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. Ratatouille
    Ratatouille is as audacious as they come. It takes risks and goes places other films wouldn't dare, and it ends up putting rival imaginations in the shade.
  2. Sicko
    Sicko is likely Moore's most important, most impressive, most provocative film, and it's different from his others in significant ways.
  3. Evening
    For all of its class-act bona fides, Evening lurches between the morose and the sentimental, with occasional incursions into the absurd.
  4. Vitus
    Combines complex relationships with a winning style of storytelling.
  5. Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox
    Lamm effectively uses interviews with family members and the soap's users to draw a well-rounded portrait of the otherwise inscrutable senior Bronner. In doing so, she observes a bittersweet story of a family and the surprising effects a crusading eccentric can have on them.
  6. Live Free or Die Hard
    A slick and efficient piece of action entertainment, fast moving with energetic stunt work and nice thriller moves.
  7. Ghosts of Cité Soleil
    A forceful documentary set against the 2004 Haitian coup d'état that toppled the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Over the GW
    It's not vivid or harrowing enough to command attention. Worse, at a mere 76 minutes, the movie skips past what seems like lots of crucial exposition in favor of vague flashbacks and confusing inserts. The awkward documentary-style interviews don't help.
  9. 1408
    In the grand scheme of things, the Dolphin Hotel is no Overlook, but it's no cheesy slaughter motel either.
  10. Evan Almighty
    Carell is lovable as God's unwilling disciple. But the comedy is less than divine.
  11. A Mighty Heart
    Moving and frighteningly real.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Black Sheep
    The cast, including Tammy Davis as a handyman and Glenis Levestam as a housekeeper with a taste for innards, hits its marks flawlessly, even when the material isn't first-rate. Like "Shaun of the Dead," Black Sheep is at once exhilarating and self-deprecating, knowledgeable without being fannish, clever but not too clever.
  13. Broken English
    A wry, charming romance about a New York woman who has given up hope of finding love.
  14. Lady Chatterley
    The most frankly sensual movie in memory. Winner of five Cesars, the French Oscar, including best picture and best actress for its luminous star, Marina Hands, it has found the soul of the celebrated D.H. Lawrence novel.
  15. You Kill Me
    We've seen the inner lives of hit men and mobsters rendered innumerably in recent years on film and television, but You Kill Me does it in a satisfyingly comedic way, loaded with easily identifiable idiosyncrasies.
  16. Klimt
    Klimt comes alive only fitfully at best, and it seems that for those occasional moments when it comes into focus there is an equal number that are merely silly.
  17. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    Earnest, gee-whiz and foursquare, this simple and intentionally inoffensive sequel gets points for being easy to take and scrupulously avoiding obvious sources of irritation.
  18. Nancy Drew
    Hopefully, the girls who see Nancy Drew this summer will take their cues from the smart, engaged, intellectually curious character Roberts so charmingly portrays.
  19. Eagle vs Shark
    As it turns out, spending a couple of hours with emotionally arrested, socially moronic characters is not a whole lot more fun than spending a couple of hours with actual emotionally arrested, socially moronic people.
  20. Fido
    Most consistently funny is a deadpan Henry Czerny as the pipe-smoking, battle-hardened Zomcon head of security.
  21. When the Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan
    As compelling as the music and concert footage is, it is the vitality of the performers as characters that enables the movie to transcend the music documentary genre.
  22. Strike
    Despite the grim Cold War environment, Schlöndorff blends, mostly successfully, goofiness and melodrama into the overall social realist tone.
  23. Czech Dream
    Czech Dream has an impish effectiveness. But what saves it from being an arrogantly aren't-we-clever? home movie is, refreshingly, the flimflammed masses themselves, lured as the bargain-hungry but left looking like cattle out for a graze.
  24. Macbeth
    The film is strictly straight-to-video action movie stuff, albeit with dialogue in iambic pentameter.
  25. Noriko's Dinner Table
    Through a barrage of fragmented images of lurid events, escalating hysteria and sheer madness, Sono holds up a cracked mirror to modern life, inspiring the viewer to think with unexpected seriousness about what it means to be a human being.
  26. Lights in the Dusk
    There's a dry humor underlying the absurdity of Koistinen's experience. When things cannot possibly get worse, they do.
  27. Ocean's Thirteen
    Better than the fiasco that was "Ocean's Twelve" (how could it not be?) but not as engaging as "Ocean's Eleven."
  28. Hostel: Part II
    Hostel II is far too shrewd and savagely witty to be caught engaging in higher seriousness. Roth could probably go even further with this particular franchise if he wanted to. Yet somehow, I think he's meant for grander, subtler and more intricate distractions than this.
  29. Surf's Up
    A clever, delightfully rendered summer diversion.
  30. The Last Confederate: The Story of Robert Adams
    The film's long suit is the chemistry between the leads: Julian Adams, if occasionally stiff, has a strong, sometimes Matthew McConaughey-like presence; newcomer Gwendolyn Edwards shows spark as the beautiful Eveline.
  31. La Vie en Rose
    Marion Cotillard astonishes as Edith Piaf in 'La Vie en Rose.
  32. 12:08 East of Bucharest
    It's clear that an exceptional body of work is coming out of this country at this particular time and place. It's not necessary to categorize these films to enjoy them, it's just necessary to go.
  33. Knocked Up
    Funny, but its lacking at the core. Judd Apatow's comedy takes the guy's side of things, but how does the woman feel about all of this?
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gracie
    An earnest, well-acted, poignant drama that nevertheless runs afoul of sports movie clichés.
  35. Mr. Brooks
    Evans and Gideon never really succeed in selling the idea that serial killing is a disease -- which would require a degree of realism that the slick, over-plotted Mr. Brooks doesn't otherwise aspire to. They seem to be content with occupying the audience with a series of twists and jolts.
  36. Crazy Love
    At one point, Klores thought about making a feature film out of the material, but it's a good thing he decided against it. You could not make this stuff up.
  37. Ten Canoes
    Ten Canoes is nonetheless audacious and impressive, but challenging work, requiring steadfast concentration.
  38. Pierrepoint
    At once desperately grim and unnervingly gripping, providing an exacting sense of the detail and procedure that went into death by hanging.
  39. Bug
    Creepy and unsettling, to say nothing of gory, but overall it's a little claustrophobic and uneven.
  40. 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.
  41. Angel-A
    In essence, you get "It's a Wonderful Life" meets "Wings of Desire," swapping out the substance for self-help platitudes. If you can get past that, you can enjoy it as a 90-minute look at a lovely postcard.
  42. Golden Door
    Beautiful, spacey, trans-oceanic odyssey.
  43. Paprika
    Kon's best work yet.
  44. Amu
    Despite the overt message and Manichean universe it pushes, Amu manages some memorable cinematic moments while getting the word out for its cause.
  45. The Boss of It All
    No one is likely to rank "Boss" on the same level as his more somber and ambitious efforts, but Von Trier admirers will be pleased to discover that, even while working in a far less consequential mode than usual, the ever-uninhibited filmmaker's distinctive flair is in full force.
  46. Shrek the Third
    Has its moments... But does a kids' movie really need, among other similar touches, a Hooters joke? I, for one, wouldn't want to have to explain it.
  47. In Search of Mozart
    Made to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth last year, In Search of Mozart is challenging and exemplary.
  48. Brooklyn Rules
    Not as bad as Bobby's mother's lasagna, neither is Brooklyn Rules anywhere near the best you've ever had, though at times, it may remind you of it.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Even Money
    The film's subject is not race but gambling, yet the cynical message is the same: We're all pathetic.
  50. Flanders
    Nonprofessional actors Boidin and Leroux deliver intense performances which shoulder the emotional weight of the film.
  51. The Last Time
    The movie unravels pretty quickly as Caleo almost immediately gives away the "what" but remains marginally entertaining as he manages to maintain some suspense in the "why" and the "how" before blowing the genre completely by going soft in the resolution.
  52. Severance
    Along with lots of pitch-dark humor, James Moran's often clever script is peppered with winks and nudges about the war on terror that helps distinguish the film from the recent spate of torture flicks.
  53. Fay Grim
    A sophisticated, sometimes intentionally silly spy thriller of international intrigue, Fay Grim charts the history of American foreign policy while commenting on current global complications with wink and a nudge.
  54. The Wendell Baker Story
    A cast this charismatic is bound to make something of the situation. In short bursts, the movie is alternately sunny and charming, dark and weird, confounding and dull.
  55. Private Property
    An impeccably acted character drama revolving around a mother and her teenage twin sons, Private Property shows how strong and how terrifying the bonds within families can be. Directed by Belgium's Joachim Lafosse, it etches the line between love and hate with a savagery that is almost unprecedented.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hollywood Dreams
    It's a very mixed bag. When it's good, Hollywood Dreams is corrosively funny and unexpectedly poignant. And when it's bad, it's over-the-top bad.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Memories of Tomorrow
    Charting its protagonist's agonizing slide into senility, the Japanese melodrama Memories of Tomorrow invites mostly unflattering comparisons with "Away From Her."
  58. Once
    The music is so rich and completely satisfying and the characters so appealing Once makes us believe that this is all happening right in front of our eyes. We fall for each of these young people at the precise moment they are falling for each other, and what could be better than that?
  59. 28 Weeks Later
    28 Weeks Later lacks the streamlined thrust of its predecessor but makes for compelling, adrenaline-fueled viewing just the same.
    • 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.
  61. American Pastime
    Director Desmond Nakano, who co-wrote the script with Tony Kayden, does a fine job in evoking the events and era and in guiding his actors through emotion-filled scenes. However, much of the plot revolving around a climactic baseball game is trite and detracts from the overall drama.
  62. Casting About
    A fascinating and surprisingly involving film.
  63. The Hip Hop Project
    Perhaps the film's biggest failing is simply that the music of The Hip Hop Project isn't more thrilling, that there isn't a sonic equivalent to the wounded, searching feelings of the young writers' lyrics.
