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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  1. Sleeping Dogs Lie
    A movie with a premise and an ad campaign promising sexual outrageousness, Sleeping Dogs Lie turns out to be rather tame.
  2. Heartthrob
    Apart from an extended scene-setting flashback that takes the form of a lavish Farah Khan song-and-dance montage, most of the running time is devoted to wearying flop-sweat farce.
  3. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
    An excellent documentary by MacArthur fellow Stanley Nelson (The Murder of Emmett Till), offers no grand theories for the Jonestown phenomenon.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Masai: The Rain Warriors
    As our warriors encounter the Kenyan equivalents of Cyclopes and Sirens, the languid pace and the lulling voice-over (French subtitled in English) make for a nice bedtime story rather than a window on primal struggles.
  5. 51 Birch Street
    Open-minded, probing but never prurient, 51 Birch Street is much more than a portrait of suburban ennui. It's a loving, painful map of the gulf between thought and word, between word and deed, that props up good marriages, and sends bad ones to hell.
  6. Hair High
    Famed animator Bill Plympton's legendarily skewed aesthetic and worldview are in top form here, bringing life to a script that plays like "Carrie" on a wicked acid trip.
  7. The Grudge 2
    Generating gore-free unease through sound effects and scary faces is the specialty of director Takashi Shimizu, who helmed the original series (known in Japan as Ju-On). He creates some unsettling moments here, particularly a well-staged scene involving a body under the sheets and a man in a shower, but the evil ghost itself is a predictable, one-trick pony.
  8. Man of the Year
    No doubt, Levinson thought he was making this generation's "Dr. Strangelove." What he's actually made is a desperate, ponderous sop to progressives that caters to all of the left's worst fears about voter fraud, corporate malfeasance and the impossibility of effecting real change.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Marine
    Tongues are planted firmly in cheek; it’s impossible to endorse a full price ticket, but fans of campy action should check this out.
  10. Driving Lessons
    While Driving Lessons' writer-director, Jeremy Brock, sticks to the all-too-familiar template of such tales, he's given Walters her best role since "Educating Rita." Hamming it up with the precision of a master, she makes this somewhat plodding film a pleasure, as does young Grint.
  11. Infamous
    Infamous is the better Capote film, yes, but also the less easily digestible one, the more eccentric one and -- yes -- the gayer one.
  12. Nearing Grace
    The actors are superb -- especially Smith, who exudes some of the live-wire charisma of the young Sean Penn in Rosenthal's "Bad Boys," and the smoldering Brewster.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tideland
    This Southern Gothic Alice in Wonderland is not for the faint-hearted, to be sure, yet amid the swaying chaff there are moments of piercing grace and beauty when we'e reminded of the lost, lonely child at the heart of this tale. If nothing else, it's liberating to see one of cinema's unrepentant fantasists going out on a limb like this and cutting loose.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker
    It's ostensibly an action movie, and the action is so poorly shot as to be embarrassing.
  15. One Night with the King
    Those viewers who found anti-Semitism lurking under every stone in The Passion of the Christ may rejoice in this celebration of Jewish heroism; all others should rest assured that falling asleep in the cinema is not a mortal sin.
  16. The Departed
    DiCaprio harnesses a terrific, buggy intensity reminiscent of "GoodFellas'" hopped-up Henry Hill (Ray Liotta).
    • 36 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Employee of the Month
    Don Calame and Chris Conroy's script is witty and peppered with good laughs, but cops out a bit at the end with an overly conventional resolution. As for Jessica Simpson... her character is virtually irrelevant, as is her acting ability.
  18. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
    Few surprises lie in store for connoisseurs of torture cinema, though unlike its 2003 predecessor, this Massacre owes less to Bay’s attention-deficient aesthetics than to the measured, Georgia O’Keefe-on-acid sensibility that guided Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel’s much-cannibalized original.
  19. 49 Up
    Their pain is our pleasure, for though occasionally Apted's bluntness makes you want to take a bite out of his neck, there's something immensely satisfying about watching the playing out of ordinary lives we've become attached to over time.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    El Cortez
    Every "twist" is so telegraphed that there's little suspense here. Phillips' performance is an enjoyable change of pace, and the gratuitous sex scene with Middendorf is fairly hot, but the story's just an aggravating wait for the inevitable double-crosses. For it to be a true lowbrow pleasure, more sex would be needed.
  21. Tales of the Rat Fink
    These hunks of greased lightning tell how a gearhead SoCal teen got wind of the post-World War II hot-rodding craze, crossed paths with a pinstriper named von Dutch and ended up as the automotive visionary whom Tom Wolfe famously called “a genius of the only uniquely American art form.”
  22. Shortbus
    The boldest provocation of Mitchell’s sweet, tender and gently funny film may be its exuberant celebration of community and togetherness at a cultural moment rife with fatalism and disconnect.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
    It's a loving film, but Kushner's own characters are more richly textured than Mock's depiction of the playwright and the divided, divisive world he's trying to fathom.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    ...So Goes the Nation
    From its riveting opening to its gripping conclusion, . . . So Goes the Nation is arguably the most intelligent, kinetic analysis of the modern election process since "The War Room."
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Queen
    Politically shrewd, unexpectedly funny yet immaculately tasteful docudrama.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Open Season
    On the plus side, Open Season enjoys a clear narrative, real rooting interest and good interspecies rapport. On the downside, there’s a surfeit of cruel bunny-rabbit gags.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    School for Scoundrels
    This crass remake of the 1960 Robert Hamer film is kept alive for a while by director Todd Phillips (Old School), but ultimately succumbs to its weak script and hopeless typecasting.
  28. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
    It's forceful and alive and spilling over with crazy poetry.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Broken Sky
    All in all, a striking, memorable disappointment -- not unlike so many first loves.
  30. All the King's Men
    I'd take almost any colorful-character shtick over the gloomy gravitas that settles over All the King's Men early on and never leaves.
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