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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  1. Daredevil
    Johnson clearly digs the idea of Daredevil as an agonized hero, slathering the screen with gloomy lighting and Catholic imagery, yet the movie has far less emotional weight than, say, "Spider-Man" (whose building-hopping pyrotechnics it often appears to be copying).
  2. He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not
    Mercifully there's more Hitchcock than Lacan in this slickly enjoyable little number, which cannily plays off the ingénue image of "Amélie's" Audrey Tautou.
  3. Stone Reader
    To anyone whose soul lives or dies by reading or writing or both, the movie is a total thrill, and not just as a debate on the nature of the one-shot writer or the decline of publishing.
  4. America So Beautiful
    The film staggers under its own didacticism. Too often we're told of men who were professionals back home and are here reduced to driving cabs, waiting tables or vending ice cream.
  5. Shanghai Knights
    Turns out to be that rarest of Hollywood creatures: a sequel that one-ups the original…These two smart, happy movie stars prove that silliness doesn’t have to be moronic.
  6. Deliver Us from Eva
    Hardwick doesn't have the chops yet to give the movie the caffeinated zip that it needs to really fly. There are too many dull, flat stretches…(however) the soundtrack kicks ass.
  7. May
    The inventive and unpredictable May is exactly the kind of unexpected delight one hopes for every time the lights go down.
  8. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
    Directed by Donald Petrie ("Miss Congeniality") with about as much substance and style as a ham sandwich. It's a heavy hand that damps down such airy creatures as Hudson and McConaughey.
  9. The Guru
    By the time a Bollywood production number segues into the finale from "Grease," the transition not only makes perfect sense, it sparkles.
  10. Lost in La Mancha
    Too bad for Gilliam and everyone involved, but in the departments of spectacle and schadenfreude, great fun for us.
  11. Biker Boyz
    Orlando Jones, buff and commanding, steals the film as Soul Train, a lawyer-biker, while Lisa Bonet, a sexy, enigmatic earth mother, is stranded in a movie that has no idea what to do with her.
  12. The Recruit
    Visibly uninspired, Pacino gives a perfunctory performance -- though surely he must have looked over at Farrell and been reminded of himself 30 years ago, all jacked-up and beautiful, like a stallion at the gate.
  13. Suddenly Naked
    In this lively romantic comedy from Canada, actors Wendy Crewson and Joe Cobden give off sparks -- in bed and out.
  14. Final Destination 2
    The cast of the original looks Shakespearean in comparison to Cook and her hapless cohorts, but to be fair, those first dead ducks had a real script to explore, which this bunch does not.
  15. Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary
    Junge's testimony about the last days in Hitler's bunker will fascinate the layperson, but it adds little to what is already known by historians.
  16. Amen.
    Subtle distinctions have not been Costa-Gavras' long suit, but urgency becomes him in this forceful and intelligent evocation.
  17. Darkness Falls
    Black cats, ill-timed power outages and children in peril are just a few of the hoary scare tactics ineffectively rendered in the style of so many films buried in the dark recesses of January.
  18. Charly
    It simply takes faith for granted as a motivating factor, and thus pulls off the neat trick of never making us feel we’re being preached at -- Yet, as directed by first-timer Adam Anderegg, from Jack Weyland's 1980 novel, the movie is too amateurishly square to make the most of its own ironic implications.
  19. A Guy Thing
    Transcends its video-box-shelf-filler pedigree only when it's actually indulging in guy stuff, mostly of the frat-boy, beer-commercial variety.
  20. National Security
    The career of the lovably tense Zahn may benefit more from this movie than that of Lawrence, who’s funny, here and there, but who appears to be working at half speed.
  21. Kangaroo Jack
    Bruckheimer shifts from high-concept historical romance "Pearl Harbor" and high-concept T&A "Coyote Ugly" to a first attempt at high-concept light comedy, yet only his fondness for dragging acting talent down with him carries over.
  22. Divine Intervention
    As pristine a distillation of Palestinian rage as I've seen outside the evening news.
  23. P.S. Your Cat Is Dead!
    It's Boyar who’s the find here, though, a gently magnetic presence who's all the more impressive for being thoroughly riveting despite spending most of the movie face-down on a counter.
  24. City of God
    But if City of God whirs with energy for nearly its full 130-minute running time, it is oddly lacking in emotional heft for a work that aspires to the epic -- it is essentially a tarted-up exploitation picture whose business is to make ghastly things fun.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Crimson Gold
    The result is the work of a funereal yet darkly funny neorealist, sounding the rallying cry against the inflexible maxim casually delivered by one of his own film's characters.
  26. WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3
    The two encounters with the beast WXIII -- first in a darkened factory, and later in an empty stadium, to the strains of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in G Minor (Pathétique) -- elevate the disappointingly flat animation into a vivid fable of monster and morality.
  27. Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
    Melville seems to peer out from behind the camera with a reassuring wink and nod. Le Cercle Rouge is the most self-consciously cool of his famously underheated films noirs.
  28. The Son
    Makes no attempt to entertain us. Much of this extraordinarily tactful movie, like "Rosetta," is shot in close-up, focusing on the back of Olivier's neck, as if inviting us to see the world as he does.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Just Married
    As long on violent slapstick as a Three Stooges retrospective.
  30. The Slaughter Rule
    This bleak debut feature from writer-directors Alex and Andrew Smith would be all but impossible to sit through if it weren’t for Ryan Gosling and Clea Duvall.
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