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. The Upside of Anger
    One senses that this is an intensely personal project for Binder, who is not as forgiving as he might be toward the mercurial mother. Still, the film is carried by Costner and Allen, who project a chemistry so incrementally built on reluctant camaraderie, they almost seem like siblings.
  2. Millions
    Millions is an intelligent children’s film that may prove to be a guilty pleasure for adults.
  3. In My Country
    In My Country stands closest to "Hotel Rwanda," a similarly clumsy yet inescapably moving effort to confront the brutal consequences of colonial oppression.
  4. Mail Order Wife
    Initially amusing, ultimately wearying mock documentary.
  5. Black Cloud
    A determinedly old-fashioned boxing/coming-of-age film, only perfunctorily hitting its marks.
  6. Don't Move
    Though sprung from the mind of a woman, the film plays like a hetero male fantasy of tortured love.
  7. Dot the I
    Parkhill's heart seems to belong to 1940s film noir, where a lonely man could be driven half-mad by the sight of a mystery woman performing a hot flamenco dance, a scene Parkhill stages here to unintentional titter-inducing effect.
  8. Fabled
    Quickly reveals itself to be a hyper-stylized flick (lots of odd angles and studied production design in the service of flashbacks and dream sequences), but the glossy sum effect is that of a film student straining for a weightiness he can't pull off.
  9. Nowhere Man
    If Blake Edwards wrote a script and then Abel Ferrara directed it, it might look something like Nowhere Man.
  10. Off the Map
    A small masterpiece of tone and form.
  11. The Jacket
    The director's work is suitably unnerving, but leaves one feeling beaten senseless by reel two. When the hero's well-earned moment of clarity finally arrives, most will likely be too numbed out to care, despite the best efforts of Brody, an actor too vividly alive to be wasting his time playing dead.
  12. Dear Frankie
    The movie’s glib trafficking in illness, death and pinched little faces to jury-rig our emotional responses (Gibb was inspired by the equally likable, equally pandering Czech film "Kolya") lost me at hello.
  13. Face
    Only at the end, when one of the principals makes a decision you don't see coming, does Face fleetingly weigh in as a movie you haven't seen a thousand times before at ethnically correct film festivals.
  14. Gunner Palace
    Sensational viewing.
  15. Walk on Water
    Its suggestion that Israel, of all nations, should know better than to persecute minorities within and across its borders, give the film a thrilling universal appeal.
  16. The Best of Youth
    And like all great family sagas, The Best of Youth, while tipping its hat to the painful confusion of living life forward, reels it backward to give it the thrilling significance of time and place.
  17. Cursed
    Poor special effects, a silly looking werewolf and clunky comic writing help to spoil what should have been a fun B-movie.
  18. Man of the House
    Stuck with flat material and a star more adept at responding to humor than generating it, director Stephen Herek, in a vain attempt to generate laughs, enlists Cedric the Entertainer, as a convict-turned-preacher.
  19. One More Round
    As producer, writer and star of his first movie, Ray Jahangard gets points for confidence and nerve, but at the end of the day, it must be said that not everyone is meant to work in the movies.
  20. The Other Side of the Street
    A smart, quietly moving film.
  21. Up and Down
    This fluidly paced film, with its keen observation of the confused longing for love, family and stability in an inherently unstable world, nonetheless keeps faith with the Czech genius for holding the tonal line between tragedy and the absurd.
  22. Sex Sells: The Making of 'Touché'
    Tiresome, and with no discernable edge or wit, Sex Sells is most powerful when it dawns on us we're watching Barnes, the leggy replacement for Suzanne Somers on "Three's Company," and Zmed, the beefcake cop from "T.J. Hooker," arrive at this point in their careers.
  23. Window Theory
    This film looks so good, thanks to some impressive production work (nice rainstorm) as well as Andrew Huebscher's vibrant cinematography, that one wonders, as one dull scene after another rolls by, why director Andrew Putschoegl - and co-writers Large and Kyle Kramer - didn't lavish half as much attention on the script.
  24. Because of Winn-Dixie
    Jeff Daniels is a compelling-enough actor to lift almost any film out of mediocrity, but even he has his work cut out for him.
  25. Constantine
    Constantine, which opts in the end for what I can only describe as a kind of supernatural humanism, is not without its spiritual satisfactions.
  26. Son of the Mask
    Most of the animated sequences, capably mixed with live action, leave a bad aftertaste, particularly when the ultimate fate of one beaten and battered human bystander after another is left callously unresolved. In other words, parents beware.
  27. Nabbeun namja
    Ghastly.
  28. Schultze Gets the Blues
    Michael Schorr's delightfully deadpan comedy debut blew away the German box office, and once you let yourself sink into its gentle rhythms, as slow and deliberate as those of its protagonist and inflected with tiny but significant shifts of pace and tone, you'll see why.
  29. Turtles Can Fly
    Ghobadi's genius seems supercharged rather than weighed down by his higher calling, and his imagery is so boilingly alive that we come away from it feeling exhilarated rather than depressed.
  30. The Animation Show 2005
    Animation fans, no matter their stylistic preference (computer-generated, claymation, old-school hand-drawn), will find much to sate their appetites in this collection of award-winning and critically acclaimed work. There’s not a dud in the bunch.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »