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. Cold Mountain
    Zellweger looks like a big movie star roughing it à la Paris Hilton, and as if this weren't distracting enough, the hills are alive with big acting names from both sides of the Atlantic who pop up as help or hindrance to Inman's pilgrim's progress while straining, with variable success, for credible Southern twangs.
  2. The Grandfather
    The picture's deepest strength, however, is the fire Fernán-Gómez conjures from deep within himself, as if "honor" were an extinct volcano he could will into exploding, given enough anger and time.
  3. The Safety of Objects
    A couple of unexpected revelations in the final act pack an emotional wallop that shifts the film (shot in clean, uncluttered takes) into the realm of old-fashioned tearjerker, but the tears are wholly earned.
  4. Stranger Than Fiction
    Teems with ideas both literary and existential, which might make it unbearably precious, were it not redeemed by woozy charm and some serious acting from Will Ferrell.
  5. Margarita Happy Hour
    Breaks in the film's otherwise smooth continuum, however, are bridged by Hutchins' soulful performance, and by Chaiken's excellent feel for the grace notes and steady tempo of native New York life, the sacredness of female friendship, and the precarious balance between love for oneself and for others.
  6. Happy Endings
    When all is said and done, Roos treats his characters and his audience to an unblushingly sentimental, conciliatory ending of the kind that ordinarily makes me feel as though I'm being played for a sucker. I wept on demand and went home happy.
  7. Ronin
    A film in which the mechanics of the plot are far less interesting, and vital, then the interior landscape of men who exist outside the law.
  8. Monsieur N.
    And though at over two hours the movie is too long and too slow, de Caunes sustains a sense of mystery and ambiguity to the end of what is both a satisfying character study and a stately quasi-thriller for amateur historians.
  9. Shadow of the Vampire
    Malkovich and Dafoe play off each other with a devilish hamminess.
  10. Changing Times
    Full of last-minute surprises, this willfully slippery movie seems to make the case both for mixing it up and sticking to your own kind. Which is all of a piece with the sensibility of this wonderfully ambiguous filmmaker, a visionary of our changing times.
  11. Quadrophenia (re-release)
    This ode to wrestling one's way out of youth's shell holds up surprisingly well.
  12. How to Eat Fried Worms
    Worms is one of those rare kiddie flicks that successfully adopt a child’s-eye view of the world, where nothing is more important than saving face on the playground and where parents are as distant and clueless as storybook giants.
  13. Land of Plenty
    The flawed, fascinating Land of Plenty is easily Wenders' most vital work in more than a decade -- a troubling meditation on terrorism paranoia, poverty and homelessness.
  14. The Devil's Miner
    It’s the captured conversations about everyday lives and struggles that pin you to your seat.
  15. My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    A one-joke movie if ever there was, but the joke happens to be a good one -- a Tracy-and-Hepburn-style battle of the sexes in which Kate can fly and blast through walls -- and director Ivan Reitman (who made Ghostbusters) feels at home with the mix of screwball and supernatural.
  16. All the Real Girls
    Green is essentially a poet of moods rather than a teller of tales, and he adorns the movie with stylistic touches influenced by Terrence Malick.
  17. The Take
    This film puts a pained human face on the cost of the corporate status quo.
  18. Sleepy Hollow
    There's so little going on with either the film's story or its characters, however, that there is plenty of time to get lost in cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's eerily beautiful visuals.
  19. Russian Dolls
    Precisely observed, charming and - for better and worse - light as air.
  20. Day Watch
    For all the vampires and blown-up cars, you'll see no sadism for the hell of it, only an oddly sweet-tempered mix of hyperbole, understatement and profoundly Slavic philosophizing about guilt, freedom and responsibility.
  21. The Crazies
    Despite a midfilm lull of his own, Eisner stages a series of nifty action sequences, nearly all of which feature a moment of surprise, as well as gruesome wit.
  22. Bread and Tulips
    Maglietta, whose soulful countenance and offhand grace are soothing to behold, and Ganz, who says more with a shrug and sigh than most poets do with a sonnet.
  23. Down in the Valley
    Writer-director David Jacobson has an excitingly clear-eyed, unsentimental feel for the intensity of adolescent passion.
  24. American Blackout
    An illuminating, infuriating document that paints McKinney as a true American heroine and patriot and confirms your worst fears about just how rotten our "democratic" process is at its core.
  25. The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me
    Drake draws us in, digging deep to track the occasionally divine, always ridiculous journey that is big-city gay life.
  26. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    The only player in this tawdry round-robin game who moved or seduced me in any way was Andy’s poor, hapless Gina. Tomei’s an ordinary beauty... But she has real screen presence and range, and her neglected wife is an artful inversion of her Oscar-winning role as Danny DeVito’s pert squeeze in "My Cousin Vinny."
  27. Piglet's Big Movie
    Charming, animated retelling of stories from A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books.
  28. Low Heights
    Hatamikia isn't just a button pusher; he's a skilled craftsman with a dynamic wide-screen shooting style, who draws us into the story with visceral devices such as speedy tracking shots and gliding slow motion -- flashy elements the fastidious new wavers wouldn't touch.
  29. The High Cost of Living
    The cast is uniformly good, but Isabelle Blais especially stands out as Natalie.
  30. The Third Miracle
    Harris and Heche are simply electric together, and "Hill Street Blues'" Charles Haid is wonderfully brash as the venal bishop.
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