Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,552 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: 8,716 out of 16552
  2. Mixed: 5,819 out of 16552
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16552
16552 movie reviews
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  1. Himalaya
    Complexity and personality among key figures keeps Himalaya involving throughout its grueling journey and lifts the film above the merely ethnographic.
  2. No One Sleeps
    An adroit, ambitious, richly detailed and keenly observant piece of filmmaking by the director of the haunting Rio drama "Via Appia" (1990).
  3. The Man Who Cried
    There is even less going on between Ricci and Depp here than there was in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," mostly because Potter gives them nothing to play.
  4. The Road Home
    A gorgeous film with a vision strong enough to sustain heart-tugging, heightened by San Bao's romantic score, that verges on the sentimental.
  5. Pearl Harbor
    The film's immense cast and crew, headed by director Michael Bay, writer Randall Wallace and stars Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale, blend artistry and technology to create a blockbuster entertainment that has passion, valor and tremendous action.
  6. Our Song
    This modest film has virtues that come out of nowhere. It takes familiar material and develops it with such tact and skill that we find ourselves moved and sort of amazed at the same time.
  7. Fast Food Fast Women
    An intimate, small-scale movie in the nicest sense.
  8. Angel Eyes
    Adds up to a carefully crafted romantic drama of considerable insight and emotional impact that provides Lopez an acting challenge she meets with ease.
  9. Moulin Rouge!
    You can go with it or resist it, be exhilarated or worn out. But forgetting the experience is not one of your options.
  10. Shrek
    This fractured fairy tale not only knows there's no substitute for clever writing, it also has the confidence to take that information straight to the bank.
  11. Sordid Lives
    Has its moments here and there, but not nearly enough of them to add up to a satisfying movie.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Startup.com
    Nimbly documents the rise and fall of a Web company through its charismatic leaders.
  13. The King Is Alive
    Stylish and gritty, The King Is Alive lacks the impact of revelation that might have made the journey worth taking.
  14. The Trumpet of the Swan
    Nothing quite works about The Trumpet of the Swan, one of those animated films that make you realize how hard it is to strike the right tone for a family film.
  15. Bread and Roses
    Bread and Roses" hits home when one of Maya's co-workers observes, "When we put on uniforms, we become invisible." It's a truth as uncomfortable as it is undeniable.
  16. A Knight's Tale
    As advertised, A Knight's Tale does try to rock you. The problem is, it doesn't rock you nearly enough.
  17. About Adam
    A sly romantic comedy made with wit and style.
  18. Pavilion of Women
    Can never rise above the melodrama of a past era, despite a splendid, impassioned portrayal by Willem Dafoe and an affecting one by Luo Yan.
  19. Under the Sand
    Requires careful attention at its abrupt finish. Close concentration on the final shots yields a meaning not possible should a viewer's attention wander or turn away a few moments too soon.
  20. Nora
    The filmmakers' special triumph lies in the inspired way that in the nick of time it draws its story to a close, with Nora and Joyce struggling toward a new level of understanding.
  21. Eureka
    To watch this film, in short, can be a transforming experience.
  22. Time and Tide
    Visually, the film is a stunner with its impossibly mobile camera work. It is also all but impossible to hold on to the story line.
  23. The Mummy Returns
    Both pleasantly old-fashioned and packed with up-to-date computer-generated special effects, the film's constant plot turns, cheeky sensibility and omnipresent action sequences have no trouble attracting our attention and holding on.
  24. Ed Gein
    At times awkward and under-inspired, creating a question as to whether so gloomy and repugnant a tale was worth telling simply for its own sake.
  25. Deuces Wild
    Skip it. Just fill in the blanks and you too can brew the same bland, goopy mixture, right down to such clunker lines as "There is a Santa Claus, Ma. He just doesn't come to Brooklyn anymore."
  26. Green Dragon
    A gracious, eloquent film that by its end offers a ray of hope to the refugees able to look ahead and resist living in a past forever lost.
