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 8.8 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
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  1. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    The finale goes on and on, but the movie is nicely photographed (by John Bailey) and duly empowering, and should please the vast teen-girl audience for which it's intended.
  2. One Hundred Mornings
    As the film works toward its negative Eden ending, having illustrated just how little a life is worth, one of its most potent points is how brutally destabilizing hope can be when despair has become the norm.
  3. The Price of Free
    Director Derek Doneen opens hearts wide with his documentary The Price of Free, his tale of enslaved children working in factories in India. But he’ll also crush many of those hearts with the revelation that viewers are among the villains activist Kailash Satyarthi is fighting.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes
    Once the Quay brothers confidently establish their film's astonishing look, they merely repeat their techniques until the images no longer delight or surprise, leaving all too visible the Quays' struggles with the trickier demands of storytelling and character development.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Occupation: Dreamland
    Superb documentary.
  6. Buzz
    The film's power is undeniable, as a bittersweet valentine to Buzz and the many others who came to Hollywood and found a factory that produced dreams, yes, but nightmares too.
  7. Mission: Impossible III
    Cruise is probably the most graceful physical performer to occupy the screen since Burt Lancaster, and in this sort of action role, he's just about peerless...He may not be a great actor, but to find a greater movie star would be a nigh impossible mission.
  8. Mystery Men
    Mystery Men gives proof that satire isn't dead.
  9. Shelter
    Wright is a find, while Rowe may surprise those who dismissed him as a Brad Pitt look-alike when he first came to attention in "Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss." Here, Rowe displays new authority and confidence, as if lately he’s been looking in the mirror and seeing himself, rather than that other, more famous blond.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Source
    A witty exploration of cultural mythology, while simultaneously contributing to that mythology.
  11. La bûche
    Sweet but slight pièce de fluff.
  12. Robot Stories
    This is a heartfelt endeavor, given weight by Shimono's extraordinary performance, in which the actor uses the subtlest flicks of his weary brow to call forth torrents of sorrow and minefields of regret.
  13. Voices in Wartime
    The film's self-limiting pacifism precludes a closer look at the poetry of war, which is not synonymous with poetry against war.
  14. Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
    A witty, well-crafted comedy that combines primal slapstick with sharp satiric banter to keep children and parents laughing together.
  15. Coffee and Cigarettes
    It's worth fidgeting through the mediocre stuff to get to three good pieces. In one, Cate Blanchett turns in a tour de force as both herself and her aggressive, resentful Aussie cousin in an awkward encounter that captures the pathological relationship between ordinary people and celebrities.
  16. Tying the Knot
    Absorbing documentary about gay marriage is most persuasive when most specific.
  17. The Future of Food
    As Future untangles the many ways in which our food supply has been co-opted and tainted in pursuit of a booming bottom line, you realize that beneath its tasteful façade, Garcia's documentary is actually nothing short of a pure horror film.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Lady in Question Is Charles Busch
    The downside to what is, in essence, an authorized biography is that the movie plays like an inflated "Today" show profile; the upside is that Busch has given Catania and Ignacio complete access to the old footage from his Limbo Lounge days.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    ...So Goes the Nation
    From its riveting opening to its gripping conclusion, . . . So Goes the Nation is arguably the most intelligent, kinetic analysis of the modern election process since "The War Room."
  20. Lemming
    Like Michael Haneke's "Caché," this effectively creepy little customer from Dominik Moll (With a Friend Like Harry) fires yet another shot across the bows of French bourgeois complacency, while throwing in a wink and a nudge about the perils of surveillance.
  21. Before the Fall
    When movie clichés are presented with rigor and feeling, they can pack a fresh punch.
  22. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    By turns merry, tough-minded and sweetly nostalgic.
  23. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
    A clumsily directed, painstakingly faithful adaptation thats heavy on plot, light on nuance, and features in its title role a young newcomer whose most striking quality is an almost preternatural absence of oomph.
  24. The Turandot Project
    For a film hinged on one of the more passionate art forms, it's all a little bloodless.
  25. The Slaughter Rule
    This bleak debut feature from writer-directors Alex and Andrew Smith would be all but impossible to sit through if it weren’t for Ryan Gosling and Clea Duvall.
  26. Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
    This illuminating, often rousing film fits snugly alongside the various anti-Bush/corporate/globalization documentaries that continue to pack the art houses.
  27. Closer
    Strip away the cavernous lofts, the minimalist art galleries and the pricey consulting rooms, and you have four characters unable to earn their keep with the audience.
  28. Favela Rising
    Elevated by fantastic performance footage of Sa and his young protégés singing, dancing and rhythmically banging on cans, plastic bottles or anything else that can be fashioned into a drum -- and a cultural revolution.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eden Lake
    As a thriller, Eden Lake absolutely works, but feel-good entertainment it isn’t. Don’t bring a date.
  30. Gay Sex in the 70s
    It's fair to assume that most viewers likely to see the film, whose title is the very definition of truth in advertising, already own the knowledge being sold.
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