Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,520 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 38% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Sand Storm
Lowest review score: 0 Saw VI
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8,697 out of 16520
  2. Mixed: 5,806 out of 16520
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16520
16520 movie reviews
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  1. Legion
    Legion may traffic in signposts of the apocalypse, but the whole affair mostly indicates that we're in the movie wasteland that is January.
  2. Daybreakers
    Any higher intentions are brought crashing down by predictability, wooden characters, giggle-inducing attempts at scares (shrieking bats, anyone?) and cinematography so gloomy it should be checked for serotonin deficiency.
  3. Nine
    Because Nine is a musical, it would help if your leading man could sing, and I don't mean carry a tune, but actually flex some vocal muscle. Again, love Daniel Day-Lewis, excellent racing shirtless through the forest, but a song-and-dance man he is not. So what does that leave Nine with? Well not much.
  4. Did You Hear About the Morgans?
    Grant has never been less charming and Parker never less fashionable or more grating than they are as Paul and Meryl Morgan.
  5. The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
    Duffy tamps down his best instincts -- occasional wry humor and the appealingly oddball supporting character (Willem Dafoe last time, a bug-eyed Clifton Collins Jr. here as the MacManus' admiring Latino cohort) -- and doubles up on his worst: homophobic gags, tedious '90s-era slo-mo shootouts and overwrought gangster tropes.
  6. Pandorum
    Keeps its audience in the dark -- literally and figuratively -- far too long to be of much use besides as a patience-trying exercise in reference spotting.
  7. Gamer
    Rarely have the words "game over" come as such sweet relief.
  8. The Box
    What the plot doesn't decimate, the film's slower-than-a-clogged-drain pacing does. Sadly, this is one box that's just not worth picking up off the porch, much less opening, not even for a million dollars.
  9. The Fourth Kind
    They try to get 'real' about strange occurrences. Instead they get ludicrous.
  10. I Hate Valentine's Day
    This is a film with a mission: Get to the grand-gesture climax without disturbing any clichés in its path.
  11. P.S. I Love You
    You could go see P.S. I Love You, or you could hit yourself on the head with a meat mallet -- it depends on the amount of time and money you want to devote to what amounts to roughly the same experience.
  12. Mindhunters
    Turns out to be a thudding dud, crammed with clunky dialogue, bad acting and gruesome but unpersuasive gore. Mindhunters will pass muster with only the most undemanding horror fans.
  13. White Noise
    The movie straitjackets Keaton into a humorless, table-pounding role.
  14. Are We There Yet?
    Gets nowhere. Its star Ice Cube remains characteristically amiable, but this thuddingly miscalculated comedy is way beneath him.
  15. Hide and Seek
    Unless you're a connoisseur of movies that are so bad they're good, Hide and Seek is one game you're not going to want to play.
  16. The Wedding Date
    Winds up an oddly depressing, lost, little movie that eventually caves in on itself.
  17. Bigger Than the Sky
    This heartfelt valentine to the stage leaves no cliché unturned. If it has anything to recommend, it is the loving portrayal of the camaraderie of those who participate in art for art's sake who, to quote Cyrano, "work without one thought of gain or fame."
  18. One More Round
    An unsuccessful concoction of sincerity, camp and crassness that is more interested in its parade of D-level celebrities than developing its characters.
  19. Be Cool
    Although Travolta is as smooth as ever, the picture is a bust, a grimly unfunny comedy with no connection to reality, and worst of all, running on and on for two dismal hours.
  20. Nowhere Man
    The bleak absurdity of its predicaments cries out for a tone of pitch-dark comedy to stave off the unintended laughter that it is virtually certain to elicit.
  21. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
    As awful as the original was inspired.
  22. Eating Out
    Eating Out might just make it as an amusing trifle, but on the big screen it's merely tedious and silly.
  23. House of Wax
    Related to the 1953 Vincent Price film in name, embalming technique and Warner Bros. pedigree only, the new House of Wax is a dreary, predictable tale.
  24. A Hole in One
    The anesthetized, deadpan performances -- except for Meat Loaf as Anna's gangster boyfriend, who's so over-the-top it appears he stumbled in from another movie -- and dull storytelling result in an unsuccessful mix of screwball comedy, melodrama and noir.
