New Times (L.A.)'s Scores

  • Movies
For 639 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 47% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Donnie Darko
Lowest review score: 0 Rollerball
Score distribution:
639 movie reviews
  1. It would be hard to imagine a less exciting movie. Still, inoffensiveness can sometimes lead to success, at least initially, for a family film.
  2. If this it supposed to be comedy, why isn't it ever, for one second, funny?
    • New Times (L.A.)
  3. This film is just too damn weird to pass up, and for the blacklight crowd, way cheaper (and better) than Pink Floyd tickets.
    • New Times (L.A.)
  4. Loquacious and dreary piece of business.
  5. As Bundy, Michael Reilly Burke (Octopus 2: River of Fear) has just the right amount of charisma and menace. It's his performance that makes the movie, giving a relatively shallow script more depth and character nuances than likely existed on the page.
  6. Mandel Holland's direction is uninspired, and his scripting unsurprising, but the performances by Phifer and Black are ultimately winning.
  7. When Circuit is on its game it's very telling and where it's at its best is detailing just how difficult it is for men so hedonistically self-involved to love one another.
    • New Times (L.A.)
  8. A bland, obnoxious 88-minute infomercial for Universal Studios.
  9. There is something distinctly self-satisfied about Amy's Orgasm that rubs the viewer the wrong way. The film should come with a warning label: Vanity project ahead!
    • New Times (L.A.)
  10. The moviemakers have eliminated the finer points of the novel in favor of broad strokes. Very broad strokes.
  11. What it lacks are solid performances, save Slater's game attempt to take everything seriously.
    • New Times (L.A.)
  12. One of those genially paced, character-driven indies, and succeeds as such very well.
    • New Times (L.A.)
  13. The underlying theme constantly changes shape, not in a way that seems rich in ambiguity, but in a way that seems poorly worked out.
  14. For better or worse -- plenty of both, in fact --it's a movie that has a coherent vision. It's a shame that vision just doesn't happen to be very interesting.
  15. Jovovich isn't at her best, but that's mainly because her character is required to be in shock most of the movie, except when she remembers that she's a Charlie's Angel, or happily sheds clothing to maintain that R-rating. Frankly, most of us can live with that.
  16. Too bad very few of these high jinks are actually funny -- the outtakes at the end of the film suggest a more relaxed ensemble vibe that the film proper was unable to retain.
  17. Warner Bros. is presumably aiming this movie not at children but at full-grown dopers with bad munchies glued to the Cartoon Network. Dude, pass the Scooby snacks.
  18. Parents wishing to protect their beloved daughters from cliché overload might do well to withhold the old allowance money for a couple of weeks -- until the inevitable bout of Mandymoviemania subsides.
  19. Moviegoers might have preferred a little more care with the characters. As it is, Alma comes off not as a courageous trailblazer but as an indiscriminate adventuress.
  20. Reasonably well-made and all, but it's simply too familiar, too derivative and too inferior to its predecessors to have any reason to exist.
  21. The extra-short length is puzzling -- about half an hour has been lopped off the length of the original Canadian release -- but what remains feels whole and wholly satisfying, a rare, successful merging of the obvious and the haunting.
  22. Rife with silliness, such as the flashbacks within flashbacks of characters who were not with one another at the time, and occasional unintentional laughs -- but it's also a good, raucous kick in the behind, which is literally all it aspires to be
  23. A vicious, hard-core version of "Thelma and Louise," going nowhere near the Grand Canyon but leaving a trail of carnage in their wake.
  24. The movie gets bogged down in dull dialogue, despite some truly impressive special effects and a hilariously silly CG devil who closely resembles his counterpart from the PlayStation game Tekken 2.
  25. It's sweet, tart, brightly colored, insubstantial, and utterly lacking in nutritional value. It's also fun to consume, and harmless enough as long as it isn't your whole diet.
  26. While the specifics of the plot are often as fragile as an actual glass house, those looking for a good night of disposable entertainment will find it here.
  27. This pallid little ditty, like the rest of Lance Bass and pals' oeuvre, is soulless, banal and derivative.
  28. If you peel away the surface of this movie, one is left with not much at all.
  29. It's a bad sign when you're rooting for the film to hurry up and get to its subjects' deaths just so the documentary will be over, but it's indicative of how uncompelling the movie is unless it happens to cover your particular area of interest.
  30. With virtually no interesting elements for an audience to focus on, Chelsea Walls is a triple-espresso endurance challenge.

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