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. The Ladykillers
    An uncharacteristic if unsurprising dud.
  2. Jersey Girl
    Despite that frisson of naughtiness and the occasional smile, Jersey Girl is overall too bland to hold our interest.
  3. Ned Kelly
    Since Ned Kelly -- which is not terrible, just too often dull -- has a no-expense-spared feel to it, this Focus Features release can be regarded only as an opportunity missed.
  4. Dogville
    A provocation, a coup de theatre and three hours of tedious experimentation.
  5. The Gatekeeper
    Has a certain stiffness and awkwardness at the start, but this deeply personal work steadily grows more powerful and eloquent, creating a tragic vision of the plight of illegal aliens that transcends its melodramatic elements.
  6. Bon voyage
    Not long into this most exhilarating and enjoyable of movies, it becomes reminiscent of such vintage jewels as Carol Reed's simultaneously thrilling and amusing "Night Train to Munich."
  7. Taking Lives
    It's slick nonsense at best and for the first hour it's watchable. There's cheap entertainment to be had from a thriller in which two detectives are played by beauties as ravishing as Jolie and Martinez.
  8. Intermission
    Turns out to be a tedious and under-inspired comedy.
  9. Dawn of the Dead
    Good zombie fun, the remake of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead is the best proof in ages that cannibalizing old material sometimes works fiendishly well.
  10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    A memory play and a sleight of hand, Eternal Sunshine is more than anything else deeply sincere. Like Spike Jonze, who directed "Adaptation" and "Being John Malkovich," Gondry succeeds principally by balancing Kaufman's churning skepticism with unflinching hope.
  11. Divan
    The result is a touching and humorous documentary that for all its enlightening scope, encompassing centuries of religious and cultural history and a physical voyage of thousands of miles, is ultimately a deceptively simple tale of a daughter trying to reconnect with her father across two boroughs.
  12. Noi the Albino
    An impeccably made bleak comedy with an exactly calibrated, almost musical sense of timing, Nói is singular enough to have swept the Eddas, the Icelandic Academy Awards.
  13. Maestro
    For the uninitiated it is a revelation, and for the aficionado it will surely be a special treat. Its every frame is an expression of love for the music, the underground club scene, its creators and its patrons.
  14. Spartan
    (Mamet) backslides to a system that has his speeches read in a stylized way. The result is language that sounds unhappily artificial and characters who behave like they are less than real.
  15. Knafayim Shvurot
    When the melodrama does get strong, and it does, when bad things happen on a dark and stormy night, we go with it rather than resisting. The film has won our trust, given some heft to its characters and involved us in their lives, come what may.
  16. Secret Window
    Unsteadily pitched between horror and comedy, Secret Window turns out to be neither terribly scary nor especially funny.
  17. Distant
    A beautifully made, unapologetically artistic piece of work.
  18. Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London
    As ingenious and lively as the original film.
  19. NASCAR: The IMAX Experience
    A splendid example of pure cinema.
  20. Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
    Call this a brooding comedy or a darkly whimsical drama, "Wilbur's" willingness to mix gallows humor and real sadness make it something on which labels do not easily fit.
  21. Games People Play: New York
    Whitney takes having it both ways to new heights -- depths is perhaps more like it. He satirizes reality TV while showing total nudity and at times carrying sex to the verge of soft-core porn. As titillating and energetic as the film is, it is also rather sad because it reveals what aspiring actors will endure for what they apparently regard as an opportunity.
  22. Ghost River
    Directed by Olivier Dahan, Isabelle Huppert takes the most familiar type of material and attains impeccable results.
  23. Hidalgo
    Hokey though it is, with a horse-hugger ending thrown in to boot, Hidalgo has a sweet-natured appeal that welcomes sentiment without overdoing it.
  24. Starsky & Hutch
    Because no one involved with Starsky & Hutch actually seems to care about the movie, all Wilson can do is idle in neutral while Stiller frantically shifts gears, looking for an excuse to split.
  25. The Reckoning
    The Reckoning isn't great by any means and there are moments during the final stretch when it isn't even good. But for its first hour or so, the story moves at a steady clip, generating enough mystery to keep you guessing and enough atmosphere to keep you interested.
