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. Travolta is stuck giving a remarkable performance in a film so trivial and offensive its mere existence is as loathsome as it is laughable.
  2. Stallone's script is well structured, though the jaw-droppingly banal dialogue gives us little reason to care.
  3. Just when it looked like "Not Another Teen Movie" might claim the crap crown comes this stoner's tale.
  4. Every plot point is obvious a mile away to anyone who's ever seen a film, and made even more obvious by the fact that the camera blatantly points out clues shortly before they're put to use.
    • New Times (L.A.)
  5. Most of it is incredibly, gleefully crude and tasteless, but it is also good-natured and harmless, and there's a pretty good chance you'll find yourself laughing.
  6. Snow Dogs may simply be a stupid waste of your time. But if you know the source, it's an abomination.
  7. In one of the year's most woefully manipulative and oppressively pandering offerings: I Am Sam, a dolled-up TV movie-of-the-week masquerading as profound cinema.
  8. With malice for all, Drop Dead Gorgeous isn't likely to win any popularity contests.
  9. Highbrow self-appointed guardians of culture need not apply, but those who loved "Cool as Ice" have at last found a worthy follow-up.
  10. Indeed, the best that can be said about The Majestic is that it may boost Capra's reputation by virtue of comparison. Apparently, it's not so easy to weave that kind of magic.
  11. Moves in fits and starts, with some crafty and credible fight choreography by Xin Xin Xiong on either side of the pretty but boring middle hour.
  12. Nominal comedy has a few bright spots but never seems to find its rhythm.
  13. A shame, this frenetic mess, as there were loads of reasons to be hopeful.
  14. Merely labeling National Lampoon's Van Wilder "sophomoric" or "vulgar" doesn't do justice to the perpetrators' dedication.
  15. Has an awkwardness that defeats whatever emotional involvement it tries to achieve.
  16. A film bereft of emotion, characters and words with more than two syllables.
  17. So desperate are the filmmakers to create a "hip" western that they try to cram it with action sequences that aren't very exciting.
  18. Not only unfunny, but downright repellent.
    • New Times (L.A.)
  19. No one in a McCulloch movie is ever normal -- most of the humor comes from characters saying or doing the weirdest thing you could possibly come up with in any given circumstance, and if that kind of humor's your bag, there's frequently a lot to enjoy in the bizarre antics of Green and Jason Lee,
    • New Times (L.A.)
  20. A happily self-aware body-count flick that's as brutally funny as it is plain-old brutal. A broad slash of scary, sci-fi fun, the project leapfrogs all the Scream and Last Summer junk to carve itself a new, high-tech niche.
    • New Times (L.A.)
  21. Joe Morton, Linda Hunt and Kathy Bates show up in supporting roles, only to have Costner's flagging energy drag them down, too.
  22. You probably saw this film the last time around, when it was called "Sleeping With the Enemy." This one merely adds a better car chase and more ass-kicking.
  23. An ugly-duckling tale so hideously and clumsily told it feels accidental. Surely, no one PLANNED something this disastrously unfunny.
  24. A torturous, mawkish, ill-conceived remake.
    • New Times (L.A.)
  25. This limp gender-bender-baller from a first-time director and rookie screenwriter steals wholesale from that 1982's "Tootsie," forgetting only to retain a single laugh.
    • New Times (L.A.)
  26. Hilarity should ensue, but it doesn't.
  27. Expect to be perplexed.
  28. It's a heartfelt and powerful examination of faith that no serious student or enthusiast of theology or philosophy should miss.
  29. Given how uninvolving Summer Catch is, the truly remarkable pitching here was not so much on the mound as in the executive office where someone convinced Warner Bros. to green-light this turkey, which should have been called Good Will Hitting.
  30. Director Mick Jackson (L.A. Story) delivers playful and charming teens-turned-30 moxie.
    • New Times (L.A.)

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