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 8.6 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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    • 70 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    I.O.U.S.A.
    One graphic that I.O.U.S.A. doesn't include is a national balance sheet of our assets and liabilities, which would illustrate that the former is more than double the latter. We're in the black, and a film this deep in the red isn't something to be scared of at all -- or taken seriously.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Star Wars: The Clone Wars
    The Clone Wars is minor to the point of irrelevance, nothing more than a stylized direct-to-DVD shrug projected onto a big screen while Lucas launches two more TV series filling in prequel blanks better left empty.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Mirrors
    It's a mystery why Sutherland attached himself to this dour, muddled thriller.
  4. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
    This low-budget horror comedy arrives via a lively trailer and a witty print ad, yet the film itself never quite takes off.
  5. Tropic Thunder
    Like this summer's other slapstick cause célèbre, "Pineapple Express," it's a comedy with as high or higher a body count as the movies it purports to be parodying, and the problem isn't the violence per se but rather the fact that neither movie ever finds a satisfactory balance between tongue-in-cheek and guts-in-hand.
  6. Pineapple Express
    The problem, dare I say it, is that the movie just ... isn't ... that ... funny.
  7. Bottle Shock
    Just around the halfway point, something unexpected happens -- the movie actually gets good. You can chalk that up to the delightful Alan Rickman.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Midnight Meat Train
    Director Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus) is a bit weak when it comes to storytelling, but there are few who could so enthusiastically stage a butcher fight amid hanging human carcasses in a subway car.
  9. Swing Vote
    The longer Swing Vote hangs around, the more engaging it becomes. It's twice as smart as you have any reason to expect but still only half as smart as you wish it were.
  10. The X Files: I Want to Believe
    The truth is still out there, like an unsold lawn chair at a garage sale, in this just plain lousy second big-screen outing for erstwhile FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Space Chimps
    The animation, incidentally, is half-a--ed, like they ran out of the $292.96 budget halfway through. Rip-off indeed.
  12. Transsiberian
    Anderson and his very fine cast keep things chugging along at a breathless pace, complete with a midfilm reversal of fortune nearly as unexpected as "Psycho's" shower scene. All aboard!
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Meet Dave
    Meet Dave feels a little too cuddly and familiar to be more than a programmatic summer kids' movie -- better than average, but not worth phoning home about.
  14. Death Defying Acts
    This won't be remembered as one of the prodigiously talented Armstrong's great films (My Brilliant Career, High Tide, Little Women), but it's still 90 percent better than everything else out there.
  15. Giorni e nuvole
    It plays out more like a 12-step program than a human drama.
  16. Hancock
    Doesn't seem to quite know what it is or where it's headed. So it goes anywhere it can while treading thematic water.
  17. Full Grown Men
    Lyrical and funny, Full Grown Men is a tough-minded film about the need to grow up.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beauty in Trouble
    Unfortunately, Hrebejk settles for unsatisfying allusions to the Czech experience that never break through the melodrama to make his case with any conviction.
  19. Chris & Don. A Love Story
    To describe the novelist's final days, Bachardy opens a drawer and begins pulling out the magnificent deathbed drawings he did of Isherwood -- a fusion of art and love that's deeply moving.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Miss Conception
    Miss Conception's dim view of women soon transcends unexamined and goes straight to offensive.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    War, Inc.
    Antiwar, anti-Bush, anti-corporate, yet neither as progressive nor half as funny as the "Harold and Kumar" sequel, War, Inc. squanders some top-tier talent (Marisa Tomei, Sir Ben Kingsley) as well as our patience.
  22. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
    Things could be worse. At the end of the day, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is nothing if not consistent -- taking care of business solidly, professionally and without a lick of the genuine wonderment or inspiration that you can find in surplus in Jon Favreau's Spielberg-influenced "Iron Man."
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Previous Engagement
    Stevenson manages to deliver a few poignant moments of nostalgia for the pleasures of youth against the stunning backdrop of the Maltese coastline.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Frontier(s)
    As a satire of France's recent turn to the right, Frontier(s) is both hysterical and muddled; as straight-up splatter -- a Grand Guignol concerto of scalding steam, slashed tendons and table saw, with a solo for exploding head -- it's as relentless as it is hateful, hammily directed and derivative of the dreariest slop in contemporary American horror cinema.
  25. Vice
    Inglis offers complicated characters and uniformly worthy performances without falsely manipulating us into sympathizing with anybody but tries too strenuously to fuse his warring polarities of character-driven intrigue and plot-driven treacheries into an allegory of redemption. In the end, that feels like one or two big things too many.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What Happens in Vegas
    The stars, despite having only a fraction of the charm and talent of classic sparring-but-meant-for-each-other duos, know how to mug for the camera and well up on cue, and somehow that turns out to be enough to carry this trifle.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Favor
    The Favor ultimately takes itself too seriously and ends up stranded in an unconvincing no man's land of cute bleakness.
  28. A Plumm Summer
    A Plumm Summer isn't remotely in the same league as "My Dog Skip," "Fly Away Home," "Lassie" or any of the handful of traditional family dramas that have restored luster to a genre that's been overtaken by techno-acrobats.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Deal
    When you're working with clearly conventional material, it helps to attack it from a cockeyed angle or at least adopt a gritty, lived-in urgency, but Deal is fatally earnest.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Deception
    This vision of Gotham is as fastidious as the cockpit of a BMW. But rather than sell luxury sedans, Deception offers a fantasy even big money can't buy -- Wall Street as a cross between a James Bond adventure and a Victoria’s Secret spread.
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