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 8.7 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. The Unknown Soldier
    Superb documentary.
  2. Children of Men
    One of the year's most imaginative and uniquely exciting pieces of cinema.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Zodiac
    Zodiac may be the perfect meeting of filmmaker and subject ­-- an obsessive's portrait of obsession that is, finally, a monument to irresolution.
  4. Minority Report
    Terrifically entertaining specimen of Spielbergian sci-fi, incomparably better than "A.I." and as dark a movie as the director has made since "Schindler's List."
  5. The Human Body
    There's no denying the overwhelming force of the giant IMAX screen, as we're reminded that each of us is the coolest special effect ever.
  6. Michael Clayton
    This loving throwback to the paranoid thrillers of the ’70s is a beauty.
  7. Earth
    Both visually and emotionally, a panoramic picture; Mehta wields a master's hand as she weaves together vistas of urban and pastoral India with thoughts on the nature of man as it keeps cycling out in the specifics of history.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Three Times
    I urge you to see the ineffably beautiful Three Times however you can, lest you go on thinking that Hou's greatness is merely the supposition of obscurantist critics intent on reserving their highest praise for those films that nobody else can actually see.
  9. Set Me Free
    Maintains a reflective, bittersweet tone that's almost tactile.
  10. 42: Forty Two Up
    That nothing more monumental than an everyday life has occurred to any of the subjects is perhaps the film's most compelling aspect.
  11. Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
    The superb ensemble never plays for sympathy, and the movie isn't as depressing as it may sound. Its hushed, contemplative quality is oddly affecting.
  12. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    Tim Burton has taken a hallowed classic of the modern musical theater, hemmed in the narrative from well over two hours to well under, cast confessed nonsingers in the principal roles, and somehow managed to make something magical out of it
  13. Moolaadé
    Quite possibly the most buoyant, exuberant film ever made on such an unpleasant topic.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    24 Hour Party People
    The movie's a rave and a half.
  15. Illuminata
    Very much a fully realized cinematic experience. John Turturro, even if you have to act less, be sure to direct more, and often.
  16. In the Mood for Love
    It is undeniable in its poignancy, an ecstatic vision of what might have been, though as much for its story as for the fact that the whole thing dissolves like a paper fan in rain, an evanescent masterwork.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Man Who Wasn't There
    The Coens have resurrected a hardscrabble California of wooden porches and gravel driveways, of rolling, oak-wreathed hills and one-lane roads, and of a restless people whose meager dreams are wrecked the moment money, sex or a bottle get in the way. Never has the past seemed so familiar.
  18. Blue Car
    A quietly devastating song.
  19. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
    The first REALLY great mythic film of the summer has arrived.
  20. 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.
  21. Spider
    Deliciously wicked, strangely poetic portrait (adapted by Patrick McGrath from his own novel) of a schizophrenic man at once tyrannized and elevated by oedipal terrors.
  22. Sketches of Frank Gehry
    Sketches was produced for PBS's American Masters series, but it's in theaters now and deserves to be seen on the largest possible screen.
  23. Bartleby
    While Parker and co-writer Catherine di Napoli are faithful to Melville’s plotline, they and a fully engaged supporting cast — have made the old boy's characters more quick-witted than any English Lit major would have thought possible.
  24. Joe Gould's Secret
    The alchemy of good acting under the pressure of sublime film sense makes for a miracle in the hearts of the audience.
  25. Elling
    Heartwarming here relies less on forced air than on Petter Næss’ delicate, clever direction -- and a wonderful, imaginative script by Axel Hellstenius.
  26. Under the Sand
    Powerfully enigmatic study of the fundamental opacity of human relations.
  27. Raising Victor Vargas
    Victor Vargas has the look and feel of a neo-realist masterpiece, yet captures New York with a burnished authenticity not seen since the glory days of ’70s American cinema.
  28. Nobody Knows
    Unfolds with such leisurely, terrible beauty, it takes a while to realize that what we are witnessing is the children's long slide into beggary, exacerbated by the slow torture of faint hope.
  29. Kippur
    Though Kippur seems a creature radically different -- more nakedly autobiographical, more naturalistic, more forgiving -- from Gitai's highly conceptual and stylized body of work, there are clear thematic continuities.
  30. Funny Ha Ha
    Bujalski takes a sledgehammer to the carefully ordered surfaces and dramatic conventions of narrative cinema, favoring instead an unpredictability in which the crosscurrents of quotidian life collide on the screen in a series of brilliantly alive patterns.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »