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. WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3
    The two encounters with the beast WXIII -- first in a darkened factory, and later in an empty stadium, to the strains of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in G Minor (Pathétique) -- elevate the disappointingly flat animation into a vivid fable of monster and morality.
  2. Paris, je t'aime
    The concept here holds more promise than the execution.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Unknown
    Director Simon Brand channels both "Saw" and "Reservoir Dogs" (good influences, both) to propel his main story forward, and even gets nicely twisty when the climax comes, but it's hard to escape the feeling that the B-story was added in to pad the film's running time.
  4. The Reckoning
    The Reckoning proceeds with such leaden literal-mindedness that it never seems more than a stodgy (and, at times, blatantly silly) paperback affair.
  5. Punks
    For a film purporting to tell it like it is for black gay men, race is the most poorly handled aspect in Punk's equation; it's almost as if it had no relevance. That might have flown if its most telling moment didn't suggest otherwise.
  6. Hoodwinked!
    With its chatty, overstuffed patter, Hoodwinked strains at the seams to look with it, like one of those dressed-alike Beverly Hills mother-daughter combos. Having said all that, the songs (yes, there are songs, too), mostly written by Todd Edwards, provide an unexpected bright spot.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos
    Though the movie promises a Behind the Music–type look at the meteoric rise and tragic fall of the Cosmos -- a team (if the press notes are to be believed) overwhelmed by wealth, groupies, rivalry and power struggles -- it all adds up to a tempest in a tea pot.
  8. The Sea Is Watching
    Despite a hopelessly corny score, the movie is redeemed by a goofily touching final scene.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Next Day Air
    Benny Boom built his reputation directing music videos and commercials, and his first feature, Next Day Air, falls somewhere between the blunt-force visuals of the former and the focus-grouped formulas of the latter.
  10. The Prince and Me
    To no one's possible satisfaction -- the non-question of how Paige is to ascend to the throne and retain her personal integrity that The Prince and Me falls, finally and irrevocably, flat.
  11. Palmetto
    Director Volker Schlöndorff is ponderously out of his depth with comic pulp, and fatally heavy-handed with his actors.
  12. A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
    The movie is affectionate without exactly being infectious, and Browne, who begins his film with the Michael Moore–esque revelation that Americans bowl in greater numbers than they vote, disappoints by not devoting more attention to bowling in its amateur incarnations.
  13. The Family Man
    Has the airiness of a well-made souffle, springing delicate small surprises at calibrated intervals.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    She's Out of My League
    Slight comedy, directed by Jim Field Smith, who tries with modest success to blend the sticky-sweet with the plain ol' sticky.
  15. A Very Long Engagement
    Shuttles between schoolboy humor, calculated savagery and, at the end, a rank sentimentalism in which love all too easily conquers all.
  16. 8 Women
    Without its cast -- the cream of France's female acting elite -- François Ozon's ambivalent musical-comedy homage to the 1950s wouldn't be much.
  17. Kaena: The Prophecy
    If Kaena's alternate universe isn't nearly as fully realized as "antastic Planet'," the 3-D imagery is often gloriously turbocharged.
  18. The Game of Their Lives
    The final match stirs briefly, but when it's over, the movie's energy crashes right back down again. Disappointing.
  19. Elephant
    As lead Columbine investigator Kate Battan has herself put it, “Everybody wants a quick answer. They want an easy answer so that they can sleep at night and know this is not going to happen tomorrow.” And now they have Gus Van Sant's Elephant.
    • 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.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Christmas in the Clouds
    More of a Lifetime holiday special than a theatrical feature, writer-director Kate Montgomery's tale of love and mistaken identity at a Native American ski resort is too sticky-sweet to be memorable.
  22. Pieces of April
    A tougher, more experienced director may someday force Holmes to surprise first herself, then us.
  23. Orgazmo
    There’s something entirely ridiculous about rating a movie like this NC-17: Why should sniggering, infantile, adolescent humor be denied its natural core audience of snigger-ing, infantile adolescents?
  24. Lemmy
    Devotees of Motorhead frontman/certifiable rock icon Lemmy Kilmister will be in heaven watching this gushing love letter to the man who straddles rock subgenres, but anyone who's not already a fan will cry for mercy long before the nearly two-hour film ends.
  25. The Acid House
    Sympathy is disturbingly cast aside so we can wallow in the pathetic. It’s a bad trip, man.
  26. The Beach
    An intermittently gripping, good-looking movie.
  27. Ned Kelly
    The whole movie is curiously distant and flat, like a museum object encased in extra-thick glass.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lord of War
    Incorporating surrealist humor and an ironic patina, Lord of War tries for irreverent satire, but the film (and especially Cage) is too muted and distant.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    10,000 BC
    Director Roland Emmerich (Godzilla, Independence Day) knows his money shots: any time he throws some mastodons or giant dodos on the screen for a little beast-battlin’ action, he has our attention. But his lack of skill with actors really shows during the long moments of downtime in-between.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Derailroaded
    In spite of its sympathy, Derailroaded veers into reality-TV voyeurism whenever the former street singer bemoans his lack of fame or breaks into childish caterwauling.
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