  25. Slutty Summer
    Andreas is way too low-energy to hold the screen as the film's lead, but he was wise to surround himself with a talented cast. Unfortunately, the wooden dialogue and overall shallowness of the writing keep the film from being even an amiable diversion.
  26. The Perfect Man
    The movie is a tortured marshmallow.
  27. Undead
    However visually striking, this Australian film is ultimately as tedious as it is derivative.
  28. 9 Songs
    Yet for all its ballyhooed candor about sexual matters, it's a surprisingly baffling and opaque film, too artistic to be standard pornography and too zealously focused on being graphic to the exclusion of all else to succeed as drama.
  29. Valiant
    An unconscionably dreary and amateurish-looking thing, and the rote plot and annoyingly predictable script -- a compendium of bird puns, mostly -- don't work nearly hard enough to make up for the hammy awfulness of the images.
  30. The Man
    In some ways, The Man plays like a sequel to some terrible movie that was mercifully destroyed before it was ever released.
  31. Daltry Calhoun
    In the parlance of "The Player," Katrina Holden Bronson's Daltry Calhoun would be pitched as "Because of Winn-Dixie" meets "Napoleon Dynamite," and that is definitely not a good thing.
  32. Doom
    Shows less human dimension than the new Wallace and Gromit movie.
  33. Kids in America
    A comedy so inane and tedious that it buries its premise and its various worthy points under too many arch and improbable shenanigans and endless dialogue, much of it seriously under-inspired.
  34. In the Mix
    A jumble of genres including mob melodrama, bodyguard romance and interracial love story, none of which is handled in a remotely satisfying manner by director Ron Underwood. The film's tone shifts with all the grace of a car with a balky transmission.
  35. Rent
    Rent is commodified faux bohemia on a platter, eliciting the same kind of numbing soul-sadness as children's beauty pageants, tiny dogs in expensive boots, Mahatma Gandhi in Apple ads.
  36. The Libertine
    A trying experience. As we watch Rochester fall apart in spectacular fashion, it's clear that a major lure for the venturesome Depp was the chance to play a grotesque, to become a pestilent physical wreck with an artificial silver nose. There's more in that role for the actor, however, than there is for us.
  37. My Big Fat Independent Movie
    A big fast bust.
  38. April's Shower
    The movie suffers from a malady common to tiny indies of the let's-put-on-a-show variety -- it strains for irrepressibly nutty, but lands squarely in annoying.
  39. When a Stranger Calls
    Droopy remake.
  40. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
    The performances by all three children are scarily convincing. Still, it's a taxing bit of exploitation, which, although you're glad to know it's a work of fiction, doesn't exactly make a case for itself as art.
  41. Evil
    Director Mikael Hafström's dramatic sense is so pedestrian and snail's-pace obvious -- since this 2003 feature, he's made the leap to Hollywood with the plodding thriller "Derailed" -- one starts biding time for the inevitable retributive smackdown that will save our hero from the gantlet of draggy high-mindedness about counteracting fascism with stony resolve.
  42. The Zodiac
    Unfortunately, the film lacks the suspense and drama to carry the psychological burden placed on it by its makers. Plot strands are dropped like so much lint, and it ends so abruptly that you wonder whether the filmmakers ran out of money, ideas or both.
  43. Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector
    You have to be a bit of an arrested adolescent to think "Larry" is funny.
  44. Basic Instinct 2
    What we may very well be looking at here is another "Showgirls," a drag camp-fest for the "Baby Jane" crowd, fabulous fodder for future cabaret acts, and a pleasure probably best enjoyed in a crowd -- preferably a vocal one. Dead serious and stone idiotic, the only basic instinct in evidence here is desperation.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Iowa
    Farnsworth's frenetic, often hysterical first feature tries desperately to find a style, or styles, to call its own, but there's never a moment that doesn't feel as if it's been chewed up and spit out a dozen times before.
  46. Scary Movie 4
    Isn't it amazing to see just how low some people will stoop if you pay them enough?
  47. Abominable
    Schifrin wisely holds off showing the monster -- because once the creature is revealed, the already shaky film takes a turn for the worse. The costume for the monster looks like a cross between a drugstore Halloween mask and leftover molds from the horror chestnut "Leprechaun."