  64. The Salon
    The Salon is a cut below.
  65. Chalk
    Chalk avoids some of the pitfalls of the mock-doc by showing real affection and empathy for its characters, whose funny lives of quiet desperation inspire more than their share of tenderness.
  66. The Ex
    Originally titled "Fast Track" when it was scheduled to open last January, neither the wait nor the new title makes it worthwhile. The only fast track here is the one to home video.
  67. Provoked: A True Story
    Chopped into episodes headed by typewritten dates, Provoked turns the case of a lifetime into something straight out of Lifetime.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway
    The film is a love letter to theater and the people who make it.
  69. Duck
    Writer-director Nic Bettauer hits upon some important themes, including homelessness, environmentalism and the plight of the elderly, but not enough care has gone into developing the subsidiary characters who merely come across as types.
  70. The Parallel
    The film's theory, that maybe we're all living two parallel lives -- if we even exist at all -- is intriguing, but it's rarely taken beyond the notion that Danny's just dreaming it. The result is, to be charitable, underwhelming, narratively and visually.
  71. Day Night Day Night
    The most profound thing the remarkably dread-filled drama Day Night Day Night tells us is what it doesn't tell us.
  72. Away from Her
    Poignant, wise and unafraid -- just the sort of film for a young person, or any person, for that matter, to make.
  73. Spider-Man 3
    Though aspects of it are entertaining, the presence of all these mismatched pieces give Spider-Man 3 an ungainly, cumbersome feeling, as if its plot elements were the product of competing contractors who never saw the need to cooperate on a coherent final product.
  74. Civic Duty
    By the time the movie introduces an element of ambivalence in the story, lecture hall ennui has long ago set in, and no amount of jittery horror movie conventions can change it. With nowhere for any of the characters to go, literally, the story becomes a tendentious exercise in belaboring a point.
  75. Paris, je t'aime
    Paris Je T'Aime has something going for it that not every movie can claim: It always has Paris.
  76. The Treatment
    Odd, funny film.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Inlaws & Outlaws
    Because Emory doesn't grapple fully with the issues that loom over the film, there is something soppy and soft-headed about Inlaws & Outlaws.
  78. Jindabyne
    Jindabyne's strength and power come from a number of factors: its origin, its current landscape and the unusual way its writer-director, Ray Lawrence, has chosen to work.
  79. 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.
  80. The Invisible
    Little more than an extended excuse for a soundtrack.
  81. Kickin It Old Skool
    A witless, mind-numbingly inert comedy.
  82. Next
    For an action thriller based on a Dick story, Next is peculiarly low-tech and hokey.
  83. Snow Cake
    Modest but well wrought and witty, Snow Cake is full of unexpected moments and clever observations.
  84. Les amitiés maléfiques
    Steeped in shrewdness about the often contradictory workings of human nature, Poison Friends is gratifying in the best tradition of French cinema.
  85. The Wedding Weekend
    A breezy, well-paced diversion, amusing rather than scintillating yet clearly personal.
  86. The Far Side of Jericho
    Unengaging and uninspired and that leaves far too much unexplored.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wind Chill
    This isn't merely a horror film about things going bump in the night, but a study of the effects of desolation on our sense of personal consciousness.
  88. Diggers
    Archetypal characters and somewhat formulaic plot notwithstanding, Diggers has the conviction to avoid tying things up with a bow and allows us the privilege to imagine where its denizens will go afterward.
  89. The Short Life of José Antonio Gutierrez
    Mournful and engrossing, the film traces Gutierrez's life through the people he knew and the places he lived.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Something to Cheer About
    The outline of a great story, but it never fills in the gaps.
  91. Banished
    A trite, incoherent tale.
  92. Fakers
    The scenario isn't entirely plausible, but the actors are engaging and you can't beat the running time.
  93. Zoo
    Zoo is a cool sensibility married to a hot topic, a poetic film about a forbidden, unsettling subject. Elegantly made and eerily lyrical, it deals with what director Robinson Devor has accurately called "the last taboo, the boundary of something comprehensible."
  94. Triad Election
    Like any good sequel, this film takes what is familiar with the original's concept -- in this case, an internecine struggle for supremacy -- and deepens it.
  95. Hot Fuzz
    Wright and Pegg are storytellers who weave their naughty bits into genuine characters and a plot. It's a ridiculous plot, but one that's absolutely in the spirit of the films they're satirizing.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Vacancy
    A ruthlessly efficient stalk-and-slash machine.
  97. Fracture
    It boils down to experience's arrogance, intellect and wealth versus youth's cockiness, resilience and hard work, and the actors appear to have a good time playing the game.
  98. In the Land of Women
    The 27-year-old Kasdan displays an ability to bring a refreshing, human touch to what could be overly familiar material that echoes what his father did in films like "The Big Chill" and "Body Heat."
  99. Alice Neel
    The finely crafted Alice Neel is at once tribute, investigative journalism and messy family drama.
  100. The Valet
    A complete master of cinematic farce, Veber's latest venture, The Valet, makes creating deliciously funny comedy look a lot easier than it has any right to.
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