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. Madea's Family Reunion
    Madea's a riot, but what makes this richer, more textured follow-up to "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" so fascinating is the way Perry - a first-time director adapting his own hit play - shifts on a dime from a silly fart joke scene to one of intense, Sirkian melodrama.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Casting About
    A nicely contemplative documentary about actors and their ambivalent relationship with that intimidating space.
  3. Splendor
    It's dirty and delightful, if a tad on the slight side.
  4. The Specials
    An easygoing work of unforced humor built on gags that should be stupid, but are ultimately too ridiculous to resist.
  5. Heading South
    An absorbing extension of Cantet's abiding obsession with the seeding of political inequality in intimate relations.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mr. Bean's Vacation
    It may be a stretch to call this mugging moron sympathetic, but it’s surprising how enjoyable Mr. Bean can be when he’s actually given a hint of humanity.
  7. James' Journey to Jerusalem
    An enjoyable, sneaky-smart fable about the collision between innocence and experience.
  8. Amreeka
    When most filmmakers want to say something important about cultural conflicts, they labor to bring tears to our eyes. Dabis, by contrast, makes us laugh at ourselves and, in turn, each other.
  9. Diamond Men
    But its quiet, solid center is Forster's Eddie, a man who can keep his cool under pressure and, with the merest twitch of a facial muscle, reveal a capacity for change.
  10. 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.
  11. The Bourne Identity
    Though it's clearly meant to be character-driven, the movie is thrown out of whack by a total lack of chemistry between the leads, and some great acting (Clive Owen, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox) on the side.
  12. Ae Fond Kiss...
    Gradually, and with a kind of inquisitive generosity, the filmmaker's scope expands to take in Casim's parents and two sisters, whose public shame and private despair at having the only son move in with a “goree” - a white girl - is made palpably, wrenchingly real.
  13. Ivansxtc
    To the degree that ivans xtc. works, it's thanks to Huston's revelatory performance.
  14. Reign of Fire
    Bowman and production designer Wolf Kroeger do an excellent job of evoking a twice-baked England, while writers Gregg Chabot, Kevin Peterka and Matt Greenberg keep the script devilishly pitched just shy of preposterous (it's McConaughey who stumbles beyond).
    • 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.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Dog Skip
    Adds to the current crop of great kids' fare with a most-welcome old reliable.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
    It's a loving film, but Kushner's own characters are more richly textured than Mock's depiction of the playwright and the divided, divisive world he's trying to fathom.
  18. Bought & Sold
    Straight off the streets of Jersey City, writer-director Michael Tolajian’s affable debut charms with its scruffy characters and nuanced multiculturalism.
  19. Bee Season
    McGehee and Siegel's ornate structure and editing stay just this side of tricky, as does their borderline-goofy use of special effects to make us see the world (and the words) through Eliza's anxious eyes.
  20. Kadosh
    This unusually classical story from experimental Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai flows along, suffused in a quiet beauty flecked with sober foreboding.
  21. Mifune's Last Song
    A mood of anarchic spontaneity and freshness that thrills.
  22. Scotland, Pa.
    It's a setup so easy it borders on facile, but keeping the film from cheap-shot mediocrity is its crack cast.
  23. Lost Embrace
    This delightful riff on the identity crisis of a young Jewish Argentine man deserves both the Grand Jury prize and Best Actor awards it won at last year's Berlin Film Festival.
  24. Thank You for Smoking
    As sleek, clever and cocky as its anti-heroic protagonist, Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), a hard-driving lobbyist for the tobacco industry who can turn the most unpromising PR quagmire to his own advantage with a few well-turned lies posing as rational argument.
  25. My Life Without Me
    My Life Without Me was produced by the studio of Pedro Almodóvar, and one sees the Spanish director's influence in the way Polley edges her Madonna with a touch of the reckless sensualist.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Paprika
    This loopy anime from director Satoshi Kon ("Millennium Actress") isn't a movie that's meant to be understood so much as simply experienced -- or maybe dreamed.
  27. Searching for Ingmar Bergman
    Little here will surprise cineastes but much of it will charm them.
  28. The Code
    If the plot comes off more like a reworking of Scorsese’s tales of Italian-American mobsters, Boursinhac nevertheless shows a sure hand with his story, lingering on the handsome, lost face of Dris as his world falls apart around him.
  29. Akeelah and the Bee
    While it can't have been easy to find action points for a drama about vocabulary drills, Atchison comes up with a steady stream of plot-propelling business, including Akeelah's flair for jump rope, a skill that serves her beautifully in a clinch moment.
  30. Driving Lessons
    While Driving Lessons' writer-director, Jeremy Brock, sticks to the all-too-familiar template of such tales, he's given Walters her best role since "Educating Rita." Hamming it up with the precision of a master, she makes this somewhat plodding film a pleasure, as does young Grint.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »