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. A LEGO Brickumentary
    Even with an energetic approach by co-directors Kief Davidson and Daniel Junge and fittingly playful narration by Jason Bateman, you can't help but hear a little "ka-ching!" every time images of a shiny new creation fill the screen.
  2. The Divergent Series: Allegiant
    Because the series' plot reveal turns out to be more confusing than compelling, and because turning a novel into two films invariably leads to inflated productions, only the most devoted fans of the book will pledge allegiance to what's on the screen.
  3. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
    Joke-wise, there are several solid laughs (gotta love the "Pink Flamingos" line), but much of the humor underwhelms. A few sensible life lessons are tossed in for good measure.
  4. Let's Kill Ward's Wife
    Let's Kill Ward's Wife gets by on the casual charms and deft timing of its appealing cast until the midpoint, when the film's pacing and narrative structure take a hit — and never quite recover.
  5. Preservation
    Until its characters behave illogically in the third act and the direction shows suspense fatigue, Preservation displays a flinty resolve to be better than your average woodsy-nightmare thriller.
  6. The Mountain Between Us
    The Mountain Between Us is an uneasy hybrid of a film, and its successes and disappointments show the benefits and drawbacks of hitching your film to a pair of stars.
  7. Three Night Stand
    The messy relationships and sexual predilections make for an equally messy plot, which distracts from the film's strength — depicting the truths of a romantic relationship that's past the initial excitement and the selective memories of love lost.
  8. The Phoenix Project
    A technically impressive but talky sci-fi drama that never quite comes to life.
  9. Against the Sun
    All three actors turn in solid, committed performances despite physically limiting surroundings, even as you're left with the inescapable feeling that this raft has sailed.
  10. Suburban Gothic
    Bates and co-writer Mark Bruner seem to be going for a satirical tone that falls somewhere between David Lynch and Seth Rogen, but deliberately cheesy effects and a sluggish pace sink the early potential.
  11. The Bronze
    The protagonist's unlikable routine is too high a degree of difficulty to execute flawlessly.
  12. Concussion
    The key problem is that writer-director Peter Landesman has pushed too hard to make this story fit into a dramatic mold, alternating melodrama and romance with those earnest warnings in a way that is more ungainly than effective.
  13. Ghostbusters
    A cheerful summer lark that briefly achieves comic liftoff but peters out well before its overblown Times Square climax, it proudly demonstrates that mediocrity — whether in the hunting of malevolent apparitions or the making of a mainstream comedy — is not, and never has been, an exclusively male pursuit.
  14. Z for Zachariah
    What should be a sexually and emotionally charged atmosphere instead ends up feeling like an intellectual exercise, with the actors attempting mightily to simulate chemistry that simply doesn't exist.
  15. October Gale
    The action unwinds with the mechanical artifice of a creaky play, though Nadda creates a few strikingly cinematic moments.
  16. Two Men in Town
    The setting is striking, the cast impressive. But Two Men in Town, a drama that's built on dread and circles the question of redemption for a newly released prisoner, falls short of the mythic territory it aspires to.
  17. Queen of the Desert
    The main flaws in “Queen,” however, are a lurching narrative coupled with dialogue awkwardness, and a blasé approach to Bell’s motivations.
  18. Cut Bank
    If only anything felt at stake in this story's dark spiral.
  19. Road Hard
    It's the movie's slow drift toward happiness, though, when Bruce meets a widow (Diane Farr) with a sweetly razzing sense of humor that spurs a more refreshing less patently abrasive comedy from Carolla.
  20. The Mafia Only Kills in Summer
    Ambitious, sometimes clever but largely sputtering, The Mafia Kills Only in Summer works better as a childhood memory piece than as an adult tale of love and larceny.
  21. Allure
    This portrait of strong, independent women grappling with change in their individual lives holds initial allure, but the effect proves ephemeral.
  22. Avenged
    Otherwise fairly routine, the film draws fear from ancient mythology and historical grudges in a way more reminiscent of Japanese horror than its American contemporaries. Had Ojeda delved into that a bit more, he could have really set the film apart.
  23. Secret in Their Eyes
    As screenwriter, Billy Ray's adapting the original's Argentina-centric trappings to a tense post-9/11 milieu is smart, but as director his style is hardly atmospheric.
  24. The Forger
    In attempting to spin out its competing storylines, the crime drama The Forger never quite gets a handle on either one. Still, an array of strong performances, including a well-calibrated turn by John Travolta, and compelling emotional moments help counter the patchy narrative.
  25. 3 Hearts
    The overwrought plot mechanics are exasperating, but the lead actresses' exquisitely modulated performances get under the skin.
  26. Burnt
    Burnt is mildly diverting.
  27. The Magnificent Seven
    A sense of lethargy hangs uneasily over the lumbering new version of The Magnificent Seven. Despite its sturdy plot, seasoned director and capable cast toplined by Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke, it arrives in a comatose state, a film unlikely to arouse passions one way or another.
  28. The Forecaster
    The Forecaster, a documentary study of the rise and fall of commodities advisor Martin Armstrong, would have paid greater dividends by taking a more impartial approach to its subject.
  29. Live From New York!
    The movie contains enough warmth, humor and nostalgia to prove an affable if unremarkable snapshot.
  30. Ardor
    Pablo Fendrik's Ardor is a densely atmospheric, Sergio Leone-steeped western that ultimately proves too reverential for its own good.
  31. Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
    The audience's response to The Prophet is likely to be determined by their feelings for the original book rather than the eclectic, imaginative visuals.
  32. Ride
    You can't blame Hunt for perhaps taking on too much — at least she wrote herself a complicated role in this sorry age for front-and-center movie women — but it doesn't always make for a smooth Ride.
  33. Where Hope Grows
    A melodramatic third act strains to reconcile the film's disparate parts, and the feel-good ending is not quite earned. Still, the film offers a few lessons for those inclined to hear them.
  34. Pacific Rim: Uprising
    Pacific Rim Uprising...is an unquestionably dumber, slighter, less fully realized piece of work than its predecessor. It is also 22 minutes shorter and, though no less committed to an aesthetic of shattered glass and pulverized steel, a rather more endurable experience on the whole.
  35. Gemma Bovery
    As a bored baker with an overactive imagination, the wonderful French actor Fabrice Luchini is the only reason to see Gemma Bovery, a mildly amusing riff on Flaubert. H
  36. Marie's Story
    At its most provocative, it suggests a tension between spirit and flesh in the nun's maternal feelings. Rather than examine that friction, Améris pushes the narrative in predictable directions.
  37. Skin Trade
    If bare-knuckle fights are what you seek, director Ekachai Uekrongtham certainly delivers. But the film scarcely scratches the surface of the horrors of human trafficking.
  38. The Film Critic
    Although the meta-style conceit is fun, it doesn't fully kick in until the film's midpoint. Until then it's a sluggish, fairly dour ride.
  39. The Ocean of Helena Lee
    Unless you're on this spiritually noodling movie's wavelength — an easier proposition when the great McKee is singing (she wrote the music with Akin) — this is narratively thin, tone-poem stuff
  40. Anesthesia
    The all-star cast is uniformly good, but the script lacks any sort of nuance to temper the pandering lecture.
  41. 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.
  42. Legend
    As told by Helgeland this Legend simply isn't memorable, because a tremendous effort by Hardy is let down by unfocused storytelling.
  43. 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.
  44. The Nightmare
    Ascher is too content to let repetition of experience take over his film.
  45. Love
    When Love works, Noé achieves a lulling, melancholic frenzy about sex and memory, but the foundation isn't strong enough to make his movie ever seem more than a stereoscopic fermata: one envelope-pushing note held way too long.
  46. Wild Horses
    The best moments showcase Duvall and Franco, formidable stars representing different cultural eras, testing the waters of a father-son relationship bruised by outmoded views of love and sin.
  47. Groundswell Rising
    Groundswell Rising is an undeniably passionate but frustratingly one-sided examination of the controversial method of gas extraction.