  48. The Celestine Prophecy
    The movie is flatly acted and extremely ill-paced, lacking any sense of urgency, momentum or fun. "Romancing the Stone" it is not.
  49. RV
    The bedraggled movie limps along to its phony hogwash of an ending, adding the ignominy of sentimentality to its previous sin of being so derivative.
  50. See No Evil
    A flavorless snack, time filler until "Saw III" and "Hostel 2" are served up.
  51. Little Man
    Devoid of verbal wit, instead relying on a relentless stream of Looney Tunes-inspired violence.
  52. Lady in the Water
    There is something bizarrely compelling about the movie. It's slower than watching a train wreck but invokes that same level of disbelief.
  53. Barnyard
    It's always dispiriting to see children's movies succumb to desperate pandering to the coolness imperative, especially since, given the marketing muscle they tend to have behind them, the bigger trick seems to be in getting people not to see them.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Amateurs
    There are no laughs to be found in writer-director Michael Traeger's would-be comedy The Amateurs, but there is one big mystery: how actors of this caliber could have been convinced to take part.
  55. The Quiet
    It never quite settles on whether it's a "Mean Girls" burlesque of teen life, an "American Beauty"-style bad-things-in-the-suburbs drama, or a wayward horror film. And it certainly never reconciles itself to successfully pulling off a hybrid of the three.
  56. The Covenant
    As boredom sets in, the viewer realizes that "The Covenant" does possess one magical power: It afflicts its audience with restless leg syndrome.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Unknown
    The movie's disinterest in character might be forgivable were its plot not riddled with holes.
  58. Meet the Family
    Good-natured and exuberantly politically - socially is more like it - incorrect, but it is woefully under-inspired and amateurish.
  59. Night of the Living Dead 3D
    Even for ultra-low-budget, grade-Z horror movies, this is a truly incompetent film.
  60. Living the Dream
    This is a bitter, occasionally farcical drama with the most hostile cinematic view of Los Angeles since "Crash."
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Black Christmas
    Like an ugly tie or a pair of slipper socks, Black Christmas is destined to be forgotten the instant it's unwrapped, gathering dust until the season rolls around again.
  62. Factory Girl
    It's more like "That Girl" on speed than anything else.
  63. Stomp the Yard
    Yes, stepping is an age-old tradition at historically African American schools, but this smells of desperation; one more misstep for a film with two left feet.
  64. Cease Fire
    Cease Fire is no art film but, rather, mainstream fare that's likely to appeal primarily to Farsi-speaking audiences. It is talky, too long at 1 hour, 44 minutes and tends to be preachy and tedious.
  65. The Hitcher
    The original film was intellectually engaging as well as tangibly creepy, while the new remake is just plain bad, and boring to boot.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Blood and Chocolate
    It's a relentlessly silly horror/fantasy/romance that is merely the latest twist on a tired premise.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Hannibal Rising
    Bad as Harris' Hannibal Rising screenplay (his first) is, at least it's an improvement on his dreadful book, streamlining its convoluted action and discarding large chunks of unspeakable dialogue.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Wild Hogs
    By the time it sputters across the finish line, Wild Hogs feels as if it's gone on forever -- like a trip in a hot car with the windows rolled up. The air is stale and hard to breathe, and it sure feels good when it's over.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Caffeine
    Detailing the sexual and romantic misadventures of the employees and patrons at a London cafe, Caffeine is about as appetizing as a pot of dishwater coffee.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Adam's Apples
    The movie is all surface, loudly clamoring for attention and then losing its voice.
  71. The Hills Have Eyes II
    You'd like to think such bankruptcy of imagination means we've seen the last of these subterranean creeps. But you know they'll be back soon to collect their royalties from the gore hounds who apparently don't care how dull or warmed over the accompanying package.
  72. Pathfinder
    One of the funniest films of the year. That's not good news for this attempted action-adventure, which clearly lost its way in its own copious fog.
  73. Redline
    Redline isn't exactly a car wreck, mainly because it's far less exciting, and you can, in fact, look away. Perhaps at your shoes.
