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. Munich
    Munich is at best a muddled prayer for peace whose weakness stems not from its politics but from the misconception of its main character. Avner is not just a fictional character, but an absurdly improbable expression of Spielbergian schmaltz.
  2. Caché (Hidden)
    The eerily timely subject of Haneke's film is France's unwilling encounter with the disenfranchised minorities it has tried to sweep under the rug. As one who giggled through his widely admired, irredeemably silly "The Piano Teacher," I wasn't prepared to be easily won over by Caché, but it turns out to be his most human and affecting movie to date.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Ringer
    The movie strains so hard to have its heart in the right place that it never really exploits the guilty-pleasure fun of the premise.
  4. The Intruder
    For Denis’ film - which may be her most intricately constructed and intensely beautiful to date - is one that transcends words and stories, a movie to be felt rather than rationalized.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cheaper by the Dozen 2
    What keeps the film afloat (barely) is the sheer charisma of Eugene Levy and the young Alyson Stoner, who manage to find emotion and laughs in the tritest of dialogue and the flimsiest of scenarios.
  6. Fun with Dick and Jane
    This is satire made from the inside of the ivory tower, and when, late in the third act, Fun With Dick and Jane decides to come on strong with platitudes about how the petit bourgeois really can stick it to the haute bourgeois, it goes from bad to worse.
  7. The White Countess
    I have the greatest respect for Kazuo Ishiguro, whose wonderful novel "The Remains of the Day" became one of the best films in the Merchant-Ivory oeuvre. But the combination of his stately writing and James Ivory's stately directing, even when pepped by Christopher Doyle's fizzy cinematography, makes for fatally low-key viewing.
  8. The Family Stone
    A potentially interesting tale flailing haplessly in the quicksand of holiday-movie formula.
  9. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
    Making an altogether impressive big-screen directing debut, Jones exudes quiet control over this full-bodied Western, taking pleasure in his measured pacing, mixing somber authority with flashes of surrealist wit and luxuriating in the magnificent, vanishing vistas of his home state.
  10. The Producers
    The musical film version of The Producers is, for better or worse, a faithful record of the stage production, adhering to the same if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it philosophy that informed the recent "Rent."
    • 26 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Angels with Angles
    Not even Gorshin's marvelously dead-on impression of Burns can save a movie that rewrites screwball comedy in the same way King Henry VIII rewrote Catholicism.
  12. Hoodwinked!
    With its chatty, overstuffed patter, Hoodwinked strains at the seams to look with it, like one of those dressed-alike Beverly Hills mother-daughter combos. Having said all that, the songs (yes, there are songs, too), mostly written by Todd Edwards, provide an unexpected bright spot.
  13. The Big White
    The clammy eccentricity on display -- is like a wet blanket, while Colin Friesen's lazy screenplay has all the wit of a slushball. "March of the Penguins" was funnier and edgier.
  14. King Kong
    King Kong isn't terrible, but it's something that none of Jackson's previous movies ever was -- it's enervating.
  15. The Grace Lee Project
    Niftily shot and edited, The Grace Lee Project isn't just a witty unpacking of stereotype. It's also a welcome freshening of the old documentary saw that there's no such thing as an ordinary person.
  16. Happy Here and Now
    Since premiering on the festival circuit in 2002, this small masterpiece has been one of the best films around not to secure a proper theatrical release, and while one week on a single L.A. screen at the height of the crowded holiday season may not exactly qualify as proper, it's nevertheless a joyous happening.
  17. Memoirs of a Geisha
    It's not a great movie, or even a particularly good one, but it's spectacular. No expense has been spared. The technical crew reads like a roll call of Oscar-night regulars.
  18. Brokeback Mountain
    Brokeback Mountain is at once the gayest and the least gay Hollywood film I've seen, which is another way of saying that Lee has a knack for culling universality from the most specific identities.
  19. Mrs Henderson Presents
    Stephen Frears has had more downs than ups of late, but I would never have thought the man responsible for "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "The Grifters" capable of stooping to pap as pappy as this unbearably chipper take on the real-life story of Laura Henderson.
  20. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
    By staying focused on the children -- frightened evacuees from the London Blitz whose parallel war in Narnia both taps into and finally quiets their unspoken terrors -- Adamson keeps faith with the humanity of Lewsis' tale.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Marebito (The Stranger from Afar)
    Marebito's ghoulish delight in gore will turn off the squeamish, but tougher souls will recognize that the over-the-top shocks are Shimizu's way of illustrating how terrifying the risk of human connection can be.
  22. Neal 'N' Nikki
    Nepotism can't account for the movie's stylistic horrors. Writer-director Arjun Sablok, a TV veteran with visual ADD, has pitched the candy-colored cuteness at a frenzy that verges on hysteria.
  23. The World's Fastest Indian
    A warm, spacious road movie with a stirring sense of the wide-open landscapes of the American West.
  24. Æon Flux
    The plot frequently resets/realigns itself in the fashion of "Lost" or "Alias," as good guys become bad guys, friends become enemies, and combatants become lovers. To portray confusion and uncertainty is one thing; to make a film this unsure of itself, wracked by its own faulty footing and reticence, is quite another.
  25. Transamerica
    Transamerica is about as sexual as "The Brady Bunch." It's about an intelligent woman in excruciating transition to a new body that will line up with an identity she's held all along.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    First Descent
    Hardcore fans will appreciate the handful of genuinely gnarly aerial sequences, but these gravity-defying stunts, which can be thrilling as part of a five-minute James Bond pre-credit sequence, grow very tedious when repeated over almost two hours.
  27. The Kid & I
    Gores certainly seems to be enjoying himself, and diplomacy and plain old good taste prevent one from saying much of anything about his screen performance. Arnold doesn't merit such kindness, nor does producer and director Penelope Spheeris, whose work barely rates above the level of rote competence.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt
    The archetypal Townes Van Zandt song is a low-key ballad filled with sadness and failed humanity. Director Margaret Brown's documentary about the revered songwriter's songwriter (who died at the age of 52 on New Year's Day, 1997) keenly achieves the same tone.
  29. The Boys of Baraka
    The kids absolutely win your heart, but there's something off-putting in the film's lazy juxtaposition of unexamined Negro dysfunction tropes (absent fathers, violent streets) against an idyllic Africa tended by white benevolence.
  30. Down to the Bone
    Quietly devastating.
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