Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,520 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: 8,697 out of 16520
  2. Mixed: 5,806 out of 16520
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16520
16520 movie reviews
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  1. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
    Nearly three hours long, and deliberately paced at that, this first feature ever in the Inuit language is a demanding experience. But the rewards for those who risk the journey are simply extraordinary.
  2. The Sum of All Fears
    Has vast scope, unflagging energy, a rousing Jerry Goldsmith score and a horrendous disaster sequence that conveys much in discreet fashion in keeping with post-Sept. 11 sensibilities yet is needlessly evasive in telling us the precise extent of its magnitude.
  3. Undercover Brother
    A funkadelic fun ride that shrewdly reinvigorates the eye-popping styles and pulpy veneer of '70s blaxploitation flicks.
  4. Elling
    A witty and sophisticated sensibility brings individuality to the classic odd-couple comedy.
  5. The Next Big Thing
    All strained artifice, inhabited by individuals who either lack dimension or are merely stereotypes. The result is a movie not nearly as amusing as its makers may think.
  6. Bartleby
    It's not a bad idea, and it has the right cast and the right look. But, sad to say, it lacks the pace and energy to make it come alive and therefore remains more of a literary conceit than a movie.
  7. Master of the Flying Guillotine (re-release)
    Called the Holy Grail of the Hong Kong martial arts movies of the '70s, and now that it has been lovingly restored and given a regular theatrical release, it's easy to see why.
  8. CQ
    The result is stylish but awfully slim.
  9. Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
    Demands the utmost concentration, for to look away from the screen for even a brief moment is to risk losing a plot line or a crucial bit of information, but its cumulative, transporting impact makes it worth the effort. Above all, it has an overwhelming sense of reality atypical of the American cinema.
  10. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
    Despite its good intentions, Spirit is more self-conscious and uninspiring from a dramatic point of view than one might have wished. Still, whenever it threatens to get bogged down in earnest dramaturgy, a stirring visual sequence -- rouses us.
  11. Enough
    Lacking a real actress, director Michael Apted is called upon to fudge the facts and make Slim's ordeal as taut as possible. He gets the job done, but the suspense scenes have a generic fright-by-numbers feel that tell us he's wearing his professional hat and knows it.
  12. Insomnia
    Insomnia shows an equally welcome ability: a gift of creating intelligent, engrossing popular entertainment.
  13. The Importance of Being Earnest
    The result is a film that is at best highly uneven and perversely at odds with itself. Luckily, Wilde's delicious sense of absurdity and peerlessly witty dialogue are pretty indestructible, and "Earnest" itself remains a peerless comedy of manners.
  14. Late Marriage
    Late Marriage will assuredly rank as one of the cleverest, most deceptively amusing comedies of the year.
  15. The Believer
    Admirably ambitious and utterly unsparing, but as credible as the arc of Danny's odyssey is in itself, the all-important need to evoke a profound sense of the enigmatic and paradoxical in relation to Danny's fate has eluded Bean.
  16. About a Boy
    Because a gradually thawing Will plays more to Grant's strengths, the second part of the film, helped as well by Rachel Weisz as a love interest, is much more fun. But it is still hard not to feel that this film is pushing us too hard, slickly trying to seem more honest than it actually is.
  17. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    Only a teenage boy could find this kind of stuff continually diverting, and only a teenage boy would not notice flimsy emotions and underdeveloped acting. It seems George Lucas, like Peter Pan, has never really grown up.
  18. Ultimate X: The Movie
    The film's strengths may actually work against it with younger fans who might be disappointed by the few stomach-churning, white-knuckler moments.
  19. Blackwoods
    Always a welcome presence in any film, Howard, as a simple-minded hick, gives Blackwoods whatever humor and life it has.
  20. The Lady and the Duke
    Just as interesting, if not more so, is how Rohmer integrates his very contemporary concerns into a period drama, how he creates characters who manage to be true to our times as well as their own.
  21. Unfaithful
    Though it is difficult to take Unfaithful as seriously as it takes itself, on its own terms it's quite well done.
  22. The New Guy
    An unintentional parody of every teen movie made in the last five years. Which can be the only rational explanation for making such a mess all over the screen.
  23. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
    Raises it to the level of an art film with fully drawn characters, a serious underlying theme, and a sophisticated style and point of view.
  24. Home Movie
    There is something reassuring in seeing free-thinking individuals express their personalities so emphatically yet invitingly in the places they live.
  25. The Mystic Masseur
    The result is an eccentric, amusing fable that moves at an unhurried island pace, a picturesque tale that Merchant seems to have invested with an almost personal sense of spirit.
  26. A Shot at Glory
    Not as distinctive or even as humorous as its needs to be to stand out, but it has clearly been made with affection and care.
  27. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
    May well be Imamura's funniest film; it is also one of his most accomplished. It is the work of a mature artist who has kept his adventurous spirit alive, which he has expressed in a complex and risky work carried off with an effortlessness that comes only from wisdom and experience.
  28. Hollywood Ending
    It's as sad and painful to report as it is to experience, but Hollywood Ending makes the conclusion inescapable: Woody Allen has become his own worst enemy.
  29. Fleeing by Night
    An exquisite love story directed with admirable subtlety and sensitivity.
  30. Spider-Man
    Spider-Man may look like an action comic come to life, but its best feature is its romance comic heart. It's that rare cartoon movie in which the villain is less involving than the love story.
  31. The Other Brother
    Perfectly pleasant if slightly pokey comedy.
  32. Circuit
    At once a sexy soap opera, at times lurid and bathetic, and also a gritty cautionary tale made by a filmmaker honest enough to have it both ways.
    • 5 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Vulgar
    Johnson does seem to have some psycho-sexual ax to grind amid all this visual and sexual crudity. For instance, women barely figure in the action, with Will taking on various stereotypical feminine attributes. But good luck finding meaning in all this mess.
  34. Dogtown and Z-Boys
    A more impartial filmmaker might have understood the need for other voices to balance against all that attitude, might have understood how hungry the film makes us for even a single non-adulatory moment.
  35. Life or Something Like It
    Amiably glossy if naggingly old-fashioned.
  36. Jason X
    Like a dinner-theater version of the "Alien" movies without the good grooming.
  37. Night at the Golden Eagle
    A modest pleasure that accomplishes its goals with ease and confidence.
  38. Rain
    Moves way past the predictable into the shocking. Indeed, the film is so expertly structured and paced that its denouement knocks you off your feet.
  39. The Salton Sea
    Taking issue with efforts like The Salton Sea, cold and unemotional films that couldn't be more pleased at the opportunity to enthusiastically drag audiences through unhappy material, is as futile as getting mad at the wind.
    • Los Angeles Times
  40. Some Body
    SomeBody reclaims well-trodden territory with an innovative hand that feels fresh as tomorrow.
  41. Freshmen
    Far removed from the usual college movies, as amusing as they can sometimes be, and so authentic it's like eavesdropping on life.
  42. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
    All told, this is going to make passable television. Eventually.
  43. Murderous Maids
    Denis and Testud, in a wondrous collaboration of a gifted director and equally gifted actress, succeed in making Christine a tragic figure.
  44. Mutant Aliens
    Zany, exuberantly irreverent animated space adventure.
  45. Murder by Numbers
    Though Schroeder makes you squirm more than you want to at the inevitable scenes of the trussed-up female murder victim, he also has the proclivity and the skill to make at least the B-picture half of Murder by Numbers of more than passing interest.
  46. Girls Can't Swim
    Birot is an engaging storyteller who can inspire luminous, spontaneous portrayals, but her ending is so drastic that it feels unearned, a note of bleakness struck merely for its own sake.
  47. Enigma
    It is such a grand, romantic entertainment that it sweeps the viewer along in its swiftly escalating suspense.
  48. The Scorpion King
    The movie itself is a live-action cartoon, a fast-moving and cheerfully simplistic 88 minutes of exaggerated action put together with the preteen boy in mind.
  49. World Traveler
    The film is perhaps best enjoyed as a minor work with some major pluses, notably in the characterizations and in their adroit portrayals.
  50. Nine Queens
    Deliciously funny and fiendishly clever con-man comedy that begins on a note of ingenuity that it then sustains with the tension of a high-wire act.
  51. Chelsea Walls
    Ethan Hawke, in his feature directorial debut, has brought Nicolette Burdette's play to the screen with fluid grace and a perfect blend of dreaminess and grit, expressed in camerawork that seems to float and in Jeff Tweedy's shimmering, gently insistent score.
  52. The Triumph of Love
    The result is an exquisite yawn that provokes consideration of how accomplished Ben Kingsley, Fiona Shaw and Mira Sorvino and others are as actors -- but how in this instance the characters they play so intensely never come alive.
  53. Mule Skinner Blues
    An affectionate documentary about a free-spirited group.
  54. The Cat's Meow
    Relatively accurate as a period piece, looks great and boasts a bevy of vintage numbers, some original recordings and others performed in an authentic manner by Ian Whitcomb and His Bungalow Boys.
  55. Outta Time
    Unafraid of improbability and coincidence, writers Ned Kerwin & Scott Duncan pile on nonstop action that keeps up a furious pace without giving the viewer time to ponder its credibility.
  56. Quo Vadis?
    Kawalerowicz directs with briskness and vigor but cannot keep the first half of his film from slipping into tedium.
  57. Human Nature
    A goofball movie, in the way "Malkovich" was, but it tries too hard.
  58. Frailty
    Well-crafted, disturbing Texas gothic thriller, a completely spooky piece of business that gets under your skin and, some plot blips aside, stays there for the duration.
  59. The Other Side of Heaven
    The whole trippy experience is like being held at gunpoint by a Jehovah's Witness at the front door while George Gobel holds forth in the living room on Nickelodeon.
  60. Changing Lanes
    Frustrating yet deeply watchable melodrama that makes you think it's a tougher picture than it is.
  61. New Best Friend
    Struggles awkwardly to bring a twist or two to its hoary class-conscious story line, aiming for a subtlety in character development that's smothered by excessive kitsch and kink.
  62. The Sweetest Thing
    The trick is getting from a conclusion made five minutes into a movie to an ending 90 minutes away. It can be a scary prospect. In The Sweetest Thing it is mostly a hoot.
  63. Lucky Break
    Lightly reflective and consistently entertaining, Lucky Break is an easy-to-take diversion.
  64. Les Destinées
    Assayas has made a great film from Jacques Chardonne's classic novel. Although far different in tone, time, place and temperament, it brings to mind "Gone With the Wind" in its depth and scope and in its love story, which unfolds over a turbulent era.
  65. High Crimes
    The problem with High Crimes, acceptable though it is, is that it's not close to anyone's best work.
  66. American Chai
    Perceptive, good-natured movie.
  67. Big Trouble
    A pleasant diversion, a lightly amusing criminal comedy with a plot so complicated even the people in it can't quite believe what's happening.
  68. The Komediant
    It is impossible to watch this warm, wonderful film without becoming aware of the enormous impact the Yiddish theater has had on every aspect of American show business.
  69. Van Wilder
    Those 24-and-unders who are looking for their own "Caddyshack" to adopt as a generational signpost may have to keep looking.
  70. Crush
    Begins as a captivating romantic comedy and then, at the very moment it's most involving, takes a wholly gratuitous and disastrous swerve and just keeps on going from bad to worse.
  71. Teddy Bears' Picnic
    Does for industrialists, politicians, pro-football owners and lawyers what Christopher Guest's "Best in Show' did for dog owners -- but without the skewer.
  72. The Rookie
    The pleasure of a film like this is not in wondering where it's going to go, but in knowing its exact trajectory. Getting us to pull for a foregone conclusion as if the outcome was in serious doubt is no small sleight of hand.
  73. The Piano Teacher
    The Piano Teacher will surely be too strong for some audiences and is best left to those who like films that take big risks and get away with them.
