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 Day I Became a Woman
    Promising, if uneven, first feature.
  2. I Am a Sex Addict
    While some may bail early, those who stay to the end are likely to dwell on Zahedi's unwavering (some would say unrelenting) belief in his own artistry, as well as the film's many funny, quotable lines.
  3. Constellation
    Only Williams makes any real emotional connection: I'm not sure I'd call his performance good, but there's something fascinating about seeing the man once heralded as "the black Clark Gable" three decades removed from heartthrob status, heavy and sullen-looking, weighed down by the burdens of time and age.
  4. New Suit
    If none of it is particularly original or insightful, it's nonetheless executed with skill and economy.
  5. Where's Marlowe?
    (Ferrer's) performance as the sensitive private dick borders on beatific as he stumbles about a nighttime Hollywood Boulevard waxing lyrical about "love, sex and betrayal."
  6. Frida
    There's something oddly moving about the film purely as a love story between two people who were more alike than was good for them, yet somehow stuck it out. What we see in Frida is not Kahlo the painter, but Kahlo the love of Rivera's life, as he was of hers.
  7. 13 Going on 30
    The director of 13 Going on 30, Gary Winick, was unable to infuse this material with either the sustained screwball cadences of his earlier "Tadpole" or an emotional resonance comparable to that of his superb "The Tic Code."
  8. Vodka Lemon
    Exceedingly dry and precise and slow-paced comedy.
  9. Bully
    The film's start-and-go rhythm can be as maddening as the characters' amorality and sheer wallowing stupidity, but Clark has an uncanny talent for putting atmosphere on celluloid.
  10. Big Daddy
    Sander has turned mediocrity into the triumph of the smug.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Water for Elephants
    Beautifully designed, sufficiently choreographed, insipid but watchable, Elephants stresses that showbiz is about the maintenance of an illusion by any means necessary.
  12. Dirt Boy
    The film essentially grinds along in second gear. A promising debut, Dirt Boy nevertheless fails to fully deliver.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Not Forgotten
    If the film's first two-thirds are dreary and preposterous, give Soref credit for a truly -- what's the proper cinematic terminology? -- batshit-crazy finale involving demented religious sects, ridiculously bloody face-offs and a gaggle of cross-dressing Mexican prostitutes.
  14. The United States of Leland
    Only Chris Klein, as the lovesick live-in boyfriend of Becky's sister, is given anything like an active emotional arc to play, and he runs with it so beautifully that he steals the movie.
  15. Frankie and Johnny Are Married
    Pressma's intermittently amusing screenplay, some good-natured cameos by a bunch of his famous friends, and an intelligent performance by Chess — playing herself opposite TV regular Alan Rosenberg -- save the day and the relationship.
  16. A Love Song for Bobby Long
    Not terrible for a movie featuring John Travolta as a literature professor, but not too good either.
  17. Possession
    Watching Possession is a movie experience not much deeper than you'd get on your couch watching Masterpiece Theater or Mystery! -- pleasant enough, but oh so soft.
    • L.A. Weekly
  18. The Big Empty
    More amiable than laugh-out-loud funny, the film pokes along, buoyed by the motel's bright Hawaiian color scheme, and a moonlit desert finale that's awfully pretty.
  19. Closer
    Strip away the cavernous lofts, the minimalist art galleries and the pricey consulting rooms, and you have four characters unable to earn their keep with the audience.
  20. Suddenly Naked
    In this lively romantic comedy from Canada, actors Wendy Crewson and Joe Cobden give off sparks -- in bed and out.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Babylon A.D.
    If nothing else, it's nice to see an action movie that takes Europe, not America, as its grounding point.
  22. Calendar Girls
    The real-life calendar girls were actual human beings, and here they're merely comic patsies, lacking the distinctive personalities that made the men of "The Full Monty" so endearing, their final act of revelation so peculiarly dignified.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Meskada
    Sternfield's direction isn't spry enough to handle the abrupt shift in genre when this moves from detective tale to social-problem film, and things bottom out with a town hall meeting tepidly shot as courtroom drama that stops the story's momentum dead in its tracks and leaves Meskada limping through its last half-hour.
  24. Road Trip
    Genially moronic, Road Trip will tide you over until the next slice of "American Pie" comes along.
  25. Ghost Rider
    iInstead of a buoyant, imaginative superhero movie on the order of Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" films or Bryan Singer's "Superman Returns," we get a lumbering, paint-by-numbers origin story.
  26. Beyond Borders
    As kitsch, however, it's pretty enjoyable. Jolie and Owen perform with such conviction, and the film -- blissfully unaware of its own badness -- takes its paperback-romance shenanigans with such goofy gravity, that it's easy to get caught up in the whole, soap-opera thrust of the thing.
  27. Smile
    If the dialectics here are strictly Hallmark, the film is lifted by some nice location work - all of the Chinese scenes are shot around Shanghai - and deepened somewhat by the bleak depiction of the emotional lives of Katie, her family and her friends.
  28. Hope Floats
    Cloying, unoriginal stuff, rescued -- barely -- by the easy affection that courses between Bullock and Connick Jr., and by the lovely cinematography of Caleb Deschanel.
  29. Bedazzled
    It's nowhere near as funny, largely because of an exhaustingly hyperactive performance by Elizabeth Hurley.
  30. We Were Soldiers
    It was a hellish encounter, as well as a portent of the 10 years to come, and as such deserves far better than Mel Gibson's glower and writer-director Randall Wallace's guns-and-Moses platitudes.
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