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. Clay Pigeons
    "You've got a sense of humor, I like that," Lester Long proclaims at one point. Well, we all like that, but would it be asking too much to have a little coherence to go along with it?
  2. Deliver Us from Eva
    Flows smoothly, looks great and probably cost lots less than it looks. One can't help resist saying it delivers the goods.
  3. The Nanny Diaries
    The social bite of the popular novel fades into a generic chick flick.
  4. Reservation Road
    Neither involving as a study in grief nor compelling as a thriller about conscience, the cat-and-mouse tragedy Reservation Road is a misery windup so schematic and obvious it reduces its crisis-stricken characters to little more than emotional bumper cars.
  5. Picture Perfect
    It only serves to remind one of better movies, at a time when one needs no reminders.
  6. Dr. Seuss' The Lorax
    This movie version adds a whole lot of other stuff, most of it not very good and not in keeping with the spirit of the Seuss original.
  7. My Spy
    The slapstick generally works and the movie milks Bautista’s sheer size and roughness, compared with tiny Coleman’s crafty fearlessness. Much of the story is telegraphed, but it’s not about shocks or surprises. It’s a charming diversion stocked with people who are fun to watch.
  8. Lolita
    Except for a memorably haunted performance by Jeremy Irons as the conflicted Humbert Humbert, what the new version lacks most of all is inspiration.
  9. Something from Tiffany's
    Although Something from Tiffany’s was shot in a festive, lit-up New York City, there’s a flatness to the look and tone of the film that keeps it from crossing the line from “something to put on while wrapping presents” to “something to watch with the whole family every Christmas.”
  10. The Super Mario Bros. Movie
    The Super Mario Bros. Movie is mildly amusing, swift, noisy and unrelentingly paced, which is par for the course considering this is the studio that brought us the Minions.
  11. Crash Pad
    A plucky ensemble fails to elevate Crash Pad, a forced, formulaic revenge comedy about an obnoxious slacker whose new housemate turns out to be the husband of his older ex-mistress.
  12. Toy Soldiers
    Material like this might have worked if the moviemakers had played it completely crazy and over-the-top, if they'd made it a true satire of the American upper class facing its worst nightmare. But the tone of Toy Soldiers suggests its makers might have tried to turn Animal House into a triumph of the spirit story, too. [26 Apr 1991, p.F10]
    • Los Angeles Times
  13. Seed of Chucky
    Chintzy-looking gore-bore.
  14. We Are Your Friends
    The movie is visually inventive and with enough good moments and smart moves to never be entirely dismissible, while not strong enough to overcome its essential thinness.
  15. Ashby
    Rourke and Wolff certainly have chemistry, and Sarah Silverman (as Ed's concerned single mom) and Emma Roberts (as Ed's potential girlfriend) provide solid support on the edges. But the humor never feels aimed in any particular direction.
  16. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    Director Stephen Daldry has taken great care in looking at it through the eyes of a precocious New York City boy in a film filled with both sentiment and substance.
  17. Immortals
    I realize that making Immortals immortal was way too much to ask, but frankly, just a shade more plausible, not to mention pleasurable, would have been nice.
  18. Extinction
    More filmmakers should treat the zombie subgenre as allegorical, the way George A. Romero intended. But Extinction and "Maggie" both arrive at the same conclusion about fatherhood, thereby confirming it as a cliché rather than a coincidence.
  19. Lavender
    Gass-Donnelly has a great eye and brings some genuine beauty to his movie’s rural setting. The preoccupation with aesthetics though means that “Lavender” is sometimes quieter, slower and artier than the material warrants.
  20. Tank Girl
    Watching Tank Girl is as disorienting as waking up in someone else's bad dream. You want to get out as fast as possible, but all the exits seem to be blocked.
  21. Sweet Girl
    Momoa can believably howl in anguish and throw a devastating punch, but he can’t carry a script this muddled.
  22. Mirror Mirror
    The finery and regalia of their contributions are integral to Singh's vision, giving this mostly conventional princess story its fair share of romantic froth and more than a little moxie.
  23. El Chicano
    Reminiscent of Hollywood cop movies from the ’80s, when masculinity came only in a macho shade, but propelled by the fresh winds of inclusion, El Chicano stands as a solidly acted and technically accomplished spectacle, the latter likely the result of Hernandez Bray’s time delivering stunt magic behind the scenes as a stunt coordinator.
  24. Food of Love
    An elegant work, Food of Love is as consistently engaging as it is revealing.
  25. Festival in Cannes
    A giddy comic fantasy, full of romance, chicanery and beguiling, sophisticated players.
    • Los Angeles Times
  26. Breakin' All the Rules
    The hard-sell comic delivery one expects from contemporary date movies is pleasantly tempered here.
  27. 28 Days
    Too glib too often to make much of an impression any way you look at it.
  28. Beyond the Sea
    Hindered by its own theatricality, Beyond the Sea feels at once hermetic, defensive and corny.
  29. The Calling
    The Calling is an absorbing, solidly crafted procedural thriller with a terrific lead turn by Susan Sarandon.
  30. The Ringer
    Though the movie bears some of the Farrellys' trademark outrageous humor, it has a sweet demeanor and makes a noble statement.
  31. The Apology
    The revelations taper off in the film’s second half, sapping it of some energy as it hits the homestretch. But the characters’ despair and passion remains gripping throughout, as they force each other into some overdue reckonings with the past.
  32. Beaches
    The most shamelessly manipulative movie since they shot the dog in "The Biscuit Eater."
  33. Ravenous
    Has all the ingredients for a cult film success but most definitely is not for everyone. It's stylish, sophisticated, venturesome--to say the least.
  34. Johnny English Reborn
    All that matters with efforts like this is whether the cookie-cutter plotting serves up enough situations for Atkinson to contort himself into and out of jams. After all, are the narratives what you remember from the "Pink Panther" movies? Or the silly things, like that Clouseau could so easily get his finger caught in a spinning globe?
  35. Hunky Dory
    Laurence Coriat's shapeless script...pads its overlong running time with standard teen trauma — band squabbles, girl betrayals, skinhead brothers — that saps the audience's energy before the grand finale.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Next Day Air
    That's about all Next Day Air can muster by way of invention, trying to slap a new face on a gaggle of rote gestures in a vain attempt to cover its own uselessness. But no matter how big the guns it draws, every shot is a dud.
  37. You, Me and Dupree
    Doesn't aspire to be much more than a serviceable summer comedy, and the script displays the engineered precision of a theme park ride.
  38. Rebecca
    The filmmakers seem curiously at sea over the purpose of their assignment, possessing neither the patience to plunge headlong into the story’s familiar depths nor the radicalism to reinvent it entirely.
  39. You Should Have Left
    Unfortunately, the movie’s thriller elements amount to pale reflections of many other works.
  40. Tommy Boy
    Farley reminds us just how liberating an agile, uninhibited, out-sized comedian can be in these times of caloric restraint...Tommy Boy is a good belly laugh of a movie.
  41. Unlocked
    A straight-ahead political thriller that fails to ratchet up the requisite tension despite its timely subject matter and (largely) effective cast.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Manderlay
    Trier gets lost in his own rhetoric, forgetting to entertain his flock while raking them over the coals.
  43. Airheads
    Airheads, directed by Michael Lehmann and scripted by Rich Wilkes, is far from great. But it sure is ripe. It's bursting with bad ideas, half-good ideas, good and bad actors yelling and mugging. Like a lot of youth comedies, it's frenetic where it should be inspired.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Hackers
    All the sound and fury in the world can't disguise the fact that yowling music, typing montages and computer animation do not a gripping finale make. This movie megabytes.
  45. Mind the Gap
    An earnest but overly contrived and overly long tale.
  46. The Woman Chaser
    Very much a first film, but a venturesome start for Devor as well as a splendid launch for Warburton.
  47. Yes Day
    Like its juvenile characters, Yes Day sometimes goes too far, with over-the-top scenes that lessen the impact of the genuine emotions elsewhere. But will kids whine about it (other than for their own Yes Day)? Probably not, and parents likely won’t mind either.
  48. Honey Don't!
    As sloppy as it is, there’s no denying that Honey Don’t! works as a noir with a pleasant, peppery flavor. Yet, there’s a snap missing in its rhythm, a sense that it doesn’t know when and how its gags should hit.
