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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    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
    Mincing around like a bored old glam rocker and hissing threats from behind electric neon eyes, Nighy seems to be the only person on set who found a glint of amusement in his part. He fares better than poor Sheen, a scraggly Wolverine who made a more credible vampire-slayer opposite Frank Langella’s Nixon.
  2. The Prince of Egypt
    Thou shalt not covet any thing that is thy neighbor's. Maybe DreamWorks should stop trying to be Disney.
  3. Hide and Seek
    While the final revelation is laughably absurd, DeNiro and Fanning are so far inside their roles that one can't giggle for long.
  4. Kamikaze Girls
    For this viewer, the climactic scooter-gang rumble, heavy on plot twists and empowerment speeches, felt eternal, but for many, the happy silliness of the film's first half should carry the day.
  5. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
    A movie that's nearly as good as its publicity campaign.
  6. Bánk bán
    Where Káel stumbles is in having his stars lip-synch, sometimes poorly, to a recording. It's a devil's bargain that allows for more natural staging, but that fails to convey that an opera's power lies less in cinematic shadings of character than in raw emotions refined by the spectacular art of a rigorously trained human voice.
  7. November
    To their great credit, writer Benjamin Brand and director Greg Harrison weave these contradictory variations into an effective puzzle, if one that doesn't quite transcend being a puzzle - it never becomes a mystery, like, say, "Mulholland Drive," or even "The Sixth Sense."
  8. She's the Man
    She’s the Man amounts to little more than softcore porn for the tween set, with aesthetics ripped from the pages of the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog and virtually every scene revolving around Viola/Sebastian’s crafty escape from some impromptu disrobing.
  9. 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.
  10. Birth
    Birth may be the most futile application of cinematic and acting skill I've seen all year. A little "Twilight Zone" flummery would have livened up the proceedings to no end.
  11. Flawless
    An appallingly crude film, with dialogue lifted off bumper stickers, characters stitched together from shorthand clichés (the brassy black drag queen; the fiery little Latin number) and a plot that's on cruise control from the opening credits.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cheaper by the Dozen 2
    What keeps the film afloat (barely) is the sheer charisma of Eugene Levy and the young Alyson Stoner, who manage to find emotion and laughs in the tritest of dialogue and the flimsiest of scenarios.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dinosaur
    There are plenty of gorgeous real-life vistas for adults to look at while stuffing popcorn in their ears to avoid the oversignifyin' music and the hurtin' dialogue.
  14. Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
    The bloom is off the rose due to cynical rehash.
  15. World Trade Center
    World Trade Center is fatally benign -- an unexceptionable and therefore unexceptional heroic narrative that does little to further the tentative creep of our pop culture toward parsing the significance of that catastrophic day.
  16. Someone Like You...
    In supporting roles, Ellen Barkin and Marisa Tomei are marvelously light-footed.
  17. Aaja Nachle
    Both in subject matter and form, this 25-minute music drama within the film tips its hat to the roots of Bollywood cinema’s most distinctive conventions -- with the inestimable assistance of its most seductive modern axiom.
  18. White Chicks
    Wisely, the filmmakers don't try to reform the real rich-bitch divas -- some cultural icons are beyond redemption.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Moog
    Largely, you get to watch a nice old guy waxing philosophical in his beloved vegetable garden, in his workshop or amid city traffic. If that switches you on, then plug in.
  20. Typhoon
    The movie is executed by director Kwak Kyung-Taek with flair, technical polish and tumescent firepower that the shriveled cinemas of Hong Kong and Japan can no longer match. But every gesture feels synthetic, from the back story about North-South separation to massage the emotions of the home audience, to the 24-style globe-hopping nuclear-terrorism premise.
  21. Two Ninas
    Peet and Poor make strong impressions in smaller roles, but then again, edgy and sexy is easier to make compelling than decent and nice.
  22. Spider-Man
    Perhaps the real question, then, isn't how you update Spider-Man but why you would even try. Introduced in 1962, the original superhero helped to initiate the age of modern comics. Raimi hasn't figured out how to reconfigure him for the blockbuster age, and there are suggestions.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Obsessed
    Isn't half as dramatic as what probably went down after she (Beyoncé Knowles) kicked LaTavia and LaToya out of Destiny's Child.
  24. Chasing Liberty
    The movie's saving grace is newcomer Goode, who has what they used to call smoldering good looks, and who can, not so incidentally, actually act.
  25. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    This often gripping but also unremittingly grim and drab account of these events is a "Taxi Driver" without the cathartic finale.
  26. From the Edge of the City
    An impressive work that's ultimately undone by its excessive style.
  27. 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.
  28. The Medallion
    While the premise does lead to a few moments of inspired physical comedy -- the movie repeatedly falls back on poorly staged, choppily edited fight scenes between Chan and a gloomy, power-mad villain.
  29. Blade II
    Even Del Toro can't raise the conceptually dead.
  30. Paranormal Activity 2
    Where "The Last Exorcism" was sustained by artfully balanced skepticism and a feel for character, Paranormal 2, putatively directed by Tod Williams, can only hold an audience with the understood promise of big jolts around the corner.
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