Los Angeles Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 16,550 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 2.2 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: 8,714 out of 16550
  2. Mixed: 5,819 out of 16550
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16550
16550 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Gandhi, My Father
    Exposes director Khan's stage roots -- he has no feel for the close-up, although his use of the frame itself, and negative space, is occasionally thrilling.
  2. Laura Smiles
    As Ruscio piles it on, he gets himself further and further away from any sense of genuine emotional truth.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    No End in Sight
    The result, narrated in a grave monotone by Campbell Scott, is a catalog of horrors so absurd and relentless it verges on farce, or Greek tragedy.
  4. No Reservations
    The movie feels stubbornly, resolutely disingenuous and one-dimensional. Everything in it isdesigned to make you feel better, so why does it feel artificial and palliative in that really depressing way?
  5. The Simpsons Movie
    In some ways, it reminded me of the final "Seinfeld" episode. As much as I laughed throughout, I kept wondering what was with all the emotional lessons.
  6. This Is England
    The writer-director brilliantly juxtaposes the personal and the political, bookending a stirring coming-of-age drama with the provocative opening and an equally affecting end sequence.
  7. Arctic Tale
    Reinforcing the adage that looks aren't everything, the live-action animal drama Arctic Tale arrives in an impressive visual package and even boasts a timely message, but its undistinguished storytelling is a big letdown.
  8. Cashback
    Writer-director Sean Ellis more-or-less successfully expands his Academy Award-nominated 18-minute short to full length, showcasing his talented young cast to good effect.
  9. Goya's Ghosts
    Lavish production and wardrobe design, as well as beautiful cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe make Goya's Ghosts lovely to look at, but as a portrait of the artist, the movie is a letdown.
  10. Hairspray
    What it offers isn't really a nostalgic look at a "more innocent time" so much as a saucy wink at a casually vicious time that is constantly being sold to us as innocent.
  11. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
    Fails to deliver on its main promise of big laughs, which is the film's truly unforgivable sin.
  12. Sunshine
    For though it can't maintain its momentum all the way to the end, Sunshine until it stumbles is gratifyingly far from the usual space-opera stuff.
  13. Live-In Maid
    What Live-in Maid offers is a pitch-perfect observation of life on a continent where forms are adhered to, distances aren't really kept, and your best friend is the person who knows to pour the cheap domestic whiskey into the empty bottle of imported stuff before your bridge buddies show up to judge you.
  14. Interview
    For a film that unfolds mostly in a single location, Interview manages not to feel like a stage piece. But the premise, which may have worked in Holland, gets a little lost in the American translation.
  15. My Best Friend
    Too serious to be an out-and-out comedy, too funny not to be one, My Best Friend is a lot easier to enjoy than to classify.
  16. Talk to Me
    With its R&B soundtrack and footage of civil unrest, Talk to Me might seem to cover familiar ground. But as an intimate portrait of the complex, fruitful and extremely volatile friendship between trailblazing African American men whose daring came to redefine an industry, it's fresh and revelatory.
  17. Tekkonkinkreet
    Arias has a tendency toward creative overkill, mostly in the climax that renders with apocalyptic imagery the metaphysical consequences of Black and White's separation.
  18. Captivity
    It's the movie business equivalent of encountering someone you once knew begging for money on the street.
  19. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
    It finally can't transcend the limitations inherent in being no more than a way station in an epic journey, a journey whose cinematic conclusion is several years away.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Drama/Mex
    Skipping from one story to another and scrambling their relative chronologies, Drama/Mex presents a flashy package, but that only reveals the paucity of its ideas.
  21. Joshua
    Seductive and creepy, perfect for a hot summer night when nobody has the energy to pose a lot of questions.
  22. Introducing the Dwights
    The movie belongs to Blethyn, who takes a difficult, easily misunderstood role and gracefully cracks it open to reveal what's inside.
  23. Rescue Dawn
    Aside from a riveting adventure story that Herzog tells in all of its terrifying, stripped-down simplicity, Rescue Dawn is a fascinating study of human particularity.
  24. Transformers
    Transformers' multiple earthling story lines are tedious and oddly lifeless, doing little besides marking time until those big toys fill the screen.
  25. 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.
  26. 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.
  27. Sicko
    Sicko is likely Moore's most important, most impressive, most provocative film, and it's different from his others in significant ways.
  28. Evening
    For all of its class-act bona fides, Evening lurches between the morose and the sentimental, with occasional incursions into the absurd.
  29. Vitus
    Combines complex relationships with a winning style of storytelling.
  30. 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.
  31. Live Free or Die Hard
    A slick and efficient piece of action entertainment, fast moving with energetic stunt work and nice thriller moves.
  32. 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.
  34. 1408
    In the grand scheme of things, the Dolphin Hotel is no Overlook, but it's no cheesy slaughter motel either.
  35. Evan Almighty
    Carell is lovable as God's unwilling disciple. But the comedy is less than divine.
  36. 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.
  38. Broken English
    A wry, charming romance about a New York woman who has given up hope of finding love.
  39. 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.
  40. 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.
  41. 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.
  42. 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.
  43. 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.
  44. 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.
  45. Fido
    Most consistently funny is a deadpan Henry Czerny as the pipe-smoking, battle-hardened Zomcon head of security.
  46. 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.
  47. Strike
    Despite the grim Cold War environment, Schlöndorff blends, mostly successfully, goofiness and melodrama into the overall social realist tone.
  48. 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.
  49. Macbeth
    The film is strictly straight-to-video action movie stuff, albeit with dialogue in iambic pentameter.
  50. 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.
  51. Lights in the Dusk
    There's a dry humor underlying the absurdity of Koistinen's experience. When things cannot possibly get worse, they do.
  52. 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."
  53. 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.
  54. Surf's Up
    A clever, delightfully rendered summer diversion.
  55. 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.
  56. La Vie en Rose
    Marion Cotillard astonishes as Edith Piaf in 'La Vie en Rose.
  57. 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.
  58. 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.
  60. 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.
  61. 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.
  62. Ten Canoes
    Ten Canoes is nonetheless audacious and impressive, but challenging work, requiring steadfast concentration.
  63. Pierrepoint
    At once desperately grim and unnervingly gripping, providing an exacting sense of the detail and procedure that went into death by hanging.
  64. Bug
    Creepy and unsettling, to say nothing of gory, but overall it's a little claustrophobic and uneven.
  65. 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.
  66. 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.
  67. Golden Door
    Beautiful, spacey, trans-oceanic odyssey.
  68. Paprika
    Kon's best work yet.
  69. Amu
    Despite the overt message and Manichean universe it pushes, Amu manages some memorable cinematic moments while getting the word out for its cause.
  70. 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.
  71. 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.
  72. 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.
  73. 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.
  75. Flanders
    Nonprofessional actors Boidin and Leroux deliver intense performances which shoulder the emotional weight of the film.
  76. 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.
  77. 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.
  78. 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.
  79. 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.
  80. 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."
  83. 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?
  84. 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.
  86. 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.
  87. Casting About
    A fascinating and surprisingly involving film.
  88. 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.
  89. The Salon
    The Salon is a cut below.
  90. 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.
  91. 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.
  92. 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.
  94. 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.
  95. 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.
  96. 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.
  97. Away from Her
    Poignant, wise and unafraid -- just the sort of film for a young person, or any person, for that matter, to make.
  98. 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.
  99. 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.
  100. Paris, je t'aime
    Paris Je T'Aime has something going for it that not every movie can claim: It always has Paris.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »