water Under a Red Bridge is a poem to the enduring strengths of women. It may also be the best sex comedy about environmental pollution ever made.
  7. Thumbsucker
    American independent movies about awkward adolescence are never in short supply, but this highly assured first feature by commercials and music video director Mike Mills is the first since "Donnie Darko" to view the latter stages of teenagerdom as fodder for a phantasmagorical odyssey of Lewis Carroll–like distortions.
  8. Babel
    Repeatedly, Iñárritu and Arriaga stop themselves just short of suggesting that we're all going to hell in a hand basket. Had they not -- well, then Babel might really have been onto something.
  9. Eklavya: The Royal Guard
    Eklavya contains only one song sequence, a lovely set piece for leading lady Vidya Balan (Salaam-e-Ishq), but it embraces the imperatives of dynastic family melodrama as fervently as any classic of Bollywood’s golden age. This is robust storytelling, with blood and thunder pumping through its veins, and real whiskers on its face.
  10. Undercover Brother
    The film works no matter which side of the racial divide you're on, because nothing unites an audience quite like making fun of everyone.
  11. Live Free or Die Hard
    Provided you don't think too long or hard about it (and why ever would you?), Live Free or Die Hard is infectious good fun, and a tremendous encouragement to the middle aged.
  12. Up for Grabs
    But by film's end, no one is looking good. If Wranovics is somewhat too noncommittal in his presentation, he still shows a great eye for detail.
  13. The Opposite of Sex
    Sex holds in perfect tonal balance, and without cynicism, a brew of maliciously transgressive comedy and tender sympathy for its tortured characters, all gripped by terror of love, or sex, or both.
  14. Cinderella Man
    The movie is calamitously miscast.
  15. The Cooler
    The romance that ensues between Macy and Bello (both of whom are terrific) is exactly the kind of mature, sexy adult relationship that people complain doesn’t exist in movies anymore.
  16. 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.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt
    The archetypal Townes Van Zandt song is a low-key ballad filled with sadness and failed humanity. Director Margaret Brown's documentary about the revered songwriter's songwriter (who died at the age of 52 on New Year's Day, 1997) keenly achieves the same tone.
  18. Giorni e nuvole
    It plays out more like a 12-step program than a human drama.
  19. Butterfly Tongues
    The family flags palpable agony... provides the movie's only earned emotional tension.
  20. Monster's Ball
    In its exploitation of human misery, Monster's Ball doesn't just invite cynicism; it provokes hostility.
  21. Ride with the Devil
    The film is beautifully shot and filled with fine performances.
  22. The Ignorant Fairies
    Moving and vibrant Italian-language film.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Small Time Crooks
    Small Time Crooks is definitely minor Allen that, nevertheless, offers a welcome riposte to the current national obsession with getting rich.
  24. Green Book
    Sure, it’s kind of entertaining to see the studly, studious Mortensen slap on a few pounds and go way out with the fuggeddaboutit talk as he tries to shoot the shit with Ali’s pedantic, closeted virtuoso. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him ham it up. But the leads mostly are saddled with literal, middle-of-the-road material.
  25. Boy Erased
    When Jared finally erupts, Hedges nimbly navigates the character’s hurt, fear and burgeoning pride — his relief at having at last found his voice.
  26. Nurse Betty
    This delightful and compassionate romp achieves precisely that rare quality -- grace -- that sets Betty apart from the pack.
  27. Imelda
    Diaz leaves us unsure about whether we should pity or revile Imelda, a woman alternately charmingly childlike, shockingly remote and, ultimately, as she stands over the waxed corpse of her husband, pathetic.
  28. There's Something About Mary
    Their taste is as bad as their timing is exquisite.
  29. Joshua
    Part of the fun of Joshua is the skill with which Ratliff juggles horror and realism, feeding one into the other until we become part of the unraveling of the Cairns' perfect life.
  30. Forgiving Dr. Mengele
    It's hard to know whether to be impressed or appalled by Eva Mozes Kor, the Holocaust survivor in Bob Hercules and Cheri Pugh's fascinating documentary who has made forgiving the Nazis her life's work.
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