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. Voices in Wartime
    The film's self-limiting pacifism precludes a closer look at the poetry of war, which is not synonymous with poetry against war.
  2. American Dreamz
    As in his previous "In Good Company," Weitz wants too much to like all of his characters, and he wants us to like them too. The result is a movie devoid of any threat, or many laughs, with barn door–broad performances.
  3. Black Christmas
    The flashbacks are wittily gothic, and the present-day murder scenes have the absurdist, chain-reaction intricacy of the "Final Destination" deaths.
  4. P.S.
    This sappy stuff gets better direction by Kidd (who made the far superior Roger Dodger) than it deserves, and Linney gives a wonderfully wistful portrayal of urban loneliness.
  5. Because of Winn-Dixie
    Jeff Daniels is a compelling-enough actor to lift almost any film out of mediocrity, but even he has his work cut out for him.
  6. Amy
    If Tass had found a way to include more playfulness, her film would be more endearing. Instead, she accents the easy bathos of David Parker's script, from the problems of the shrill, cliched neighbors to a finale that plays like a movie of the week.
  7. Into the Blue
    Into the Blue is a likable bimbo of a movie, all surface and -- despite breathtaking underwater photography and a marked resemblance to Peter Yates' "The Deep" -- zero depth.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Baxter
    A movie filled with cardboard cutouts where the interesting characters ought to be. As a result, The Baxter is less engaging than the '40s screwball comedies (like The Philadelphia Story) that it's supposedly sending up, and not nearly as effervescent.
  9. One Night at McCool's
    The drawback is Tyler, who lacks the vigor and energy her part requires in order to transcend charges of misogyny.
  10. Princesa
    By the time Princesa finally slides into halfhearted melodrama in its last quarter, we're only too happy to follow Fernanda back to the rim and a little excitement.
  11. Loverboy
    actor-turned-director Kevin Bacon (Sedgwick's husband) can't seem to decide if he's making a film about a loving eccentric or a sociopath.
  12. Mousehunt
    The movie's real charms lie in its surprisingly dark atmosphere and its almost subversive sense of humor.
  13. Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling
    Leitman has unearthed a terrific collection of vintage footage - yet, as if doubtful about holding our interest, she skims too quickly over the historical background.
  14. Angela's Ashes
    140 minutes of flat vignette, as dreary and uninvolving as the driving rain that never lets up on the benighted streets of Limerick.
  15. Mickey Blue Eyes
    An abbondanza of busy, situation comedy twists that snip one's suspended disbelief and send it crashing like a chandelier.
  16. Moulin Rouge!
    Drowns in baroque mise en scène camp, frenetic musical numbers and a precious dialogue conceit that wears out its welcome very fast.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Melinda and Melinda
    From its austere opening credits to its screechy women, this 35th film by Woody Allen looks and sounds like a dozen other Allen movies.
  18. Rounders
    Though the movie looks gorgeous, glittering with the monochromatic beauty of noir transposed into the key of yellow, it chugs along like an overly responsible documentary, more the working out of an idea about the gambler's true nature than a story.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Protector
    Jaa has the skills for the job, and shows them off in numerous fight scenes; it's just a shame that the movie he's in is barely acceptable in any other respect.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Inni
    The result is a hazy, shoegazy visual tone that is both elegiac and eulogistic - that is, at once meditative and funereal.
  21. Stealing Harvard
    Whenever Green shows up to do his semi-improvised, non-acting shtick (detaching pit bulls from testicles, kamikaze wheelchair rides, etc.), this otherwise sprightly and intermittently amusing movie suddenly feels like a ship dragging its anchor.
  22. Flight of the Phoenix
    But, in the end, it may be that man against sand isn't as thrilling as it was back in the day.
  23. Heartthrob
    Apart from an extended scene-setting flashback that takes the form of a lavish Farah Khan song-and-dance montage, most of the running time is devoted to wearying flop-sweat farce.
  24. Latter Days
    Though the film covers familiar queer-cinema ground, Latter Days' finely observed truths about the painful costs of being yourself make even the contrivance of its happy ending forgivable.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Man of the Century
    Though the story is often silly to the point of ridiculous, its goofy tone and charming characters, especially Frazier's Johnny, create a lovely idealization of a long-gone era.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Yours, Mine and Ours
    Likable (if not especially funny).
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Deal
    When you're working with clearly conventional material, it helps to attack it from a cockeyed angle or at least adopt a gritty, lived-in urgency, but Deal is fatally earnest.
  28. Can't Hardly Wait
    The cast of mostly unknowns is agreeable if unnecessarily bland, not a Spicoli among them.
  29. The Road to Guantanamo
    By inviting us to take on trust the Tipton Three's accounts of what they were doing in Afghanistan, Guantánamo falls into a familiar trap of agitprop filmmaking - turning the victim into a hero. The movie gives us no particular reason to believe that they were up to anything nefarious - or that they weren't.
  30. U-571
    A story as creaky as the sub that gives the film its name.
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