  26. Down by Love
    Never does Down by Love, handsome and fully crafted, have the feel of being a filmed play. It emerges as a fresh, challenging and unpredictable experience with a stunning finish.
  27. Red Trousers: The Life of the Hong Kong Stuntmen
    So engaging and illuminating that it is enjoyable even for those unfamiliar with one of cinema's most dynamic forms.
  28. James' Journey to Jerusalem
    Devastating and amusing.
  29. What Boys Like
    Slight in the extreme, more tasteless than amusing, but at least its young actors manage to make promising impressions, especially Wiehl and Brenner, whose characters have a tad more dimension than the others.
  30. Club Dread
    Pretty dreadful.
  31. Greendale
    By the time Greendale reaches its rousing crescendo with the anthem "Be the Rain" and Young and Crazy Horse have blown off the barn doors, the Canadian-born artist has crafted one genuinely tasty slice of Americana.
  32. Tube
    The picture is sleek rather than merely slick, moves like lightning and is loaded with nail-biting incidents and dynamic action. What's unfolding for the most part is fun and exciting, but unfortunately it isn't always fully clear.
  33. Twisted
    Twisted is rubbish, but it looks good enough, moves fast enough and does improve as it progresses, principally because its plot disintegrtes to the point of outright comedy.
  34. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
    Sufficiently original and engaging to be called merely "Havana Nights" but will no doubt get a boost by the reference to the popular 1987 "Dirty Dancing."
  35. Goodbye Lenin!
    Funny but not a comedy, serious but never overbearing, emotional in an engaging and bittersweet way, Good Bye, Lenin! is a wonderful film unto itself about a world unto itself.
  36. Confessions of a Burning Man
    The four individuals' narratives are not always that compelling and make for a film best experienced on a strictly sensory level. Let the images wash over you and enjoy.
  37. Alila
    The film's drawback, and it is a serious one, is that few of its characters wear very well. The more we see them, the less they involve us and hold our interest, a situation not helped by the bombastic, theatrical style of acting a few of the performers have felt free to employ.
  38. The Passion of the Christ
    In effect, aspects of Gibson's creative makeup -- his career-long interest in martyrdom and the yearning for dramatic conflict that make him an excellent actor, coupled with his belief in the Gospels' literal truth -- have sideswiped this film. What is left is a film so narrowly focused as to be inaccessible for all but the devout.
  39. Against the Ropes
    If they had to make things up, couldn't they have made up something smarter?
  40. Clifford's Really Big Movie
    Though not exactly a gripping experience for adults, parents have reason to be grateful for a movie that has been so carefully tailored to preschool to first-grade sensibilities.
  41. EuroTrip
    While the cast members are all appealing, with characters that are barely penciled in it falls on their shoulders to make the film even passably watchable, which they only barely manage.
  42. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
    At a time when crassness and dumbing down pervade popular entertainment, especially movies aimed at youthful audiences, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen dares to be smart.
  43. Kitchen Stories
    There's nothing casual about the way this film has been put together, yet that painstaking care leads to laughter that is completely unrestrained.
  44. Welcome to Mooseport
    Gene Hackman, bristling with wit and energy, is at his amusing best in the robust comedy.
  45. Crying Ladies
    High-spirited and good-natured, Crying Ladies never loses touch with reality.
  46. Lost Boys of Sudan
    Too short by half, Lost Boys of Sudan affords frustratingly little by way of real analysis and history. But it does introduce us to two extraordinary young men whose faith in this country is almost as unbearably sad as their stories.
  47. After the Life
    Central to the last film's success are Manise and Blanc, who invest the story with intensity unmatched since Belvaux stormed through the first feature.
  48. The Code
    The atmospheric, richly detailed La Mentale has terrific vitality with its volatile mixture of alternating camaraderie and savagery.
  49. The Seagull's Laughter
    A delicious pitch-dark Icelandic comedy centering on a femme fatale so enigmatic it brings into question just how fatale she may actually be.
