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. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
    The list of ills is endless, well-researched, and cross-referenced repeatedly for emphasis. That makes the film a bit of a slog at times, but the fury and grief of the folks interviewed propel it forward.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Christmas in the Clouds
    More of a Lifetime holiday special than a theatrical feature, writer-director Kate Montgomery's tale of love and mistaken identity at a Native American ski resort is too sticky-sweet to be memorable.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Derailroaded
    In spite of its sympathy, Derailroaded veers into reality-TV voyeurism whenever the former street singer bemoans his lack of fame or breaks into childish caterwauling.
  4. The Legend of Zorro
    The Legend of Zorro is a Saturday matinee entirely lacking in Saturday-matinee thrills or brevity -- what's passable for the first 80 minutes or so becomes intolerable as the movie ticks past the two-hour mark.
  5. Prime
    On and on drags this amour fou, with its one-liners, ripostes, elaborate misunderstandings and chastened reaction shots, all courtesy of writer-director Ben Younger, straining to let out his inner femme after the testosterone excesses of "Boiler Room."
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Saw II
    Saw II repels, morally and aesthetically, and while some -- including the filmmakers, perhaps -- may take this as a compliment, it isn't intended as one. Let the game stop. Please.
  7. The Weather Man
    The Weather Man begs to be taken seriously and can't easily be dismissed; it kicks around in your mind for a good long while after you've seen it. Cage, who does his finest work since "Leaving Las Vegas," has stripped himself bare of the patented tics and mannerisms he honed in one Jerry Bruckheimer movie too many.
  8. America Brown
    Director Black is competent with the camera, but he seems to have instructed the entire cast to deliver their lines in hushed tones and pauses pregnant with hoped-for meaning -- except for Kwanten, whose overenthusiastic impersonation of a red-state rube is as grating as horseshoes on a blackboard.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    little man
    Conn is exasperating and heroic in equal measure, an altogether riveting portrait of motherly devotion at its most primal.
  10. New York Doll
    Overall, Whitely's debut film may just fill you with an unexpectedly deep elation.
  11. Paradise Now
    Abu-Assad, who made the lovely 2002 film "Rana's Wedding," is a far more gifted observer of the everyday than he is an action director, which is why, in Paradise Now, he productively sidetracks into a persuasive and often very funny portrait of the irrationalities of life under occupation.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Three... Extremes
    Title notwithstanding, Three . . . Extremes really offers only two.
  13. Ballets Russes
    The meat of the film is their wittily edited interviews with company members, now in their 80s and 90s and scattered around the world, many of them still active as teachers and consultants.
  14. Doom
    Baffling too is The Rock's choice to follow up his acclaimed performance in "Be Cool" with a role that requires him to do little more than widen his eyes and grunt lines.
  15. Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story
    This is as corny as it sounds, and yet not half as cloying and sentimental as you expect. At the end of the day, the horse may win the race, but the fate of the American heartland looms large and unresolved.
  16. Shopgirl
    There's something refreshing about a film set in Los Angeles that gets its L.A.-ness right -- the difference in vibe between Silver Lake and the Hollywood Hills, or the types of people at CityWalk versus Saks. It is that sense of specificity, both geographic and emotional, that gives Shopgirl its pull.
  17. Stay
    A steaming compost heap of high-art pretense and half-cocked psychoanalysis that almost makes you sorry Nicolas Roeg isn't making pictures anymore.
  18. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
    Snappy, fun and outrageously irreverent, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the work of someone with nothing to lose, which is only to the audience's gain.
  19. After Innocence
    Rousing, quietly outraged documentary.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Naked in Ashes
    In spite of its aspirations toward enlightenment, Naked in Ashes leaves its audiences bewildered.
  21. Protocols of Zion
    Levin crawls into America's woodwork to ferret out anti-Semites of all stripes, then rushes at them with Socratic reasoning -- a futile and often hilarious project, since they prove immune to thought reform, however rational.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Kids in America
    A trite teen comedy burdened with lofty aspirations of rallying adolescent audiences to political action.
  23. The Roost
    The Roost advances a nifty man-vs.-nature scenario that harks back to Fessenden's own "Wendigo" and provides a nice chaser to a summer movie season populated by cuddly penguins and benevolent cheetahs.
  24. Ushpizin
    A warm, conciliatory entertainment.
  25. Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family
    There’s nothing postmodern about this "family," unless postmodern means never having to grow up.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Domino
    Scott's lack of faith in the script is all too evident -- in most scenes, the lines are so dull, he has to up the ante of his already-infamous attention-deficit style.
  27. Elizabethtown
    Crowe's undeniable gifts -- his well-crafted individual scenes and his love for his characters -- are more evident here than his flaws.
  28. The Fog
    Nothing comes together after the first ten minutes.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Where the Truth Lies
    When conventional answers arrive, Where the Truth Lies seems as cheesy as its title -- but its disorienting layers of narrative make the double-entendre almost profound.
  30. North Country
    The movie’s old-school feminism is true to its subject, and Theron proves charismatic enough to stand alone as an emblematic working-class heroine doing what she has to do without benefit of feminist theory. I’m even willing to forgive this rousing drama its coy, flirty ending, if only because its heroine has the grace not to drive her pickup truck off a cliff.
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