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. Coach Carter
    The corniness and predictability feel, if not quite fresh, then not so groaningly stale.
  2. Wall
    Bitton is Frederick Wiseman-obsessive about the practical details that make this horrific arrangement work, but she's also an unabashed polemicist.
  3. Snide and Prejudice
    The Marat/Sade irony of setting these scenes in a madhouse helps, but Macfadyen's volcanic magnetism and spot-on mimicry of Hitler's body language and speech patterns make insight flesh.
  4. Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
    Refreshingly laid-back romantic comedy.
  5. Animal Factory
    What enrich the film are its layers of detail -- moronic racial protocols, turf wars, pecking orders, men as livestock -- the authenticity of the dialogue and the rich range of characters.
  6. The Wedding Singer
    Sandler smirks a good deal less than he did in his last two movies, and with a couple of acting lessons, he might develop into a screen presence.
  7. Lucie Aubrac
    Aside from isolated flares of unchecked emotion ...Bouquet's Lucie is too far removed from our ken of romance and overriding purpose, or from Berri's for that matter, to be embraced entirely.
  8. American History X
    Director Tony Kaye may be reaching for opera, but screenwriter David McKenna has set his sights distinctly lower.
  9. Bulgarian Lovers
    For his first feature in 15 years, Spanish filmmaker Eloy de la Iglesia has made a witty, unsentimental class comedy.
  10. Sacred Planet
    Despite his obvious passion, Long never fully ties together the human and animal footage, and so the film feels disjointed, as if two different documentaries are being fused into one.
  11. Invincible
    A wonderful movie. For every misstep there are the sublime expressions of agony and ecstasy of which Herzog is a master.
    • 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.
  13. Fidel
    It's a refreshing change from the self-interest and paranoia that shape most American representations of Castro. At the same time, Bravo anticipates that such a view will drive some nuts.
  14. The Rookie
    At its best, there's nothing gushy about Dennis Quaid's portrayal of Morris, and more than anything it's his beautifully modulated reserve that holds this film in emotional check.
  15. Where's the Party Yaar?
    Mathews has obvious storytelling chops, and a sharp eye for absurdity. But there are sacred cows in hip, progressive America, too, and the truly fearless satirist has to be a carnivore.
  16. Rosetta
    A portrait of dispossession so acute that it's caused a few critics to cry, Let her eat cake!
  17. Fight Club
    On a purely visual level, it's the most powerful and viscerally exciting movie to come out of Hollywood this year. Which doesn't mean that it's all good.
  18. Flickering Lights
    A hit in Denmark, this impressive debut feature from writer-director Anders Thom as Jensen is decidedly offbeat, with Jensen contrasting moments of brutal violence with the emerging gentleness of Torkild and his friends.
  19. Gattaca
    Although that's enough plot for two movies, Niccol proceeds to clog up his meticulously mounted story with a murder and a romance (hence Uma Thurman), allowing needless intrigue to distract from his ideas.
  20. Team America: World Police
    Accomplished yet uneven feature.
  21. Saving Face
    In her charming debut feature, writer-director Alice Wu works hard to sidestep both pathos and antic comedy, an admirable ambition that makes for a relentlessly low-key film that nonetheless builds to a third act rich in surprising turns of character.
  22. Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert
    She makes a perfectly fine role model, if you rate cheerful, sensible and chaste under the skinny tights and glow-in-the-dark tank tops.
  23. Creed II
    It’s a Rocky movie, just the latest go-round, its story more formulaic, its people less specific, its rhythms as wheezily familiar as a workout you should have changed up weeks ago. It’s a diminishment of Creed, a dumbing down, just as Rocky II was a diminishment of Rocky.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Final Season
    Formulaic but not cynical, The Final Season has some sweet, thoughtful passages in what is otherwise just one more well-meaning inspirational sports movie.
  25. Agent Cody Banks
    Unfortunately, two separate screenwriting teams...send Cody away from kid-resonant environs and off to exotic locales, culminating in an overproduced mountain-lair finale.
  26. Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust
    In the current flood of Holocaust documentaries, stories of righteous gentiles abound, but the singular beauty of Hiding and Seeking is its delicate but relentless probing of ambiguous motivation on the one hand, and its hearteningly conciliatory spirit on the other.
  27. Click
    After an hour of predictably sophomoric antics involving foulmouthed kids, compulsively self-pleasuring canines and the rampant objectification of women, Click turns into a surrealist death dream in which Sandler's masochistic impulses flower onscreen as never before.
  28. Left Luggage
    Manipulative filmmaking at its most gently persuasive.
  29. Walking Tall
    Johnny Knoxville has a few inspired bits as Vaughn's recovering-addict chum, and The Rock carries an effortlessly soft side in the nonviolent scenes, but Bray doesn't linger too long on anything that doesn't end in a thud or wallop.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America
    C.S.A. isn't subtle, but its undisguised indignation places it in the same bold polemical tradition as Peter Watkins' incendiary "Punishment Park" (1971), that nightmarish slice of speculative sci-fi about government-sanctioned manhunts for hippies and dissidents.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »