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. Constantine
    Constantine, which opts in the end for what I can only describe as a kind of supernatural humanism, is not without its spiritual satisfactions.
  2. The Brothers
    If it registers at all, it'll likely be more because of the fuckability of Morris Chestnut -- a star waiting for a worthy film -- than any insights or memorable moments from the movie itself.
  3. The Iron Ladies
    A surprise hit in Thailand, the film is nonetheless a reductive mess.
  4. All My Loved Ones
    The movie is loaded with good intentions, but in his zeal to squeeze the action and our emotions into the all-too-familiar dramatic arc of the Holocaust escape story, Minac drains his movie of all individuality.
  5. A Family Affair
    Barely competent. The pacing never accelerates beyond sluggish, and Lesnick's script is an awkward pile of gag lines.
  6. Red Trousers: The Life of the Hong Kong Stuntmen
    Brave, gifted, haunted and poor, these kids are so heartbreaking that you wish Shou had the good sense to give their lives the attention he lavishes on himself.
  7. 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.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
    Thankfully, the film, which skirts that rapidly deteriorating line between fantasy and reality -- Irwin as "himself" as croc expert as suspected international spy -- takes a tongue-in-cheek attitude even as it pushes the Croc Hunter agenda: Mother Nature? Don’t muck with her.
  9. Duplex
    Could have used two rangier lead players than Stiller (doing his patented aggrieved-yuppie shtick) and Barrymore (who's so perky you want to slap her); the 81-year-old Essell, however, is a wicked pleasure throughout.
  10. Face
    Only at the end, when one of the principals makes a decision you don't see coming, does Face fleetingly weigh in as a movie you haven't seen a thousand times before at ethnically correct film festivals.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Marebito (The Stranger from Afar)
    Marebito's ghoulish delight in gore will turn off the squeamish, but tougher souls will recognize that the over-the-top shocks are Shimizu's way of illustrating how terrifying the risk of human connection can be.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Two for the Money
    Dramatic failings are only exacerbated by D.J. Caruso's direction: He composes every frame as if for television -- despite the fact that the film is shot in widescreen -- and his visual style is about as cinematic as sports talk radio.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Management
    Each new superfluous Jennifer Aniston rom-com is already met with low expectations, but add some overcooked, middlebrow Indiewood quirk and you've got cinema's purest shade of beige.
  14. Murder by Numbers
    Even as the psychological interdependencies of the two boys take the foreground, the movie gets more and more crowded with fun-house surprises and cliffhanging set pieces.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    My Name Is Khan
    For a movie that preaches cultural understanding, it sometimes seems a little too comfortable perpetuating ethnic stereotypes.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Madea Goes to Jail
    Check off all of Perry’s motifs: vilification of the black bourgie princess, tough-love Christian messages, Academy Award–nominated actresses (Viola Davis, this time) managing to maintain their dignity.
  17. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
    Much of the film is as strange and oddly beautiful as one of Arbus' own photographs, bold in its attempt to find new ways of cracking the biopic chestnut and sensitive in its portrayal of a 1950s woman who, like so many of her contemporaries, finds herself imprisoned in a "Good Housekeeping" nightmare.
  18. Conspiracy Theory
    The film isn't really about much and so feels patchy and forced, with elements more calculated than inspired, more urgent than exciting.
  19. Storytelling
    Storytelling is no more likely than "Happiness" or "Welcome to the Dollhouse" to resolve the question of whether director Todd Solondz is a serious artist or a nasty little man with a perversely glum view of the universe.
  20. Garage Days
    Dazzling imagery and a grab bag of wry jokes, no matter how lively, can take a movie only so far when there's no emotional ballast attached.
  21. The Island
    Nary an original idea abounds in The Island.
  22. Blast from the Past
    A flimsy premise to begin with, it’s been punctured beyond repair by an amateur script from Bill Kelly and director Hugh Wilson (The First Wives Club), and by Wilson’s shocking ineptitude with dialogue, framing and pace.
  23. My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    A one-joke movie if ever there was, but the joke happens to be a good one -- a Tracy-and-Hepburn-style battle of the sexes in which Kate can fly and blast through walls -- and director Ivan Reitman (who made Ghostbusters) feels at home with the mix of screwball and supernatural.
  24. Step Up 2: The Streets
    Directed in humongous close-up by former dancer Jon M. Chu, Step Up 2 the Streets is suavely choreographed by Jamal Sims, Nadine "Hi Hat" Ruffin and Dave Scott.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Deterrence
    Ultimately this is a radio drama made into a movie with a single set.
  26. Home on the Range
    The film skews young, to be sure, and it isn't as memorable as the new Disney classics of the early 1990s, but there's still plenty here to hold the interest of viewers of all ages: delightful performances (particularly by Dench, plowing Angela Lansbury terrain), zinging comic dialogue and a soundtrack that's a wealth of sonorous riches.
  27. Straight-Jacket
    Writer-director Richard Day, whose debut feature, the drag comedy Girls Will Be Girls, was shamefully neglected by critics and audiences alike, proves again that he's the new master of the catty one-liner, and he's also becoming a striking visual stylist.
  28. Poseidon
    The effects are terrific, from the two-and-a-half-minute opening sequence that tracks around the brilliantly lit liner from below, above and round about, to some amazing exterior shots of the groaning vessel rolling around in the churning sea like a giant, wounded whale.
  29. The Other Boleyn Girl
    Stuck for years playing young women who are the idealized object of male desire (Portman and Johansson)-- flaw-free and, in Johansson's case, barely conscious -- they come alive in The Other Boleyn Girl, as if being bound up in costumer Sandy Powell's exquisite gowns has freed them from the tighter constraints of their own beauty.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cease Fire
    Milani has never been one for subtlety, but although her feminism remains refreshingly vital, Cease Fire comes down like a blunt instrument, hammering out the couple's kinks and flaws much too easily.
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