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. Are We There Yet?
    Surely the only thing more excruciating than being trapped in a car with a bratty child is having to sit through a road-trip movie that features two of them.
  2. An Amazing Couple
    Domestic farce always has a potentially compelling dark side when it reveals the tenuousness of love and the fragility of all human relationships, but Belvaux seems far too busy orchestrating the copious action to pause for anything approaching insight.
  3. Vanity Fair
    Turgid, melodramatic travesty of Thackeray's gimlet-eyed satire.
  4. Freedomland
    Ordinarily it's kind of hard to screw up a Richard Price story, but the writer is his own worst enemy here, with a screenplay so filled with bromides and object lessons from God, you can't tell what he's trying to say.
  5. Basic
    Those expecting a reunion with Jackson, Travolta's “Pulp Fiction” co-star, should be prepared: They don't interact at all, which is a bit like casting Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and not letting them dance together.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Good Luck Chuck
    Though he’s known for his mildly edgy standup, someone in authority has decided Cook would be well-suited for fluffy romantic comedies, but like last fall’s Employee of the Month, Good Luck Chuck is so undistinguished that it feels like an extended screen test.
  7. The Rider Named Death
    Curiously flat and immobile.
  8. Dark Water
    The movie is prettily shot by Almodóvar collaborator Affonso Beato, but no amount of tastefully desaturated color or imaginary friends going whoo-whoo in the deserted apartment upstairs can save this lumbering echt-thriller from fatal tedium.
  9. Spawn
    If Spawn had anything close to a script, it would be a pretty nifty fantasy about conspiracy, apocalypse and a fat killer clown.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Naked in Ashes
    In spite of its aspirations toward enlightenment, Naked in Ashes leaves its audiences bewildered.
  11. Running with Scissors
    One expects neither subtlety nor surprise from a scenario boasting a household pet named Freud. If there's any reason at all to see Running With Scissors, it' Bening.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Provoked: A True Story
    Unfortunately, syrupy music, reductive characterizations and bland cinematography turn her case into an earnest feminist fable that plays like an afterschool special for grown-ups.
  13. Russian Doll
    Kazantzidis struggles for the flavor of classic romance, with a string of standards on the soundtrack to little avail.
  14. Enemies of Laughter
    Paymer is the key to this mild-mannered comedy built on easy setups and borscht-belt one-liners.
  15. Snake Eyes
    Not too long after the knockout opening, all that's left of Snake Eyes are Cage's wild eyes, the dregs of David Koepp's rotten script, and De Palma's restless, anxious camera, on the prowl for something, anything, to hang on to.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Erosion
    For those turned on by the thought of such “sexually charged” scenes as men describing techniques for picking locks to women while drawing on their bodies with mascara pencils, Erosion may provide some pleasure. Everyone else though, will be worn down by the film’s tedious hand-wringing about infidelity and bursts of unerotic sex.
  17. Riding in Cars with Boys
    In many ways, Marshall and Barrymore are an equal match -- while both have a flair for the small touches that build a good comic scene, each lacks the complex layering of motive and emotion that make a human life believably real.
  18. No Turning Back
    Heartfelt yet overly schematic debut feature.
  19. Undertow
    Undertow seems to be straining to say something at once tragic and heartwarming about fathers, sons and brothers, but I'm damned if I know what it is.
  20. 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.
  21. Dot the I
    Parkhill's heart seems to belong to 1940s film noir, where a lonely man could be driven half-mad by the sight of a mystery woman performing a hot flamenco dance, a scene Parkhill stages here to unintentional titter-inducing effect.
  22. Dirty Love
    The sex-comedy-for-girls idea never quite takes off.
  23. Bittersweet Motel
    Never really gets across the essence of who the band members are and why they inspire such fidelity.
  24. Dead or Alive
    Not for the squeamish (a guy rips out his own arm, for goodness' sake), the film is nevertheless more than just a gonzo gross-out. But not by much.
  25. Kiss the Bride
    Complete predictability is avoided only thanks to its openness to the fluidity of sexual identity -- which isn’t enough to make this anything more than the most ignoble outing in bi-curious screen hijinks since France produced Poltergay.
  26. Across the Hall
    Merkin tries too hard for stylistic flourishes (as the hyper set-designed, claustrophobically seedy hotel underscores) and winds up almost sinking the noir-ish tale he’s telling.
  27. See Spot Run
    It's finally a hilarious and cuddly flashback from the dog's point of view, to his training as a pup, that marks the moment when the film finds its sweetly moronic legs.
  28. The Cat in the Hat
    Myers is the movie's fatal flaw, squeezing out the other characters who fatten the plot, mostly with an eye to parents.
  29. Thérèse: The Story of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
    Skip the movie, stay home, read the book and say three Hail Marys.
  30. Human Nature
    Although a few moments are hilarious, this would-be romp remains laboriously earthbound when it should be swinging gaily through the trees.
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