Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,522 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 16522
  2. Mixed: 5,808 out of 16522
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16522
16522 movie reviews
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  1. Quarantine
    Shame as well upon the advance marketing department for blowing the end of the movie in ads, thus exorcising any ghost of a chance Quarantine had of issuing a surprise.
  2. Dung che sai duk
    "Ashes" is glorious and ultimately wrenching, but it's a tough journey.
  3. Choose Connor
    What makes Choose Connor so special and unsettling is the consistent adroitness and perfect timing with which Eberl makes his revelations.
  4. Call + Response
    All in all, Call + Response makes alarmingly clear how ugly, pervasive and out-in-the-open the trade in humans for sex or labor often is.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    RocknRolla
    Ritchie whisks you along on a whirlwind tour, but he's not averse to putting on the brakes long enough to admire some of his favorite attractions.
  6. Rachel Getting Married
    Best and most unexpected of all, Rachel Getting Married dares to mix the bitter with the sweet. It understands that life-altering situations like weddings not only bring out the worst in human behavior but also the finest.
  7. 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.
  8. Beverly Hills Chihuahua
    Despite its superficial lip-service to self-actualization/realization, there has to be more to life than what Beverly Hills Chihuahua is putting out there, which is fit for neither man nor beast.
  9. Blindness
    What was presumably intended to play like a fable plays, instead, like an overly long car commercial crossed with a scare-mongering public service announcement.
  10. Flash of Genius
    Wants so much to be liked, even with its prickly, difficult hero, that it misses the mark of nonobviousness necessary not only for a patent, but also for a thrilling, original work.
  11. An American Carol
    It's a gag-strewn, hit-and-miss affair that's not without its chuckles.
  12. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
    The putrid showbiz comedy How to Lose Friends & Alienate People appears to hit DEFCON 5 in mistaking its brand of moral laxity for cutesy irreverence.
  13. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    It is a teen romantic comedy that largely fits the familiar template but is also fleshed out with atmosphere, a nice blend of broad goofiness and sophistication, and two appealing leads who bring it to life.
  14. Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert
    It has the potential to be culturally bridging in its way, and that makes looking for Muslim comedy in the Western world worthwhile.
  15. Ballast
    A quintessentially American story that unmistakably echoes European art house cinema, combining the aesthetic purity of France's Robert Bresson with the social consciousness of Belgium's Dardenne brothers. It also is a powerful, character-driven melodrama that easily holds our attention from first to last.
  16. Forever Strong
    The movie is well shot and edited, the rugby scenes are enjoyable (if likely puzzling to the uninitiated) and "Strong's" earnestness excuses at least some of its predictability.
  17. Smother
    A promising effort that doesn't cohere into anything more, Smother never fully comes to life.
  18. Miracle at St. Anna
    Pedestrian and awkward, this film is a disappointment not only in comparison with Lee's earlier epic, the underrated " Malcolm X," but also in comparison with another film with similar aims, Rachid Bouchareb's "Days of Glory."
  19. Choke
    As the story of a wallowing pig, Choke is often pretty entertaining, but when it comes to where-do-I-come-from poignancy, it can't always keep from gagging.
  20. The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela
    Their film is a rarity in that Rios emerges as a vibrant, reflective woman, an individual who refuses to be defined by her transsexuality.
  21. Obscene
    As vital, incisive and entertaining as its subject.
  22. Shoot on Sight
    Shoot on Sight has good intentions but winds up a thematically simplistic, dryly plotted and perfunctorily shot melodrama, one of those movies where dialogue is there to categorize people, not parse the complexities of human beings.
  23. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
    A hugely entertaining, efficiently crafted documentary about a ruthless, if undeniably clever, American political force.
  24. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
    Rich in revealing detail and apt in its use of everyday Spokane settings, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers shows that Wang remains a master explorer of the landscape of the human heart.
  25. Appaloosa
    The two men collaborate so well, in fact, that the real love match of Appaloosa is between the two of them and no one else.
  26. Battle in Seattle
    Townsend's sincerity, his admiration for the idealism of the people behind the anti-WTO protests, is never in doubt, but combining drama with historical re-creation is frankly a challenge his filmmaking skills are not up to.
  27. The Duchess
    Even surrounded by all this quality work, Ralph Fiennes, who plays William Cavendish, the fifth duke of Devonshire, the most powerful man in England next to the king, walks off with the picture.
  28. Hounddog
    The problems that plague the movie land squarely with the writer, director and producer, Deborah Kampmeier, who has crafted a howler of a bad script, shows little affinity for working with actors and displays no visual sense behind the camera.
  29. Lakeview Terrace
    Jackson modulates Abel's internal turmoil and heated exchanges with enough shades of loneliness, steely generosity and wicked playfulness to give the actor firm control of our fascination and growing unease.
  30. Ghost Town
    Audiences who feel battered by Hollywood's usual hard-sell approach to farce may be disarmed by Koepp's soft touch and inclined to credit blandness as understatement.
  31. Igor
    One of those fever-pitched computer-generated whizbangs in which every character spits out lines like a caffeinated Catskills comic.
  32. My Best Friend's Girl
    Ultimately, its most unforgivable sin is that it's simply not funny.
  33. Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
    Director Koji Masutani has masterfully assembled a wealth of archival footage, photos and audiotapes, some of which has been recently declassified.
  34. Burn After Reading
    Because it's a Coen brothers film before it's anything else, this is about as dark and nihilistic as comedies are allowed to get before the laughter dies bitterly on your lips.
  35. Flow: For Love of Water
    A smartly done, involving look at a number of interrelated water issues.
  36. Moving Midway
    His engaging chronicle of the physical, historical and psychological effect of the undertaking, is also an invitation for a film buff to meditate on the antebellum South's mythic power in stories and film.
  37. Towelhead
    On the upside, newcomer Summer Bishil turns in a gutsy, quietly riveting performance as Jasira.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Family That Preys
    Dude, what made you refuse to screen your film for critics before it opened Friday? I'm betting you would have received an earful of praise for your writing and directing.
  39. Righteous Kill
    Righteous Kill's script is credited to "Inside Man's" Russell Gewirtz, and you wonder how the sleek, nuanced flow of that earlier movie evaded this one.
  40. The Women
    Becomes unfocused as it stumbles over all the points it wants to make.
  41. Mister Foe
    Ultimately Mackenzie's tidy resolutions undercut the psychological depth, but as offbeat coming-of-age yarns go, Mister Foe has a commanding fleetness.
  42. Ping Pong Playa
    Breathes fresh life into the tired, bloated sports-comedy formula -- while remaining utterly formulaic.
  43. Save Me
    This is a modest, thoughtful, independent production of exceptional insight and quietly devastating power.
  44. Surfer, Dude
    The film is awash in doobies and breasts, clichéd cinematic language and clumsy exposition. It's reminiscent of the stoner-culture movies of the late '60s and early '70s but without the naive fun.
  45. Bangkok Dangerous
    Pretty much all the things that made the original so original are filtered out of this un-original.
  46. A Secret
    A harrowing and wrenching coming-of-age story.
  47. August Evening
    Though this artful film inches toward its not-unpredictable conclusion and could logically have ended several times before its final fadeout, I was sorry when it was over. How rare is that?
  48. The Pool
    In its leisurely, exceedingly subtle way, The Pool charts Venkatesh's gradual awakening to the larger world.
  49. Babylon A.D.
    This is not a terrible movie, but it's too familiar by half and too confusing by a third.
  50. I Served the King of England
    The new film is so leisurely paced and overly long that what means to be at once charming yet darkly satirical lapses into tedium and barely comes alive.
  51. Sukiyaki Western Django
    Not even a brief appearance by Quentin Tarantino and a ton of references to other movies enlivens the proceedings much.
  52. Young People Fucking
    The cast tries but rarely achieves an authenticity of emotional intimacy.
  53. College
    A tedious, by-the-numbers raunch-fest that exists strictly because it can.
  54. Disaster Movie
    The product's not 100% giggle-free: Several songs have amusing lyrics, especially parodies of "Juno" and "High School Musical."
  55. The House Bunny
    Among the sunnier, funnier films of the year, thanks largely to the zest with which Faris embodies a mental vacuum.
  56. The Longshots
    Cube fills the bill as the shaggy, aimless Curtis, a veritable ghost of glories past. It's not a particularly layered performance, but it works.
  57. Hamlet 2
    It's an unhinged, off-the-wall comedy that will try anything once, an uneven film in which the hits are so dead-on that the misses don't seem to matter.
  58. Cthulhu
    Cthulhu isn't awful, but it isn't particularly compelling either.
  59. Trouble the Water
    A stirring documentary.
  60. Momma's Man
    Mastery of tone is everything here, and Azazel's control, combined with his wit, perception, discretion and easy command of the visual and of his cast makes Momma's Man a gem.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Rocker
    For the most part, The Rocker is content to simply keep the beat, marking time as the summer movie season moves on.
  62. Star Wars: The Clone Wars
    Despite some absolutely gorgeous animation and adjusting expectations for what Clone Wars is meant to be, the Force is not strong with this one.
  63. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
    Bardem's performance is so good it tends to mask how lacking much of what surrounds it is.
  64. Fly Me to the Moon 3D
    This oddly paced kids' entertainment displays flashes of intelligence -- then misspells terms on NASA control panels.
  65. Mirrors
    An empty enterprise that provides a few moments of goofy fun, Mirrors reflects back nothing.
  66. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
    As a horror-comedy, it boldly declines to scare or amuse.
  67. Henry Poole Is Here
    Though not strictly a religious tract, Henry Poole Is Here is undeniably selling spiritual reawakening. If only its makers believed that aesthetically useful adage: God is in the details.
  68. The Girl Cut in Two
    Impeccably made and uncompromisingly adult, Claude Chabrol's A Girl Cut in Two is unquestionably the work of a master.
  69. Tropic Thunder
    There is genuine humor and palpable satiric intent underneath the waves of unnerving bad taste and political incorrectness.
