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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    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Criminal
    The cast is brilliant, not least of all Reilly -- vaguely despicable, smooth as an oil slick and altogether mesmerizing in the most impressive screen performance he's yet given.
  2. Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
    An intellectually steelier case against Bush, his cabalistic administration and the Iraq war than Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, Hijacking is even more chilling because it eschews the heartstring symphony conducted (albeit very effectively) by Moore and sticks to irrefutable facts and no-bullshit analysis.
  3. Reconstruction
    Eventually it all starts to feel like an extended European perfume ad: pretty but eye-rollingly pretentious.
  4. Testosterone
    The cutesy opening of writer-director David Moreton's Testosterone (co-written with Dennis Hensley) turns out to be a crippling miscalculation.
  5. When Will I Be Loved
    Far from a complete success: It takes too long to get to its central premise and, once there, too often meanders away from it. But Campbell is close to astonishing whenever she's onscreen.
  6. Vlad
    It all adds up to pleasantly nonsensical mayhem.
  7. A Letter to True
    Meandering.
  8. Paparazzi
    In producer Mel Gibson's second crackpot persecution-complex film of 2004 -- heat-blast directed by first-timer Paul Abascal -- it's obvious who Bo is supposed to represent.
  9. Wicker Park
    In the end it doesn't lead to much beyond weepy melodrama. Still, McGuigan draws committed performances from a talented cast.
  10. Warriors of Heaven and Earth
    The buildup is so compelling in this "Chinese Western" by He Ping (Swordsman in Double Flag Town) that its thunderous anticlimax of an ending can almost be forgiven. Almost.
  11. Big Girls Don't Cry
    Sleek, not-quite-trashy-enough melodrama.
  12. The Cookout
    Queen Latifah gets co-producer and scenarist credits for this anemic comedy, and also a supporting role that amounts to the worst performance of her career.
  13. Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War
    While it comes on like a flag-waver, it actually delivers something more nuanced. Its underlying skepticism about the Korean War seems to have jibed with the current national mood: The picture was, deservedly, a huge hit.
  14. Remember Me, My Love
    If it were less prone to soap-opera histrionics, this screechy saga of an upscale family collapsing under the weight of its members' self-absorption might have something worth saying about domestic politics in post-fascist, post-communist, post-socialist Italy.
  15. Vanity Fair
    Turgid, melodramatic travesty of Thackeray's gimlet-eyed satire.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hero
    Hero is an epic, evocative of another epoch and of landscapes beyond time. It's overwhelming. And yet I miss the animating anger of Zhang's early masterworks, in which penniless young lovers were oppressed by impotent old men.
  17. Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
    What they don't do often enough is battle anacondas. It's all tease and no payoff.
  18. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
    As for anyone else who may experience a sudden need for therapy after sitting through this, you're on your own.
  19. Bush's Brain
    A tad dry but never boring.
  20. L.A. Twister
    The film offers no new insights into its people or into the dynamics of the Hollywood machine -- the whole affair, played for low-intensity laughs, is numbingly familiar.
  21. Bright Leaves
    McElwee fans will welcome back the wonderful Charleen, his former teacher and lifelong friend, older and mellower but as beguiling and free-spirited as ever.
  22. Without a Paddle
    Burt Reynolds, whose near-vaudevillian comic timing, is refreshing but not enough to carry the picture.
  23. Benji: Off the Leash!
    Yes, Joe Camp has gone meta. It's hard to not feel a measure of warmth for the determined optimism of his enterprise, especially since he hasn't lost the touch for cute dog antics.
  24. Exorcist: The Beginning
    The “surprise” ending, when it comes, is more of a hoot than a holler.
  25. Almost Peaceful
    Modest, wise ensemble piece.
  26. Bright Young Things
    There's no denying that Fry's movie is all the livelier for its gay embellishment.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    End of the Century
    It does pry much deeper into the band’s unexpectedly complex and contradictory personalities.
  28. Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War
    This hastily slapped-together festival of talking heads is so staid, one longs for some of Moore's look-at-me theatrics, and despite the movie's sober-citizen approach, it's no less one-sided than "Fahrenheit 9/11."
  29. Rosenstrasse
    Von Trotta and co-writer Pamela Katz can't resist cutting, again and again, to Hannah and her airless musings on the story's meaning. These interludes stop the movie in its tracks and, counter no doubt to von Trotta's intentions, do a disservice to the Rosenstrasse women themselves, who shouldn't have to fight for screen time.
  30. Mean Creek
    Estes never really completes a thought about this sorry group's moral dilemmas.
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