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. Little Lili
    It's the third feature Miller has shot using lightweight digital video cameras, and the result is a special lightness in the work itself -- the glowing images ease into one another like leaves turning in a summer breeze, while the performances are similarly effortless.
  2. Way Off Broadway
    This ensemble drama is passionately acted and nicely shot, but the storytelling of first-time writer-director Dan Kay is infused with an archaic naiveté.
  3. Noel
    Sentimental, borderline-bizarre Christmas movie that boasts just enough good acting to make up for the treacle.
  4. The Polar Express
    The result is another powerful children's story dulled into mediocrity by the worship of technology.
  5. Overnight
    A diabolically enjoyable documentary on unearned self-esteem.
  6. Alfie
    Pretty good as pretty good goes, with Jude Law turning in an efficiently chipper, if palpably less dark, performance than the one that earned Michael Caine his first Oscar nomination.
  7. Cachorro
    Albaladejo turns his film into a banal, mildly entertaining trifle of affirmation, eliciting a shrug more than any real emotion.
  8. Callas Forever
    Ardant gives in this film the performance of her life, lip-synching to the voice of the real Callas.
  9. Brother to Brother
    In movies, the young are forever being taken back in time by the old, but what sets apart this low-energy yet ambitious debut feature by writer-director Rodney Evans is the complexity of the questions that journey raises.
  10. Fade to Black
    Routinely assembled live document.
  11. Scumrock
    Sweetly mocking comedy about the perils of reaching 30 with little to show for one's avant-gardeness except crazy hair and an ossifying attitude.
  12. Intoxicating
    Flatly directed by Mark David, tediously paced and melodramatic.
  13. The Incredibles
    The Incredibles creates so seamless a mood of exhilaration that we resent being pulled out of it.
  14. A Silent Love
    All three actors are more than up to the challenge, particularly the radiant Salazar, who feasts upon that rare gift of a role that allows an actress the wrong side of 40 to be funny, sexy and vital without apologizing.
  15. Ray
    For too many minutes of its two and a half hours, Ray flips through its cinematic pages with a breathless and-then-this-happened urgency, offering up little in the way of personality (or truth) beyond Jamie Foxx's strong performance.
  16. Saw
    A story that's so ridiculous you'll at least be entertained by the outrageous plot contortions to come.
  17. Birth
    Birth may be the most futile application of cinematic and acting skill I've seen all year. A little "Twilight Zone" flummery would have livened up the proceedings to no end.
  18. Enduring Love
    British director, Roger Michell, strikes an assured balance between intense mood piece and Gothic chiller.
  19. It's All About Love
    Vinterberg's execution is overstuffed, unoriginal and often downright incomprehensible. And what's Sean Penn doing dangling off airplanes -- pontificating, as usual, from a great height?
  20. Violet Perfume: No One Is Listening
    This powerfully rough slice of neo-realism, hitched to soapy melodrama, puts a heartbreakingly human face on the widespread problem of sexual assault in Mexico.
  21. This Girl's Life
    Though spiked with nice performances (Marquis herself is a natural, no matter how lame her lines), This Girl's Life succeeds more as a nudie curio.
  22. Sideways
    A trenchant American satirist in his previous films, Payne moves in a different direction with Sideways -- one less mordant but just as pointedly observant.
  23. The Grudge
    Isn't art, but as date-night fright flicks go, it's effective.
  24. Surviving Christmas
    It's screen comedy at the end of its tether, Capra-corn gone rancid.
  25. Lightning in a Bottle
    It’s a rousing celebration.
  26. The Machinist
    In a way, though, it’s all Bale's show. Withering down to an alarming 120 pounds, he delivers a deeply obsessed performance that leaves us both fascinated and sickened.
  27. Stella Street
    At full length it’s still pretty funny, but only for its natural 30 minutes, after which it grows repetitive and tiresome as only material meant for the short attention span can.
  28. Undertow
    Undertow seems to be straining to say something at once tragic and heartwarming about fathers, sons and brothers, but I'm damned if I know what it is.
  29. Fish Without a Bicycle
    Though Green is engaging, the rest of the cast are unlikable and tediously self-involved, especially Mattison, who, not surprisingly, wrote this tripe.
  30. The Manson Family
    The movie is monotonous, and by the time it gets to its climactic re-enactment of the Tate-LaBianca killings, it seems little more than the heir to "Survive!, The Zodiac Killer" and other unsavory 1970s horror cheapies that tried to turn a quick buck on real-life tragedy.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »