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. Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
    Whether on the high seas or in the Holy Land, the film exhibits a colorful, bouncy sense of the epic (the whale's Jaws-inspired arrival even elicits a few chills), while its saving grace is a consistent sense of its own absurdity.
  2. Bloody Sunday
    A scrupulously even-handed account, free of ideological or tribal partisanship, based on eyewitness accounts by survivors and the anonymous "Paras" themselves.
  3. Red Dragon
    What Ratner brings to the proceedings is an awareness that what worked for "Silence" -- namely screenwriter Ted Tally, production designer Kristi Zea and, of course, Anthony Hopkins as Lecter -- will work overtime here, to enhance the project at hand and provide a seamless connection back to Jonathan Demme's multiple-Oscar winner.
  4. Captain Pantoja and the Special Services
    Roaming freely between comedy (which mostly works) and drama (which mostly doesn't) before settling on trite sentimentality, the film may not be an altogether unpleasant way to pass the time, but, ultimately, the innocuous Captain Pantoja doesn't earn its stripes.
  5. Just a Kiss
    A twisted black comedy -- The accomplished ensemble meshes nicely, but the actors all look pale and exhausted, an effect that may be a byproduct of the film’s photography, which is terrible.
  6. Wasabi
    The film lapses too often into sugary sentiment and withholds delivery on the pell-mell pyrotechnics its punchy style promises.
  7. Crazy as Hell
    It could have been a hoot in a bad-movie way if the laborious pacing and endless exposition had been tightened. As it is, only LaSalle's sizzling performance makes Crazy more than a by-the-numbers psycho-horror thriller.
  8. Skins
    The sharpness of Eyre's opening, however, ebbs away when he takes up the story of Rudy (Eric Schweig) and Mogie (Graham Greene), two brothers with neatly opposed responses to the reservation grind.
  9. The Man from Elysian Fields
    Despite its dry wit and compassion, the film suffers from a philosophical emptiness and maddeningly sedate pacing, and, in the end, the only aspect of the movie that truly commands attention is Jagger's desperately inexpressive acting, which hasn’t improved one iota since "Ned Kelly."
  10. The Lonely Affair of the Heart
    A tedious viewing experience.
  11. Shanghai Ghetto
    One of the most fascinating and least documented tributaries of the Jewish experience in World War II.
  12. The Tuxedo
    The film is ultimately more labored than inspired. A cameo by James Brown is amusing, but it can't keep The Tuxedo from earning the distinction of being Chan's worst Hollywood film to date.
  13. Biggie and Tupac
    Deceptively rambling, shrewdly ragtag documentary.
  14. Sweet Home Alabama
    To call the film contrived would imply that some sort of effort had been made, when Sweet Home Alabama is nothing but dead lazy and slow — y'all.
  15. Moonlight Mile
    Both funny and telling about the messy passages of grief.
  16. The Trials of Henry Kissinger
    To explore seriously the question of Kissinger's crimes wouldn't merely take hours, it would require the patient, unblinking vision of a Frederick Wiseman or Marcel Ophuls. Gibney and Jarecki just want to string the bastard up.
  17. The Mesmerist
    The actors do what they can with direction, from Gil Cates Jr., that calls for yelling, flailing and rapid-fire delivery of stale bons mots, but none of the film is as funny or clever as Cates and screenwriters Ron Marasco and Michael Goorjian (adapting Edgar Allan Poe's short story) seem to think.
  18. Trapped
    Mandoki's a pro, but a juiceless one, with only enough energy to reach the finish line, which becomes the viewer's goal as well.
  19. The Ignorant Fairies
    Moving and vibrant Italian-language film.
  20. The Banger Sisters
    Sarandon's motherly sexiness is appealing, but it's Hawn, in a warm and deep performance as the hapless but free-spirited Suzette, who walks away with the movie.
  21. The Four Feathers
    A mindless muddle.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Secretary
    Secretary's treatment of female sexuality is as matter-of-fact as its handling of self-mutilation, and the key to both is Gyllenhaal's remarkable performance.
  23. Invincible
    A wonderful movie. For every misstep there are the sublime expressions of agony and ecstasy of which Herzog is a master.
  24. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
    Thai director Kaos (a.k.a. Wych Kaosayananda), making his inauspicious Hollywood debut, still can't breathe any life into it. You'll just want to get back to your Game Boy.
  25. 8 Women
    Without its cast -- the cream of France's female acting elite -- François Ozon's ambivalent musical-comedy homage to the 1950s wouldn't be much.
  26. Spirited Away
    Does full honor to Miyazaki’s teeming and often unsettling landscape, and to the conflicted complexity of his characters: Not a single frame was cut, and the voice casting and performances are uniformly excellent.
  27. The Experiment
    Too much of a mess to say anything with assurance, pieced together as it is from mismatched institutional movies such as "Cool Hand Luke" and "Shock Corridor" -- with "Lord of the Flies" thrown in for good measure -- and turning on plot points that simply don't wash.
  28. Elvira's Haunted Hills
    Peterson and her longtime writing partner, John Paragon, as well as director Sam Irvin, clearly worship the Poe-inspired Roger Corman/Vincent Price films of the 1960s, so of course there’s a pit and a pendulum in that dungeon, but who’d have expected it to be so beautifully designed?
  29. Low Heights
    Hatamikia isn't just a button pusher; he's a skilled craftsman with a dynamic wide-screen shooting style, who draws us into the story with visceral devices such as speedy tracking shots and gliding slow motion -- flashy elements the fastidious new wavers wouldn't touch.
  30. Alias Betty
    The last-minute details of plot can't compete with the frightening intensity of Kiberlain's and Garcia's performances, which trace, with brilliant precision, the exhausting mix of brutality and grace inherent in the mother-daughter relationship.
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