  48. In Stereo
    The luminous Garrett shines as Brenda, emerging from her shell. Hauptman manages to sand down David's spiky edges. The supporting characters, unfortunately, are two-dimensional and less charismatic.
  49. Police Story: Lockdown
    The engaging plot gets a bit absurd toward the end.
  50. Chocolate City
    The make-it-rain clichés are abundant and Jean-Claude La Marre's direction is pedestrian, but at least a few of the choreographed numbers here prove more magical than what Soderbergh mustered.
  51. Uncertain Terms
    As it stands, "Terms" proves too uncertain.
  52. 7 Minutes
    Although stylish and intriguingly told, the twisty crime drama "7 Minutes" never quite jumps out of the pack.
  53. Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back
    There are occasionally interesting peeks into the hard work of keeping a flame alive that burned briefly 30 years ago. But mostly this is a video tour book for fans, no more, no less.
  54. The Little Prince
    Although Mark Osborne’s new CG/stop-motion feature succeeds in bringing the essence of Saint-Exupéry to life in the lovely stop-motion sequences, there are only a few of these delightful moments in an otherwise muddled movie that feels like three films ineptly grafted together.
  55. 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.
  56. Chagall-Malevich
    Although the results could never be accused of being uneventful, the characters cry out for deeper, more complex dimensions than simply the wide-eyed dreamer and the rhetoric-spewing agitator on display here.
  57. Meet Me in Montenegro
    Holdridge and Saasen simply lack the acting chops to carry their feature, leaving them with a scenic but indulgent selfie of a big-screen romance.
  58. Hippocrates: Diary of a French Doctor
    Director and co-writer Thomas Lilti's mistake, though, is thinking the bland Benjamin's coming of age concerns are worth so much screen time. The sturdier character study in Hippocrates is of soulful, beleaguered Algerian-born Abdel (Reda Kateb).
  59. Boulevard
    Working from a screenplay by Douglas Soesbe that juggles contrivance and insight, Montiel labors to avoid sensationalizing Nolan's story, and in the process he overcompensates.
  60. The Suicide Theory
    Although Michael J. Kospiah's script isn't exactly predictable or didactic, it does feel contrived and improbable on occasion.
  61. Northmen: A Viking Saga
    Northmen: A Viking Saga uses a relatively smaller scale to its advantage.
  62. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
    This action facility, however, is not enough to make "13 Hours" more than sporadically successful, in part because, at 2 hours and 24 minutes, the film is too long for its own good and risks feelings of repetition and exhaustion.
  63. I Touched All Your Stuff
    It's too bad that Bühler and Mariani take Kirk's tall tale at face value instead of doing their own investigative work and tracking down other characters for interviews.
  64. Solo: A Star Wars Story
    Ehrenreich isn't given much to work with here, but his sly comic reserve and devil-may-care attitude give you reasons to keep watching, well after the story has stopped doing anything of the sort.
  65. Stonewall
    The proceedings can seem less like a fresh retelling of a seminal story and more like, despite stabs at grit and terror, a theatricalized, dewy-eyed version of days past.
  66. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
    It’s possible to watch this movie, in other words, and feel that the series is carving out a new direction, returning to its ancient stomping grounds and sticking to a familiar holding pattern, all at the same time. Such is the repetitive, rudderless nature of so much big-budget franchise filmmaking, even with a proven talent like Bayona behind the camera.
  67. Our Brand Is Crisis
    Nominally a satiric comedy, the film is only sporadically effective, running out of energy before it reaches the end.
  68. The Dressmaker
    What starts as a cheeky lark about bad reputations and snazzy transformations never really gels into something truly funny or even appetizingly weird.
  69. Sneakerheadz
    The film is more lifestyle puff piece than journalism.
  70. Underworld: Blood Wars
    The fifth film in the series still executes creative kills; if only the same attention were paid to the rest of the movie.
  71. Bad Boys for Life
    Lawrence doesn’t just steal scenes; he brings things back to earth, sometimes by expressing open contempt for the plot he’s mired in. His comic instincts are exactly what Bad Boys for Life needs as it tilts toward third-act grandiosity.
