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. Flightplan
    Schwentke handles the claustrophobic environment efficiently enough, though he dallies too long before letting anxiety give way to action.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Roll Bounce
    The film's only creative spark comes from Bill Butler and Kishaya Dudley's lively skate choreography, and that you can see in the trailer.
  3. Daltry Calhoun
    Traub does her plucky best, coming off as part Judy Blume heroine, part post-WB hipster, and she provides the film with its few and infrequent moments of emotional truth.
  4. Dear Wendy
    Starts out as an inspired test case for the continued necessity of the Second Amendment, and only near the end does it lose some of its tightly concentrated focus.
  5. Dirty Love
    The sex-comedy-for-girls idea never quite takes off.
  6. Dorian Blues
    Dorian Blues is full of similarly rigged moments, but there are genuine chuckles, and a palpably heartfelt final scene between Dorian and his mom ends the tale on a powerful note.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A History of Violence
    Cronenberg holds up a mirror, but he leaves it up to us to recoil at what we see.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Occupation: Dreamland
    Superb documentary.
  9. Oliver Twist
    Lacking energy and pace and enslaved by a ghastly score, this tepid movie left me longing alternately for David Lean's thrillingly grim 1948 masterpiece, and Carol Reed's chipper 1968 sing-along, with pretty tunes by Lionel Bart.
  10. Proof
    Engrossing.
  11. HellBent
    You can be sure that his victims die shirtless, and are as dumb as the hetero dimwits who fell prey to Jason or Freddy, but what you might not expect is that this queer-slanted slasher flick is actually pretty good.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Cry_Wolf
    Cry Wolf is one of those movies that's rated PG-13 not because the producers wanted to get the broadest audience possible, but because no one 17 or older would be sucker enough to fall for it.
  13. Just Like Heaven
    The usually zippy and subversive director Mark Waters (Freaky Friday, Mean Girls) plays things straight and suffocatingly sentimental - which actually makes the whole movie seem that much creepier.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lord of War
    Incorporating surrealist humor and an ironic patina, Lord of War tries for irreverent satire, but the film (and especially Cage) is too muted and distant.
  15. Corpse Bride
    There is much clattering and clanking plus a couple of songs; some of the gothic-inspired, neo-Victorian visuals are quite arresting; and the corpse bride herself is, dare one say, surprisingly hot. But the whole thing just isn’t much fun.
  16. Thumbsucker
    American independent movies about awkward adolescence are never in short supply, but this highly assured first feature by commercials and music video director Mike Mills is the first since "Donnie Darko" to view the latter stages of teenagerdom as fodder for a phantasmagorical odyssey of Lewis Carroll–like distortions.
  17. The Thing About My Folks
    Raymond De Felitta's directing is straightforward, tactful, lyrical where necessary and never mawkish, and though Reiser's script offers no grand insights, it's full of sharply observed and funny detail.
  18. Stupid Boy
    Composed of artfully used split-screen, lots of hand-held camera, and expertly honed dialogue, the film floats on currents of sadness and understated humor. It also makes Loic's existential ache almost palpable.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One Bright Shining Moment
    The strength of One Bright Shining Moment lies in its reminder of McGovern's critical role in reforming the way his party chose its convention delegates, and how prescient he had always been about the looming disaster of Vietnam.
  20. G
    Cherot (who also co-wrote the script with Charles E. Drew Jr.) has made that rare hip-hop movie that doesn't fetishize lurid ghetto clichés.
  21. Venom
    Although, in the end, this is basically just a moss-strewn remake of his 1997 hit, "I Know What You Did Last Summer," director Jim Gillespie appears invigorated, sending his capable young cast into a series of nicely staged suspense sequences.
  22. Separate Lies
    Though it's not much more than an haute-bourgeois morality play about the inadequacy of bourgeois morals, that's plenty in view of the small but terrific ensemble at Fellowes' disposal.
  23. The Future of Food
    As Future untangles the many ways in which our food supply has been co-opted and tainted in pursuit of a booming bottom line, you realize that beneath its tasteful façade, Garcia's documentary is actually nothing short of a pure horror film.
  24. The Man
    Jackson and Levy strike only damp sparks off each other, and they seem to have been introduced to each other --without benefit of rehearsal -- mere moments before the director cried "Action!"
  25. An Unfinished Life
    The 68-year-old actor (Redford) segues into full-blown irascible-old-man mode, and though the transformation isn't quite as compelling as it sounds, it's easily the best thing going for this Lasse Hallstrom–directed, Wyoming-set weepie.
  26. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
    Creepy enough at first, this relatively gore-free film gradually becomes a stifling talk-fest in which superb actors drone on for so long about the nature of belief that one longs for a juror to spew a little pea soup.
  27. Cote d'Azur
    Bruni-Tedeschi is her usual radiantly libidinal presence, but channeling Bette Midler doesn't become her, and even she can't redeem all the redundant vaudeville carry-on.
  28. Keane
    British actor Damian Lewis, in an astonishingly elastic yet disciplined performance, invests Keane with a richly ambiguous, heartbreaking inner life that's only at peace when he manages to form a tenuous human connection.
  29. Steal Me
    It's not really original stuff, and there are few genuine surprises, but Painter skillfully layers visual details and off-the-cuff dialogue into a smart, condescension-free piece on small towns and the complicated lives they contain. The standout here is the always-wonderful Seymour (Hotel Rwanda, Birth).
  30. Green Street Hooligans
    Playing something of a cipher who reinvents himself as the occasion demands, Wood is unusually well cast, but it's Hunnam, with a psychotic twinkle in his eye, who turns the movie on whenever he's onscreen.
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