  74. Time Out
    Not just an especially subtle and thoughtful psychological drama, it's a provocative, even an unnerving one as well.
  75. Death to Smoochy
    Starts out as such a deliciously savage satire of TV kiddie shows that it's a shame it swerves out of control and over the top, sliding into tedium before pulling together for a clever, if protracted, finish.
  76. Panic Room
    What's surprising about this traditional thriller, moderately successful but not completely satisfying, is exactly how genteel and unsurprising the execution turns out to be.
  77. No Such Thing
    Not everyone, for sure, is going to be able or willing to go the distance in this ambitious but exceedingly offbeat epic, which is great-looking and has a sweeping romantic score by Hartley himself.
  78. Clockstoppers
    Exceptionally user-friendly for the technologically challenged among us and rides over its less inspired patches on a wave of cheeky humor.
  79. Margarita Happy Hour
    Chaiken manages to make the film conversational without seeming talky, the curse of many New York filmmakers, and she has as sure an instinct for the succinct image and brisk pacing as she does for dialogue.
  80. Sorority Boys
    The result is crass but reasonably harmless, although to hear one of the guys hold forth on how much he's learned about family and loyalty in just one week living with the DOGs is enough to make a person gag.
  81. Very Annie Mary
    Familiar but winningly funny and good-hearted.
  82. Son of the Bride
    A warm and affectionate Argentine film of wide appeal that is an Academy Award nominee in the foreign-language category.
  83. Blade II
    Like the original, Blade II has superior production values and visual and special effects. Snipes and Kristofferson build on the resonance of their original portrayals.
  84. Pauline and Paulette
    This beguiling Belgian fable, very much its own droll and delicate little film, has some touching things to say about what is important in life and why.
  85. Harrison's Flowers
    Leaves us with a heightened appreciation of the bold and personal films made by a number of filmmakers of the former Yugoslavia.
  86. Showtime
    From frame one Showtime displays an ingenuity, cleverness and briskness that never flags.
  87. Y Tu Mamá También
    Echoes the unmistakable freshness and excitement of the Nouvelle Vague, the sense of joy in being alive and making movies, that made those works distinctive and unforgettable.
  88. Promises
    Promises takes a simple idea and just about breaks your heart with it.
  89. Resident Evil
    A ditsy and dizzying spook-house thriller in high-tech, high-hemline gear.
  90. 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.
  91. All About the Benjamins
    Its dark-edged crime-caper plot is so formulaic it seems almost ritualized. Yet Ice Cube and Mike Epps enact their standard odd-couple tango with such ease and brio, you'd think they'd never seen such movies before.
  92. Festival in Cannes
    A giddy comic fantasy, full of romance, chicanery and beguiling, sophisticated players.
    • Los Angeles Times
  93. The Time Machine
    If Welles was unhappy at the prospect of the human race splitting in two, he probably wouldn't be too crazy with his great-grandson's movie splitting up in pretty much the same way.
  94. Esther Kahn
    Begins as a shadowy film that progresses from dark to increasing light. It has been stunningly photographed by Eric Gautier and has a wonderfully expressive score composed by Howard Shore.
  95. Stolen Summer
    How feeble a movie is Stolen Summer? So feeble they've just about buried the title on the film's own poster.
  96. Pépé le Moko (re-release)
    Beautifully crafted, movingly acted, still involving and entertaining, this is just the kind of film people are talking about when they say they don't make them like this anymore.
  97. Borstal Boy
    But if the film flirts with being sentimental, it never completely gives in: The inherent strength of the material as well as the integrity of the filmmakers gives this coming-of-age story restraint as well as warmth.
  98. We Were Soldiers
    Manages to evoke a complex series of reactions. It both frustrates with its unrelenting sentimentality and impresses with the overwhelming physicality of its combat sequences. These in turn are so powerful they take on a life of their own, sending a message that is probably quite opposite to the one the filmmakers intended.
  99. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    Can be taken as a mildly risque frothy date movie, but there's serious subtext for those who choose to look beneath surface sheen.
  100. How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog
    A dreary title for an even drearier picture.
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