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. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
    Ultimately just another celebrity bio-pic, and far less trenchant than, say, the more conventional "Auto Focus." For all their whirring ingenuity, Kaufman's scripts require a director who will tether his cleverness to reality.
  2. Love Liza
    Quirkily sad, unexpectedly funny -- and just a tad repetitive.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chicago
    Chicago is that rare thing: a nutritious hard candy.
  4. Sonny
    Preposterous and tedious, Sonny is spiked with unintentional laughter that, unfortunately, occurs too infrequently to make the film even a guilty pleasure.
  5. The Pianist
    Polanski, wisely, doesn't interpret or explain. He seems to have decided that in the face of such meticulously planned horror, the best one can do is get the details right.
  6. Max
    Suggests that had young Adolf Hitler managed to get his art show, the Holocaust might never have happened. This seems absurd, not to say insensitive.
  7. Nicholas Nickleby
    In his capable, yet only mildly exciting, adaptation of Charles Dickens’ third novel, Douglas McGrath (Emma) keeps reminding us that what we’re seeing is theater. This feels gratuitous.
  8. The Hours
    You can only cram so much of this stuff into a movie without putting your audience to sleep -- The movie sags badly in the middle, swirling around itself without making headway.
  9. Catch Me If You Can
    As an actor DiCaprio has long been known for his ardor, not to mention his tiresome self-seriousness, but working for Spielberg, he plays his scenes with a comic deftness I thought he didn't have in him.
  10. Pinocchio
    Visually sumptuous but intellectually stultifying.
  11. Smokers Only
    There is a great divide between a film about people in the throes of aimless, meandering lives and a film that is simply aimless and meandering. Smokers Only never acknowledges, let alone bridges, that gap.
  12. The Wild Thornberrys Movie
    Surprisingly engaging, as is the Paul Simon theme song, and the film is enlivened by flashes of humor just rude enough to delight older children.
  13. Morvern Callar
    A strange and beautiful film.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Two Weeks Notice
    It's not a horrible film -- and it's a fuckload better than some other oops-we-fell-in-love comedies in recent years (e.g., J. Lo's doggy "The Wedding Planner"). It's just not very smart. Deeply rentable.
  15. Narc
    Taut and well-acted, faltering only when the filmmaker loses faith in the power of his story.
  16. Gangs of New York
    Scorsese and his writers have saddled their dream with a corny plot apparently lifted from some old 1930s Warner Bros. film starring Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'Brien.
  17. Spider
    Deliciously wicked, strangely poetic portrait (adapted by Patrick McGrath from his own novel) of a schizophrenic man at once tyrannized and elevated by oedipal terrors.
  18. Antwone Fisher
    The film offers an impressive melding of quietly radical images and ideas with, yes, an old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing holiday tearjerker.
  19. 25th Hour
    Just about the only good thing you can say about Spike Lee's pointless, didactic The 25th Hour is that it's filled with strong performances, albeit of stock characters.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
    Falters precisely because there's not enough stumbling, and far too much striding gallantly forward.
  21. The Guys
    The Australian actor taps into something miraculous here -- LaPaglia's ability to convey grief and hope works with Weaver's sensitive reactions to make this a two-actor master class.
  22. Maid in Manhattan
    It's a case of persona overwhelming presence, and the butterscotch smoothness that was such an asset opposite George Clooney's glittering cool in "Out of Sight" is all but lost in the sheen of this high-gloss production.
  23. The Hot Chick
    Marks no discernible improvement on its predecessors "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" and "The Animal," though the sight of the deeply unprepossessing Schneider all dolled up for girlie business is good for a few shallow chuckles.
  24. Evelyn
    The movie has a script (by Paul Pender) made of wood, and it's relentlessly folksy, a procession of stagy set pieces stacked with binary oppositions.
  25. About Schmidt
    The bleakness and poignancy are inescapable in About Schmidt, a character study that has the emotional richness of the great Italian and Eastern European films of the 1960s, in which humor and pathos rode up and down on the seesaw together.
  26. Drumline
    It's like a musical with no big numbers, or an action film withholding the explosions.
  27. Intact
    The story is bound together with gaming set pieces that are strange, inventive and mesmerizing.
  28. Star Trek: Nemesis
    Nemesis never feels true to itself, its energy never fully engaged. Even with Earth on the line in its climactic space battle, the film seems embarrassed that it couldn't have found a better way to work through its issues.
  29. Empire
    Reyes' fast-paced tale soars on the pedigree of its cast, all of whom are clearly having a ball -- Both poignant and wickedly amusing, Empire sets high standards for a subgenre that's rarely had any.
  30. Analyze That
    It's clever, vulgar and fully committed to making us howl with laughter. If only all sequels were this much fun.
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