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. Love Hurts
    Moss brings warmth and dignity to a part that could've easily slid into stereotype, while Camryn Manheim owns her few scenes as Amanda's best friend.
  2. A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps
    (A) stirring, if inconclusive documentary.
  3. Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola
    For the most part "Matru" is neatly energetic, a mix of screwball whimsy and softball seriousness.
  4. Horns
    As things turn irrevocably supernatural, the movie's anything-goes quality ends up deepening instead of torpedoing the narrative, as can sometimes happen in horror flicks.
  5. The Houses October Built
    The documentary style makes the proceedings all the more frightening.
  6. A Small Section of the World
    The documentary A Small Section of the World is straight-up corporate propaganda. But its uplifting, powerful, well-meaning message might be enough to win over even some skeptics.
  7. Intrepido: A Lonely Hero
    Director Amelio turns Antonio's brief stint at a "real" job into a piercing and visually striking glimpse of hypocrisy and corruption — a glimpse too of the film that might have been.
  8. The True Cost
    One would almost be inclined to give Morgan a pass for interviewing some of his executive producers as expert sources. A bigger disappointment is the missed opportunity to address the significant retailer markups that could have gone toward improving sweatshop conditions instead of profit margins.
  9. Mountain Men
    Tyler Labine, known for his comedic work, contributes a fine dramatic performance tinged with comedy, and Crawford is equally as good. A smart script deftly opens and builds upon itself in a controlled slow burn.
  10. The Free World
    An initially compelling but uneven drama elevated by two centered performances.
  11. The Meg
    The Meg, stolidly directed by Jon Turteltaub (“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” “National Treasure”), winds up proving a fairly obvious theory about its chosen sub-genre: the more massive the shark (and the budget), the lighter the scares and the lower the stakes.
  12. Generation Startup
    It’s a warm, uplifting portrait of the potentials to be found in startup culture, but feels blinkered by its specific focus.
  13. Is That You?
    There’s an appealingly sentimental destination in store for Ronnie and Myla’s parallel quests that keeps the movie from floating away entirely on its all-too-airy premise.
  14. Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies
    It’s not great. It’s not terrible. It’s really not anything.
  15. Speech & Debate
    Although the story, which feels a tad past its expiration date, never digs too deeply into its central issues (hypocrisy, loneliness, censorship, finding one’s voice), Dan Harris’ peppy direction and nimble turns by the film’s young leads prevail.
  16. So B. It
    The strong cast, including John Heard, Dash Mihok, Jacinda Barrett and Cloris Leachman, sells the warm, at times cloying material with earnest conviction.
  17. Death Wish 4: The Crackdown
    Death Wish 4 may be preposterous, but on the level of technique it's a solid textbook example of crisp exploitation picture craftsmanship. Thompson clearly takes pleasure in setting up every scene with maximum economy and impact, and his work is that of a professional without apologies.
  18. 1:54
    Unfortunately, writer-director Yan England never focuses on any one lesson long enough to make a complete or satisfying statement. The result: a potentially meaningful movie that hands us a double dose of despair when a ray of hope was needed.
  19. Caught
    Caught hits the usual beats, but with an unusually strong cast and original characters.
  20. Luis and the Aliens
    It’s a silly, fairly rote animated film, but underneath the hijinks and mishaps is a rather devastatingly sad story. It’s this poignancy that makes Luis & the Aliens a step above the rest.
  21. Cold Brook
    Fichtner’s love for upstate New York — and his interest in exploring the dynamic of longtime married couples — makes this movie easy to root for. But he doesn’t have much of a story, or much of a directorial eye. His passion project is admirable but minor.
  22. One Way
    The film is a case study in why critics say “show, don’t tell.” It’s 90 minutes of people talking about routine gangster stuff, peppered with occasional gunfire.
  23. Joker: Folie à Deux
    It’s so detached from the supervillain narrative that it’s almost meta. But as the musical numbers become lengthy detours rather than lending further insight into Arthur, the sequel doesn’t sing as a character study. And it sure ain’t a thriller.
  24. Project X
    The only way to describe this movie's trio of party-throwing protagonists is numbingly predictable, as if writers Michael Bacall and Matt Drake had "Superbad" on a loop in the background.
  25. Another Happy Day
    If this low-budget indie is any indication, the younger Levinson's creative sensibilities appear to be darker than his dad's, the voice clearly his own.
  26. Untogether
    The Kirkes are attractive and intriguing actresses, Mendelsohn again proves one of the best screen actors around and Dornan looks great in scrubs. But it’s hard be sure exactly what Forrest is trying to say here and the film isn’t compelling or appealing enough to sufficiently care.
  27. Christmas Bloody Christmas
    The overall vibe here ends up being less “good dirty fun” than “foul-mouthed teenager trying to look cool.”
  28. Rambo
    Moved to take charge by something like chivalry, Rambo hits his stride in the film's second half, meting out justice in an unjust world and ultimately the movie works best when warbling its out-of-tune greatest hits.
  29. American Mary
    Writer-director siblings Jen and Sylvia Soska allow their film to turn slack and unfocused after an enticingly lurid, wickedly tense first half.
  30. Beyond Skyline
    Beyond Skyline is a boldly bonkers film, and it leans into its genre goofiness with a straight face thanks to Grillo. But more humor would have gone a long way in sustaining interest and entertainment, as it’s not quite funny, and too low-budget to take seriously.
  31. The Break-Up
    I'd be happy to see it listed in an in-flight magazine, but "Annie Hall" it's not.
  32. Touch of Pink
    Lively and often comical.
  33. The Last Days on Mars
    Lean, muscular and on the money, The Last Days on Mars takes a familiar story and tells it so tautly that we are pleased to be on board.
  34. Unsung Hero
    It’s a humble story, one with the capacity to inspire in its simple message of perseverance. But the film itself, as an artistic product, feels limited in its observational scope, because the filmmaker doesn’t have any distance from the material.
  35. Knight and Day
    It's hardly a perfect film, not even close, but it is the most entertaining made-for-adults studio movie of the summer, and one of the reasons it works at all is the great skill and commitment Cruise brings to the starring role.
  36. The Upside
    The Upside was probably never going to be a good movie, but it needn’t have been such an unfortunate, spectacularly ill-timed one, the victim of circumstances it ultimately has neither the wit nor the imagination to transcend.
  37. The Magic of Belle Isle
    It has some heartfelt performances and a nice, nondescript vibe, but it's largely unmemorable.
  38. Time Trap
    The result, directed by Mark Dennis and Ben Foster (not the actor) from Dennis’ script, is a handful of intriguing ideas in search of a more cohesive and dimensional narrative.
  39. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
    Muddled tale of faith and reason.
  40. Must Love Dogs
    Forces them (the cast) to reenact the entire unabridged Encyclopedia of Treasured Romantic Comedy Clichés and Chestnuts, Revised Second Edition.
  41. The Public
    What could have been a deep and rousing clarion call on the homeless crisis gets supplanted by surface characterizations and situations, us-against-them broadsides and weak story strands.
  42. Dark Glasses
    There are set pieces scattered throughout Dark Eyes that are as strange — and as strangely beautiful — as the best of Argento, starting with an unnerving opening sequence that sees a group of people in a park gazing at a solar eclipse.
  43. The Queen of Spain
    Had the comedy been sharper, this movie-loving movie might have convincingly meshed its Technicolor caricatures and antifascist heroics.
  44. Detour
    What’s painfully clear is that all the artfully composed shots, hinky situations and extra conceptual surprises can’t make this Detour all that compelling beyond its crisp artifice.
  45. The Crossing Guard
    The Crossing Guard, Penn's second film behind the camera, is a troubling, troublesome movie whose makeshift structure cannot contain the powerful flood of passions that he and his cast have poured into it.
  46. Instant Dreams
    As long as he maintains his focus on the notoriously private Land and the painstaking efforts of Impossible Project’s chief technology officer and Polaroid vet Stephen Herchen to recapture lightning in an SX-70, Baptist delivers something reasonably compelling. Unfortunately the bulk of the overly artsy production is preoccupied with the exploits of others.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Teen Witch
    Switch witchcraft for werewolves, and the hackneyed plot of Teen Witch could easily be that of Teen Wolf or a dozen others like it.
  48. Honest Thief
    It’s one of those pseudo-thrillers with car chases and shootouts in which it’s hard to invest yourself because its rules seem fungible.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Good Man in Africa
    Alex Murray is the conscience of A Good Man in Africa, but to the credit of both Connery and Beresford, he's anything but self-pleased or smug, and neither is the film, which has some of the spirit of an old-fashioned romp. [02 Sep 1994]
    • Los Angeles Times
  50. Hotel Transylvania: Transformania
    “Transformania” delivers what most viewers would expect from a “Hotel Transylvania” film: frenetic energy, physical comedy and Dracula learning another lesson about acceptance.
  51. White Nights
    At all times the wretched high-concept, low-intelligence story contrives to bring everything down to its sudsy level. [22 Nov 1985]
    • Los Angeles Times
  52. Wolves
    There’s plenty of predatory behavior on display in the impressively acted Wolves, a curious if unsuccessful cross-breeding of gritty domestic drama with conventional coming-of-age sports crowd-rouser.
  53. Spaceballs
    If Spaceballs disappoints you, it isn't because it's unfunny or not entertaining. Brooks at medium pressure is still more amusing than most movie makers. [25 Jun 1987, p.1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  54. The In-Laws
    They (Brooks and Douglas) are so out of sync with each other that they seem to be looking for different movies to take their acts, though neither makes you want to see those hypothetical films. Not even as an option to this one.
  55. All Over the Guy
    A romantic comedy of wit and substance that actor-writer Dan Bucatinsky and director Julie Davis have moved gracefully from stage to screen with a change of title and sexual orientation.
  56. Venus Boyz
    It is clear that these individuals have exercised considerable courage and determination to sort out their sexual natures and to be true to them. They have the sturdy sense of human survivors, and in Venus Boyz Baur regards them with compassion and dignity.
  57. Kiss the Girls
    Fleder has directed three-quarters of a terrific movie and one-quarter of pure Hollywood baloney. After carefully building up the suspense and tension through Cross and McTiernan's search, spiked with nail-biting encounters on both coasts, Fleder lets it trail off in anti-climax and banal violence.
  58. Grand Theft Parsons
    Knoxville is surprisingly good playing a man who may have been in one too many barroom brawls, moving with a hunched, hips-forward swagger that suggests someone constantly walking through very low doorways.
  59. The Brawler
    The Brawler isn’t terrible, but those with any interest at all in Chuck Wepner should start with one of the many better options.
  60. Badland
    The storytelling’s smart, but the style’s tediously reverential and somber.
  61. Exit Plan
    There is real potential in this premise, and a few flickers of genuine artfulness, but the storytelling is frustratingly abstruse, making for an Exit Plan that’s a real missed opportunity.
  62. Jetsons: The Movie
    Writer Dennis Marks and producer/directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera can't seem to decide whether they're making a with-it musical for teen-agers or re-creating the ingenuous humor of a '60s TV show, and don't do either very well.
  63. Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
    Remo Williams is a slam-bang action-adventure loaded with surprises. Just when you think it's going to be just another bone-cruncher steeped in patriotic paranoia, it sends itself up hilariously. Remo Williams has some of the funniest, brightest dialogue heard on screen all year.
  64. The Watchers
    Regrettably, the movie itself feels trapped by its airless gallery of carefully crafted images, familiar to the high-toned end of the horror genre: elegantly mood-thick surroundings, deliberately half-seen creatures, actors positioned as if in a still life.
  65. The Mighty Ducks
    Most of the movie is like the ice on which Bombay's limousine rests: cold and shaky. The only time it really comes alive is in the obvious scene, the fast, furious championship, with every Duck having his day.
  66. Every Secret Thing
    Crushingly listless and at times as off-putting as a needle scratching vinyl, this corkscrew tale of questionable (and questioned) parenting, youthful misjudgments, grudges and disappointments doesn't even have the disciplined domestic-evil allure of a Lifetime movie.
  67. Stung
    Unfortunately, the human relationships depicted here are less credible than the solid special effects.
  68. Second Act
    The movie is all over the place and there is no attempt to weave it into a coherent whole — which is regrettable as scene for scene it often works.
  69. Fun Mom Dinner
    This raunchy, female-driven comedy should be able to rely on the strength of its cast, but even the collective talents of Katie Aselton, Toni Collette, Molly Shannon and Bridget Everett aren’t enough to make the movie worth a babysitter’s hourly rate.
  70. A Previous Engagement
    A dreary experience.
  71. They/Them
    The cast is terrific, the dialogue is snappy, and Logan has the kernel of a great idea here, connecting the teenage slaughter that fills most slashers to the real-world cruelty of conversion camps. But They/Them never connects on a gut level, as a horror movie should.
  72. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
    As a horror-comedy, it boldly declines to scare or amuse.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    U.N. Me
    The result is far from evenhanded, but capable of raising important questions.
  74. Weird Science
    The film's greatest asset is Kelly LeBrock, who is triumphant. She may represent souped-up womanhood at its most fanciful but she does so with great warmth and a sharp sense of herself.
  75. Cruise
    Screenwriter Robert Siegel’s second directorial outing is better as an exercise in nostalgia than as a film, but it deserves some praise for its faithful recreation of a time and a place.
  76. The Burning Sea
    The film as a whole, though, never hits as hard as it should. The characters are too stock — generic enough that their personalities won’t distract from the looming apocalyptic trouble.
  77. Smilla's Sense of Snow
    Though enlivened by occasional touches, "Smilla's" is like the food at Taco Bell: exotic only to someone who hasn't experienced the real thing.
  78. Killing Bono
    Killing Bono whips up a frenzied mix of musical jealousy, wishful stardom and farcical lucklessness into a movie too slippery to hold onto.
  79. Held
    It lacks the cleverness or the panache to give its schtick the proper zing.
  80. Rust
    There’s an elegant severity to the natural elements that share the frame with the movie’s characters, manifested in silhouettes against vast cloudy skies, delicate snowfalls, shafts of light in dark interiors and crisp air filled with smoke and dust. A testament to lives cut short, Rust is beautifully filmed and all the sadder for it
  81. Judgment Night
    Given the opportunities for gratuitous mayhem, director Stephen Hopkins, working from a script by Lewis Colick, is reasonably restrained. He’s aided by his cinematographer, Peter Levy, who gets some real variation out of what might have been undifferentiated darkness.
  82. A Chorus Line
    In this stately and fairly slavish representation, directed by Richard Attenborough, what pokes through with the pain of a broken bone is how thin the material really is. [12 Dec 1985]
    • Los Angeles Times
  83. Destination Wedding
    Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder may have worked together in the past (most notably in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”), but Destination Wedding, a painfully indulgent anti-romantic comedy about a pair of miserable misanthropes who bond over their shared contempt of the universe, forces their screen chemistry well beyond any reasonable limits of tolerance.
  84. The Dukes
    Davi's heartfelt performance makes for a winning solo, but the movie too often lacks harmony.
  85. The Heartbreak Kid
    A grim, shrill, deluded and incredibly depressing movie, so bewilderingly mean-spirited that the trademark Farrelly Brothers gross-out scenes feel like the sweetest.
  86. Cheaper by the Dozen
    As synthetic as a plastic Christmas tree.
  87. Bobby G. Can't Swim
    Decidedly a minor item that's been on the shelf for a while but is nonetheless an effective calling card for its writer-director-star.
  88. Greenfingers
    Relentlessly smarmy and contrived, and its pitch for the cause of prisoner rehabilitation preachy and heavy-handed.
  89. Me Myself I
    Griffiths' Pam holds your attention without any gratuitous mannerisms or broad asides. It's a sleek, rangy performance that all but redeems the hackneyed familiarity of the premise.
  90. Blue Streak
    (Lawrence) has every right to be proud of carrying this rickety film on his stooped shoulders.
  91. Chasing Liberty
    The film means to be an unpretentious, engaging romantic comedy but stretches its charm awfully thin with a 110-minute running time.
  92. Pumpkin
    The result is hit or miss, with a laugh here and there, ultimately creating an aura of hopeless and drawn-out improbability.
  93. Flavors
    Aims for a kind of hip cultural fusion but lacks the sharp satirical perspective to pull it off.
  94. Life of the Party
    To complain that nothing much happens here or ponder the film's curiously tame view of university life (Rodney Dangerfield would most definitely get no respect here) is to miss the point of the movie, which is to serve as a vehicle for McCarthy, spotlighting her warm, screwball spirit and irrepressible physical comedy.
  95. Come and Find Me
    Even with several contrivances in the movie’s final third, this remains a taut, haunting ride thanks to solid writing and directing by Zack Whedon (Joss and Jed’s younger brother) and a strong, sympathetic performance by Paul. Find this one.
  96. The Last of Robin Hood
    Instead of a cautionary tale, they've looked at Flynn's life through rose-colored glasses.
  97. The Devil and Father Amorth
    While the slim sampler platter would be more at home on an "Exorcist" commemorative DVD release, the documentary, accentuated with unnerving bursts of music sampled from the works of neoromantic composer Christopher Rouse, should placate the rabid fan base.
  98. Samaritan
    Both Stallone and the assured young actor Walton give fine, nuanced performances — as does Asbaek. The premise of “Samaritan” is the stuff of cartoons, but the actors makes the stakes feel real.
  99. She's the Man
    So good-natured, and its cast seems to enjoy itself so thoroughly, that the total annihilation of disbelief it requires winds up feeling like a reasonable enough request.
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