  50. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (re-released)
    The Umbrellas of Cherbourg has stood the test of time as beautifully as Deneuve and seems likely to enchant future generations as fully as it has audiences over the past four decades.
  51. Love Object
    Parigi -- who's clearly made a close study of Alfred Hitchcock's obsessions and has watched a fair share of intelligent horror perched between cheekiness and Grand Guignol (think "Re-Animator") -- succeeds nicely.
  52. 50 First Dates
    Has nothing going for it -- and much going against it.
  53. Robot Stories
    Robot Stories isn't any good. I don't say this lightly. There's no pleasure in giving new directors bad reviews and it's especially unpleasant when what's wrong with their work isn't a clumsy performance or two, a sagging second act or a repugnant worldview, but a near-total absence of filmmaking talent.
  54. An Amazing Couple
    It's exasperating -- a near-parody of bad French comedy.
  55. Osama
    Raw and wretchedly current, it is a story that packs a cruel emotional wallop.
  56. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
    As deliberately silly as the film is, it is very knowing and carefully thought out.
  57. Miracle
    Powered by an excellent Kurt Russell performance, Miracle treats old-fashioned, emotional material with an intelligence that respects both the story and the audience.
  58. Barbershop 2: Back in Business
    Pleasing blend of humor, sentiment and commentary.
  59. Catch That Kid
    Serviceable trash. It looks and moves like a low-end action movie, complete with thumping soundtrack, nanosecond-fast edits, stunts that probably look scary to anyone who doesn't know better and even a third-act police chase through downtown L.A. In other words, it's Bruckheimer for babies.
  60. The Return
    While most films are fortunate if they succeed on any level, The Return works easily on several, making as powerful a mark emotionally as it does visually and even allegorically. Yet the film so catches you up in its compelling story, you're almost not aware of how masterful a piece of cinema you're watching.
  61. The Dreamers
    Does have its pleasures, but the feeling is inescapable that the person most pleased is Bertolucci himself. In essence he is the dreamer of the title, as eager to retreat into this hermetic world of his own creation as his characters are into theirs. Fair enough, but why does he have to drag us along with him?
  62. Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust
    Heartfelt and deeply moving.
  63. Blind Shaft
    Makes for gripping, merciless drama.
  64. On the Run
    Reveals its secrets slowly and with coy deliberation. The storytelling has the quality of a striptease, so that by the end of the film, Le Roux looks radically different from how he appears at the start.
  65. The Perfect Score
    As forgettable as the humor is the film's predictable portrayal of adults as clueless, overbearing cretins.
  66. Latter Days
    At once romantic, earthy and socially critical, Latter Days is a dynamic film filled with humor and pathos.
  67. The Big Bounce
    There may once have been a real movie rattling inside the empty studio package known as The Big Bounce, but no longer.
  68. You Got Served
    The heart of the movie, however, is the dancing, which is as spontaneous as it is spectacular, incorporating considerable gymnastics.
  69. Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
    A sweet-natured romantic comedy that's easy viewing but could have used a little more energy and a little less unalloyed niceness to put it over with more punch.
  70. Touching the Void
    It's a nervy, quasi-documentary scheme that's often successful, perhaps more so than you'd expect for this kind of a hybrid endeavor. But Macdonald's technique eventually turns out to be as distancing as it is involving, paradoxically undercutting the reality as often as it enhances it.
  71. The Butterfly Effect
    As the requisite love interest, Amy Smart gives the film's only professional performance, while co-star Eric Stoltz, as the story's villain, walks somnolent through the scenery with what seems to be barely suppressed mirth. Given the deeply unpleasant plot machinations and amateurish direction, the actor's amusement is understandable.
  72. Made-Up
    In working with Lynne Adams' script, Shalhoub, the esteemed star of the current USA series "Monk," gives his cast the inspiration and confidence to express the characters' many facets and seeming contradictions.
  73. Teacher's Pet
    Smart and stylish, Disney's Teacher's Pet is one family film that has appeal for adults as well as children.
  74. Torque
    A terrific action picture, fast-moving, studded with great stunts and smart enough not to take itself too seriously. Amid a plethora of high-minded, big-deal, year-end Oscar contenders, it offers a welcome contrast (and respite).
  75. Tom Dowd & the Language of Music
    If there is one moment in The Language of Music that will thrill old rock fans, it's watching Dowd, his fluid hands moving with a surgeon's grace, remix for the film's benefit the 24-track sub-master of "Layla."
  76. The Tracker
    Redeemed by its adherence to a simple yet distinctive approach to storytelling and its uniformly strong acting.
  77. Along Came Polly
    On paper it has every advantage, from gifted stars Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston to an established comedy writer-director with a promising idea about a romance between a carefree woman and a worried man. But instead of maximizing those pluses, Along Came Polly so completely fritters them away that even its brief 90 minutes feels unhappily long.
  78. Tokyo Godfathers
    As with the greatest animated films, the triumph of Kon's work lies not just in its beauty and singularly sophisticated storytelling but in how that beauty and storytelling combine to give the films a sting so human you can forget you're watching a cartoon.
  79. My Baby's Daddy
    A tedious comedy... It's not the worst premise for humor dashed with a little wisdom, but the script, written by the film's star Eddie Griffin and others, is less than inspired and tends to blur the line between immaturity and just plain stupidity.
  80. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
    She was guilty, no doubt, but as this immensely moving film makes clear, Aileen Wuornos was also heartbreakingly human.
  81. Chasing Liberty
    The film means to be an unpretentious, engaging romantic comedy but stretches its charm awfully thin with a 110-minute running time.
  82. The Battle of Algiers
    Achieves its success through a combination of attitude and technique, uniting, to exceptional effect, a way of viewing the world morally while looking at it physically.
  83. Yves Saint Laurent 5 avenue Marceau 75116 Paris
    Engrossing and illuminating.
  84. Secret Things
    The result is both merciless and darkly funny.
  85. Millennium Mambo
    There's wonderful promise in Hou's attempt to make a movie about the kind of woman who's usually part of the scenery.
  86. Japanese Story
    Collette is fearless in reaching deeply into her emotions, and her expressiveness as an actress comes across as completely natural because it so clearly comes from within.
  87. The Company
    Makes the world of ballet, seen by so many as rarefied, accessible and exciting, a rigorous art that yields breathtaking results.
  88. Paycheck
    The sort of noisy nonsense that Woo's earlier action movies made irrelevant, but alas not extinct.
  89. The Young Black Stallion
    A film truly geared to the 6-year-old level. If not younger.
  90. Cold Mountain
    There are not one, but two wars raging inside this adaptation: one between the North and the South, and another, more calamitous war between art and middlebrow entertainment.
  91. Cheaper by the Dozen
    As synthetic as a plastic Christmas tree.
  92. Peter Pan
    Though being magical is very much its intention, it never manages to cross the threshold that makes that happen in our hearts.
  93. Monster
    Phony choppers and a startling resemblance to Jon Voight aren't enough to transform Theron into Wuornos, and I didn't buy either the performance or the character for a second.
  94. Calendar Girls
    Closer in texture and consistency to individually wrapped American cheese than good, tangy English cheddar. But even humble plastic-wrapped cheese has its virtues and so does this film.
  95. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
    Never one to shy away from challenges, Morris has come up with one of the best documentaries of this or any year.
  96. The Butterfly
    An exceptionally satisfying film of much grace and beauty.
  97. Mona Lisa Smile
    For all its flaws, its obvious if irrelevant similarity to "Dead Poets Society," it lets us spend some quality time with some of the finest actresses in American film as they give energetic life to one of the most radically underrepresented minorities in Hollywood: the intelligent woman.
  98. House of Sand and Fog
    Its step-by-step tragedy is so ruthless in its unfolding, you may find yourself wishing it were less well done, that it left you some room to breathe. But House of Sand and Fog has a story to tell and it means to tell it, no matter what the cost.
  99. The Hebrew Hammer
    Unfunny rather than outrageous as intended.
  100. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
    As completely real on the psychological level as its up-to-the-moment visual effects have on the physical.
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