L.A. Weekly's Scores

Select another publication »
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 8.8 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
view
per page
  1. Billy Elliot
    Good, colorful fun, and by virtue of its emphasis on escape through individual initiative rather than class solidarity, more likely to succeed with American audience.s
  2. Antibodies
    Antibodies is fairly riveting, thanks to Alvart's command of craft and tone. He's a director to watch.
  3. Beverly Hills Chihuahua
    This being Disney, wholesome character-building messages abound, but for once they're freshly spun as cautions against stereotyping both ethnic and canine.
  4. 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.
  5. A Lot Like Love
    Peet is triumphant as the beguiling object of desire with wounded-bird eyes and devilish smile -- sexy and tart, then, in the space of a breath, totally, tenderly tragic. Like Oliver, we'd happily follow her anywhere.
  6. Fighting Tommy Riley
    Davis, who did some writing for a TV series and acted in a couple of B-thrillers, is notably solid inhabiting Riley's conflicted machismo, supported by Diane Tayler's fine turn as a bottom-rung manager.
  7. An Adolescent
    Okuda creates that slightly surreal atmosphere of ghost-town emptiness that will be familiar to fans of Takeshi Miike, but he infuses it with a romantic's sense of deep yearning.
  8. Hollywoodland
    This film is brave enough to admit that not all failed movie careers are the result of evil corporate suits, and Affleck makes us care that this likable but weak-minded man threw away what was solid and good in his life for the chimera of fame.
  9. Vénus beauté (institut)
    Director Tonie Marshall has taken a very simple story and laced it with potent details that make the film a rich map of her lead character's inner life.
  10. 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.
  11. Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
    Whether on the high seas or in the Holy Land, the film exhibits a colorful, bouncy sense of the epic (the whale's Jaws-inspired arrival even elicits a few chills), while its saving grace is a consistent sense of its own absurdity.
  12. Swimming Pool
    All shiny surfaces and clever moves designed to blur the lines between fantasy and reality and uncover the kinkiness that lies within us all.
  13. Down and Out with the Dolls
    Like a good punk tune, the filmmaker's focused energy distracts from compositional flaws, all the better to enjoy visceral pleasures such as a spot-on Zoë Pouledouris as preening singer Fauna.
  14. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
    The result is a fast-paced, brilliantly edited indictment that's as hard to turn away from as it is infuriating to watch. The irony, of course, is that Greenwald deploys the tricks of the trade every bit as knowingly as the evil geniuses at Fox.
  15. Ice Age: The Meltdown
    The movie still retains the goofy charm, stylish visuals and attention to character of its fine 2002 predecessor. Queen Latifah is a warm and plummy new presence as a voluptuous lady mammoth whose only drawback is that she was raised by possums and thinks she's one herself.
  16. Biggie and Tupac
    Deceptively rambling, shrewdly ragtag documentary.
  17. Time to Leave
    The same quiet ecstasy that made the final moments of "Under the Sand" so moving works on the viewer here too, inspiring joy and naked grief in equal measure.
  18. Friday Night
    Beguiling and intoxicating.
  19. Waking Life
    Individual artists were assigned their own characters and given free rein -- characters and locations shift on a dime from naturalistic to baroque -- with the result that the movie's formal imagination surpasses and redeems the banal tedium of some of the dialogue.
  20. Your Mommy Kills Animals
    These young American members of an international group that uses the combative tactics of anti-abortionists to vilify those who’re doing business with a major products-testing company were recently labeled terrorists by the FBI and put on trial. That one can’t quite decide if these charming men are heroes or villains is a mark of Johnson’s calm.
  21. EuroTrip
    It sure comes through on the belly-laugh front, from its animated in-flight, safety-manual credits through to the very last blooper ('ooligan Vinnie Jones' breathtaking, obscenity-filled rant against the "fahkin' Eye-ties").
  22. Charlie Wilson's War
    Watching Charlie Wilson’s War is like sitting through a very long episode of "The West Wing."
  23. Wonder Boys
    It's striking on several counts.
  24. 3 Dancing Slaves
    Stylish, beautifully shot film.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    little man
    Conn is exasperating and heroic in equal measure, an altogether riveting portrait of motherly devotion at its most primal.
  26. Volver
    The movie is enjoyable, but not passionately engaging in the way we've come to expect from Almodóvar, and it leaves you somewhat cold in spite of the warmth of Cruz's galvanic performance.
  27. Etoiles: Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet
    Tavernier's documentary about the famed Paris Opera Ballet is itself a graceful thing, a fleet-footed yet substantial examination of what it means to devote one's life to the art of dance.
  28. Bend It Like Beckham
    Enjoyably shameless confection.
  29. Out of Time
    The movie is casually, glamorously multiracial, and Washington is great fun, but the final glory belongs to actor John Billingsley, who plays one of those rumpled minor characters plugged into thrillers to keep you guessing whether they're light relief or something more sinister, and who, in a few memorably funny scenes, shuffles away with the movie.
  30. Collateral Damage
    A pretty decent action picture.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »