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 8.7 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. The New Guy
    Various actors deserving of better (including Zooey Deschanel, Eddie Griffin and Lyle Lovett) suffer through the undercooked material, while love interest Eliza Dushku gamely gets through both a bikini-modeling montage and a mechanical bull ride, but none of their efforts can save this film.
  2. Janice Beard
    Slight but charming comedy.
  3. The Lady and the Duke
    As always, conversation is the constant threading together Rohmer's stately pace and episodic structure, the thing he uses to show us who his characters are and what their friendship entails.
  4. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
    It works its magic with such exuberance and passion that the film's length becomes a part of its fun.
  5. Home Movie
    At 60 minutes, the film never stops feeling like a guided tour, while we're wishing it was a sleepover.
  6. Dirt Boy
    The film essentially grinds along in second gear. A promising debut, Dirt Boy nevertheless fails to fully deliver.
  7. Fleeing by Night
    That decade-spanning finale allows the three leads to age onscreen and demonstrate their impressive range, particularly Liu.
  8. A Shot at Glory
    Demonstrating yet again that he knows few limits as an actor, Duvall not only nails the accent, he inhabits the man's flinty, grudge-bearing contrariness with such a furious commitment that it brings out the best in the actors around him.
  9. The Mystic Masseur
    The film is being sold as a comedy, and it is amusing. Secretly, though, it's a romance, with Merchant's roving camera discerning the tempestuous love triangle at the heart of Naipaul's novel.
    • L.A. Weekly
  10. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
    Imamura has said that Warm Water Under a Red Bridge is a poem to the enduring strengths of women. It may also be the best sex comedy about environmental pollution ever made.
  11. Hollywood Ending
    It isn't only that there is a dearth of ideas in Hollywood Ending -- however hateful, "Deconstructing Harry" was at least about something -- it's that the whole thing is almost entirely devoid of pleasure.
  12. Spider-Man
    Perhaps the real question, then, isn't how you update Spider-Man but why you would even try. Introduced in 1962, the original superhero helped to initiate the age of modern comics. Raimi hasn't figured out how to reconfigure him for the blockbuster age, and there are suggestions.
  13. The Other Brother
    The film needs strong characters and snappy dialogue to carry it through. It has neither.
  14. Rain
    Jeffs' meticulous framing nicely counterpoints all the messy turmoil, and her screenplay flows with the cadences of life -- its awkward eruptions and long, hurtful silences -- but she never pulls you deep enough into her characters.
  15. Circuit
    Mostly, Shafer and co-writer Gregory Hinton lack a strong-minded viewpoint, or a sense of humor, about a world in which the DJ has the power to unify, if only for a night, men of godlike beauty and the mortals who worship them.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sex with Strangers
    The effect is so riveting, and the cameras so psychologically penetrating, you may be left breathless -- but satisfied.
  17. Life or Something Like It
    Jolie hogs the spotlight as usual, leaving romantic interest Ed Burns struggling to register and only Shaloub -- fetid, dirty, soulful -- with his dignity intact.
  18. Dogtown and Z-Boys
    Enormously enjoyable, high-adrenaline documentary.
  19. Night at the Golden Eagle
    The director pulls back from the hotel, placing it against the skyline of our beautiful city, which appears to be waiting, patiently, for a more original exploration of its inhabitants.
  20. Jason X
    The film has spunk. Unfortunately, the gore comes with brutal regularity, so that, despite Farmer and Isaac's attempts to liven things up, the film still just wears you down.
  21. The Salton Sea
    The Salton Sea isn't without interest or ideas, though some of the better ones are cribbed from David Fincher and, especially, Martin Scorsese.
    • 5 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Vulgar
    First-time director Bryan Johnson's failure to resolve the film’s two moods -- psychopathic sexual brutality and light social satire -- proves fatal.
  23. Some Body
    Any resemblance to Cassavetes, intentional or not, only makes the film's flaws all the more apparent.
  24. Enigma
    It's all part of a larger calculus that the filmmakers hope will translate into a thinking person's thriller. If only they themselves knew how to figure it.
  25. Girls Can't Swim
    The film's intimate camera work and searing performances pull us deep into the girls' confusion and pain as they struggle tragically to comprehend the chasm of knowledge that's opened between them.
  26. Chelsea Walls
    Pretension, in its own way, is a form of bravery. For this reason and this reason only -- the power of its own steadfast, hoity-toity convictions -- Chelsea Walls deserves a medal.
  27. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
    Vardalos is a pleasing mix of Elaine May and Bonnie Hunt; in other words, she's not a sex kitten, but she's funny and smart.
  28. The Scorpion King
    Director Chuck Russell ("The Mask") keeps the computer effects to a minimum, emphasizing instead the essential ingredients of a Saturday-afternoon serial, namely, venom-tipped arrows, pissed-off cobras and a buxom babe.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Divorce: The Musical
    Dworman's comic style dangles in the abyss somewhere between sub-Woody Allen and Mel Brooks (his script borrows too heavily from both).
  30. Murder by Numbers
    Even as the psychological interdependencies of the two boys take the foreground, the movie gets more and more crowded with fun-house surprises and cliffhanging set pieces.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »