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 Grey Zone
    It's grim stuff indeed, but somehow the horror never quite overwhelms Nelson's sure-footed approach to raising all manner of frankly unanswerable questions -- in particular, what would or could one have done in such circumstances?
  2. K-19: The Widowmaker
    K-19 is so unnervingly square that it seems eerily like Party-sanctioned Soviet filmmaking: Its Motherland-loving sailors, myth-making shots of K-19 and displays of heroism are worthy of the Young Lenin Pioneers' Handbook.
  3. Small Voices
    Ultimately, however, a too-earnest script that pins the future of this community on a school-district singing contest, undercuts the film's natural performances and its sedate, contemplative pacing.
  4. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
    The result is a fast-paced, brilliantly edited indictment that's as hard to turn away from as it is infuriating to watch. The irony, of course, is that Greenwald deploys the tricks of the trade every bit as knowingly as the evil geniuses at Fox.
  5. Fuck
    Profound and joyously silly at the same time.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Man on the Moon
    The sort of sick humor even Andy Kaufman would have recognized as well beyond the pale.
  7. The Safety of Objects
    A couple of unexpected revelations in the final act pack an emotional wallop that shifts the film (shot in clean, uncluttered takes) into the realm of old-fashioned tearjerker, but the tears are wholly earned.
  8. Session 9
    A deft exercise in atmospheric horror and insanity. Which is why it's unfortunate that, ultimately, Anderson steps back from the brink.
  9. Shanghai Knights
    Turns out to be that rarest of Hollywood creatures: a sequel that one-ups the original…These two smart, happy movie stars prove that silliness doesn’t have to be moronic.
  10. Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
    Whether on the high seas or in the Holy Land, the film exhibits a colorful, bouncy sense of the epic (the whale's Jaws-inspired arrival even elicits a few chills), while its saving grace is a consistent sense of its own absurdity.
  11. Gozu
    The various disruptions Miike visits upon his stories, and upon his audience, serve mainly to focus attention on the manipulating intelligence behind the scenes. They're a fancy way of yelling, "Look at me!"
  12. Big Fish
    The whole seems disjointed, incoherent and lacking in the startling originality of the other two Edwards (Scissorhands and Wood) who, half a career back, poured from Burton's distended outsider imagination.
  13. Stepmom
    Less a movie about stepfamilies than a PSA about how cancer makes everyone behave themselves at Christmas.
  14. Prime
    On and on drags this amour fou, with its one-liners, ripostes, elaborate misunderstandings and chastened reaction shots, all courtesy of writer-director Ben Younger, straining to let out his inner femme after the testosterone excesses of "Boiler Room."
  15. The Legend of 1900
    The sense of loss aroused by the film is oceanic.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    ZigZag
    A great ensemble cast can't lift this heartfelt enterprise out of the familiar.
  17. Tortilla Soup
    It is, however, Tortilla Soup's cultural transposition that feels most phony. Where Lee brings depth and subtle observation to his middle-class ensemble piece, Ripoll has simply added a thin Latino glaze.
  18. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
    Somehow poor pacing and this lack of visual variety manage to make a great show seem boring.
  19. Francis Ford Coppola Presents: The Legend of Suriyothai
    The characters are flat creatures of duty, and the film is more a tale of the collective will of a state than of the rugged individuals behind it.
  20. Ask the Dust
    What seduces most about Ask the Dust isn't its verisimilitude, but its gloriously old-fashioned backlot sheen - the L.A. of old Hollywood movies and of our collective fantasies.
  21. First Snow
    First Snow has a fine sense of place and a small but terrific turn by veteran actress Jackie Burroughs.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    City of Ember
    The story subtly evokes Rand and scripture, colliding secular and spiritual values, and, as such, appeals to the blue- and red-minded alike.
  23. Undisputed
    With flashbulb editing as cover for the absence of narrative continuity, Undisputed is nearly incoherent, an excuse to get to the closing bout (shot through bars and barbed wire in case we forgot the combatants are incarcerated), by which time it's impossible to care who wins.
  24. Kiss of the Dragon
    The inventive, often comically horrible fight set pieces will have you standing on your seat cheering like a Viking, and the result is a supremely kinetic and amusing guilty pleasure.
  25. American Pie
    The movie lover in you will recoil; your inner sophomore will rejoice.
  26. May
    The inventive and unpredictable May is exactly the kind of unexpected delight one hopes for every time the lights go down.
  27. The Myth of Fingerprints
    An overly mannered film drowning in the symptoms of dysfunction but unable to tap the root causes of this WASPish clan's pain except in the most oblique and cursory ways. This might be Freundlich's point, considering this family deals with its problems through avoidance.
  28. Ocean's Twelve
    For sheer urbane elegance coupled with technical mastery and lush, old-fashioned élan, no one working for the studios today comes close to the versatile Soderbergh.
  29. Burning Man: The Burning Sensation
    The overall vibe is druggy and self-indulgent, like a spring-break orgy for pretentious arts majors.
  30. Glory Road
    Glory Road keeps its focus frustratingly narrow. There's a nugget of an interesting idea here...But first-time director James Gartner's movie is less a study of race than it is a fast break of underdog clichés and "inspirational" speeches.
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