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. Life as a House
    There's nothing particularly wrong with this movie, except that it's too nice for words.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Freshman Orientation
    It isn’t particularly funny. Mocking lesbians for bad bongo-beating poetry, for instance, just ain’t fresh, interesting or even especially offensive.
    • L.A. Weekly
  3. Man on Fire
    A schizophrenic outing from habitually hysterical director Tony Scott (True Romance, The Fan), Man on Fire is a movie of two unreconcilable halves.
  4. Orwell Rolls in His Grave
    Even though he refuses to excise about 15 to 20 minutes of unnecessary material, Pappas is nonetheless a steady editor who, less intrepid than dogged, pieces together a sustainably intriguing, suitably distressing exposé.
  5. Washington Heights
    Promising yet problematic.
  6. Klimt
    Ruiz is so intent on harnessing the painter to his own -- here, rather arid -- relativism that he never manages to convey the unfettered eros that brings crowds flocking to exhibitions of Klimt’s work, even as critics hold their noses.
  7. The Alamo
    Pinned down and smelling death, the men grow into fully realized human beings, which makes for some fine performances, but doesn't exactly propel this epic, richly detailed film forward. The battle, when it finally comes, is brief, admirably non-gory and rather dull.
  8. NASCAR: The IMAX Experience
    Disappointing that the film's modern-day race sequences -- which follow quick glimpses of computer-run car factories and pit-crew practice sessions -- fail to excite the senses.
  9. Girlfight
    Kusama leads with feminist empowerment, but her sucker punch is a sappy romance.
  10. Wimbledon
    Director Richard Loncraine (Richard III) moves things right along, but during the final tennis match, his pacing is undone by sports-movie convention, particularly the witless color commentary offered by tennis legends John McEnroe and Chris Evert.
  11. Monkeybone
    Like so many movies that depend on effects for effect, plot comes in a poor second to spectacle. That leaves the Fraser, funny and sexy as hell, left with little chance to prove it.
  12. Solomon & Gaenor
    First-time writer-director Paul Morrison has a gift for evoking a time and place.
  13. Dracula 2000
    Although it's not half bad -- which doesn't mean it's half good -- this horror cheapie comes equipped with a few ideas, a little atmosphere and a couple of serviceable scares.
  14. Intolerable Cruelty
    Intolerable Cruelty seems the kind of movie that results from two essentially erudite, anarchic talents playing down to the masses.
  15. The Polar Express
    The result is another powerful children's story dulled into mediocrity by the worship of technology.
  16. Sleeping Dogs Lie
    A movie with a premise and an ad campaign promising sexual outrageousness, Sleeping Dogs Lie turns out to be rather tame.
  17. Wasabi Tuna
    Fox does have a sharp sense of the absurd that comes out in silly subplots.
  18. Kill the Irishman
    Though director Jonathan Hensleigh (The Punisher) perks up when filming violence, the atmosphere throughout is past-prime, stymieing any strut.
  19. Music from the Inside Out
    The result is 90 minutes in the company of some of the nicest and most boring people you can imagine ever having a movie made about them.
  20. The Whore's Son
    In the end, Sturminger's virginal insistence on draining the mother-son relationship of all eros also drains it of interest.
  21. The Great Water
    The Great Water hangs heavy with sepia photography and Christ-like symbolism -- I felt as though I were watching it from the inside of a dank Russian Orthodox church.
  22. FAQs
    The dialogue is blunter, and harder for his amateur cast to pull off, while Lewis' stridency, however justified, ultimately jars against the film's tender, all-is-love fantasia.
  23. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
    Few surprises lie in store for connoisseurs of torture cinema, though unlike its 2003 predecessor, this Massacre owes less to Bay’s attention-deficient aesthetics than to the measured, Georgia O’Keefe-on-acid sensibility that guided Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel’s much-cannibalized original.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Astro Boy
    Corny but goodhearted, the film tries hard not to annoy parents, with animation more fizzy than frantic and nerdy references.
  25. In My Country
    In My Country stands closest to "Hotel Rwanda," a similarly clumsy yet inescapably moving effort to confront the brutal consequences of colonial oppression.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Darshan: The Embrace
    Unless you're already a true believer, Amma comes across in Darshan as a perfect angel, a frustrating enigma and a rather dull cinematic subject.
  27. The Replacements
    Although this movie doesn't have an ounce of depth, it's so thoroughly amiable and upbeat that you'd have to be in a fighting mood to find fault with it.
  28. Bulletproof Monk
    It’s a testament to Chow's star power that, even with an accent more than casually reminiscent of Elmer Fudd's, he comes off charming, handsome and cool in a movie as ridiculous as Bulletproof Monk.
  29. The Ballad of Bering Strait
    While the film frequently concentrates on the wrong story, the humanity of the musicians comes through in their own words and actions.
  30. Vampires
    There's a surprising amount to relish about this gleefully self-conscious, disposable romp through horror's sexiest subgenre, mainly the film's grasp of its own terms.
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