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. Danielson: A Family Movie (or, Make a Joyful Noise Here)
    Shot on digital and layered with animated segments, performance footage and clips from Smith family home movies, Family Movie unfolds with a gentle, justified confidence in the power of its subject.
  2. Night Watch: Nochnoi Dozor
    In the final act, the movie dons a more human face and commits to an absorbing tale of crime and punishment, albeit pushing the fatigued message that you can't always tell light from dark these days.
  3. The Triumph of Love
    What is surprising, and what one takes away most deeply and happily from Triumph of Love, is a refreshed admiration for Mira Sorvino.
    • L.A. Weekly
  4. Pipe Dream
    Does have its charms.
  5. NASCAR: The IMAX Experience
    Disappointing that the film's modern-day race sequences -- which follow quick glimpses of computer-run car factories and pit-crew practice sessions -- fail to excite the senses.
  6. My Sister Maria
    One worries from scene to scene about whether the movie is a work of experimental art or just another ruthless intrusion into the life of a dying and, to some degree, broken woman. I'm willing to bet that Maximilian fretted over this too, for the film is as tense and fractured, as alienating -- and, finally, touching -- a work as it undoubtedly ought to be.
  7. The Fast and the Furious
    The best cheap thrill to come out of Hollywood in ages -- it's a shot of tonic for the current blockbuster bloat.
  8. Hitch
    The film moves in fits and starts, and is way too long, but it may prove memorable, if only for the sweet, marvelously inventive performance of Kevin James.
  9. Samoan Wedding
    The all-Polynesian cast, many of whom developed this material as part of a theater troupe called "The Naked Samoans," bring so much energy and glee to the telling that one can only smile and hope they all profit wildly from the American remake that's reportedly in the works.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Midnight Meat Train
    Director Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus) is a bit weak when it comes to storytelling, but there are few who could so enthusiastically stage a butcher fight amid hanging human carcasses in a subway car.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    There's something terminally small about this big-screen melodrama, with its trite characterizations of fighting parents, empty pockets and kind hearts.
  12. It Happened in L.A.
    At times, Morgan's script inspires laughs; but at others, the witticisms seem forced
  13. X-Men: The Last Stand
    Long before the movie's climax, in which Magneto (Ian McKellen) turns smashed-up automobiles into fiery projectiles to be hurled at his enemies, those in the audience will know what it means to behold a flaming hunk of junk.
  14. Jarhead
    Curiously, Jarhead transforms Swofford himself (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) from the book’s duty-bound youth, desperate to live up to his father's military legacy, into an enigmatic voyeur whose feelings and motivations are rarely made clear.
  15. Love Liza
    Quirkily sad, unexpectedly funny -- and just a tad repetitive.
  16. Swimming Upstream
    A passionately told tale.
  17. Tuvalu
    Allusive as all hell, Tuvalu's slapstick allegory of European socioeconomic upheaval in the 20th century opens with a spoof of "Breaking the Waves" lofty coda, then races through a mise en scène that's equal parts Tarkovsky, Méliès and the Brothers Quay.
  18. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
    Far too often, Douglas indulges his preference for the superficial over the substantive: The plentiful performance footage -- shot in overproduced, music-video fashion -- overwhelms the film, as do White’s purplish, faux-poetic musings.
  19. Life Is Beautiful
    The director gives us not just a pop Holocaust but a prettified, palatable Holocaust.
  20. The King
    A lurid, overheated Southern Gothic that wallows in its own unpleasantness.
  21. Hard Candy
    The more things drag on, the more monotonous they become and, by the end, Hard Candy has devolved into a rather transparent game of one-upmanship in which Hayley and Jeff come across in almost equally repellent measure, their behaviors driven less by organic impulses than by their need to satisfy the script's elaborate series of reversals and counter-reversals.
  22. Go Further
    Without the actor’s name and amiably demented grin, Go Further would be an unspeakably tedious and preachy travelogue. With them, this insupportably long home movie, unremarkably directed by Ron Mann, is merely dull.
  23. Brown Sugar
    Despite crisp photography and the director's gift for building a scene, the film doesn't click until the third act, when Mos Def's performance as Dre's protégé appears to energize everyone around him.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bridge
    The result is an attractive, well-intentioned film that is surprisingly dull and uninvolving.
  25. The Oath
    While watching the film, I not only laughed a lot and gasped oh, shit! in the right places. I somehow never once found myself tempted to sneak a peek at my phone to check in on our real American hellscape.
  26. Beloved
    Though Beloved sags into repetition after two of its three hours, this beautiful movie is suffused with an intensity that holds our attention for the conclusion.
  27. Unleashed
    The most enjoyable film Besson has had his name on in eons.
  28. ...And They Lived Happily Ever After
    This look at the assorted struggles of modern hetero coupledom gives off a distinctly moldy aroma.
  29. Snakes on a Plane
    Snakes was the most exuberantly trashy delight of this summer movie season or last.
  30. Solomon & Gaenor
    First-time writer-director Paul Morrison has a gift for evoking a time and place.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »