Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,523 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: 8,698 out of 16523
  2. Mixed: 5,808 out of 16523
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16523
16523 movie reviews
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  1. Astro Boy
    Plays like "Transformers" for tots, a "Pinocchio" story that stays true to its source material's storied past without adding much in the way of interest, outside of some clankingly obvious political subtext that will alienate people of all stripes.
  2. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
    Cirque is a harmless bit of fluff with a very cool look, but there's just never enough bite.
  3. Saw VI
    Terrible acting, zero suspense, laughable logic and the promise of another one next year. How can we get this policy canceled?
  4. (Untitled)
    As in the best movie satires, there's a solid core of truth informing director Jonathan Parker's (Untitled), which takes on the New York art and music worlds in one smart and funny swoop.
  5. Motherhood
    Invites the kind of judgment it condemns.
  6. Ong Bak 2
    Elephants aside, the plot of this Ong Bak is rudimentary at best.
  7. The Wedding Song
    Exquisite yet harrowing.
  8. Killing Kasztner
    If you know the name Rezso Kasztner, you won't need any encouragement to see Killing Kasztner: The Jew Who Dealt With Nazis. If you don't, that is even more reason to see this documentary on the strange and compelling life and death of one of the most morally complex figures to come out of the Holocaust.
  9. Where the Wild Things Are
    When faced as a director with the rudderless screenplay he (Jonze) co-wrote with Eggers, he's been powerless to energize it in any involving way. Sometimes you are better off with 10 sentences than tens of millions of dollars, and this is one of those times.
  10. Law Abiding Citizen
    The film's greatest sin isn't its cynical moral posturing but its complete failure to engage audiences on even a visceral level.
  11. New York, I Love You
    Where "Paris" was the ingénue, fresh-faced and surprising, "New York" needed to come in with the confidence of a more practiced hand, and it never quite manages that. Better to think of it as a day trip rather than an actual film, just a brief, mostly delightful excursion into the city.
  12. The Stepfather
    Tthe film is all of a piece, a handsome, thoughtfully crafted production that generates a mounting terror securely anchored by assured performances, consistent psychological persuasiveness and believable dialogue. What's most chilling about The Stepfather is that it was inspired by an actual incident in New Jersey in 1971.
  13. The Little Traitor
    The film is clever in using a child to tease out the misunderstandings that arise between those on opposite sides, even when the river of emotions that should course through The Little Traitor sometimes runs dry.
  14. The Maid
    The Maid has that particular gift of leaving you off balance in the best possible way, and whenever something like that comes around you owe it to yourself to check it out.
  15. An Education
    This is a performance, and a film, to cherish for this year and always.
  16. The Damned United
    There's barely any on-field footage in The Damned United. What we get instead is fine acting and directing, splendid dialogue and a story too outrageous to be made up.
  17. Bronson
    Whether it's Peterson/Bronson's more theatrical bits or his untamable character's many blood-spitting, knuckle-beating, explosions, Hardy chomps down on his once-in-a-career role with stunning ferocity and never lets go. He's extraordinary.
  18. Good Hair
    The result is a documentary that weaves as much comedy as fact into the narrative, making the experience a satisfying entertainment even for the lucky few who have no hair cares at all.
  19. Trucker
    There are so many wonderfully unconventional things to like about this tiny independent film, Monaghan's earthy and uncompromising performance chief among them, its depth surprising you at every turn.
  20. Visual Acoustics
    Nominally about the life and career of landmark Southern California architectural photographer Julius Shulman, but it's more about the buildings he photographed than it is about him. Which is probably the way he'd like it.
  21. Eating Out: All You Can Eat
    Just as silly and tedious as the first two unconnected tales of young gay love -- but lots worse.
  22. Adventures of Power
    Adventures of Power just may teach the world that, as hard as it is to catch the wind, it's harder still to drum the air.
  23. Peter and Vandy
    Peter and Vandy has the decided disadvantage of arriving a couple of months after the similarly structured "(500) Days of Summer," a movie sporting a sunnier sheen, more appealing cast and an actual reason to care about the outcome.
  24. The Yes Men Fix the World
    An odd combination of righteous, raucous and rueful.
  25. Araya
    The 1959 film's style is dated, but it is visually glorious and tells a fascinating story.
  26. A Serious Man
    Writer-directors Joel and Ethan have seized the opportunity afforded by the Oscar-winning success of "No Country for Old Men," to make their most personal, most intensely Jewish film, a pitch-perfect comedy of despair that, against some odds, turns out to be one of their most universal as well.
  27. Whip It
    What makes Whip It a blast is the action in the rink. What gives Whip It heart is the pathos, pain and mettle-testing elements that accompany any serious athletic competition. It doesn't hurt that its diminutive star is surprisingly athletic and agile on the track.
  28. Zombieland
    First-time feature director Ruben Fleischer brings impeccable timing and bloodthirsty wit to the proceedings. Cinematographer Michael Bonvillain captures some interesting images amid the post-apocalyptic carnival of carnage, as when he transforms the destruction of a souvenir shop into a rough ballet.
  29. The Invention of Lying
    Ultimately it's the characters who are the joke -- too thin, too vacuous, too unlikable for us to care what happens in the next 30 minutes, much less for the rest of their lives. Too bad, really, because the truth is Gervais is a very funny guy. The ugly truth is that The Invention of Lying isn't -- funny, that is.
  30. More Than a Game
    A knockout of a sports documentary. Destined against its will to be known as "the LeBron James movie," it is all that, and a good deal more.
  31. As Seen Through These Eyes
    Any remembrance of Holocaust victims is, of course, a worthy endeavor and a historical priority.
  32. A Beautiful Life
    The whole thing plays like a bad Equity-waiver one-act.
  33. The Horse Boy
    Tthe film, which also contains brief interviews with several autism experts, proves an extraordinary journey of the heart and spirit, and a stirring testament to parenthood.
  34. Surrogates
    An interesting idea, but unfortunately, the film's narrative and emotional engine operate as mechanically as the titular, dead-eyed glamazoids.
  35. Paranormal Activity
    Peli works at mining the unknown, the unknowable, like a minimalist, using small moments and virtually no special effects exceedingly well.
  36. 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.
  37. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
    The idea is that the guys' adventure proves transformative, but Tucker's dramatic I've-seen-the-light speech is charged with just the right degree of glibness to leave one skeptical.
  38. Coco Before Chanel
    A superior filmed biography that brings intelligence, restraint and style to what could have been a more standard treatment.
  39. The Boys Are Back
    The Boys Are Back is a bit like the parenting it portrays -- at times there is pain, mistakes will be made, but if you can get beyond that, there is pleasure to be found.
  40. Fame
    Someone has driven a stake through the heart and ripped out the soul of the 1980 original. The responsible parties, make that irresponsible parties, should be found, thrown in movie jail and not allowed within 50 feet of a set again. Ever.
  41. The Blue Tooth Virgin
    Hilarious, acutely knowing.
  42. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
    The film is intelligent, well crafted and often funny, but it may not sufficiently reward even the brief time it asks one to spend with such hideous men.
  43. The Providence Effect
    If anything is missing from this inspiring film, it is a deeper examination of why, given how common-sensical these approaches are, so few other schools have been able to accomplish what Providence St. Mel's has.
  44. Mary and Max
    Mary and Max’s jauntiness fades into a sadness that culminates on a note of self-acceptance -- and a great gratitude for the sustaining, redemptive power of friendship.
  45. Capitalism: A Love Story
    Moore's scattershot is a lot more interesting than some filmmakers' focus, and many of those individual parts are classic.
  46. Irene in Time
    Like its central character, Henry Jaglom's 16th feature is gangly and graceful, awkward and tender, a jumble of astute observation and clunkily heightened reality.
  47. In Search of Beethoven
    A splendid work that will be a revelation to the uninitiated and a joy to music lovers.
  48. The Informant!
    While this film fits squarely into Soderbergh's recurrent goal of ignoring audience interest when possible, that's the only area in which it can be considered a success.
  49. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
    The movie's humor targets both kids and grown-ups with equal success, but, even with the presence of a mustache-fixated monkey, the main attraction here is the movie's vibrant 3-D animation and its perfect storm of foodie-friendly sight gags.
  50. Love Happens
    That this superficial romance between a successful self-help author and a nurturing florist is also a film about overcoming the tragedy of losing a loved one only makes its clichéd insipidity that much more irksome.
  51. Jennifer's Body
    Diablo Cody's glib teen-hip dialogue mostly feels like self-conscious splatter over a sorely lackluster scare flick.
  52. Paris
    If the idea of interconnectedness feels secondhand, what's fresh and affecting is the way Binoche's and Duris' characters navigate life and death.
  53. The Burning Plain
    Powerful, profound and beautifully rendered.
  54. Disgrace
    Absorbing but often bloodless and, frankly, depressing.
  55. Laila's Birthday
    Masharawi saves his fist-shaking until the very end, but he needn't have bothered. His camera captures the senselessness of life in this city under siege in a way that words cannot.
  56. Harmony and Me
    Harmony and Me, written and directed by Austin-based Bob Byington, represents much of what is wonderful and fresh about the recent wave of ultra-low-budget American independent filmmaking.
  57. Bright Star
    Masterfully put-together, made with confidence, intelligence and command.
  58. 35 Shots of Rum
    For 20 years, Claire Denis has been among France's foremost filmmakers with her acute yet subtle observations of the ebbs and flows within relationships. Her perception and understanding seem to grow only richer over the years, and her newest film, 35 Shots of Rum, is surely one of her finest -- and thereby one of the best films of the year.
  59. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
    The gripping story of how hawk-turned-dove Ellsberg's explosive actions circuitously led to the impeachment of Richard Nixon and, in turn, an end to the Vietnam War is comprehensively detailed in Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith's evocative documentary.
  60. I Can Do Bad All by Myself
    What works best, though, is that it's practically an R&B/gospel musical.
  61. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
    The leads can't lend either spunk or gravitas to what was already a preposterous yarn 50 years ago.
  62. Not Forgotten
    A movie that's more convoluted than satisfying.
  63. No Impact Man: The Documentary
    The film ultimately is more practical than profound, a slightly smartened-up "Dummy's Guide to Green Living," which, as you learn, most of us probably know a good deal less about than we imagine.
  64. Sorority Row
    It lapses into that familiar category of movies that go in for lots of fancy obfuscation along the way only to make its story seem all the more simple, trite and contrived by the finish.
  65. The Other Man
    Approaching the film with, let's say, lowered expectations may go a long way toward appreciating what it attempts, as well as what it achieves.
  66. White on Rice
    It's revealing that writer-director Dave Boyle has said that in a way he fulfilled his lifelong ambition to be a cartoonist with the live-action White on Rice because his people in this wan, trite and increasingly silly comedy are little more than stick figures.
  67. Crude
    For what Crude does best is take us behind the scenes and show in often candid detail how campaigns are waged, tactics decided on and strategies prioritized.
  68. Walt & El Grupo
    The best kind of labor of love. A documentary made with affection and intelligence, it looks at a brief episode in the life of a cultural icon and uses it to illuminate what turns out to be a telling moment in time and in the process shed some light on the man himself.
  69. Gamer
    Rarely have the words "game over" come as such sweet relief.
  70. All About Steve
    A dippy clunker like All About Steve has no purpose other than as a challenge: If you laden a usually charming A-lister with a thoroughly off-putting, unhinged character, can she claw her way to likability? The short answer is no. The long answer is, what in the world was Bullock, who also produced the movie, thinking?
  71. Black Dynamite
    An enjoyable celebratory ode to a fiercely entertaining counterculture-inspired genre.
  72. Extract
    While Extract is mildly amusing and a slice of a mostly working-class world that doesn't make it into comedy that much anymore, it's not completely convincing as a movie.
  73. Amreeka
    This is a pointed, emotional story of a divorced Palestinian woman and her son who immigrate to the U.S. just after the invasion of Iraq, a story that benefits from Dabis' background as a child growing up in the Midwest during the Gulf War as the daughter of a Palestinian father and a Jordanian mother.
  74. American Casino
    The result is a lopsided, visually uninspired film that works best when it eschews the complex numbers-crunching of its financial industry pundits and whistle-blowers to profile the everyday victims of the crisis.
  75. The Final Destination
    Though this latest entry has an OK sense of humor, moves swiftly enough and sports an effective opening sequence of racetrack destruction that puts its Fusion 3-D technology to good use, it mostly comes off as a particularly flimsy excuse to string together a bunch of gory killings.
  76. The Open Road
    It's a low-key road movie that doesn't stray far from the very, very beaten path.
  77. The September Issue
    A slight, if often riveting, behind-the-scenes documentary.
  78. We Live in Public
    If anything, the film is a reflection of the Web zeitgeist, where observation comes easily but insight is rare. What saves the documentary from becoming a complete frustration is the sheer, stunning prescience of Harris.
  79. Big Fan
    Starring an ideally cast Patton Oswalt in the title role, Big Fan is a poignant, dead-on character study, an examination of a crisis in the life of the most die-hard of die-hard New York Giants football fans.
  80. Halloween II (2009)
    What you won't feel is genuine horror, because unlike John Carpenter -- whose original 1978 film is a sly game of nerve-racking peekaboo -- Zombie isn't out to engage fans of the genre with a slaughterhouse bonbon like "Halloween II."
  81. Taking Woodstock
    It's a frustrating complication of a movie with a sprawling story and grand ambitions -- and some truly grand acting -- that stumbles almost as often as it soars. Bummer.
  82. Inglourious Basterds
    Clocking in at 2 hours and 32 minutes, it is unforgivably leisurely, almost glacial, a film that loses its way in the thickets of alternative history and manages to be violent without the start-to-finish energy that violence on screen usually guarantees.
  83. World's Greatest Dad
    For all of its cutting cynicism, "Dad" proves unexpectedly moving in its portrait of a middle-aged man leaving childish things behind.
  84. Post Grad
    A joyless fluffball about after-college job woes with a dispiriting message for smart young women.
  85. Shorts
    The problem with Shorts is in the execution. The blown-up plot line at times derails even the little ones, the many fine comedic grown-ups are mostly squandered, and the "message" part of the movie feels like it was thrown together during detention, resulting in a wrap-up that is rushed and cloyingly PC.
  86. The Baader Meinhof Complex
    A fascinating hybrid of a film. Even though its purpose couldn't be more serious, its style could hardly be more pulp.
  87. Fifty Dead Men Walking
    Terrific performances and an array of kinetic action scenes help distinguish Fifty Dead Men Walking from the seemingly endless stream of films about Northern Ireland's infamous era of sectarian violence known as the Troubles.
  88. Five Minutes of Heaven
    Ultimately, Five Minutes of Heaven is stronger as a whole than its individual parts. It's a well-performed piece that perhaps required a more calibrated hand than Hirschbiegel's proves here.
  89. X Games 3D: The Movie
    An uneven thrill-circus display that too often feels like TV writ large and loud rather than the kind of cinematic reimagining that defined the surf-flick genre.
  90. Art & Copy
    One of the main treats of Art & Copy is that it allows us to revisit those classic ads, all of which are just as exciting now as they were when they first ran.
  91. My One and Only
    The 1950s suit Zellweger, as does the film.
  92. Sikandar
    Had it been crafted with a bit more depth and finesse, writer-director Piyush Jha's involving thriller Sikandar"might have had the potential to reach beyond the average Bollywood import's core audience. Still, the film boasts a significant story with several effective plot twists that make it worth a look.
  93. Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha
    Van Peebles' persona and sensibility remain engaging, as do his way with his beguiling score and songs, but his film desperately needs tightening to eliminate tedious moments, especially in the African sequence.
  94. Casi divas
    A comedy with just the right blend of satire, social comment, myriad complications, romance and heart-tugging to give it some deft shading and variety.
  95. Still Walking
    This small gem of a movie always feels true and real as it gently reveals the quiet moments that define our lives.
  96. The Headless Woman
    Not the supernatural horror picture its title suggests, but this subtle, elliptical film evokes its own kind of nightmarish situation.
  97. District 9
    District 9 is very smart sci-fi, but that's just the beginning; it's also a scathing social satire hidden inside a terrific action thriller teeming with gross aliens and regrettable inter-species conflict. And it's a blast. . . .
  98. Ponyo
    You'll be planning to see Ponyo twice before you've finished seeing it once. Five minutes into this magical film you'll be making lists of the individuals of every age you can expose to the very special mixture of fantasy and folklore, adventure and affection.
  99. The Time Traveler's Wife
    When the film's fate rests on the alchemy of its stars, you really don't want to get that wrong. But here, chemistry is a problem, and it proves a significant one.
  100. The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
    The Goods motors along choking out enough lowbrow laughs to make for an agreeably nutty late summer ride.
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