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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    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
    I warn you, I'm gonna continue whining about the movie. Just keep in mind that I liked it.
  2. Predators
    Doing The Most Dangerous Game is, for action directors, what covering "Satisfaction" is to bar bands; if you hit most of the notes, it'll do.
  3. Hotel for Dogs
    Slobbery wet kiss of a family movie.
  4. Captain Pantoja and the Special Services
    Roaming freely between comedy (which mostly works) and drama (which mostly doesn't) before settling on trite sentimentality, the film may not be an altogether unpleasant way to pass the time, but, ultimately, the innocuous Captain Pantoja doesn't earn its stripes.
  5. The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy
    He (Berlanti) shoots for bland entertainment and scores.
  6. The Transporter
    Immensely exciting and funny.
  7. Assassination Tango
    The plot is slow and absurdly contrived, and if you're looking for a thriller, look elsewhere. If you love dance movies, Assassination Tango is worth a go.
  8. The Young Black Stallion
    IMAX magnifies everything, including flaws, which are legion in this listless, awkward prequel to the 1979 movie based on the novel by Walter and Steven Farley.
  9. My Mother Likes Women
    For a movie with a lesbian theme, My Mother Likes Women is absurdly coy about gay sex. It may be the most heterosexually minded film about lesbians ever made.
  10. Star Trek: Nemesis
    Nemesis never feels true to itself, its energy never fully engaged. Even with Earth on the line in its climactic space battle, the film seems embarrassed that it couldn't have found a better way to work through its issues.
  11. 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.
  12. Lucía, Lucía
    After a lively first half-hour, the scenes start to feel heavy, as though Serrano suddenly decided he was actually making a meaningful drama, and the ensuing, halfhearted political satire is like an extra weight on top of that.
  13. Union Square
    Without a well-delineated political or social framework, Union Square offers little that we didn't already know.
  14. Ellie Parker
    Fun, scattershot Hollywood spoof.
  15. The Night Listener
    As a performer, Robin Williams has a wonderfully volatile range; as an actor, he commutes uneasily between over-sincere and over-sinister. Both modes are on full monochromatic display in this stolid noir thriller.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Taken
    Neeson's tormented weariness lends an air of dignity to the film's pulpy, grubby nastiness, but as striking as he is in action-hero mode, the truth is that Taken doesn't need dignity.
  17. SLC Punk!
    Ultimately a wiser and truer film than its crass and cartoony beginnings would have us believe.
  18. The Saint
    The Saint works. The reason why it occasionally soars is Kilmer, an actor who’s happiest when burying himself in eccentric characterizations, a trick he performs repeatedly here even as he fills the screen with pure movie-star dazzle.
  19. Kill the Irishman
    Though director Jonathan Hensleigh (The Punisher) perks up when filming violence, the atmosphere throughout is past-prime, stymieing any strut.
  20. City by the Sea
    For the first time in years, De Niro digs deep emotionally, perhaps because he's been stirred by the powerful work of his co-stars, including a subtle Frances McDormand and a ferocious Patti LuPone, as well as the heartbreaking (and achingly beautiful) Franco.
  21. Billabong Odyssey
    Made up largely of vivid aerial shots of those folks doing the things they do, the film is a less philosophical, introspective look at contemporary surfing than Dana Brown's recent "Step Into Liquid," and is pitched at a smaller, niche audience.
  22. Hoodlum
    Too long by about 20 minutes, the film drags a bit, but the acting--fine throughout--carries the whole thing.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Final Destination 5
    So tapped into its audience's giddy schadenfreude that beyond a kinkier-than-usual jolt of black humor and some clever red herrings, the formula remains rote.
  24. Swiri
    Though the two-hour film can go slack with excess explication, Shiri compensates with an overheated drive that forces the myopia of current events toward a broader field of vision.
  25. Armored
    The camaraderie in the Eagle Shield Transport locker room is strained stuff, despite a capable ensemble cast that includes Matt Dillon and Larry Fishburne.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Eat Pray Love
    Though targeted to the same female filmgoers who flocked to the self-realization via food porn of "Julie & Julia," EPL is a comparative downer, letting viewers experience the rush of self-improvement without having to do any of the work. I cried. Mission accomplished?
  27. Planet of the Apes
    Overly familiar industrial product, a big-budgeted entertainment defined by its putatively big concept (apes rule), an underwritten script and a few flashes of Burton's visual genius and gently askew worldview.
  28. Shaft
    What Jackson's Shaft can't do is talk the talk, or much of anything else, in director John Singleton's feature-length insult to one of the more cherished modern screen icons.
  29. The Rules of Attraction
    It's so playful, wicked and unseemly, by the time you realize that the actual plot of this brilliantly sordid satire hasn't started, the party is already over.
  30. Everybody Says I'm Fine!
    Bose does a good job of keeping his melancholy tales loose with wry humor, and while not all of the episodes are successful, at their best they show real empathy for the complex lives of India's modern middle class.
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