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. That's the Way I Like It
    Goei's sharp-eyed satiric sense evokes the diversity and energy of Singapore, and his good-humored nostalgia makes disco rise from the dead.
  2. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    Leven's tepid screenplay and the passionless self-control of Redford's direction make this bloodless movie a chore to sit through.
  3. Lonesome Jim
    First-time screenwriter James C. Strouse (in whose hometown the film was shot) provides so few clues to the source of Jim's malaise, or that of his entire sad-sack family, that the movie remains rudderless and not the least bit believable.
  4. Kingdom Come
    So many stars means so little room for character and plot.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Little Secrets
    Despite its extraordinary theme, the film wades again and again into the kind of ordinary territory befitting its muted if glossy made-for-TV look and its tinkling, whimsically modern piano score.
  6. Head of State
    Pandering, stiffly acted and brimming with awkward (if progressive) political posturing, Rock's films attempt to filter old Hollywood formula through a hip-hop sensibility.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Third World Cop
    Excels at suspense and atmosphere, despite the garden-variety plot and an unintentionally hilarious - credit sequence .
  8. The Heart of Me
    While director Thaddeus O'Sullivan has some interesting visual ideas -- his period London is a heavily aestheticized, matte-painted dreamscape -- he never makes an emotional connection to the material the way he did in his fine Irish gangland drama, “Nothing Personal.”
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Smother
    With its mixture of high-profile talent and low-watt comic inspiration, Smother feels like the sort of misbegotten curiosity Comedy Central uses to fill its Sunday afternoon programming.
  10. The Animal
    The Animal is tailor-made for last-resort Friday-night rentals.
  11. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
    Creepy enough at first, this relatively gore-free film gradually becomes a stifling talk-fest in which superb actors drone on for so long about the nature of belief that one longs for a juror to spew a little pea soup.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tosca
    This filmed Tosca -- not the first, by the way -- is a pretty good job, if it's filmed Tosca that you want. I'll stay with the stage versions, however, which bite cleaner, and deeper.
  13. The Final Cut
    The movie becomes so cluttered with concept and design, it fails to get even a toehold on the humanistic subtext it's clearly reaching for. A pallid performance by Mira Sorvino, as Williams' girlfriend and advocate for the fully lived and recorded life, doesn't help.
  14. Luminarias
    There are surprising grace notes in all the performances, and familiar, friendly faces pop up in supporting roles.
  15. Running Scared
    Running Scared is decently acted and divertingly brutal, but it's also a giant step backward for its maker.
  16. The Closer You Get
    Oddly anemic and muted -- BBC Saturday-night material.
  17. The Crimson Rivers
    Never lets up: A door can't shut without sounding like a bomb going off; mutilated bodies show up with clockwork punctuality, gratuitously underscored by a relentlessly overbearing soundtrack.
  18. Just My Luck
    Looking tired and sallow and drained of her customary glow, Lindsay Lohan marches grimly through this mechanical tween comedy as if it were a particularly tedious homework assignment. Which it is.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss
    Needless to say, this is one odd concoction, which should find its primary audience among college potheads who like to watch ’70s Hanna-Barbera creations on the Cartoon Network late at night.
  20. Ghost River
    Outside of Sylvia, none of the characters has any real presence or personality in a movie that takes greater interest in shots of pretty flowers than in the human beings onscreen, and in which nearly every major plot turn is the result of blind chance.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Death and Texas
    In DiNovis’ butterfingery hands, the movie tumbles into a pedantic anti-death-penalty rant that's about as funny as a firing squad.
  22. Returning Mickey Stern
    The always-watchable Bologna is the adhesive holding together this slight and gentle romantic comedy, lending it perhaps more conviction and authority than the material warrants.
  23. Don't Tell
    Might make a fun Lifetime TV movie -- if it weren't quite so morose.
  24. La sindrome di Stendhal
    Strangely drab.
  25. City of Ghosts
    Dillon doesn't yet possess the directorial chops to give his story the necessary snap; the action too often feels poky and muffled. But he does have a strong sense of place, and the movie's almost worth seeing just for Jim Denault's exquisite cinematography.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    AVP: Alien vs. Predator
    Make sense? No, it doesn't. But if you manage to endure the exposition, you'll get what you paid for: popping chests. Invisible stalkers. Nicely paced chases through corridors that constantly reconfigure in interlocking stone puzzles.
  27. Death to Smoochy
    A broad, braying yuk fest that revels in coarse jokes, lacks the courage of its own cynicism (things keep wavering into sentimentality) and refuses to develop its own premise.
  28. Circuit
    Mostly, Shafer and co-writer Gregory Hinton lack a strong-minded viewpoint, or a sense of humor, about a world in which the DJ has the power to unify, if only for a night, men of godlike beauty and the mortals who worship them.
  29. Segunda piel
    Lukewarm melodrama disappoints.
  30. Notes on a Scandal
    Queasily parked between halfhearted satire and overcooked melodrama, this adaptation of a well-received 2003 novel by British writer Zoë Heller offers the unhappy spectacle of a raft of acting talent trying to do right by slimy material.
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