Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,524 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 16524
  2. Mixed: 5,809 out of 16524
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16524
16524 movie reviews
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  1. Ali and Nino
    There’s zero chemistry or feeling to this sweeping, predictable endeavor, only the scent of what might have been.
  2. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
    Inspired moments can be found throughout “Eurovision” if you have the patience.
  3. The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
    So refreshing and funny and, in its way, sophisticated.
  4. Duplex
    Its drawback is that it's a one-joke affair, leading to a repetitiousness that makes the film seem overlong even at 87 minutes.
  5. Face
    No amount of goodwill can rescue Face from its painfully literal script and acting that's all about projecting recognizable attitude rather than drawing in viewers.
  6. Marebito (The Stranger from Afar)
    Provocative rather than scary, and it's made with visual flair.
  7. Going in Style
    If anything, it uses its gifted veterans to disguise how tired, implausible and overly sentimental the proceedings turn out to be.
  8. Passenger 57
    The problem with Passenger 57 is that in fact the flight does not turn out to be all that interesting. Neither in the air nor in a pointless stopover on the ground does anything happen that arouses more than an entry-level of excitement. [06 Nov 1992, p.F1]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Star Trek: The Motion Picture
    What you see is what you respond to, and what you see is a unique cultural phenomenon, and a film that for all its visual splendors falls well short of its aspirations.
  10. Last Night
    With true insights in short supply, the on-the-nose material fails to seduce.
  11. The Zero Theorem
    This "Theorem" is all sizzle, zero steak.
  12. How to Talk to Girls at Parties
    How to Talk to Girls at Parties is an aimless, sweet-souled jumble. Its ebullience is palpable, if rarely infectious.
  13. Racer and the Jailbird
    Racer and the Jailbird remains absorbing throughout, thanks primarily to the two leads, who are both almost frighteningly believable as lovers willing to risk everything to stay together.
  14. The Guilt Trip
    There is something promising about the match-up of an old-school show-biz kid like Streisand with the modern, anxiously self-aware Rogen, but what could have been the multigenerational Thunderdome of Jewish Humor instead turns out bloodlessly disappointing.
  15. All Dogs Go to Heaven
    The animation is of variable quality; the story is a garbled pastiche of "Oliver Twist" and "Little Miss Marker;" the songs, including four by Charles ("Annie") Strouse, are eminently unhummable. [17 Nov 1989]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Summering
    There’s a sense that nature is speaking to the girls, perhaps because they’re still clinging to an age when imagination trumps reality, whatever that is. They’re also capable of seeing magical things that the adults in their lives no longer notice.
  17. American Ultra
    The action set-pieces and the comedic character scenes in the film seem to be taking turns and are rarely brought together in a meaningful way.
  18. Into the Ashes
    While Harvey does a fine job evoking the violent, character-driven crime pictures of the 1970s, he can’t quite make Into the Ashes feel original enough to be vital.
  19. Meet Cute
    Meet Cute falls into a rut fairly quickly, because it lacks the breadth of imagination that makes the best time-loop stories work.
  20. Nine 1/2 Weeks
    Sanitized for our protection and in the hands of director Adrian Lyne, 9 1/2 Weeks is a swooningly silly cautionary tale about the bad and the beautiful; a pair whose sexual tastes might have surfaced after a night of watching "Bolero" on videocassette. [21 Feb 1986, p.1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  21. Two for the Money
    Pure, unself-conscious macho camp, but it's not like Pacino and McConaughey don't know it. They're pitching tents and romping around in the grass like Jerry Maguire on steroids.
  22. Jungle Cruise
    Jungle Cruise, despite its more-than-capable leads and its much-vaunted attention to detail and verisimilitude, never feels transporting in the way that even mediocre blockbusters were once able to muster. It’s less an expedition than a simulation, a dispatch from a wild yet oddly pristine world where seeing is never close to believing.
  23. Management
    Though it doesn't always work, it's an idea with its heart in the right place and, paired with nonshock comedy, it's a nice change of pace.
  24. The Boss Baby
    Mistaking cliché for comic insight, and lacking the kind of conceptual rigor that a Pixar intern could probably muster, the script falls back repeatedly on the kinds of assumptions about human behavior that are meant to be cute and relatable to grown-ups and kids alike, but which instead offer an unflattering glimpse into the movie’s lazy, cynical soul.
  25. Nothing Like the Holidays
    • Los Angeles Times
  26. My Name Is Khan
    A potent, energetic heart-tugger and Khan and Kajol, major Bollywood stars, are highly appealing and equal to the demand of their emotion-charged roles.
  27. Murder by Numbers
    Though Schroeder makes you squirm more than you want to at the inevitable scenes of the trussed-up female murder victim, he also has the proclivity and the skill to make at least the B-picture half of Murder by Numbers of more than passing interest.
  28. A Perfect Murder
    A Perfect Murder begins better than it ends, and the pleasures it offers turn out to be more of a transitory nature.
  29. Switch
    Perhaps Switch's greatest strength is in giving us enough information to try to come up with better questions of our own.
  30. Time Lapse
    Director Bradley King and his co-writer, B.P. Cooper, manage to overcome their shoddy premise as the plot progresses assuredly and persuasively.
  31. Northmen: A Viking Saga
    Northmen: A Viking Saga uses a relatively smaller scale to its advantage.
  32. The Night Eats the World
    No matter how spare and arty The Night Eats the World is, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been done before.
  33. Shoplifters of the World
    Shoplifters of the World, in fact, belongs to Cleo, not just because Howard is such a dizzyingly charismatic actress but because her story, which unfolds parallel to Dean’s, is a heartfelt coming-of-age drama that perfectly embodies the youthful angst, ennui and romantic longing expressed so well in the music of the Smiths.
  34. Cobweb
    That title, Cobweb, suggests only one cobweb, but why be stingy? This movie’s screenplay is strewn with them: dozens of dusty tendrils linking it back to older, better horror films, sometimes on a shot-by-shot basis.
  35. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    Exciting, distracting and quite possibly permanently concentration impairing, what Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End offers is a wonderfully scenic medley of impressive action sequences so lengthy, elaborate and numerous that remembering what came before becomes a kind of test of mental focus.
  36. Boundaries
    Feste...has been known to elicit strong performances even from thuddingly obvious, maudlin material. But her attempts to establish an atmosphere of drab, low-key realism — evident in the dim lighting, wobbly framing and Laura’s penchant for rumpled plaid shirts — can scarcely conceal the essential phoniness of the material.
  37. Love in the Villa
    Julie and Charlie make a winning couple, which goes a long way toward making Love on the Villa watchable. But they’re so boxed-in by the movie’s clichés, their love affair rarely gets the chance to breathe.
  38. The Stoning of Soraya M.
    The Stoning of Soraya M. goes well beyond its angry didacticism and its specific indictment of men's oppression of women to achieve the impact of a Greek tragedy through its masterful grasp of suspense and group psychology, and some superb acting.
  39. Trash
    The compelling film, like its energetic young stars, is in constant motion. Although the nominally gritty tone occasionally gives way to the director's weakness for the theatrical, the film is rooted by that trio of engagingly authentic performances.
  40. After the Wedding
    In too many scenes Freundlich prefers the arch heaviness of pained expressions in posh surroundings when what you’re waiting for is the messiness of humans letting fly after their careful worlds have been upended.
  41. Bullitt County
    Although a third act reveal doesn’t quite pack the intended punch, Bullitt County nevertheless propels its characters in some unanticipated, intriguing directions.
  42. Fatima
    In a pandemic, some might call the film a beacon of hope; others might prefer science to prayer for salvation. As a piece of cinema, though, Fatima is unlikely to be canonized.
  43. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
    As predictable as the movie often is, it’s elevated by Condor’s disarming and charming Ruby, and some vivid character designs. The luminous undersea kraken kingdom is also quite a sight.
  44. Therapy for a Vampire
    Although amusing and filled with many well-timed comic bits, especially by the deft Moretti, the movie loses some of its farcical steam en route and suffers from a diffused point of view.
  45. Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
    Yet whenever you get too irritated at Fur's pretensions, the remarkable acting of its two stars pulls you back in and keeps you watching.
  46. Champions
    For the most part, it is warmly amusing without diving too far into the realm of the maudlin or treacly; and it side-steps anything insensitive while still enjoying some bawdy humor.
  47. Conspiracy Theory
    It might even have made a good film, but it hasn't. In the hands of stars in denial about their stardom and a director who can't be bothered to take things seriously, it has come out implausible and unsatisfying, a comic thriller that is not especially funny or thrilling.
  48. The Campaign
    Rude, rowdy and raunchy, The Campaign gleefully skewers the current sad state of American politics. With a target that tempting, it's not surprising that this cynical and funny film hits more often than it misses.
  49. My Policeman
    My Policeman is an absorbing, resonant, deeply wistful adaptation of the 2012 novel by Bethan Roberts that will probably be best appreciated — stylistically, thematically, romantically — if judged more within the context of its mainly mid-20th century setting than by contemporary expectations.
  50. Ticket to Paradise
    Part of the appeal of Ticket to Paradise is seeing Roberts and Clooney together before they — and this type of glossy studio entertainment — become extinct.
  51. Storytelling
    None of this intellectualizing is necessary to the simple enjoyment of Storytelling -- provided the viewer has a taste for the pitch-black humor that emerges when Solondz's camera becomes a veritable blowtorch aimed at humanity's myriad failings.
  52. Garage Days
    Like real indie films, garage bands are by definition rough around the edges, but what separates the true believers from the poseurs is their passion, their commitment -- and not just how cool they look on screen or on stage. A mainstream endeavor tricked out as an indie, Garage Days gives us plenty to look at but no reason to care.
  53. Twins
    Twins starts with an overblown fairy-tale quality that seems as if it should work. But, by the finish, the movie collapses on the shoulders of the stars. It works because they both showed up and delivered the goods and kept their end of the deal. [9 Dec 1988, p.1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  54. Letters to Juliet
    An ode to romance of the most starry-eyed sort, a sugary paean to quixotic clichés and a film destined to be a guilty pleasure for some (me included, sigh) and the painful price of a relationship for others (so steel yourselves).
  55. A Kind of Murder
    The story remains an academic argument, struggling to pierce the handsome surface.
  56. The Island
    Chases, crashes and explosions are thick on the land in the second half of this movie, but though they are expertly done, their size, frequency and increasing disconnection from what was once a coherent story leave you feeling pummeled rather than exhilarated.
  57. It Lives Inside
    Proving her own star quality, a committed Suri guides Sam through a journey of identity and final-girl heroics that brings satisfying healing to her strained relationship with her mother.
  58. The Ten
    David Wain, director of "Wet Hot American Summer," brings his popular brand of surrealist yet mundane humor to the big screen with more or less dreadful results.
  59. Look
    With its emphasis on its interweaving stories, the movie offers no commentary on the phenomenon of increasingly pried-apart privacy, positive or negative. Not that Look needs to be political, or even particularly deep, but that nonexamination, coupled with lack of real insight into the characters, leaves one sensing an opportunity missed.
  60. The Laureate
    Haddock proves the beating heart of the piece, infusing her role with a quiet strength, determination and equitability; neither plucky enabler nor long-suffering victim but something believably fresher and more heroic. Maybe she should have been the film’s true focus.
  61. You People
    You People busts out of the gate with the lit, razor-sharp zip of a “Dear White People” only to limp across the finish line with all the edge of Up With People.
  62. Blast from the Past
    Intermittently appealing movie romance.
  63. Scarborough
    Scaborough doesn’t try to shock audiences, but its attempt at a surprise is sadly predictable.
  64. My Salinger Year
    Joanna’s journey of creative and emotional enlightenment — including the balancing act of trying to write when consumed by a day job — is managed with grace, tenderness and touching credibility by a wonderfully winning Qualley in concert with Philippe Falardeau’s smart, engaging direction and screenplay.
  65. My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    The movie doesn't purport to have her stand for all women, just the crazy ones, and as such, G-Girl is pure, soul-cleansing id catharsis.
  66. Welcome to the Rileys
    Fortunately Stewart seems to thrive in water over her head, and when she pulls Gandolfini in with her the movie gels. It makes you wish the filmmaker had left them in the deep end longer.
  67. GameStop: Rise of the Players
    This documentary has its limitations, both as a piece of reporting and as cinema. Tulis and his editors rarely give the viewer a moment to breathe and reflect, as they race through a blitz of images from internet chats and cable shows. Their approach to the documentary form is merely functional at best, and sometimes is visually unappealing.
  68. Prince of Darkness
    To give the movie its due, it's been directed, at least on the visual level, with unusual elegance: filled with graceful, gliding tracking shots, and icily precise Hitchcockian setups of the bleak decor and scary effects.
  69. Twelve Thirty
    aAn ambitious ensemble piece in which every actor is able to shine and every character is a master of the well-turned phrase.
  70. Lovely Molly
    Common sense and basic logic are left at the door; there's a brief creature effect that is laughably, outlandishly awful.
  71. Deterrence
    Lurie undermines his high-wire act with the melodramatic carryings-on of the diner patrons.
  72. Home on the Range
    What it really is is an unapologetic cartoon, a harum-scarum endeavor that's so comically frantic it wears you out as much as it entertains.
  73. Straight-Jacket
    Whatever pleasures it holds, Straight-Jacket is highly uneven.
  74. Burn Your Maps
    It's all very strange and more than a bit silly, but somehow — even as characters travel halfway around the world — the plot never journeys anywhere that surprising.
  75. The Case for Christ
    Give credit to the filmmakers for making a faith-affirming picture that aims to be more thoughtful than maudlin. But what they’ve ended up with is a fairly rote Christian redemption narrative — albeit with more charts and graphs.
  76. Poseidon
    More than characters, dialogue and lighting, here Petersen is interested exclusively in suspense of the will-he-or-won't-he-be-crushed-by-that-falling-flaming-elevator variety.
  77. Now You See Me
    For all the talent up on the screen — and one can't fault the performances — the movie just doesn't deliver.
  78. Wide Awake
    Wide Awake is a wonderful family film that deals sensitively, and even with humor, with a fairly unusual situation for the screen: a 9-year-old's struggles with his faith in God. [20 Mar 1998, p.F10]
    • Los Angeles Times
  79. Funny Farm
    Funny Farm --a weak-fish-out-of-water comedy about a New York City couple who see their rural paradise turned into a rustic hell--is a movie with a doubly deceptive title. This movie isn't about a farm, and it isn't very funny, either.
  80. Guarding Tess
    While it's understandable that it was thought that Tess needed something more, that it couldn't go on merely being clever and fragile, this solution goes too far in the opposite direction. [11Mar1994 Pg. F9]
    • Los Angeles Times
  81. The Education of Charlie Banks
    Too often Durst's direction is overly earnest, heavy in long takes, atmosphere wise but scene foolish.
  82. The Other Boleyn Girl
    Not content to be a mildly diverting royal bodice-ripper, it spirals out of control into the kind of overwrought dramaturgy that's out of its league.
  83. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
    In Prince Dastan, he (Gyllenhaal) is supposed to be that heady mix of street smarts, roguish charm and barroom moxie with the noble heart of a lion underneath. It's a lot to ask and turns out to be something more than he can deliver.
  84. Dark Skies
    Really the biggest problem with Dark Skies is that Stewart can never quite decide just what story he is telling — a slow-burn horror parable or paranoid invasion flick — or whether to focus on this character or that, instead struggling to string together scares regardless of how they fit together overall.
  85. The American Society of Magical Negroes
    Like a comedy sketch that overstays its welcome, “Society” undermines both its caustic intent and its romantic-comedy subplot.
  86. 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.
  87. Race You to the Bottom
    Race You to the Bottom has an ending that is rightly open yet thoroughly satisfying -- as is the entire film.
  88. Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry
    An entertaining, adeptly crafted documentary that treats its provocative subject matter with refreshing respect.
  89. Bel Borba Aqui
    What the film lacks in biographical depth, it makes up for with stirring visuals (including effective bits of split screen, time-lapse photography and animation), a vibrant score and an infectious, in-the-moment spirit.
  90. 28 Hotel Rooms
    Despite the familiar setup, this is no "Same Time, Next Year," what with its hot-sheets trysts, full-frontal flashes and frank language. But the brief - sometimes very brief - encounters glimpsed here between the film's leads and sole characters (billed only as "Man" and "Woman") are inventive and telling.
  91. How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change
    "How to Let Go” says all the right things about an unnerving peril, and the various ways some highly motivated people are trying to combat it.
  92. The Vault
    The Vault is a combination heist and horror picture; and it’s the rare genre mash-up where each element’s equally strong.
  93. Line of Duty
    There’s scarcely a minute of the amped-up action movie Line of Duty that isn’t absolutely ridiculous … and scarcely a minute that isn’t mindlessly entertaining.
  94. Nobody's Hero
    Any effort that manages to incorporate pointed observations about Islamophobia, casual xenophobia, female objectification and sexual hypocrisy, at the same time working in a loud make-out session in a cathedral confessional certainly can’t be accused of slacking, no matter how kooky or tedious things become.
  95. Society
    No one who sees the last half-hour of this movie will ever forget it--though quite a few may want to.
  96. Fandango
    Fandango overreaches badly and sinks under a heavy weight of symbolism, bathos and sheer preposterousness that no amount of humor and incident can redeem.
  97. Sugar Hill
    Wading through blood is too much of a price to pay for Sugar Hill’s pluses, and it’s a shame the movie business has made it difficult for them to be experienced any other way.
  98. Elles
    It's tempting to call Elles some kind of thinking-person's sex movie, but it's more about thinking and about sex (and thinking about sex) and is far more likely to encourage awkward, emphatic conversation than post-show friskiness.
  99. Cowboys & Aliens
    A leaden mash-up of western and science-fiction elements that ends up noisy, grotesque and unappealing.
  100. The Purge: Anarchy
    The Purge: Anarchy is a good deal bloodier, but also — gulp — a good deal better than its predecessor. Make no mistake, a good "Purge" does not equal a good movie, but the post-apocalyptic thriller is slightly more interesting because it takes itself, and its menace, more seriously.
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