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. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Clockstoppers
    Exceptionally user-friendly for the technologically challenged among us and rides over its less inspired patches on a wave of cheeky humor.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Very Annie Mary
    Familiar but winningly funny and good-hearted.
  8. Son of the Bride
    A warm and affectionate Argentine film of wide appeal that is an Academy Award nominee in the foreign-language category.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. Showtime
    From frame one Showtime displays an ingenuity, cleverness and briskness that never flags.
  13. 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.
  14. Promises
    Promises takes a simple idea and just about breaks your heart with it.
  15. Resident Evil
    A ditsy and dizzying spook-house thriller in high-tech, high-hemline gear.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. Festival in Cannes
    A giddy comic fantasy, full of romance, chicanery and beguiling, sophisticated players.
    • Los Angeles Times
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. Stolen Summer
    How feeble a movie is Stolen Summer? So feeble they've just about buried the title on the film's own poster.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
  26. How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog
    A dreary title for an even drearier picture.
  27. Drift
    Drift is a slender, intimate tale that is thoughtful and revealing, nicely written, directed and acted.
  28. The Cherry Orchard
    An exquisite performance by Charlotte Rampling, whose work as Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya, the matriarch of the great estate the cherry orchard sits on, is the film's dazzling centerpiece.
  29. Big Bad Love
    Brave and admirable for the trust that it puts in a viewer's intuition and willingness in going along with it right through to its rewarding finish.
    • Los Angeles Times
  30. Maryam
    Carefully crafted, notably in its deft dramatic structuring, and has become timely in a way its maker could never have anticipated.
  31. Mean Machine
    Mean Machine may not have the resonance to linger in the memory affectionately as "The Longest Yard" does, but it plays well, with a fast pace and plenty of punch.
  32. Monsoon Wedding
    Has an engaging warmth and an effortless sense of life. It also has an instinct for the humanity and universality of situations that are comic, romantic and quite seriously dramatic by turns.
  33. Dragonfly
    Appalling, shamelessly manipulative and contrived, and totally lacking in conviction.
  34. Queen of the Damned
    Turns out to be a muddled limp biscuit of a movie, a vampire soap opera that doesn't make much sense even on its own terms.
  35. Return to Never Land
    It's no use expecting Return to Never Land to match, much less exceed, Disney's 1953 version of "Peter Pan," which by itself isn't quite in the uppermost tier of the studio's full-length cartoons.
  36. Scratch
    Highly entertaining and encouraging documentary.
  37. The Last Man
    Fat, homely men who feel they have been wrongly underrepresented in underwear ads should flock to The Last Man.
    • Los Angeles Times
  38. Wendigo
    Though Wendigo has weak spots, including an ending that is not as satisfying as it might be, the film remains memorable despite its flaws. This is a properly spooky film about the power of spirits to influence us whether we believe in them or not.
  39. Hart's War
    Less fascinating and finally unsatisfying is the awfully familiar racism angle, a subplot that, though unusual in a POW movie, turns regrettably earnest and preachy almost immediately.
  40. Crossroads
    Spears acquits herself as well as anyone might, in a movie as contrived and lazy as this one.
  41. Umberto D (re-release)
    Creates magic of a completely different sort. It makes the unlikeliest subject unforgettable, finding drama, beauty, even poetry in simple things and simple lives.
  42. Super Troopers
    There's nothing super about Super Troopers except for those deep into the low end of the frat-house mentality that equates smart-alecky with hilarity.
  43. John Q
    An all-stops-out rabble-rouser that hurls a broadside at America's medical insurance crisis.
  44. Scotland, Pa.
    It's easy to accuse Morrissette of condescending to a bunch of yokels, but hardly anybody would hold that against him if the result had been hilarious instead of deadly dull.
  45. Rollerball
    It's too bad this Rollerball veered off-track so swiftly, derailed by bad writing and possibly also by some of that extensive post-production reworking.
  46. Big Fat Liar
    Screenwriter Dan Schneider and director Shawn Levy substitute volume and primary colors for humor and bite. Granted, it's a kids' flick, but kids today have enough savvy about the movie industry to report for Variety.
  47. Collateral Damage
    The film's political philosophy, as much as it has one, is of the "a plague on both your houses" variety, painting the rebels and the CIA as equally fixated on killing innocent civilians for their own nefarious ideological ends. We've seen it all before, and we'll likely see it all again.
