L.A. Weekly's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Four Brothers
    It's a finely tuned Motor City engine: The action, including a nighttime car chase through a blinding snowstorm, is fast, brutal and efficient; the Motown soundtrack never cuts out; and as a gangster called Sweet, the British-Nigerian actor Chiwetel Ejiofor gives an electrifying performance.
  2. The Great Raid
    The Great Raid cries out for the kind of B-movie industriousness that Dahl brought to his early, low-budget films noirs (Kill Me Again, Red Rock West and The Last Seduction), but instead it has dreams of sugarplum Oscars dancing in its head, and never stops mistaking spectacle for the truly spectacular.
  3. Asylum
    I hope to God that Patrick McGrath's novel Asylum, about a bunch of repressed Brits manipulating the stuffing out of one another in a 1950s psychiatric hospital, is better than the shallowly competent exercise in nastiness that British director David Mackenzie and screenwriter Patrick Marber have made of it.
  4. The Goebbles Experiment
    Brilliantly edited for drama and irony, The Goebbels Experiment juxtaposes little-seen German propaganda films with excerpts from Goebbels' diary.
  5. Grizzly Man
    While Grizzly Man is never less than a fascinating portrait of a troubled Peter Pan who couldn't function in human society and tried to remake the animal kingdom into his own private Hanna-Barbera cartoon, it fails to establish Treadwell as much more than a serious headcase, let alone a titanic figure.
  6. Pretty Persuasion
    This is a very funny film about a creepy, excruciatingly lonely world.
  7. Wasabi Tuna
    Fox does have a sharp sense of the absurd that comes out in silly subplots.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pulse
    Whether you take it as horror show or social commentary (or both), this is sublimely terrifying stuff.
  9. Clean
    The emotional truthfulness of Clean enters into our bloodstreams with its muted vigor, and we find ourselves getting hooked by this tale of getting unhooked.
  10. Chaos
    Writer-director David DeFalco's ugly, pointless and dishonest remake of Craven's remake.
  11. A State of Mind
    The stadiums and performance halls of Pyongyang become staging grounds for massive, highly choreographed political pageants that make the Nuremberg rallies look like dinner theater. You’ve never seen anything quite like these dazzling displays of groupthink.
  12. The Dukes of Hazzard
    Director Jay Chandrasekhar (Super Troopers, Club Dread) does a fine job with the car jumps. Just try to wake up whenever you hear "Yee-haw."
  13. Broken Flowers
    It's a romantic comedy in which both the romance and the comedy are turned to such muted levels that any lower would require closed captioning.
  14. 2046
    The result is a film chilly and externalized in all the ways that Mood was bottled up and woozily dreamlike.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    My Date with Drew
    What's most grating, though, is how the film pretends to be an inspiring story about one ordinary guy's pursuit of a quixotic dream to meet his muse, when in fact Herzlinger's adoration of Drew is considerably less heartfelt than his infatuation with himself.
  16. Saint Ralph
    In fairness, the movie isn't the absolute worst of its kind and there's a certain charm to Butcher's amiable, puppy-eyed performance. But Michael McGowan's direction is as flat as an asphalt road, and his script is gasping for air long before it enters the final stretch.
  17. Secuestro express
    Too often, though, Jakubowicz falls back on his relentlessly pirouetting DV camera, attention-deficient editing and ear-splitting sound effects as a substitute for real tension, or a more piercing inquiry into the bubbling tension between South America's haves and its poverty-stricken have-nots.
  18. Duma
    A drama of uncommon beauty and emotional resonance.
  19. The Chumscrubber
    Shrill, smug would-be satire.
  20. Junebug
    Ensemble casts like this are not easy to come by. Adams is something more than that -- a brilliant young comedian bursting into bloom.
  21. Darwin's Nightmare
    But for all its bleakness, Nightmare is a film that demands to be seen. In unflinching terms, it captures the hellish existence endured by the many so that the few may wallow in privilege.
  22. Must Love Dogs
    At once over- and under-written, and peppered with tiresome coincidences and misunderstandings, Goldberg’s mechanical, joke-one, joke-two, joke-three approach to ensemble screenwriting soon betrays his TV-sitcom roots.
  23. Sky High
    Kurt Russell is adorably self-mocking as the cluelessly enthusiastic dad in his dorky superhero uniform, and even the spiffy effects lack self-importance. "The Incredibles" it ain't, but Sky High will do nicely.
  24. Stealth
    Even Cohen can't dull the loony romanticism of the movie’s finale and, to his credit, stages one truly spectacular bit of action midway through, when Biel bails out behind enemy lines and narrates each harrowing moment of her earthward plummet.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Aristocrats
    Delicious fun, indeed, but it doesn't really require a large screen. Please send me a copy of the DVD.
  26. Tony Takitani
    This gossamer work is one of the loveliest examples of minimalist cinema I've seen in a long time.
  27. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    By turns merry, tough-minded and sweetly nostalgic.
  28. Hustle & Flow
    But while some may leave the theater tapping their toes and whistling the lyrics to such inimitable original ballads as "Hard for a Pimp" and "Whoop That Trick," they should hang their heads low and mourn the sorry state of the contemporary African-American movie.
  29. The Island
    Nary an original idea abounds in The Island.
  30. Bad News Bears
    There may be no other actor (Thornton)working today (or as frequently) who is this good each and every time out.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »