Los Angeles Times' Scores

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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
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  1. Only Human
    Mines the comic possibilities of the classic setup of introducing the fiancé to the family, with results that are playful, charming and surprisingly thoughtful.
  2. Wordplay
    Delightful.
  3. Dog Lover's Symphony
    The only suitable ending for such a stinker involves a twist-tie and a baggie.
  4. Cars
    What's surprising about this supremely engaging film is the source of its curb appeal: It has heart.
  5. A Prairie Home Companion
    The result is at once familiar and disconcerting, meta-Keillor done in Altman's desultory, distracted style.
  6. Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul
    Crossing the Bridge does more than offer a wide variety of entertaining and intoxicating Turkish music. It also uses music to paint a portrait of a vibrant, cosmopolitan city and provide a window into a rich and varied national culture.
  7. The Heart of the Game
    An exhilarating story of loyalty and perseverance, The Heart of the Game succeeds as both inspiration and social commentary.
  8. The Long Weekend
    Excruciatingly unfunny.
  9. Autumn
    The twists and reversals that pile up, stirred by greed, friendship and betrayal, fail to register any meaning, simply accumulating -- so that ultimately Autumn is as dry and lifeless as the leaves that fall to the ground in its opening images.
  10. The Omen
    Despite slick camera work by Jonathan Sela and intense, naturalistic performances by Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles, The Omen retains the aura of ceremonious kitsch of the first movie, favoring a well-lighted, upscale Goth aesthetic punctuated with flashes of well-timed, cymbal-crashing shockers and giggly camp.
  11. The Break-Up
    I'd be happy to see it listed in an in-flight magazine, but "Annie Hall" it's not.
  12. District B13
    More athletes than actors, Raffaelli and Belle are terrific when their bodies are in motion but the movie grinds to a halt when they open their mouths.
  13. The War Tapes
    The film acutely captures the topsy-turvy uncertainty of life during wartime, where there's Burger King and land mines and Pizza Hut and snipers.
  14. The Puffy Chair
    A pointed and nicely observed screenplay that guides us on an often funny journey through familiar terrain made fresh by their off-center sensibility and three fine performances.
  15. Typhoon
    Ambitious and impressive, both in its provocative themes and superb production design using striking sets and locations in Korea, Russia and Thailand, this handsome epic amply rewards audiences willing to go the distance.
  16. The Conrad Boys
    The Conrad Boys reveals little cinematic instinct or imagination but has a deeply personal quality that becomes engaging.
  17. Favela Rising
    Memorable and significant.
  18. Peaceful Warrior
    The sage-elder/wayward-charge saga Peaceful Warrior aims for inspirational highs but mostly feels like a self-help book read aloud by actors.
  19. Coastlines
    For fans of Nunez's previous work, it's almost as if he put in all the clichés he would normally avoid and left out the wonderfully textured internal moments that made "Ruby" and "Ulee's Gold" unique.
  20. X-Men: The Last Stand
    Ratner seems to have found a theme that he can relate to: A terrifying trio of angry, undomesticated women who all but run away with the movie.
  21. Cavite
    A dark, riveting thriller.
  22. Fanaa
    To resort to strictly ethnocentric references, Fanaa is equal parts MGM extravaganza, Shakespeare lite and James Bond. In their heart of hearts, isn't that what movie audiences really want?
  23. An Inconvenient Truth
    Although the message of the film sounds bleak, it is actually quite rousing.
  24. La Moustache
    Emmanuel Carrère's witty, elegant La Moustache is a deliciously unsettling, beautifully sustained enigma, a film of much beauty and flawless performances, especially from Vincent Lindon in one of his most demanding roles.
  25. 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.
  26. Over the Hedge
    The disappointingly pedestrian computer-animated Over the Hedge will be more entertaining for little tykes than their older siblings and parents, and would not seem out of place on Saturday morning television.
  27. See No Evil
    A flavorless snack, time filler until "Saw III" and "Hostel 2" are served up.
  28. The King
    A dark and deeply unsettling movie with its roots in classical tragedy.
  29. Lemming
    The acting is serviceable and primarily of the stare-until-you're-uncomfortable variety, although Rampling is much more than that: She's a classic screen temptress with the aura of a melancholy spider.
  30. Mouth to Mouth
    As the film progresses, however, Murray becomes less and less sure of where things are heading or what it is she is trying to get at, such that the last few reels feel perfunctory and unengaged.
  31. Twelve and Holding
    Smart, compassionate filmmaking that captures both the intricacies and the tragedy of contemporary adolescence.
  32. Poseidon
    More than characters, dialogue and lighting, here Petersen is interested exclusively in suspense of the will-he-or-won't-he-be-crushed-by-that-falling-flaming-elevator variety.
  33. Just My Luck
    Stay as far away from Just My Luck as you can.
  34. Giuliani Time
    With the former mayor currently enjoying one of the rare second acts in American political life, Giuliani Time does a strong job of reminding us what the first one was like.
  35. Wah-Wah
    Both acidly funny and very moving.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sketches of Frank Gehry
    Pollack does give a substantial chunk of screen time to Milton Wexler, Gehry's longtime analyst, who proves to be a winning, charismatic presence.
  37. Russian Dolls
    Charming and antic, Russian Dolls doesn't quite cohere in the way of "L'Auberge Espagnole" into a clever snapshot of contemporary Europe.
  38. Mission: Impossible III
    Hoffman is so proficient in this role that he just about overmatches Cruise and makes the wait until he speaks again in the second half of the film hard to endure with any patience.
  39. Art School Confidential
    If a more elegant and succinct explanation of what compels some people to go to art school has ever been filmed, I haven't seen it.
  40. An American Haunting
    At times, the narrative thread slips the movie's grasp and there are flat spots in which characters just scream and thrash. Given what its ending aims for (don't ask), such interludes feel flabby and gratuitous even with Sutherland and Spacek providing gravitas to the ghoulishness.
  41. Hoot
    Any charm and character ascribed to Carl Hiaasen's bestselling book have been homogenized in Wil Shriner's flat screenplay and direction.
  42. Down in the Valley
    For a film that has allegedly undergone extensive tinkering following its premiere at last year's Cannes Film Festival, Down in the Valley abounds in nagging loose ends and suffers overall from logy pacing.
  43. One Last Thing...
    Too dark to be very funny, too mushy to be pitch black.
  44. United 93
    It’s a mark of Greengrass’ unequaled gift for believably re-creating reality that, once seen, it’s impossible to get United 93 out of your mind, no matter how much you may want to.
  45. Stick It
    The film strives for some type of a girl-empowerment message that equates trading one type of conformity for another with self-determination but muffs the dismount and stumbles on the landing. In other words, it fails to Stick It.
  46. Akeelah and the Bee
    A genuinely sweet and determinedly inspirational family film that features a charming young actress in the title role. It's a successful feel-good movie, but it would make you feel even better if it didn't push quite so hard for its desired effects.
  47. RV
    The bedraggled movie limps along to its phony hogwash of an ending, adding the ignominy of sentimentality to its previous sin of being so derivative.
  48. Guys and Balls
    A wry, robust comedy of broad, sometimes crass humor set in the ultra-macho world of a small-town German soccer team.
  49. The Lost City
    In an era when so many films are cynical, cash-grabbing mechanisms of global corporate culture, no more and no less, it is frustrating to come across a work such as this, in which the grasp-exceeding reach and reckless vision of its creators become the biggest drawbacks rather than the film's greatest assets.
  50. Water
    As beautiful as it is harrowing.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Whore's Son
    The misfortune, of Michael Stürminger's low-boil melodrama is that it's entirely too familiar. Underneath the movie's cool surface beats the heart of a 1940s tear-jerker. It's a subzero "Stella Dallas."
  52. Revoloution
    A hopelessly muddled example of inspirational indie cinema.
  53. Army of Shadows
    As someone who was part of the Resistance, Melville knew enough to neither melodramatically glorify nor cynically devalue the heroism he presents. This is people doing what needed to be done, Army of Shadows says, this is the way it was.
  54. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
    Though it is undeniably bleak and pessimistic and marked by a texture of observation worthy of British director Mike Leigh, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is not as forbidding as it sounds.
  55. Three Times
    Finds Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien at his most intimate and romantic. The deceptive simplicity of these vignettes, written by Chu Tien-wen, throws into relief Hou's formidable storytelling strengths and visual acuity - his way with actors, his subtlety and expressiveness.
  56. American Dreamz
    Grant's second coming as a rake and an egotist is the best thing to happen to his career since "Four Weddings and a Funeral." He is twice as enjoyable as the preening bad guy as he was as the bumbling good guy, and Weitz makes perfect use of the new persona.
  57. The Sentinel
    An unassuming thriller, a nifty piece of genre filmmaking without frills or self-importance. It's a throwback, if you will, to the days of B pictures, when formula movies were made with a maximum of skill and a minimum of pretense.
  58. Silent Hill
    Works up a decent amount of solid, creep-show atmosphere in its first act before making some absurd decisions of its own in its second.
  59. Somersault
    Dreamy and creepy, tender and terrifying, Somersault is a frank and visceral film that at the same time exudes an unexpected innocence.
  60. The Celestine Prophecy
    The movie is flatly acted and extremely ill-paced, lacking any sense of urgency, momentum or fun. "Romancing the Stone" it is not.
  61. The Almost Guys
    Shot in just 24 days, the film staggers under the weight of stale gags and a meandering plot.
  62. Standing Still
    Wants to be an honest, earnest look at the difficulties of growing up and moving on, but it remains stuck in such a fantasy-laden milieu that the characters never feel particularly real, and their problems seem phony and arbitrary.
  63. Stolen
    Stolen is about a puzzle that's resisted solution for more than 15 years, but that doesn't stop it from being a fascinating, adventurous documentary with a lively and eccentric cast of characters.
  64. Scary Movie 4
    Isn't it amazing to see just how low some people will stoop if you pay them enough?
  65. Kinky Boots
    A humanist parable about how to be a good person, live a good life and make gallons of lemonade when life suddenly hands you lemons, it's predictably delightful and delightfully predictable.
  66. Hard Candy
    Maddeningly exploitative, the film takes a provocative subject -- pedophilia -- and wraps it in a sterile, vacuum-sealed package, devoid of meaning.
  67. The Notorious Bettie Page
    Harron has said she was determined to be nonjudgmental about Page, to do justice to the woman's "mystery and ambiguity." In practice, however, that attitude plays as coldness, and Page, for all her remarkable zest, comes off as a not terribly interesting person we're given no incentive to become involved with.
  68. Look Both Ways
    A fearless movie about a fearful subject, an unusually empathetic and quite funny film that deals with death and dying in the most offbeat and casually life-affirming way. Exceptionally smart, playful and perceptive, Look Both Ways confronts things that people would rather avoid.
  69. Abominable
    Schifrin wisely holds off showing the monster -- because once the creature is revealed, the already shaky film takes a turn for the worse. The costume for the monster looks like a cross between a drugstore Halloween mask and leftover molds from the horror chestnut "Leprechaun."
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Herbie Hancock: Possibilities
    Possibilities ends up as a testament to only one thing: a missed opportunity to explore one of the most visionary and influential careers in modern music.
  71. Mountain Patrol
    These kinds of merciless conditions lead to a culture that is stoic about life and death and a story that will surprise you by its willingness to embrace that unsentimental natural world.
  72. La Mujer de Mi Hermano
    As pared down, stylish and deceptively simple as the stark glass and concrete block inhabited by two of its main characters, La Mujer de Mi Hermano (My Brother's Wife) is an adultery drama that skips the big life lessons in favor of observing the mysteries of human interdependency and social behavior.
  73. Metal: A Headbanger's Journey
    Dunn says he's been defending his choice in music since he was 12, and the film is a carefully organized and thoughtful argument for the merits of metal.
  74. The Sisters
    A pompous, overwrought and itchingly claustrophobic psychodrama.
  75. Sisters in Law
    You might start to seriously wonder if there's a way to get this woman to run for office here in America.
  76. Lucky Number Slevin
    Lucky Number Slevin is an attempted cinematic sleight-of-hand that has its moments, but is finally just plain annoying, wearing its influences too broadly on its sleeve.
  77. The Benchwarmers
    From the beginning to its very end, The Benchwarmers seems to be struggling to justify its own existence.
  78. Phat Girlz
    Likké should be applauded for tackling a subject that's bristling with sociopolitical thorns and that raises some provocative questions, particularly about what we find attractive in other people and why.
  79. Friends with Money
    The result is an exquisitely calibrated hypermodern comedy of manners. A quiet but devastating ensemble piece, both acerbic and sweet, "Friends" blends empathy and a great sense of comic timing with the richness of Holofcener's trademark take-no-prisoners observations.
  80. On a Clear Day
    Sweet-natured, if somewhat familiar, On a Clear Day features fine performances by Mullan, Blethyn and Sives. Dellal and cinematographer David Johnson paint an inviting picture of Glasgow.
  81. When Do We Eat?
    A self-consciously zany dysfunctional family comedy, When Do We Eat? strains so hard to be outrageous that it sacrifices characters for caricatures. They might have had something if they'd let everybody relax, be themselves and enjoy dinner.
  82. 4
    But most important, for the adventurous moviegoer, it's more than apparent throughout this inventive, hypnotic and queasily funny portrayal of socioeconomic chaos that this director is a talent to watch.
  83. One Last Ride
    Director Tony Vitale, best know for "Kiss Me Guido," gamely tries to keep pace with Cupo's erratic storytelling and struggles to convey the inner life of Cupo's character.
  84. Sir! No Sir!
    A powerful documentary that uncovers half-forgotten history, history that is still relevant but not in ways you might be expecting.
  85. 95 Miles to Go
    A tedious experience.
  86. Quality of Life
    The ending, which unnecessarily veers toward lumpy, overwrought melodrama, undoes the scrappy elegance the film previously displays in fits and starts.
  87. I Am a Sex Addict
    What this is remains mysterious after a single viewing, but not so mysterious as to inspire a second.
  88. Basic Instinct 2
    What we may very well be looking at here is another "Showgirls," a drag camp-fest for the "Baby Jane" crowd, fabulous fodder for future cabaret acts, and a pleasure probably best enjoyed in a crowd -- preferably a vocal one. Dead serious and stone idiotic, the only basic instinct in evidence here is desperation.
  89. Slither
    Slither is a gross, disgusting, but undeniably amusing treat laden with homages and in-jokes.
  90. Brick
    Johnson has taken a well-worn, much-revised genre, adapted to what's become a clichéd setting and transcended both in the process.
  91. Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!
    Cutting to the beat of the Beasties' propulsive rap, Hörnblowér creates an experience that is simultaneously low-fi and state-of-the-art.
  92. Adam & Steve
    Much of Craig Chester's good-hearted love story Adam & Steve is silly and contrived, but the film boasts four engaging actors.
  93. The Devil and Daniel Johnston
    A performer of formidable self-absorption, Johnston has inspired a film with the same trait, and the results are about what you might expect.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Iowa
    Farnsworth's frenetic, often hysterical first feature tries desperately to find a style, or styles, to call its own, but there's never a moment that doesn't feel as if it's been chewed up and spit out a dozen times before.
  95. Iron Island
    This is not a typical Iranian production. Simultaneously deeply allegorical and concretely physical, this striking film is not a typical production, period.
  96. Tibet: A Buddhist Trilogy
    In three parts, the film patiently unwraps the details of daily monastic life. Observation and translation is emphasized over explanation or interpretation.
  97. Yang Ban Xi: The 8 Modelworks
    Overall, the film lacks cohesion and a true point of view. Further muddling the film's meaning is a voice-over attributed to Jiang Qing, which we learn at the end is fictionalized.
  98. Drawing Restraint 9
    Ultimately, the scale of the production and the expectation built into the release don't entirely justify the effort.
  99. Inside Man
    Smartly plotted by newcomer Russell Gewirtz and smoothly directed by, of all people, Spike Lee, Inside Man is a deft and satisfying entertainment, an elegant, expertly acted puzzler that is just off-base and out-of-the-ordinary enough to keep us consistently involved.
  100. Stay Alive
    Stay Alive spends a lot of time inside the video game system, and what will terrify the audience very early on is the realization that there's better acting in the video game than on the big screen.
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