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. Bounce
    Thrillingly unpredictable.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Barenaked in America
    Surprisingly few insights from the quintet, and after 90 minutes we're more familiar with the furniture of their rooms.
  3. Charlie's Angels
    Of course, it's terrible -- but did it have to be this bad?
  4. A Love Divided
    In the end, Macartney and screenwriter Stuart Hepburn decide that love conquers all, which may have been the way it happened but doesn't leave the film with much going on.
  5. Tomorrow Never Dies
    The hardware explodes just fine, all the right people die, and Pierce Brosnan, suave and likable as ever but no Sean Connery, not in a million years, gets the job done.
  6. Anger Management
    Although Sandler's formula remains constant -- the downtrodden hero can do eet! -- what's new is his willingness to share the screen equally with a male co-star. Not that anyone could get in the way of that mugging steamroller Nicholson.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Protector
    Jaa has the skills for the job, and shows them off in numerous fight scenes; it's just a shame that the movie he's in is barely acceptable in any other respect.
  8. Wild Side
    Though Lifshitz's attitude toward sex and sexuality ranks among the most progressive in contemporary movies, he doesn't belabor it; seen through his eyes, Wild Side is a love story in which love is unrestrained by matters of gender or sexual orientation or even the number of lovers.
  9. The Devil's Own
    Hobbled by a schizoid desire to make a deep human drama on the one hand and a blistering IRA shoot-'em-up on the other, Alan Pakula's new movie is less a story than a plodding sequence of debates punctuated by gunfire.
  10. The Wood
    What feels genuine in the film -- mother-son bonds, the wedding party -- is surrounded by overdetermined and formulaic scenes lifted from other films.
  11. Orfeu
    Unfortunately, the innovations that attend this updating dilute the iconic weight of the original.
  12. Down with Love
    This brittle little confection from director Peyton Reed (Bring It On) may drive you up the wall -- unless you're willing to settle for great frocks, stylish production design and wicked opening credits.
  13. XX/XY
    The young filmmaker clearly needs to experience a bit more of la vraie vie before his own observations can take in more than the clumsy romantic feints and parries of early adulthood.
  14. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
    Achieves a generic period look, but there's nothing lived-in about its rooms, nothing persuasive or necessary about its time and place -- there's no longer even a movie fan's nostalgia to give it some spark, or a reason for being.
  15. Don't Tell
    Don’t Tell is intelligent on the schizoid mental strategies of incestuous families, but its style and mood are so heavily drawn from television soap opera, I found myself more absorbed in the seriocomic lesbian subplot that rambles along entertainingly, if irrelevantly, on the periphery.
  16. Black Snake Moan
    Black Snake Moan is, at its core, a fairly straightforward variation on George Bernard Shaw -- "Pigsfeetmalion," if you will. One day, when he outgrows his terminal adolescence, Brewer might be the perfect filmmaker to tackle Faulkner or Tennessee Williams.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Three Days of Rain
    The result is both a hypnotic mood piece -- where characters' blank existential stares are framed through rain-beaded car windows -- and a murky riff on urban Midwestern ennui (by way of the Russian steppes).
  18. Dorian Blues
    Dorian Blues is full of similarly rigged moments, but there are genuine chuckles, and a palpably heartfelt final scene between Dorian and his mom ends the tale on a powerful note.
  19. Blade II
    Even Del Toro can't raise the conceptually dead.
  20. The Independent
    Kessler frames it all with an ironic eye (Stiller's misfit mogul holds court in cheap motels and burger joints) and with enough big-hearted tenderness to keep the humor from going sour.
  21. Get Over It
    A lobotomized updating of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
  22. The Mothman Prophecies
    Pellington's sharp, fastball compositions and nerve-splintering cutting style are of a piece with such intelligence, devilishly mixing shock with optimism.
  23. The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John
    It aims simply to relate a great and enveloping story -- one that may lead us to ponder the things that unite (rather than distance) peoples of differing belief systems, and may compel us to marvel at the many wonderful and horrible endeavors undertaken in the name of religion.
  24. Made-Up
    Voice-overs and commentaries are piled on top of contrived intimate moments until, despite some easygoing performances, the movie -- the actual movie -- is a blur of undercooked motivations and halfhearted improv.
  25. Greendale
    It's perhaps Greendale's greatest flaw that, rather than stirring the blood, its heartfelt call to arms comes off as a sentimental, even trite, notion from an increasingly distant past.
  26. Little Manhattan
    At its best, there's a strong (albeit live-action) echo of Charles M. Schulz's "Peanuts" in Little Manhattan. The movie's hero, Gabe, is a world-weary 10-year-old who addresses us in eloquent voice-overs. Like Charlie Brown, he's in love with a red-headed beauty.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Wild Tigers I Have Known
    The film is distancing and off-putting, more a feat of look-at-me-ma derring-do than something resonant, meaningful and just the slightest bit moving.
  28. Gridiron Gang
    In a true-life sports tale like the recent "Invincible," you buy into all the inspirational clichés because the characters have inner lives and the movie is about something bigger; here, you keep hoping for something bad to happen to somebody just for the sake of balance.
  29. Con Air
    Con Air is entertaining in an extravagantly decadent sort of way. It just isn't a movie.
  30. The Lake House
    By herself, Bullock isn't enough to hold up this enervating movie, which lumbers along ponderously until, at the end, it takes a giant leap into the suspension of disbelief that lost me altogether.
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