Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,523 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 16523
  2. Mixed: 5,808 out of 16523
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16523
16523 movie reviews
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  1. Akira
    Akira is a jumble of high-tech visuals that will appeal only to hard-core Japanese animation fans. Viewers in search of a coherent narrative or polished animation should look elsewhere. [14 Mar 1990, p.F3]
    • Los Angeles Times
  2. The Day After Tomorrow
    The story is too silly, too woefully underwritten, to stake a claim on seriousness.
  3. Ice Age
    The problem rather is the wholesale embracing of what has become de rigueur in animation, the practice of treating major characters as if they were stand-up comics working a room in Las Vegas.
  4. The Life of David Gale
    Frankly, the film's real surprise is that it doesn't collapse under the weight of its sanctimonious posturing and howling pretension. The film is crammed with high-cultural references and people playing "smart," but none of it adds up.
  5. New York Minute
    A coy, frantic attempt at screwball comedy, lightly seasoned and more than a little gummy.
  6. Patch Adams
    Williams knows when material is working, and he knows the sound of an honestly aroused crowd. This ain't it!
  7. Raise Your Voice
    Hilary Duff can't rise above an overbearing script with underdeveloped roles.
  8. The Stepford Wives
    It was somebody's nitwit idea to rip out the story's guts and brains for a sour sellout of a finale -- which finds the filmmakers behaving exactly like Stepford men and turning an original into a dummy.
  9. The United States of Leland
    An ambitious and intelligent film probing that chronic contemporary phenomenon, the seemingly senseless crime, but it is ultimately unsatisfying for all its efforts and various pluses.
  10. Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie
    The appeal of Yu-Gi-Oh! for kids who play the card game shouldn't be too much of a mystery -- at least to any adult who admits to tuning in to celebrity poker on TV.
  11. Little Black Book
    It's an irrefutably bad movie, littered with paper-thin characters, crummy dialogue and a mawkish undercurrent that wells up any time it starts to resemble something smarter and snappier. Yet it is somehow redeemed by Murphy's agreeably quirky performance in a horribly underwritten role.
  12. Without a Paddle
    Despite some agreeably idiotic moments, Without a Paddle is also mostly without a rudder. Its few memorable highlights end up floating haplessly in a genial but uninspired and watery plot.
  13. I, Robot
    More disturbing, yet another robot, or maybe two, seems to have written a Hollywood script and hijacked a major studio production. Given the film's assembly-line screenplay and mechanistic storytelling, no other explanation seems viable. Certainly no one with a heartbeat or taste would blow so much talent, time and resources on such rubbishy writing.
  14. Napoleon Dynamite
    It's a simple collection of sight gags and pratfalls that mines the overly familiar turf of awkward adolescence without bringing anything truly original to the experience.
  15. Barb Wire
    Ought to be disreputable fun. Instead it ends up, all its explosions and exposed flesh notwithstanding, rather inert.
  16. Feeling Minnesota
    The go-for-broke plot twists are daring, but because there's no sense of background to the characters, one gets the sense it's all being made up as Baigelman goes along.
  17. The Chamber
    The Chamber is like a balloon that all the air has leaked out of. Maybe it wasn't magnificent before, but in its current state it is sad indeed.
  18. A Life Less Ordinary
    But the result is no more than a forced fable, a self-consciously smarty-pants concoction that is too clever by half and too pleased with itself in the bargain.
  19. Love! Valour! Compassion!
    That this is the first film for director Joe Mantello, who was nominated for a Tony for directing the stage version, may be compounding the problem. But frankly, if someone wanted to do a parody of a gay film like this, it's hard to imagine the sloganeering being much different.
  20. 101 Dalmatians
    Fluffy and mild to the point of somnolence, it can't even get the full benefit of its strongest asset, Glenn Close's performance as the grasping virago Cruella DeVil.
  21. Eraser
    Eraser does have a few big-ticket stunts that hold the attention, but director Charles Russell, fresh from "The Mask," isn't able to infuse them with the intensity and believability that James Cameron brought to comparable sequences in "True Lies."
  22. Evita
    Without real dialogue and believable connections between actors, Evita is limited in its effectiveness, and all the crying for Argentina in the world can't change that.
  23. Phenomenon
    Well-meaning and convinced it has something of value to say, its "Reach Out and Touch Someone" sensibility ensures that all its satisfactions will prove hollow, and so they do.
  24. 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.
  25. Cliffhanger
    Make no mistake, the high-flying stunts in director Renny Harlin's film are definitely state of the art, and while they're going on, the film works up a serious level of excitement. But as soon as the action stops and the inevitable talking begins, Cliffhanger falls to earth with a considerable thud. [28 May 1993 Pg. F1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  26. Wayne's World
    The Wayne's World concept, which, egged on by a rabid studio audience, works so beautifully in skit format, ends up feeling dragged out and energy-less at feature length. [14 Feb 1992 Pg. F1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  27. Rob Roy
    Working with cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub, director Caton-Jones has givenRob Roy a beautiful wide-screen look, filled with gorgeous vistas. But this film is like a color Xerox copy of the real thing: hard to tell from an original until you look closely at the details.
  28. 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
  29. Jefferson in Paris
    A wax-museum movie that is both bland and reverential despite its focus on the great man's love life, Jefferson is hampered by its disconnected protagonist.
  30. Nine 1/2 Weeks
    Sanitized for our protection and in the hands of director Adrian Lyne, 9 1/2 Weeks is a swooningly silly cautionary tale about the bad and the beautiful; a pair whose sexual tastes might have surfaced after a night of watching "Bolero" on videocassette. [21 Feb 1986, p.1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  31. Jacob's Ladder
    Really effective horror films make us participants in the horror. Jacob's Ladder doesn't draw us in in that way. It's a movie about interior states that's all on the outside. [30 Oct 1990, p.1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  32. Girl 6
    Too slight to be taken seriously and too off-putting (especially when the phone callers get hostile and the work demeaning) to be funny, Girl 6 feels like the first draft of a potentially interesting project. It just hasn't been made good on here.
  33. Amateur
    Hartley turns what might have been a lurid pulp thriller into a freeze-dried art thing. He squeezes all the juice out of pulp. [19 May 1995]
    • Los Angeles Times
  34. Disclosure
    The idea that sexual harassment is about power, not sex, and that a woman in power can potentially misbehave just like a man may be news to certain segments of the population, but they are not news enough to light a much-needed fire under this production. [9 Dec 1994, p.1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  35. Renaissance Man
    Marshall doesn't have the gift for shamelessness, and that's why the film, with its pileup of sentimentalities, seems so processed. [04 Jun 1994]
    • Los Angeles Times
  36. Wall Street
    Wall Street wants to be a shrewd piece of movie making, our own insider's tip, but it's tinny and thin and close to moral bankruptcy. As for its veracity, it's probably no closer to Wall Street than "The Bad and the Beautiful" was to the skills of movie making. And it's a lot less fun. [11 Dec 1987, p.1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  37. Clue
    Inspired by the Parker Brothers board game of the same name, Clue is more frenetic than funny, more strained than suspenseful or scary. In fact, it's not the least bit scary or suspenseful but instead quickly grows tedious. The more you struggle to keep track of the constantly multiplying plot developments, the harder it gets to care who did it. [13 Dec 1985, p.6]
    • Los Angeles Times
  38. 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
  39. Sex and the City 2
    The satire is sagging, the irony's atrophied and the funny is flabby.
  40. The A-Team
    An underwhelming experience. I pity the fool, as TV star Mr. T might say, who mistakes this for genuine entertainment.
  41. Dinner for Schmucks
    Against all reason and expectation, the result is a distinctly unfunny film.
  42. The Back-up Plan
    Good slapstick is actually an art -- unfortunately not one practiced here -- and bad slapstick is just tedious.
  43. Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel
    Has much that tries for outrageous camp, but too much of it plays like a crude travesty of overly familiar Southern decadence. It needed a director who knows how to stylize intense theatricality rather than merely revel in it in wobbly fashion.
  44. Group
    The well-intended Group is nevertheless problematic. It's relentlessly grueling, as therapy can be, and not everyone will be able to see a reason to watch it.
  45. The Rose Technique
    With The Rose Technique, producer-writer Ray Stroeber came up with a promising idea, but director Jon Scheide plays this pitch-dark comedy far too straight.
  46. Emerald Cowboy
    Rich in authentic locales but is unevenly directed by Andrew Molina and is hazy in its chronology. Hayata's story in all its myriad implications might well have been better told in documentary form.
  47. Trouble Every Day
    Highly problematical. The trouble with "Trouble" is one of temperament. Denis' formality and seriousness make the horror genre a risky business for her, especially when sex is combined with outrageous gore.