  70. Elegy
    Elegy seems determined to make real every ageist dig that could be thrown its way -- out of touch, balefully slow and, for a film at least partly about the zesty enterprise of sex, awfully lifeless.
  71. Beautiful Losers
    Fortunately, Rose's on-camera turns as a kind of "I-was-there" guide through the various incarnations of the Alleged Gallery and its starrier alumni, help give this freewheeling portrait a welcome heart.
  72. 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.
  73. What We Do Is Secret
    Grossman bangs out a visceral, energized biopic that captures the vibrant idiocy of punked-out youth and a tortured soul gaining his wish of cult status.
  74. Pineapple Express
    In the role of dramaturge, Rogen and his co-scripter Goldberg lack Apatow's discipline and deft hand for peripheral characters; the writing in Pineapple Express gets lazy whenever it strays too far from its central axis of players.
  75. Bottle Shock
    The soul of the grape, that thing that elevates a wine to greatness, proves here as elusive on screen as in the bottle.
  76. Patti Smith: Dream of Life
    Impossibly long and angular, with a brutally beautiful face, she represents something that's been rare in the popular culture in the past decade: an artist with a voice and a vision.
  77. Frozen River
    As the summer heats up, let Frozen River wash over you; let its bracing drama and the intensity of its acting restore your spirits as well as your faith in American independent film.
  78. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
    Though the new film has some good things, it does not have enough of them to make the third time the charm.
  79. Sixty Six
    Instead of depicting a boy's first steps toward manhood -- ceremony aside -- it turns into an uninvolving portrait of self-absorption.
  80. In Search of a Midnight Kiss
    If it were a parody of relationship-youth pictures, In Search of a Midnight Kiss would maybe be tolerable, but writer-director Alex Holdridge seems to be playing it with a straight face.
  81. America the Beautiful
    With so many pointless detours ripping you away, the film feels as lamely digressive as the proverbial one-track guy whose head won't stop turning as each new temptation walks by.
  82. Man on Wire
    This is a police procedural, if you will, about what's been called the artistic crime of the century.
  83. 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.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Step Brothers
    Step Brothers is not a retread so much as a reduction, stripping away the magical pretext of "Elf" and the period trappings of "Anchorman" to get to the heart of the thriving man-boy genre.
  85. Baghead
    The filmmakers maintain a delicate balance that generates tension on multiple levels, including sexual. They giddily mix genres, but Baghead, part meta-cinematic comedy, part relationship drama and part horror movie, remains rooted in reality.
  86. Brideshead Revisited
    That the film is neither a true triumph nor a total disaster makes it somewhat difficult to justify revisiting "Brideshead," apart from the hope it will inspire someone somewhere to pick up the book.
  87. Bustin' Down the Door
    A mostly enjoyable wave of nostalgia.
  88. No Regret
    As a love story, it could scarcely be more tempestuous and as an exposé of class differences and sexual hypocrisy it could hardly be more scathing -- or, more important, entertaining.
  89. The Order of Myths
    An invaluable portrait of us-and-them America, a smart, generous, poignant, quietly disturbing movie about secrecy and hospitality, and how easy it is for a tradition of separateness to flourish when the stakes are as deceptively frivolous as an eye-popping yearly party.
  90. American Teen
    Here are casual cruelty, crushing heartbreak and pressure from parents and peers, all of which can involve the viewer but are nothing revelatory.
  91. CSNY/Déjà Vu
    Though it may be another in a long line of choir-preaching, anti-Iraq war documentaries, CSNY/Déjà Vu, Neil Young's effective hybrid of concert film and political snapshot, is one of the shrewdest and most entertaining of the bunch.
  92. Boy A
    While the cast is uniformly superb, Garfield ("Lions for Lambs") deserves special mention for his deep, extraordinarily expressive performance.
  93. The Dark Knight
    May be the most hopeless, despairing comic-book movie in memory. It creates a world where being a superhero is at best a double-edged sword and no triumph is likely to be anything but short-lived.
  94. Mamma Mia!
    Though the filmmakers may have been imagining they were re-creating the old days of MGM musicals, it's the Village People's misguided "Can't Stop the Music" that comes to mind instead.
  95. Space Chimps
    The film is suitable for all ages, but there's probably not enough fuel beyond cute chimps in Candyland to achieve orbit for the kids.
  96. A Very British Gangster
    If Tony Soprano had a cheekier, less haunted, openly gay British counterpart, it would be Dominic Noonan, the Manchester crime boss profiled in the stylish and compelling A Very British Gangster.
  97. Felon
    Felon is not a total bust. What does work is because of the strength of the actors. Dorff brings a visceral sense of desperation to his performance, though he does tend to go too big too quickly. Kilmer gives the film its center as an alien, still presence amid the chaos around him.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Berlin
    Reed stands at the center, taut and impassive, punching out words that are more often spoken than sung.
  99. Take
    In the end, Take is too enamored of its time-shifting gimmick and cheap suspense to ultimately have much impact.
  100. Transsiberian
    Mortimer gives a terrifically keyed-up performance that is nicely complemented by the wholesomely chipper Harrelson, who seems to be drawing inspiration from Fred MacMurray's gallery of Disney dads.
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