  74. Slow Burn
    Beach's storytelling tactics, much like the film as a whole, would simply be annoying if they weren't also borderline insulting.
  75. The Condemned
    Condemned is, if nothing else, an object lesson in how to punish women for fun and profit. But it's all for a point, the filmmakers would have us believe. One suspects that's a point of sale.
  76. The Invisible
    Little more than an extended excuse for a soundtrack.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Georgia Rule
    Georgia Rule oscillates clumsily from shock to slapstick to schmaltz. The result of these big tonal swings is a cinematic strikeout.
  78. License to Wed
    The movie is a pastiche of tortured slapstick, groan-inducing dialogue and a lethal dose of treacle, apparently awaiting one of Williams' trademark sprees of riffing and vamping to save the day. That moment never comes, however.
  79. Bratz
    It's a movie on the wrong side side of the so-bad-it's-good line.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Underdog
    Director Frederik Du Chau's big-screen Underdog has all of the cartoons' crudeness and none of their charm. It's the celluloid equivalent of sugar cereal: cheap, empty and headache-inducing.
  81. Descent
    Depending on your revenge story preferences, the brutally pretentious Descent is either a payback flick with an agonizingly formless middle, or a soul-darkening head trip bracketed by a crude vengeance tale. Mostly, though, it's indie provocation trapped between shock and blah.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    War
    War ties itself in knots trying to bring something new to a stale formula. It's never painful to watch, but that's only because it provokes no feeling at all.
  83. Dragon Wars: D-War
    Fluent in the laughable dialogue of a million bad fantasy flicks:
  84. Martian Child
    Martian Child would like to be "About a Boy (Who Thinks He's a Martian)", but, disappointingly, it doesn't even come close.
  85. Revolver
    The result is a film that's main crime is inducing stupefying boredom with little payoff in the end.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
    Its convictionless competence is merely dull, denying the pleasures of an outright howler without providing much else.
  87. The Air I Breathe
    A stew of cheap irony, ponderous but meaningless allegory, violence and pretension, the movie is all borrowed style and calculated pandering. It does, however, get more ludicrous by the minute. So in that sense, it's good for an occasional laugh.
  88. Fool's Gold
    It's a big, cheesy, familiar bore. With its garland of set pieces featuring Matthew McConaughey in mortal danger strung together by beach-groovy musical hooks, Fool's Gold feels at times like a third-rate Bond movie set to a Jimmy Buffett album.
  89. Prom Night
    This is as listless, mindless and utterly useless a piece of corporate brain-clog as one is likely to come across for quite some time.
  90. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
    As a work of nonfiction filmmaking it is a sham and as agitprop it is too flimsy to strike any serious blows.
  91. Deception
    Deception would be laughably bad if it weren't so rotely inert.
  92. XXY
    The genitally ambiguous as well as transsexuals and gay people deserve more than XXY's good intentions.
  93. Speed Racer
    The fakeness of it all overwhelms, dampening any real excitement. It's hard to care about characters so stiff and one-dimensional they out-cartoon the cartoon originals, and it's hard to watch them bop around like avatars in a flat, airless, digital world.
  94. The X Files: I Want to Believe
    Even at its stride, "The X-Files" was a load of malarkey. But it was thoughtful malarkey and compulsively watchable. One could say the same about the first two-thirds of The X-Files: I Want to Believe before it spins out of control and into a delirious plane of awfulness.
  95. Take
    In the end, Take is too enamored of its time-shifting gimmick and cheap suspense to ultimately have much impact.
  96. Hell Ride
    The film gets the scummy patina right, all phony-Leone dusty trails, but while everybody on screen looks to be enjoying themselves, it is no fun to watch.
  97. Religulous
    Though he claims to be a seeker, someone who "has to find out" why believers believe, Maher sets out not after answers but cheap laughs that preach, so to speak, to the converted.
  98. Sukiyaki Western Django
    Not even a brief appearance by Quentin Tarantino and a ton of references to other movies enlivens the proceedings much.
  99. Igor
    One of those fever-pitched computer-generated whizbangs in which every character spits out lines like a caffeinated Catskills comic.
  100. My Best Friend's Girl
    Ultimately, its most unforgivable sin is that it's simply not funny.
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