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. Gabrielle
    Gabrielle, a quietly insidious tale of domestic warfare that makes the protagonists of Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage" look like pussycats, will exasperate and satisfy in roughly equal measure.
  2. The Uninvited
    A remake of the 2003 Korean horror film "A Tale of Two Sisters," The Uninvited is a Hand That Rocks the Cradle–type thriller that's been dressed up as a horror movie.
  3. Overnight
    A diabolically enjoyable documentary on unearned self-esteem.
  4. Stolen Childhoods
    A serious work of analysis, rooting the resistance to reform in Third World government corruption and Western profiteering.
  5. Stir of Echoes
    The ghost story is not half as satisfying as the lovely indie mood piece tucked inside it about a community tending to itself in the wake of a recent wound.
  6. Full Grown Men
    Lyrical and funny, Full Grown Men is a tough-minded film about the need to grow up.
  7. Harvard Man
    As with most of Toback's films, there are Big Ideas being bandied about that never quite coalesce, a failing that, this time at least, mirrors his hero's own hyped-out search for meaning.
  8. Herbie Hancock: Possibilities
    Filled with great archival footage from throughout Hancock's five-decade career, and with elder-statesman words of wisdom from the man himself, Possibilities celebrates an impulse that's too rare in modern music: the love behind the labor of creation.
  9. Queens
    Although not quite as uproarious or as wickedly subversive as Pedro Almodóvar's more substantial body of work, Queens is content to scamper gaily in the wake of his achievements -- and to offer one more reason for old Franco to roll anew in his grave.
  10. Shaolin Soccer
    The movie has a rambunctious and likable energy that compensates for its unsteady, only intermittently amusing narrative.
  11. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    So daring, well-made and tirelessly inventive that I kept asking myself, “Why isn't this even better? Why isn't it moving me?” One huge problem is the hero... he's played by 42-year-old Jim Carrey, whose still-bottomless need to be loved invariably smacks of desperation and self-pity.
  12. Alfie
    Pretty good as pretty good goes, with Jude Law turning in an efficiently chipper, if palpably less dark, performance than the one that earned Michael Caine his first Oscar nomination.
  13. The Scorpion King
    Director Chuck Russell ("The Mask") keeps the computer effects to a minimum, emphasizing instead the essential ingredients of a Saturday-afternoon serial, namely, venom-tipped arrows, pissed-off cobras and a buxom babe.
  14. 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.
  15. Superstar in a Housedress
    Slow-starting but ultimately invigorating debut film by Craig Highberger.
  16. Brother
    Brother is a solid return to gangster form for Kitano, who knows how to transcend the most overly familiar genre clichés without betraying the rules of engagement.
  17. End of the Spear
    This is exceedingly earnest stuff, dolloped with Christian goodness and solid production values.
  18. Hurricane on the Bayou
    A film free of political fury, but full of activist optimism, this tame but heartfelt documentary is a fine companion piece to a day at the science museum.
  19. 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.
  20. Becket (re-release)
    There's much to be said for a film that, however cheesily realized, sticks in memory for four decades.
  21. Nora
    We may not fully grasp what Nora saw in Joyce, but what he saw in her is made unmistakable, and worth seeing.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shakespeare Behind Bars
    Albeit a tad repetitive, Shakespeare Behind Bars succeeds in humanizing men we might too easily label as monsters, and provides a solid argument in favor of prisons that place rehabilitation above retribution.
  23. Going By
    If one were to parody Iranian cinema, packing into one film its common tropes and themes to the point of bursting, it would probably be a lot like Iraj Karimi’s Going By.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
    Greenwald's sense of indignation carries the day: He preaches to the choir -- and apparently passes the collection plate -- with evangelical furor.
  25. Equilibrium
    The fun here is not so much in the solid if stolid performances from Bale and co-stars Taye Diggs and Emily Watson (gussied up to resemble the Jefferson Airplane–era Grace Slick) or in Wimmer's overpolished plot devices as it is in the production values.
  26. The Door in the Floor
    The film’s beauty is that, like any good novel, it refuses to sew up its meanings for the audience.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Where the Truth Lies
    When conventional answers arrive, Where the Truth Lies seems as cheesy as its title -- but its disorienting layers of narrative make the double-entendre almost profound.
  28. A Civil Action
    A well-chewed gumbo of every lawyer flick you’ve ever seen.
  29. After Innocence
    Rousing, quietly outraged documentary.
  30. Blood Diamond
    There's no use griping about the superfluous white-on-white romance that generates so much dead space in Zwick's movie, for without it Blood Diamond would never have been made. Which would be a pity, for as liberal hand-wringing goes, it's a winner.
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