L.A. Weekly's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. The Matrix Revolutions
    Nearly wall-to-wall climax -- an unwieldy, two-plus-hours third act of a movie, guided by the principle (incubated by "Reloaded" and fully grown here) that too much is never too much.
  2. Prime
    On and on drags this amour fou, with its one-liners, ripostes, elaborate misunderstandings and chastened reaction shots, all courtesy of writer-director Ben Younger, straining to let out his inner femme after the testosterone excesses of "Boiler Room."
  3. Over Her Dead Body
    Many a comic potentiality is underworked, and the film's prevailing tone is obnoxiously erratic -- surely the supporting eccentrics (Jason Biggs and Lindsay Sloane) aren't supposed to be so off-putting? -- but it rests safe when entrusted to the charisma of its principals.
  4. My Heart Goes Hadippa
    Ultimately, what’s most noteworthy about this middling effort is how aggressively un-contemporary it is.
  5. Idlewild
    The film only rarely harnesses the power of the anachronistic, funk-driven, beat-heavy rap music that swells its soundtrack. Even the intricately choreographed crowd dance scenes, filled with frenzied movement, are more often stillborn than stimulating.
  6. The Page Turner
    Though The Page Turner clearly aims for ambiguity of meaning, you'd have to be blind, or deaf to the strenuously long-faced score, to miss the signs and portents that keep piling up in this dispiritingly transparent movie, which brandishes its foregone conclusion 20 minutes in.
  7. People Say I'm Crazy
    His is a valiant story, though it doesn't quite work as a nearly 90-minute documentary -- the Cadigans simply don’t have enough material.
  8. The Amateurs
    The Amateurs is nothing if not easy to watch. Yet, as a writer, Traeger is consternatingly adolescent and glib.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dieu est grand, je suis toute petite
    Tatou evinces that innate self-possession in which Frenchwomen specialize, and lets it fly here. That, in turn, keeps this flawed movie aloft.
  10. Spartan
    Terrifically terrible, Spartan could well be Mamet's first true comedy. Only the movie thinks it's a nail biter.
  11. Twelve and Holding
    Cuesta works well with underage actors, but there's no hiding the fact that these kids amount to little more than the sum of their suffering at the hands of cardboard parental incompetents
  12. Ladder 49
    Phoenix, who initially seemed the kind of actor who was too cool, too angry, to appear in studio pap such as this, is a magnetic presence, despite the numbing pathos surrounding him, but isn't that what we used to say about Travolta?
  13. Inside Deep Throat
    Seeks to establish a pioneering role for the movie in liberating America’s sex life. To me it’s far from clear that that cheerfully cheesy slice of hardcore, made for $25,000 by a middle-aged hairdresser named Gerard Damiano, has spawned much in the way of a cultural legacy.
  14. Stealth
    Even Cohen can't dull the loony romanticism of the movie’s finale and, to his credit, stages one truly spectacular bit of action midway through, when Biel bails out behind enemy lines and narrates each harrowing moment of her earthward plummet.
  15. Bootmen
    One expects razzle-dazzle dance sequences to lift this movie above its clichés, but they are few and far between, which is not only disappointing, it's downright baffling.
  16. Mean Machine
    It does, however, fairly bubble with speed-freak energy and a dry, laddish wit that keeps the jokes coming.
  17. The War Zone
    Roth can obviously direct actors sympathetically, and he paces the movie adroitly.
  18. What Women Want
    Narrow definitions of femininity limit the comedy and the romance.
  19. Miss Julie
    A solidly filmed great play.
  20. Gothika
    Given her (Halle Berry) biggest part since winning Oscar, she responds with a zeal that's more than the movie deserves.
  21. The Affair of the Necklace
    Jeanne is no fun at all. This is no fault of Swank, who's caught in the overall confusion of a movie crippled by its ambitions to be both caper and heartfelt melodrama, to say nothing of a cautionary tale about the politics of celebrity in our own culture.
  22. Skins
    The sharpness of Eyre's opening, however, ebbs away when he takes up the story of Rudy (Eric Schweig) and Mogie (Graham Greene), two brothers with neatly opposed responses to the reservation grind.
  23. Maryam
    Where the young writer-director impresses is in the unforced sketching of era details (gas lines, the tacky energy of roller-skating rinks), in the sharp psychological insight into his lead characters, and in the performances he pulls from his actors.
  24. The Family That Preys
    What's memorable here is the sparkling chemistry between Bates and Woodard, whose scenes together are a pleasure to watch, even as one thinks that their next outing should be to co-teach a master class entitled, "How To Rise Above Cliché."
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Is It
    The problem is that Ortega offers only the public Michael.
  26. Me, Myself & Irene
    For all their foul jokes and embarrassments, the brothers have a talent for creating characters whose goodness, and lack of ironic self-consciousness, shield them against life's insults.
  27. Something's Gotta Give
    Jack, the actor, smiles obligingly, but you can practically feel him rolling his eyes.
  28. The Motorcycle Diaries
    A gorgeously burnished vintage post card come to life, Motorcycle Diaries has about as much depth and emotional currency as the cardboard that post card would be stamped on.
  29. Katakuri-ke no kôfuku
    It's an amusing scenario, until even Miike seems to lose his taste for the oddly sweet concoction and allows the film to drift aimlessly to a rainbow-hued finale.
  30. Fade to Black
    Routinely assembled live document.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »