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 8.7 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. Ballets Russes
    The meat of the film is their wittily edited interviews with company members, now in their 80s and 90s and scattered around the world, many of them still active as teachers and consultants.
  2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
    Came alive only in the presence of a supposed dead man -- specifically, the nefarious Lord Voldemort.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Paprika
    This loopy anime from director Satoshi Kon ("Millennium Actress") isn't a movie that's meant to be understood so much as simply experienced -- or maybe dreamed.
  4. The Hate U Give
    The Hate U Give takes time to focus on the nuances of Starr’s life, on the effort of code-switching, on the layers of self that Starr must sort through in everyday interactions.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    I'm the One That I Want
    An uplifting -- not to mention pee-your-pants funny -- true story of self-acceptance that should be required viewing for all TV executives and teenage girls.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chicago
    Chicago is that rare thing: a nutritious hard candy.
  7. King Kong
    King Kong isn't terrible, but it's something that none of Jackson's previous movies ever was -- it's enervating.
  8. The Story of the Weeping Camel
    Rigged toward a sentimental conclusion and overpopulated with cutesy touches (including a curtain-call finale), but there are many remarkable sights along the way.
  9. The World
    The comic, tragic and monumentally beautiful new film by writer-director Jia Zhangke (Platform).
  10. Bad Education
    It's the director's most complexly ordered film to date - a labyrinth of ids, egos and alter egos waiting around blind corners - and may be the movies' most deliriously inventive narrative spiral since "Adaptation."
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Buena Vista Social Club
    Buena Vista avoids literal politics, as if all that is beside this film's point.
  12. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire
    Though it includes plenty of footage from those terrible days, this wonderful, devastating documentary is as much Dallaire's story as it is the story of a whole continent abandoned by a cynical world.
  13. Kiss of the Spider Woman
    Leonard Schrader adapted the screenplay from the novel by Manuel Puig, and his fearless willingness to explore every corner of human nature serves what is greatest and sweetest in the performances of William Hurt and Raul Julia.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    On the Ropes
    Jolts with a quiet intimacy.
  15. Tom Dowd & the Language of Music
    It makes a convincing argument that Dowd's personal history is a kind of history of the 20th century itself, encompassing the era's art, science, commerce and politics.
  16. The Hours
    You can only cram so much of this stuff into a movie without putting your audience to sleep -- The movie sags badly in the middle, swirling around itself without making headway.
  17. Junebug
    Ensemble casts like this are not easy to come by. Adams is something more than that -- a brilliant young comedian bursting into bloom.
  18. Promises
    Proves too sincere to exploit its subjects and too honest to manipulate its audience.
  19. Tony Takitani
    This gossamer work is one of the loveliest examples of minimalist cinema I've seen in a long time.
  20. The Color of Paradise
    The performances are revelatory.
  21. Nine Queens
    Writer-director Fabián Bielinsky's devilish Nine Queens serves as further evidence that Argentina's film industry is at the forefront of a resurgent Latin American cinema.
  22. Casino Royale
    What's appealing about Bond is precisely its unhip classicism -- its promise of clean, crisp excitement delivered without the interference of whiplash-inducing camera pyrotechnics, attention-deficient editing patterns, gratuitous color tinting and/or ear-splitting rock ballads.
  23. In the Company of Men
    A provocative, timely script full of gasp-inducing lines and scenes.
  24. Monrovia, Indiana
    Wiseman doesn’t engage with immigration or migrant labor in his town portrait, which helps make Monrovia, Indiana a stubborn entry into his canon. Many of his subjects are invested in the continuity of what they perceive as a timeless American normalcy, but they’re too polite — and cagey — to say what that means on camera.
  25. The Blair Witch Project
    It's a small film whose power is derived from its stripped-down scale.
  26. Spellbound
    For the committed word nerd, spelling has its intrinsic pleasures, but in Spellbound it's another example of the peculiarly American mania for turning everything -- even play --into work.
  27. Rabbit-Proof Fence
    Noyce wants us to feel the joy of the homecoming, but he's honest enough to show, in a coda that tells what happened to the girls after their break for home, how Rabbit Proof Fence finally must be more a tale of courage than of victory.
  28. Whale Rider
    Writer-director Niki Caro, who adapted the screenplay from the novel, has crafted a script replete with both crowd-pleasing touches and subtle but powerful insights into all the characters.
  29. Sunset Story
    It's the cinematic equivalent of glancing up at the sky and taking a good deep breath.
  30. Minority Report
    Terrifically entertaining specimen of Spielbergian sci-fi, incomparably better than "A.I." and as dark a movie as the director has made since "Schindler's List."
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