  48. Swiri
    In recent years, South Korean cinema has fully flowered, producing both uncompromising highly personal films and crisp, intelligent genre movies, with Shiri the most spectacular example of the latter to date.
  49. Birthday Girl
    Butterworth guides us through the world of chaos and romantic confusion he's created as if it's the most natural place in the world. After a while, we actually believe it is.
  50. A Rumor of Angels
    The emotional aspects of the story are treated with such a heavy hand, the supernatural aspects are so vague and uninvolving, and the group dynamic is so unconvincing that one can't quite imagine why anybody bothered.
  51. Slackers
    A standard issue undergrad gross-out comedy notable only for the showy role it provides Jason Schwartzman, well-remembered as "Rushmore's" geeky high school student Max Fischer.
  52. In This Tricky Life
    The movie is, above all, a splendid showcase for stunning Santangelo, who gives a powerhouse portrayal of a vivid, sexy woman more hotheaded than truly stupid.
  53. Maelstrom
    A splendid instance of a surrealist vision that serves to heighten the impact of genuine emotions experienced by believably real people.
  54. The Son's Room
    A measured, decorous, at times pat film that manages to be quietly moving because it touches on something real.
  55. The Mothman Prophecies
    There is very little about the hoary conventions of The Mothman Prophecies that couldn't be improved by a little levity, a little more sunlight and some judicious cutting.
  56. Storytelling
    None of this intellectualizing is necessary to the simple enjoyment of Storytelling -- provided the viewer has a taste for the pitch-black humor that emerges when Solondz's camera becomes a veritable blowtorch aimed at humanity's myriad failings.
  57. The Count of Monte Cristo
    Revenge may be sweet, but this is one "Monte Cristo" that leaves a sour taste.
  58. Beijing Bicycle
    With this masterful, flawless film, Xiaoshuai emerges in the front ranks of China's now numerous, world-renowned filmmakers.
  59. A Walk to Remember
    A sensitively told story of first love that could have been more affecting with a little more grit and without so mawkish a score.
  60. Kung Pow: Enter the Fist
    The result is hopelessly inane, humorless and under-inspired.
  61. American Adobo
    An intimate, good-humored ethnic comedy like numerous others but cuts deeper than expected.
  62. Ha-Hesder
    One of the most successful, provocative and intensely contemporary of Israeli films, so much so that to watch it is to feel the country having a passionate argument with itself.
  63. Italian for Beginners
    A delicious and delicately funny look at the residents of a Copenhagen neighborhood coping with the befuddling complications life tosses at them.
  64. Snow Dogs
    Every generation is entitled to its dopey, sticky junk and, deep into the winter blahs, they don't get stickier or dopier than Snow Dogs.
  65. Brotherhood of the Wolf
    One of the five most popular films of the year in France, "Wolf" is a cross-cultural hoot that no one should take too seriously.
  66. Orange County
    Starts out deliriously funny but allows sentimentality to squeeze it to a pulp by the time it's over.
  67. Impostor
    Likely to be best appreciated by dedicated sci-fi fans, admirers of Dick in particular. It hasn't the stupendous razzle-dazzle of a mega-budget picture like "A.I. Artificial Intelligence."
  68. Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time
    Intoxicating and meditative by turns, helped by Fred Frith's minimalist score, this film opens a portal into a singular creative mind.
  69. Charlotte Gray
    Charlotte Gray, for all Blanchett's radiance and intelligence in the title role, is a bore.
  70. I Am Sam
    A warm, hard-to-resist story.
  71. Dark Blue World
    As it stands, Dark Blue World -- for all the considerable skills of the Sveraks and their colleagues on both sides of the camera -- occupies that treacherous territory between art film and popular epic.
  72. Black Hawk Down
    His is a triumph of pure filmmaking, a pitiless, unrelenting, no-excuses war movie so thoroughly convincing it's frequently difficult to believe it is a staged re-creation.
  73. Gosford Park
    It's the style of the thing, not the plot, that is the attraction here, the great way the cast has with the snarky dialogue.
  74. Monster's Ball
    Hank is but the latest of Thornton's strikingly taciturn characters in a whole string of movies, but for Berry, Leticia represents a big-screen breakthrough.
  75. The Shipping News
    It's a portrayal so unconvincing it makes it close to impossible for the rest of the film to function as intended.
  76. Ali
    Whatever the reason, the energy and hold-onto-your-seat excitement that Muhammad Ali brought to the sports world is oddly absent from this quite accomplished but finally distant film.
  77. The Majestic
    The Majestic isn't. Rather it's "The Film That Wasn't There," a derivative, self-satisfied fable that couldn't be more treacly and simple-minded if it tried. And it tries, oh, how it tries.
  78. Kate & Leopold
    A flawed time-travel love story, benefits from Meg Ryan's reliable perkiness and establishes Australia's Hugh Jackman as a potent romantic leading man. These and other pluses, however, cannot overcome the film's inability to come alive for a full hour and 20 minutes.
  79. A Beautiful Mind
    There is more to admire in A Beautiful Mind than you might suspect, but less than its creators believe. When the film does succeed, it almost seems to do so despite itself.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Song for Martin
    From its invitingly upbeat overture to its pathos-filled but ultimately life-affirming finale, "Martin" is a masterfully conducted work.
  81. How High
    There's a spirit of generosity to How High that allows many performers to shine beyond its sharp and amiable stars.
  82. Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
    The movie's clatter and whiz-bang suggests more humor than there actually is.
  83. Little Otik
    Little Otik is too outre not to turn off some, but for those who can go the increasingly macabre distance, its sheer power to confound can be enthralling.
  84. Joe Somebody
    Joe Somebody sends audiences home happy but also with an awareness that happy endings have to be earned in real life as on the screen.
  85. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
    Made with intelligence, imagination, passion and skill, propulsively paced and shot through with an aged-in-oak sense of wonder, the trilogy's first film so thrillingly catches us up in its sweeping story that nothing matters but the vivid and compelling events unfolding on the screen.
  86. Kandahar
    This remarkably revealing and timely film, in which the depiction of pain and sorrow is suffused with a sense of beauty and a graceful, flowing style, more than lives up to glowing advance notices.
  87. Lantana
    A remarkably thoughtful drama, Lantana makes it clear not only how hard to come by any emotional comfort is in this life, but more important, why we can't give up on the struggle.
  88. In Search of Peace
    Stirring, often tragic yet hopeful, In Search of Peace benefits from its eloquent narrator Michael Douglas, and from the voices of Edward Asner, Anne Bancroft, Richard Dreyfuss, Miriam Margolyes and Michael York.
  89. Piñero
    Ichaso moves easily between a black-and-white past and a full-color present, maintaining a pace as buoyant and rhythmic as the beat of the infectious Latin music that accompanies the film.
  90. Iris
    Intelligent, poignant film.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Not Another Teen Movie
    That's not to say there aren't funny moments here. There are. Two, maybe three of them. But unless you're a hearty 14-year-old -- who of course is not supposed to be seeing this R-rated movie -- it's hardly worth fishing them out of the potty humor and repulsive sex talk.
  92. The Royal Tenenbaums
    Director Wes Anderson, who also co-wrote the "Royal" script with actor Owen Wilson, unquestionably has one of America's most distinctive filmmaking sensibilities, but that is part of the problem. As my mother used to say, too good is no good.
  93. Vanilla Sky
    Though Vanilla Sky is smoothly and professionally done, even audiences who haven't seen the original will sense there is something off in the translation.
  94. Behind the Sun
    Carvalho's superb cinematography, Antonio Pinto's score and a dedicated cast and crew admirably sustain this poetic and uncompromising film.
  95. Princesa
    The well-made Princesa is daring, for it ends on an upbeat note in circumstances that are traditionally treated otherwise.
  96. Baran
    A superlative work, offering a rich emotional experience that at the same time calls attention to the seemingly endless suffering of the Afghan people.
  97. Segunda piel
    Vera has created a provocative, absorbing drama that reveals the curse of a self-hatred instilled by rigid social mores.
  98. Tuvalu
    This one-of-a kind charmer casts an immediate and delightful spell.
  99. Final
    Less than terrific technically; focus and sound levels waver. Luckily, these flaws are not inconsistent with the film's raw, unvarnished tone and they do not diminish the effect of Leary's performance or that of Davis.
  100. Last Orders
    Gathering its forces slowly, this careful, thoughtful film, quietly but deeply moving, is dramatic without seeming to be.
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