  72. The Star
    It's a serviceable animated movie appropriate for the season, but there's nothing beyond its source material that marks it as particularly unique or special.
  73. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
    It’s a thin tapestry of lore with some interesting creative embellishments, but without any real interest in character, it feels flimsy and disposable. You could do worse, but you could certainly do better.
  74. What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy
    Sands' scripted narration sounds detached and dissociated from the grief, frustration and anger he sporadically displays.
  75. 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.
  76. Miss You Already
    The film's insistence on laughter through the tears too often feels strained.
  77. The Park Bench
    A sweet tale with a smart storytelling device and charming performers, but not much more beyond the cute.
  78. Scoob!
    Scoob! was never going to be a great musical, but did it have to turn out to be just another superhero movie?
  79. Kingdom of Shadows
    Director Bernardo Ruiz never manages to weave the multiple narratives into a complex but cohesive big picture.
  80. 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
    Though not as thrilling as the original, this third installment is an improvement over the paint-by-number 2013 direct-to-video “12 Rounds 2: Reloaded.”
  81. A Christmas Horror Story
    As horror movies go, this one's not especially tense or scary. Instead, it's eerie, provocative and at times ridiculously violent. The ending feels like a cop-out after so much creative mayhem.
  82. Labyrinth of Lies
    Labyrinth of Lies too often feels like machine-stamped issue cinema from a moldy Hollywood playbook.
  83. Remember
    While its flaws are considerable, the Holocaust-themed thriller Remember benefits mightily from a quietly commanding Christopher Plummer performance that almost makes you forget the wonky plot logic.
  84. Endgame
    The otherwise congenial film plays itself to a draw because of flat characters and a script that overdoes the melodrama in the service of checking off a series of genre tropes borrowed from sports movies.
  85. The Creeping Garden
    The Creeping Garden cultivates more style than substance.
  86. Gravy
    Although a talented cast and crew keep this party lively, the lack of a point becomes a problem.
  87. Xenia
    Koutras admirably resists easy wish fulfillment by making the brothers' journey more important than their destination, but the scenario he presents inexplicably turns out to be fantasy.
  88. A Faster Horse
    The whole package, with its bizarre fondness for slow motion, feels correspondingly sluggish. All the components are here, but A Faster Horse cries out for more dynamic performance.
  89. I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance is Mine
    The film, as directed by R.D. Braunstein from a script by Daniel Gilboy, moves at a pretty decent clip and is never boring. Unstomachable at times, yes, but never boring.
  90. Why Him?
    The biggest problem with Why Him? though, isn’t him, it’s her. Stephanie is so underwritten that even though these men are competing ruthlessly over her, she drops out of the story completely. She’s the center of attention, but she’s a void. That’s not the fault of the winsome Deutch.
  91. Miles Ahead
    The sophistication gap between the character Cheadle has created and the film that contains him is so great it begins to feel like you're watching two different stories that have been unaccountably spliced together.
  92. Flowers
    Flowers is too exquisitely formalist — symmetric framings followed by willfully asymmetric shots — to ever feel flushed with real feeling.
  93. The Girl in the Book
    The film itself often feels stilted and repetitive.
  94. Cut Snake
    In one punchy way it's feverishly, genre-shakingly different. That difference makes the movie almost work. Almost.
  95. Hard Labor
    At its best, the film has the quality of a nightmare, one that keeps happening whether the characters are asleep or awake.
  96. Band of Robbers
    The film works best when focusing on the conflict between world-weary Huck and dreamer Tom, but the characters are underdeveloped and the plot overly convoluted, lacking the foundational support to prop up their antics and capers.
  97. Sex, Death and Bowling
    At its heart, it's a simple story about a family gathering around a loved one, but there's too much going on narratively and stylistically.
  98. Hyena Road
    While the attempt at a certain, documentary-style naturalism is honorable, it's at the expense of focused plotting and sufficient character development.
  99. I Remember You
    Writer-director Claudia Sparrow prefers to pay more mind to the abstract.
  100. Of Mind and Music
    New Orleans locations and stirring tunes lend texture, intermittently breaking through the film's overriding flatness.
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