  48. Controlled Chaos
    Controlled Chaos unfortunately also reveals that Zendel's talents do not equal her ambitions.
  49. Close Call
    A lot of uneven acting is also no small detriment to this frequently awkward film's credibility.
  50. Venus and Mars
    Not exactly terrible, merely stale and pointless.
  51. L.A. Twister
    In trying to qualify as mordant satire, charming rom-com, uplifting buddy movie about underdogs trying to stick it to the man and the most meta story ever told, L.A. Twister sprains itself badly.
  52. Dischord
    This premise is ripe with possibilities, but in an apparent -- and definitely misguided -- attempt to make his movie more commercial, Wilkinson has made the younger brother a murderer on the run.
  53. 800 Bullets
    It thinks it's cute, but it's as charming as an old drunk going on about how he knew Eastwood back in the day.
  54. Sky Blue
    Like a lot of other Asian sci-fi anime: a stunningly imagined world of the future populated with one-dimensional characters caught up in a trite plot.
  55. SubUrbia
    With each succeeding picture, Linklater seemed to grow as a filmmaker, just as his characters became more defined and developed. But with his fourth picture, subUrbia, he takes two giant steps backward.
  56. Hotel de Love
    The young stars are attractive and capable, but Hotel de Love is as synthetic as an old "Love Boat" episode.
  57. Angels with Angles
    Lame and overly contrived comedy.
  58. Film School Confidential
    A fictional look at film school life, realized in that archetypal film school style. If it were being workshopped in a seminar, some criticisms might include: awkward mise-en-scène, stock characters - and did you actually repeat that reaction within 10 seconds of first using it?
  59. The Almost Guys
    Shot in just 24 days, the film staggers under the weight of stale gags and a meandering plot.
  60. 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.
  61. Full of It
    A new teen fantasy movie, is indeed loaded -- with things you've seen many times before.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Inlaws & Outlaws
    Because Emory doesn't grapple fully with the issues that loom over the film, there is something soppy and soft-headed about Inlaws & Outlaws.
  63. The Wendell Baker Story
    A cast this charismatic is bound to make something of the situation. In short bursts, the movie is alternately sunny and charming, dark and weird, confounding and dull.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Over the GW
    It's not vivid or harrowing enough to command attention. Worse, at a mere 76 minutes, the movie skips past what seems like lots of crucial exposition in favor of vague flashbacks and confusing inserts. The awkward documentary-style interviews don't help.
  65. Laura Smiles
    As Ruscio piles it on, he gets himself further and further away from any sense of genuine emotional truth.
  66. In Paris
    Moody, mannered and supremely irritating, Christophe Honoré's Dans Paris plays like a pastiche of French cinema clichés through the ages.
  67. Moving McAllister
    There are enough reasons to avoid this oh-so-wacky comedy as it meanders from piney Georgia to Port Arthur, Texas, to Monument Valley, Utah, and they include Gourley's sense of direction.
  68. CJ7
    As clumsy and awkward as his previous films were stylishly silly.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Spiral
    A middling, if stylish, psychological thriller making a perfunctory big-screen pit stop before its DVD release next week.
  70. A Previous Engagement
    A dreary experience.
  71. Finding Amanda
    The problem comes largely in the conception of the hooker-niece character, Amanda, played by Brittany Snow. Tolan never quite figures out whether she is supposed to be a variation on the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold or a genuinely troubled teen.
  72. Red Roses and Petrol
    This is the kind of movie in which characters revere poetry, yet hardly anything about the writing (it's based on a stage play by Joseph O'Connor) or directing (by Tamar Simon Hoffs) qualifies as poetic.
  73. Sixty Six
    Instead of depicting a boy's first steps toward manhood -- ceremony aside -- it turns into an uninvolving portrait of self-absorption.
  74. Johnny Got His Gun
    Trumbo's aim was a kind of proletarian poetry, but McKenzie's broad emoting has the deadly earnestness of a school play.
  75. Shoot on Sight
    Shoot on Sight has good intentions but winds up a thematically simplistic, dryly plotted and perfunctorily shot melodrama, one of those movies where dialogue is there to categorize people, not parse the complexities of human beings.
  76. The Dukes
    Davi's heartfelt performance makes for a winning solo, but the movie too often lacks harmony.