  49. Beverly Hills Cop II
    It's hard to believe that the group who came up with the hard, clean edges of "Top Gun," sleek and unfeeling though it may have been, could make a picture as crude, as muddled, as destructo-Derbyish as this one. If Beverly Hills Cop II is its opening salvo, this is going to be a long, smoggy summer. [20 May 1987]
    • Los Angeles Times
  50. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
    Even this cast can’t save the rote machinations of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire as it dutifully delivers morsels of memory.
  51. Jesus Revolution
    Unfortunately, despite the interesting history, the film itself is a dry, scattered slog, neutered of all the thorny, contradictory details of the real story.
  52. Reminiscence
    The modern noir style and genre innovation are such a neat cinematic twist that it’s a bit of a letdown that the world doesn’t always feel fully fleshed out.
  53. The Deal
    The film might have worked as a taut, topical corporate intrigue thriller; instead, for all its ambition, it's just a routine mystery, despite a solid performance by Christian Slater.
  54. She's Out of My League
    What he (Jay Baruchel) brings to She's Out of My League, in addition to the geek and the gawk, is a dash of the debonair, which might seem impossible and yet he does.
  55. Sin City: A Dame To Kill For
    There is an interesting kernel of a story about beauty, betrayal and brutality inside each of the film's scenarios and a cast that could handle anything thrown at it. But the kernel never pops, and all we're really left with is a whole lot of neo-noir corn.
  56. How Do You Know
    If, as someone says in one of Brooks' trademark excellent lines, we all feel we're "one small adjustment away from making our lives work," this film is one small adjustment away as well.
  57. King Arthur
    A nutty, often enjoyable farrago of craft and cinematic sampling, King Arthur moves fast and loose, and is almost aggressive in its absence of an original idea, in and of itself a Bruckheimer trademark.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dance First
    The emotional acuity of a writer who felt things too deeply to stoop to cheap sentiment comes through.
  59. Grumpier Old Men
    t's great to see cherished, longtime stars in big roles to which they can bring so much spontaneity and finesse; you wish only that this movie were sturdier and had aimed higher. Judging from the bloopers that unreel during Grumpier Old Men's end credits, the cast had lots of fun making this movie--more fun, it would seem, than it is to watch. [22 Dec 1995, p.18]
    • Los Angeles Times
  60. 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.
  61. Naked Fame
    An engaging and forthright documentary.
  62. The Nun
    Despite its clammy atmosphere and two credible and appealing leads, the movie is mechanical in its rhythms and unimaginative in its terrors.
  63. If I Stay
    If I Stay takes time to find its footing amid miscalculations and awkward moments.
  64. Don't Breathe 2
    Álvarez and Sayagues have delivered a blood-spattered potboiler that’s no work of genius but is much better than average.
  65. Level 16
    As it sputters toward its curtain-exposing conclusion, “Level 16” stays disappointingly thin, both as a dark-future cautionary saga and a genre exercise.
  66. Esther Kahn
    Begins as a shadowy film that progresses from dark to increasing light. It has been stunningly photographed by Eric Gautier and has a wonderfully expressive score composed by Howard Shore.
  67. One Night at McCool's
    One Night at McCool's is one night too much.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Dog Park
    Peel away the layers of contrivances, however, and the leftover plot barely fills a doggy bag.
  69. Secret Window
    Unsteadily pitched between horror and comedy, Secret Window turns out to be neither terribly scary nor especially funny.
  70. White Sands
    It’s possible to enjoy White Sands from moment to moment because the actors are avid and the New Mexico locations are delicately beautiful. Still, there’s something disconcerting about this anything-for-effect style of filmmaking. It doesn’t add up to anything satisfying.
  71. Fast & Furious
    Fast & Furious is, in a very bizarre way, a thing of gasp-inducing artistry to watch, even if you're not a member of the NASCAR, gear-head, street-racing crowd.
  72. Dangerous Minds
    While films are admired for making fantasy real, some manage a reverse, unwanted kind of alchemy, turning involving reality into meaningless piffle.
  73. Hoot
    Any charm and character ascribed to Carl Hiaasen's bestselling book have been homogenized in Wil Shriner's flat screenplay and direction.
  74. Musical Chairs
    Though there's plenty of movement and enthusiasm, director Susan Seidelman is content with a metronomic approach to manipulating our feelings - buoyant Latin music never felt so routinely scene-setting - and seems afraid to let anyone on-screen depart from established caricature.
  75. Fifty Shades of Grey
    Fifty Shades encourages us to buy into this credulity-straining scenario because the actors go well together (casting director Francine Maisler did the heavy lifting), Dornan's steely resolve facing off nicely against Johnson's engaging feistyness as each tries to make this cross-cultural relationship work on his or her own terms.
  76. Rebel in the Rye
    The journey of J.D. Salinger from young wiseacre to world-celebrated author and notorious recluse is absorbingly traced in Danny Strong’s Rebel in the Rye.
  77. Shotgun Wedding
    Shotgun Wedding peters out down the stretch, as the explosions and gunfire overwhelm the banter. But the middle hour is snappy, helped by the chemistry of Lopez and Duhamel, playing two over-analytical, over-prepared types who have different ideas on how to thwart their attackers.
  78. The Gospel
    Rousing, affirmative entertainment.
  79. Undercover Blues
    Overbroad, underdone.
  80. The Ghost and the Darkness
    "I am epic, hear me roar" is what the lion-centered The Ghost and the Darkness would have you believe. The reality is more like an acceptably loud noise than a true roar, but so few films venture into the old-fashioned world of historical action adventures that even a loud noise is a welcome sound. [11 Oct 1996, p.F16]
    • Los Angeles Times
  81. The Good Catholic
    Though there’s never any real doubt that the rules of rom-com (even the platonic kind) and the sanctity of Catholicism will be given a once-over, what’s annoying in this otherwise well-meaning movie is how the barbs become a kind of armor against real feeling, and the bland direction offers nothing.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee
    Only intermittently funny at best, but mostly full of dead air, the film is a let-down on both fronts.
  83. The Whole Truth
    Hunt, whose debut feature was “Frozen River,” has a steadfastly classicist approach to tried-and-true genre storytelling that’s admirable, but instead of building tension, The Whole Truth lets it bleed out.
  84. The Da Vinci Code
    While the story plays better on the page than the screen and some of the film's elements work better than others, a proficient Ron Howard version of things is certainly competent if only occasionally thrilling.
  85. Earwig and the Witch
    If pitted against other entertainment aimed at young viewers with much less panache, “Earwig and the Witch” wins, at least in conceptual adventurousness. Even if far from being top-tier Ghibli, it’s not without its fantastical pleasures.
  86. The Basketball Diaries
    The Basketball Diaries is a lose-lose proposition. Although it masquerades as a cautionary tale about the horrors of heroin, this epic of teen-age * Angst is more accurately seen as a reverential wallow in the gutter of self-absorption.
  87. Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins
    A near continuous assault of clichés, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins doesn't become truly bothersome until its denouement, when it attempts to wring unearned sentiment from the inevitable, awkwardly staged family rapprochement.
  88. Nightmare Man
    Intermittently fun and occasionally witty, with just the right touch of self-awareness.
  89. Bonneville
    Scarcely original and in no way earthshaking, but its notable cast is a pleasure to behold.
  90. The Elephant King
    Oliver's instant switch from bespectacled nerd to Thai-stick smoking, love-struck tourist is more embarrassing than convincing, as is the film's reliance on literally elephant-heavy symbolism.
  91. The Simian Line
    These formidable actresses [Redgrave and Daly], abetted by a persuasive Connick, and by Hurt as the most genteel and benevolent of ghosts, set a high standard for a splendid ensemble cast.
  92. American Chai
    Perceptive, good-natured movie.
  93. Hollywood Ending
    It's as sad and painful to report as it is to experience, but Hollywood Ending makes the conclusion inescapable: Woody Allen has become his own worst enemy.
  94. Anatomy 2
    Suspenseful entertainment -- but it's also a suitably chilling cautionary tale.
  95. Bruce Almighty
    While Bruce Almighty does end on a modest "Candide"-like note, the getting there is too strained to be much of a pleasure.
  96. Saw
    Saw is so full of twists it ends up getting snarled. For all of his flashy engineering and inventive torture scenarios, the Jigsaw Killer comes across as an amateur. Hannibal Lecter would have him for lunch.
  97. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
    One overstuffed movie, but it's by no means a turkey.
  98. 95 Miles to Go
    A tedious experience.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Snow Blind
    Packed tighter than week-old powder, Snow Blind tries to touch on every aspect of snowboarding culture, which sometimes makes it feel like a TV travelogue compressed into feature form.
  100. CJ7
    As clumsy and awkward as his previous films were stylishly silly.
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