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. The Aryan Couple
    We get director John Daly's feel-good tedium and a waste of a performance by the magnificent Landau.
  2. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
    The best I can say about Buster Scruggs is that it seems as though the Coens picked their favorite actors and wrote them a part specifically tailored to their abilities.
  3. Fifty-Fifty
    Schizo is an earnest also-ran, sadly muffled by the opaque performance of non-actor Oldzhas Nusupbayev.
  4. The Komediant
    Slight but enjoyable documentary.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes
    Once the Quay brothers confidently establish their film's astonishing look, they merely repeat their techniques until the images no longer delight or surprise, leaving all too visible the Quays' struggles with the trickier demands of storytelling and character development.
  6. Cuban Rafters
    What's fresh for these people is, frankly, old news for anyone who has seen even one or two documentaries on similar subject matter.
  7. Danny Deckchair
    American-born writer-director Jeff Balsmeyer can't seem to make up his mind whether he's making a gentle romantic comedy with heartfelt trimmings, or a full-court Aussie farce.
  8. The Machinist
    In a way, though, it’s all Bale's show. Withering down to an alarming 120 pounds, he delivers a deeply obsessed performance that leaves us both fascinated and sickened.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beauty in Trouble
    Unfortunately, Hrebejk settles for unsatisfying allusions to the Czech experience that never break through the melodrama to make his case with any conviction.
  10. Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
    These live performances and classic music videos drive home the point that part of the Giants' longevity flows from the fact that they can't be explained, only experienced.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Center of the World
    We should be thankful for the courage of Wang and his cast in standing against a culture that nervously treats sex as either a prurient joke or a puritan crime.
  12. American Pastime
    With such rich material about dreams deferred, it’s disheartening that co-writer–director Desmond Nakano’s nobly made but patchy drama mires itself in nostalgia tropes and storytelling clichés.
  13. Notting Hill
    The result is two films: a big, dreary star vehicle that sags whenever its leads spend quality time together, and a mettlesome British caper whose nutsosecondary characters walk away with the movie.
  14. Lady Vengeance
    If this is what qualifies, as some critics have suggested, as an artistic advance for Mr. Park, let us pray for a hasty retreat.
  15. Evolution
    Amiably goofy, but it isn't especially funny.
  16. Alila
    Though absorbing enough, Alila must be counted a noble failure, if only because its efforts to follow the screwed-up lives of 12 hapless souls in a seedy Tel Aviv apartment building finally add up more to mere mimicry than commentary.
  17. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    Attack of the Clones' high-definition surfaces are certainly impressive, but they offer no lifelight, nothing to put your arms around.
    • 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.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Copying Beethoven
    One is left yearning for the overheated melodrama of Bernard Rose's 1994 Beethoven biopic, "Immortal Beloved," which was trashy, but fun.
  20. Francis Ford Coppola Presents: The Legend of Suriyothai
    The characters are flat creatures of duty, and the film is more a tale of the collective will of a state than of the rugged individuals behind it.
  21. The Memory of a Killer
    Director Erik Van Looy has filmmaking chops to spare, and while he has created a sharply shot and crisply paced film, he isn't able to make it all cohere.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stone
    At odds with its own lofty and base instincts, Stone ultimately channels neither compellingly.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. This Girl's Life
    Though spiked with nice performances (Marquis herself is a natural, no matter how lame her lines), This Girl's Life succeeds more as a nudie curio.
  26. Ghost Ship
    If you take your ghost stories garnished with a dressing of sadism, sanctimony and silliness, go ahead and squander the nine bucks.
  27. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    The script, credited to "Twin Peaks" co-creator Mark Frost and longtime "Simpsons" writer Don Payne, unsuccessfully strives for hipster irreverence.
  28. The Interpreter
    When it comes to the United Nations, though, the movie turns to Jell-O. Whether Pollack was softened up by his meetings with U.N. brass (all the way up to Kofi Annan), or by his own gentlemanly Midwestern liberalism, he is alarmingly circumspect about that august body.
  29. Maria by Callas
    Volf’s refusal to address key choices that Callas made to shape her own career and fight her insecurities suggests that he’d prefer to imagine Callas as a victim of fate — and bronchitis, fame, Onassis, etc. — instead of a strong-willed but human prima donna.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Two Weeks Notice
    It's not a horrible film -- and it's a fuckload better than some other oops-we-fell-in-love comedies in recent years (e.g., J. Lo's doggy "The Wedding Planner"). It's just not very smart. Deeply rentable.
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