  77. An American Affair
    A mess of a film that can't quite figure out what it wants to be: an illicit love story, a political thriller or a coming-of-age set piece
  78. Explicit Ills
    Undone by a deadly twofer: lack of trust in characterization coupled with single-minded faith in spelled-out messages.
  79. The Skeptic
    Old-fashioned in the worst sense, Bardwell's ghost story is heavy on Freud, light on fear.
  80. White on Rice
    It's revealing that writer-director Dave Boyle has said that in a way he fulfilled his lifelong ambition to be a cartoonist with the live-action White on Rice because his people in this wan, trite and increasingly silly comedy are little more than stick figures.
  81. Peter and Vandy
    Peter and Vandy has the decided disadvantage of arriving a couple of months after the similarly structured "(500) Days of Summer," a movie sporting a sunnier sheen, more appealing cast and an actual reason to care about the outcome.
  82. Bitch Slap
    Despite its obsession with décolletage, Bitch Slap is surprisingly puritanical (much teasing, no pleasing), substituting plentiful violence and a howlingly predictable "shock" ending for the payoff it promises.
  83. Blood Done Sign My Name
    The material gets away from him (Stuart) quickly, leaving emotionally forced, clunky filmmaking that feels simultaneously rushed and dawdling, like a chopped-down TV miniseries. (It even has natural commercial breaks.)
  84. The Last Song
    One of those maudlin romantic melodramas you just can't warn folks off.
  85. Mercy
    A romantic drama with some good qualities -- among them earnestness and strong performances -- but not enough to completely overcome the strain of its clichés.
  86. Multiple Sarcasms
    Rather than some deeper understanding of the human condition, what we get from Multiple Sarcasms is a lot of heavy breathing.
  87. The Last Airbender
    Airbender, whether intentionally or not, is pegged almost exclusively to a small-fry state of mind.
  88. The Living Wake
    The number of clearly talented individuals who committed themselves to the folly of The Living Wake were fearless too.
  89. Grown Ups
    The new Adam Sandler comedy has all the charm of a home movie that does not star your own family, which means it's overly sentimental, filled with you-had-to-be-there moments, bad jokes and even worse camera angles.
  90. Raajneeti
    Aims for something trenchant about thwarted destiny and ugly ambition in modern Indian democracy but mostly winds up with a convoluted and tonally awkward "Godfather" rehash, with nary a character worth rooting for.
  91. Charlie St. Cloud
    For now, Efron remains an unrealized dream and Charlie St. Cloud an unrealized movie, though judging from the "ooohhs" and "awwwws" from the audience, for his core tween-girl fans, that's more than enough.
  92. Spoken Word
    With the patiently assembled '90s films "Ruby in Paradise" and "Ulee's Gold," director Victor Nuñez gave independent film a quiet luster of hand-craftsmanship sorely lacking in his dreary new effort, Spoken Word.
  93. The Dry Land
    Shaped more for message than for convincing narrative impact, The Dry Land ends up feeling like a PSA to raise awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder.
  94. The Disappearance of Alice Creed
    A glum British kidnap movie in which writer-director J Blakeson manages to generate tension and some suspense, never rises above the mechanical and contrived, finally lapsing into the improbable.
  95. Tales from Earthsea
    It also features deaths by strangulation and immolation as well as a nasty bit with a flying severed limb.Kids may be less put off by all that, though, than by the film's uninspired hand-drawn animation, visual flatness and elongated running time.
  96. Legendary
    A bold-faced name for a lowercase effort, a school wrestling drama so mired in family-film clichés it can never shake loose the suspicion that - not unlike certain high-gloss mat bouts - the emotional fix is in from the get-go.
  97. Monsters
    An attempt to counter noisy, hyper effects-laden alien invasion flicks with something teasing, indie and good for you. Instead, it's like a pendulum swing too far in the other direction.
  98. The Romantics
    This sour spin on "My Best Friend's Wedding" (crossed with a pale dose of "The Big Chill") proves unsatisfying not only because of its unlikable characters and often contrived conflicts but for the thoroughly implausible bride and groom at its core.
  99. Barry Munday
    Greer's wallflower is bitter, and their respective families - played by Jean Smart, Malcolm McDowell, Cybill Shepherd and Chloë Sevigny - come off like a second-rate sitcom's castoffs.
  100. It's a Wonderful Afterlife
    While her latest, It's a Wonderful Afterlife, is affectionate and energetic, its comic premise seems too silly, and at times, too tedious, to hope for much cross-cultural appeal, despite a fine, committed cast.
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