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. Wind Chill
    Jacobs and his writers are notably more interested in creepy atmosphere -- and in contemplating the order of the universe -- than in jump-in-your-seat jolts. But well before day breaks, it's the movie’s plot (which would have made for an outstanding Outer Limits episode) that has come to seem stuck in an endless loop.
  2. Bean
    This is not comedy - it's mugging. And there's no excuse for making Bean cuddly; he only works with an evil edge.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Beefcake
    Dull, tacky docudrama
  4. Cotton Mary
    Richer and cleverer than any Merchant Ivory movie in memory.
  5. That's the Way I Like It
    Goei's sharp-eyed satiric sense evokes the diversity and energy of Singapore, and his good-humored nostalgia makes disco rise from the dead.
  6. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
    Rather exciting, rendered in a bright sunset palette and a mixture of expressive, boldly drawn traditional animation and fluid computer-generated imagery.
  7. Bomb the System
    As Bomb snakes its way toward tragedy, it grates rather than entices. The actors come off more as poseurs than as characters, and the film's political and cultural insights are superficial and old hat.
  8. The Hills Have Eyes
    An orgy of bloodletting and dismemberment that's more monotonous than shocking. Aja and Levasseur are to splatter what Liberace was to rhinestones: practitioners of gaud.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bring It On
    Starts strong, but then falters.
  10. Center Stage
    Has next to no story beyond some stock clichés about bulimia, stage mothers and internal affairs in the corps de ballet.
  11. 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
  12. House of Fools
    Powerful war satire.
  13. Serendipity
    As Serendipity moves into the final stretch, Chelsom's direction becomes frenzied but still lethargic; he never breathes life into the film.
  14. Ghost River
    Outside of Sylvia, none of the characters has any real presence or personality in a movie that takes greater interest in shots of pretty flowers than in the human beings onscreen, and in which nearly every major plot turn is the result of blind chance.
  15. I Know What You Did Last Summer
    There's no doubting that Williamson is a man who knows and loves his genre, and all the scary, screaming, sniggering fun continues here.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Milarepa
    Engages on a narrative level; however, Chokling’s direction fails to give the story any period texture or visceral emotion.
  17. Dark Water
    The movie is prettily shot by Almodóvar collaborator Affonso Beato, but no amount of tastefully desaturated color or imaginary friends going whoo-whoo in the deserted apartment upstairs can save this lumbering echt-thriller from fatal tedium.
  18. The Fifth Element
    Too long by half, burdened with shabby F/X and offering up some seriously weird performances, this pricy foray into science fiction is a muddle of miscues and narrative bloat--along with a lot of frivolous fun.
  19. Race to Nowhere
    Abeles sheds little new light on why few parents, teachers, politicians or administrators seem willing to get off the bus.
  20. Running with Scissors
    One expects neither subtlety nor surprise from a scenario boasting a household pet named Freud. If there's any reason at all to see Running With Scissors, it' Bening.
  21. Last Holiday
    Queen Latifah gives a spectacular performance in this hugely enjoyable wish-fulfillment fantasy.
  22. Once in the Life
    May lack any transcendent point that would make it exceptional, but it is certainly a worthy start, and worth catching.
  23. The Princess Diaries
    The director is Garry Marshall, but The Princess Diaries is no where near as nauseating a fairy tale as Marshall's "Pretty Woman."
  24. Brotherhood
    Characters make choices that are incredibly stupid, even wildly offensive, but also recognizably human, and as the night spirals out of control Cannon demonstrates a strong hand in controlling the mayhem. He also sets himself up as a filmmaker to watch.
  25. The Sea
    Undone by its own malignant contempt for every one of its characters, except a pathologically candid grandmother who single-handedly kept my chin from dropping to my ankles. Even Bergman would be scrambling for his Prozac.
  26. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
    Has the comfortable, old-fashioned, earnest idealism of a '50s Disney action-adventure.
  27. Secondhand Lions
    Despite the considerable imagination that has gone into realizing period scenes on a modest budget, all the episodes (past and present) feel hurried and clipped, like they've been passed through too many impatient editing-room hands, and the picture never fully absorbs you.
  28. Dopamine
    This feels like a movie that was grown in a petri dish -- poked and prodded with all manner of overcooked symbolism and thesis statements, but fatally absent the genuine human emotions about which it incessantly prattles on.
  29. Race to Witch Mountain
    A calculated bid to turn the Rock into a more family-friendly commodity. That calculation may be transparent, but it pays off: Cracking one-liners and alternating between world-weariness and growing affection for his charges, Johnson is wonderful -- much better than his material.
  30. Any Given Sunday
    The director has created a slick, newer-than-new, faster-than-fast entertainment to end all entertainments.
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