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. Bomb the System
    As Bomb snakes its way toward tragedy, it grates rather than entices. The actors come off more as poseurs than as characters, and the film's political and cultural insights are superficial and old hat.
  2. The Ninth Day
    A morally complex and emotionally satisfying drama about the vagaries of Catholic response to the Third Reich.
  3. A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
    The movie is affectionate without exactly being infectious, and Browne, who begins his film with the Michael Moore–esque revelation that Americans bowl in greater numbers than they vote, disappoints by not devoting more attention to bowling in its amateur incarnations.
  4. Saving Face
    In her charming debut feature, writer-director Alice Wu works hard to sidestep both pathos and antic comedy, an admirable ambition that makes for a relentlessly low-key film that nonetheless builds to a third act rich in surprising turns of character.
  5. Genesis
    The story is as wonderful in the showing as it is in the telling, by an African griot (oral historian) who stirs our tragicomic passage from birth to death, into a simple clay pot.
  6. Sex, Politics & Cocktails
    This peculiar little comedy, shot on digital video, gets points for editorial pizzazz, but earns a big zero for content.
  7. Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
    The strengths of Dominion, however, have been little diminished by its long shelf life and, in fact, may have grown stronger with age.
  8. Fixing Frank
    Boasts one of the most entertaining and bitterly astute screenplays I've had the pleasure of listening to in a while, with its lengthening spirals of deceit, mendacity and one-upmanship, and its elegant linguistic dances around difficult truths.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Second Best
    It tries too hard for sincerity, when it's actually more sincere when cynical. Filmed in 17 days with hand-held cameras that give it a home-movie feel, the movie takes blue-collar pride in its own hopelessness.
  10. Stolen Childhoods
    A serious work of analysis, rooting the resistance to reform in Third World government corruption and Western profiteering.
  11. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
    Lucas is a major figure, and Revenge of the Sith may be some kind of historic achievement -- the first movie in which it is fully impossible to tell where flesh ends and digital paint begins.
  12. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire
    Though it includes plenty of footage from those terrible days, this wonderful, devastating documentary is as much Dallaire's story as it is the story of a whole continent abandoned by a cynical world.
  13. Mindhunters
    A tiring exercise in time-biding sadism (versus wit or suspense), inflated with shock editing, noisy effects and an angry score, like a thriller with road rage.
  14. Kicking & Screaming
    My own little critic-in-training laughed her head off. Lacks taste, must try harder.
  15. Monster-in-Law
    This is a gay men's movie whose primary function is to doll Fonda up like a drag queen and let her rip.
  16. Unleashed
    The most enjoyable film Besson has had his name on in eons.
  17. Mad Hot Ballroom
    The worthy text of Mad Hot Ballroom is undercut by the real source of its energy, the heat of competition and the pure joy of winning.
  18. My Mother
    Honoré never gets beneath these characters' sunburned skins, and well before the end, the film tips irretrievably over into the realm of absurdity.
  19. Kings & Queen
    For all its hectic comings and goings, though, Kings & Queen is superbly controlled, gracefully shot and edited, and, for its entire 150 minutes, as engrossing as its meanings are opaque.
  20. Lost
    Writer-director Darren Lemke's likable thriller shows surprising smarts for a low-budget debut, cribbing from all the right sources.
  21. Modigliani
    A tiresome, hammy and ultimately annoying portrait of the artist as a young drunk.
  22. House of Wax
    Boring.
  23. Kingdom of Heaven
    In its depiction of a fleeting, but nevertheless factual, peace in the Middle East, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven may seem a more quixotic Hollywood fantasy than all six Star Wars movies lumped together.
  24. Fighting Tommy Riley
    Davis, who did some writing for a TV series and acted in a couple of B-thrillers, is notably solid inhabiting Riley's conflicted machismo, supported by Diane Tayler's fine turn as a bottom-rung manager.
  25. Jiminy Glick in Lalawood
    While it isn't surprising that improv gods Short and fellow SNL vet Jan Hooks, as Glick's wife, Dixie, are brilliant, who knew that perennial onscreen good girl Elizabeth Perkins, playing here a has-been bitch-diva, could be so brittle and sexy?
  26. Mysterious Skin
    A warped, but beautiful and strangely hopeful, coming-of-age tale.
  27. Up for Grabs
    But by film's end, no one is looking good. If Wranovics is somewhat too noncommittal in his presentation, he still shows a great eye for detail.
  28. The Great Role
    Half a notch above a vanity project, this chipper little number by French director Steve Suissa offers a deadly combination of shamelessness, narcissism and schoolboy comedy.
  29. Brothers
    Bier's portrayal of the brothers' interplay holds few surprises, and the exploitation of the war between East and West is vulgar, contrived and borderline racist.
  30. A Hole in One
    Ledes shows promise, but truly, this would have been better left to Todd Haynes.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »