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. Over the Hedge
    Deftly held together by bags of good humor and zany action sequences, tethered to a heartfelt conviction that green is good and family is better.
  2. The Embalmer
    Mahieux, who is superb, methodically paint Peppino as a man for whom solitude is torture.
  3. The Last Mogul
    Love him or loathe him, Avrich proposes, Wasserman mattered -- which is a lot more than can be said for most of the multinationals and their MBA-bearing surrogates who came to run the studios in his wake.
  4. Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story
    This is as corny as it sounds, and yet not half as cloying and sentimental as you expect. At the end of the day, the horse may win the race, but the fate of the American heartland looms large and unresolved.
  5. Train of Life
    Gaily seduces you into its fantasy life, then whacks you over the head with a finale that, intentionally or not, functions as a rebuke to the mad optimism of Benigni's pandering film
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Looking for Eric
    Mixing light magical realism with a more familiar brand of working-class gloom, Loach's warm, comic touch elevates the story of an aging man cracking up in plain sight.
  7. Joshua
    Part of the fun of Joshua is the skill with which Ratliff juggles horror and realism, feeding one into the other until we become part of the unraveling of the Cairns' perfect life.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Unknown White Male
    Murray honors his buddy by presenting him as a sympathetic enigma - the puzzling center of this very human suspense thriller.
  9. Garden State
    Braff is bright and has a quick ear for vernacular dialogue, and he's caught the look and the sound of his blitzed, prematurely disillusioned generation, which has had to live with more lack of definition than most.
  10. Max Keeble's Big Move
    Its overall view of 12-year-old life is essentially one of high-spirited fun.
  11. Red Doors
    A peppy if uneven charmer with a fetchingly wistful edge.
  12. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
    No one does dissolute hubris with as much charm as Grant, and his ebullience is the perfect foil to the misanthropic McCarthy.
  13. 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.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Resident Evil: Extinction
    This is wall-to-wall mayhem that dashes from one stylish, splattery, nonsensical set-piece to the next, while the star attacks her silly role with the carnivorous brio of an ocelot clawing a side of ham.
  15. Guess Who
    Has surprising depth and charm, descriptors never before ascribed to a movie starring Ashton Kutcher.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Following Sean
    Sean's grandfather was the colorful longshore Communist Archie Brown, and part of the film's charm lies in its evocation of a generational mural that includes old Marxists, flower children and the progeny of red-diaper babies.
  17. Hulk
    The Hulk is a beautiful movie, but it's unlikely to win points as a monster flick -- it's too elegant, too whimsical.
  18. Southpaw
    The small-town Irish feel of the movie is infectious, and McGrath uncovers some great supporting players.
  19. In Cold Blood (re-release)
    Why Capote liked the movie so much (or said he did) isn't entirely clear, for though it's a gripping piece of American Gothic, it's as thematically timid as it is formally flamboyant.
  20. Tales of the Rat Fink
    These hunks of greased lightning tell how a gearhead SoCal teen got wind of the post-World War II hot-rodding craze, crossed paths with a pinstriper named von Dutch and ended up as the automotive visionary whom Tom Wolfe famously called “a genius of the only uniquely American art form.”
  21. SLC Punk!
    Ultimately a wiser and truer film than its crass and cartoony beginnings would have us believe.
  22. Shopgirl
    There's something refreshing about a film set in Los Angeles that gets its L.A.-ness right -- the difference in vibe between Silver Lake and the Hollywood Hills, or the types of people at CityWalk versus Saks. It is that sense of specificity, both geographic and emotional, that gives Shopgirl its pull.
  23. Ravenous
    Although the hinges connecting the film's elements -- slapstick, political satire, thriller, gross-out shots -- sometimes squeak loudly, they hold the movie together nicely.
  24. Rat Race
    The good news is that this off-the-wall ensemble comedy may just be the summer's happiest surprise.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tideland
    This Southern Gothic Alice in Wonderland is not for the faint-hearted, to be sure, yet amid the swaying chaff there are moments of piercing grace and beauty when we'e reminded of the lost, lonely child at the heart of this tale. If nothing else, it's liberating to see one of cinema's unrepentant fantasists going out on a limb like this and cutting loose.
  26. Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain... Begins to Die
    While your personal estimation of this conservative counterprogrammer will depend largely on your politics, Chetwynd and company at least attempt to score their points honestly.
  27. Mansfield Park
    Rozema seems determined to defrill the Austen trend and charge it with a fiercer sort of femininity.
  28. Cast Away
    Solid and inspiring will do nicely for Christmas, but it ought not to be good enough for the Oscar nominations that will almost certainly rain upon this movie's adequate head.
  29. The Annihilation of Fish
    The love that grows between Fish and Poinsettia could have turned treacly in the wrong hands, but director Charles Burnett -- has the direct observational style of the silent masters.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    House of Sand
    Andrucha Waddington's admirably pretentious epic of woman in nature makes the rare attempt to impart a purely visual experience
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »