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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    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    National Treasure: Book of Secrets
    This ain’t "The Da Vinci Code," folks, and the reason you can tell is that it’s actually quite entertaining.
  2. xXx
    The film gives good action (amid more tired spy business) but comes riddled with contradictions.
  3. The Mummy Returns
    You can't see the movie for the footage, so thick is it with digital tricks and furious action.
  4. Hard Ball
    Until its dismaying final 15 minutes, this baseball redemption movie sails along on the charms of cute kids and a star who makes up in bone structure what he lacks in talent.
  5. Kiss Me, Guido
    That crack in Vitale's storytelling foundation would be forgivable if the writing, acting and character epiphanies . . . well, existed. As it is, not even Scotti's formidable lips can blow life into this stillborn flick.
  6. Shark Tale
    Falls prey to the lazy assumption that a parade of whiz-bang CGI will cover for the absence of a muscular story.
  7. A Love Song for Bobby Long
    Not terrible for a movie featuring John Travolta as a literature professor, but not too good either.
  8. Hannah Montana: The Movie
    It's almost foolish to review Hannah Montana: The Movie as anything other than the latest cog in a cultural phenomenon/mass-marketing juggernaut. The film itself certainly doesn't aspire to anything more.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
    Like Percy himself, the film doesn’t have any traits that qualify as having an actual personality. Even so, as long as the kiddies aren’t too upset by the major liberties reportedly taken with the source material, it might be enough to distract them until Harry returns.
  10. Smile
    If the dialectics here are strictly Hallmark, the film is lifted by some nice location work - all of the Chinese scenes are shot around Shanghai - and deepened somewhat by the bleak depiction of the emotional lives of Katie, her family and her friends.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Weather Girl
    Humdrum but marketable comedy.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Open Road
    The Open Road isn’t an unwatchable howler -- instead, writer-director Michael Meredith’s film is merely dull and obvious.
  13. Fun with Dick and Jane
    This is satire made from the inside of the ivory tower, and when, late in the third act, Fun With Dick and Jane decides to come on strong with platitudes about how the petit bourgeois really can stick it to the haute bourgeois, it goes from bad to worse.
  14. Cote d'Azur
    Bruni-Tedeschi is her usual radiantly libidinal presence, but channeling Bette Midler doesn't become her, and even she can't redeem all the redundant vaudeville carry-on.
  15. What Women Want
    Narrow definitions of femininity limit the comedy and the romance.
  16. Brother
    Brother is a solid return to gangster form for Kitano, who knows how to transcend the most overly familiar genre clichés without betraying the rules of engagement.
  17. The Guru
    By the time a Bollywood production number segues into the finale from "Grease," the transition not only makes perfect sense, it sparkles.
  18. The City of Lost Souls
    While the film throws a solid pop punch, you could still swear you've seen it all before.
  19. Josie and the Pussycats
    A surprisingly smart satire around the bubble-gum band that first found life in the pages of the Archie comic book series.
  20. Borstal Boy
    Overall Sheridan keeps both "Oirishry" and sentimentality in check. He captures the book's evenhanded sense.
  21. Enemies of Laughter
    Paymer is the key to this mild-mannered comedy built on easy setups and borscht-belt one-liners.
  22. Better Than Sex
    This is a small, funny movie drawn from the radical notion that a love born of late-night lust can survive the glaring light of day.
  23. Easy
    In forced, quirky tedium, it drags us through love triangles, mommy issues and crying jags that make you want to shake this chick.
  24. In the Cut
    As a movie, it must stand or fall by intense chemistry between the lead characters. Sadly, as co-written by Campion and Moore, In the Cut suffers from a fatal emotional and erotic imbalance.
  25. The Whole Nine Yards
    Well-tuned wisecracks and clever plot twists.
  26. Failure to Launch
    Even by the low standards of high-concept Hollywood rom-coms, this charmless, prophetically titled stinker stands apart, suggesting that the recent mass firings at studio Paramount may not have been such a bad idea after all.
  27. What to Do in Case of Fire
    If the screenwriters never satisfactorily reconcile these charming misfits with the unsettling fact that they're also bomb planters, albeit clumsy ones, they make up for it with smart, character-driven dialogue that's brought to life by an equally sharp ensemble.
  28. Simon Magus
    Unfortunately, it's our knowledge of what's actually to come that puts much of the chill and complexity in Hopkins' rather formulaic script.
  29. 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.
  30. Hotel
    Surprisingly enjoyable, even if you'd hesitate to call it a complete success. Indeed, Figgis expects you to sit back and roll with the pleasurable moments.
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