  27. One Night at McCool's
    One Night at McCool's is one night too much.
  28. Driven
    Harlin's skill compensates for a lot of narrative preposterousness, even it is overmatched this time around.
  29. The Golden Bowl
    Yet another Merchant Ivory triumph.
  30. Town & Country
    Seems merely tired and stale, the opposite of fresh, marked by ideas for jokes rather than things that are actually funny. Then, without warning, it goes from inept to complete disaster, sinking from indifferent to fiasco in the blink of an eye.
  31. The Luzhin Defence
    Carefully made, involving and old-fashioned, the superior work it's inspired gives it an impact that lingers even when the endgame is over.
  32. The Low Down
    Thraves is skillful at evoking mood and atmosphere and at depicting transitional periods in a person's life with a mildly wistful humor.
  33. The Hidden Wars of Desert Storm
    Hidden Wars is less dependent on talking heads than "Plan Colombia" and has the advantage of distance from some of the key events.
  34. Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles
    Where there was a modicum of charm to Mick Dundee's earliest exploits in New York City, the joke has withered as markedly as Hogan's face.
  35. Harry Is Here to Help
    Moll, in only his second feature, evokes a sense of foreboding, playing the routine against the unnerving, the humorous against the sinister, with a wit and deftness that might have impressed Hitchcock.
  36. Freddy Got Fingered
    Even the movie finds itself asking when it'll end. Not soon enough.
  37. The Center of the World
    All this sadness becomes so depressing to watch, testing the limits of the patience of even a viewer prepared to take Wang's underlying concerns seriously.
  38. Lakeboat
    Lakeboat requires its audiences to embrace it as lovingly as Mamet and Mantegna embrace its men, but it's a lot to ask.
  39. The Body
    Despite a premise that's provocative, to say the least, this one's a dud.
  40. The Circle
    Restrained yet powerful, devastating in its emotional effects.
  41. Bridget Jones's Diary
    Cheerful, cheeky entertainment, a clever confection.
  42. Josie and the Pussycats
    Light and frothy though all this is, there is an off-putting element to "Josie," and it's what must be the film's world record number of product placements.
  43. Kingdom Come
    This joyous film, which confronts pain, loss and transgression with love, wisdom and forgiveness amid inspired humor, has it all.
  44. Chopper
    A most ambitious first film. Dominik pulls it off impressively, assisted by a selfless cast, a driving score by Mick Harvey, and gifted cameramen Kevin Hayward and Geoffrey Hall.
  45. Joe Dirt
    If you are in touch with your inner 14-year-old child, you could do worse.
  46. The Girl
    In her feature debut, Zeig, -- displays confidence and style aplenty.
  47. Just Visiting
    Drains the original story of its satire and juices up its shtick, schmaltz and special effects.
  48. Beautiful Creatures
    Tedious and unfunny.
  49. The Day I Became a Woman
    Breathtaking reverie worthy of Fellini.
  50. Along Came a Spider
    A reasonably diverting albeit frequently improbable thriller.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Pokémon 3: The Movie
    Two Tylenol and a pair of earplugs might be enough to get you through Pokemon 3The Movie.
  52. Shadow Magic
    Evokes the dawn of cinema in China with much charm, humor and subtlety.
  53. Booye kafoor, atre yas
    As somber as much of this deceptively simple yet consistently acute, subtle and observant film is, an effect heightened by a carefully controlled use of color, it is not without hope.
  54. Blow
    This single cautionary tale of how drug innocence gives way to woeful, hung-over experience proves to be way too predictable to effectively caution or even involve anyone.
  55. Amores Perros
    It's a film of high energy, punctuated by rock music and a dark wit, yet it is capable of profound reflection and tragic irony.
  56. The Tailor of Panama
    Benefits from delicious acting from co-stars Geoffrey Rush and Pierce Brosnan, a mordant script co-written by le Carre (along with Boorman and Andrew Davies), and the distinctive touch of its director.
  57. Someone Like You...
    Smart, amiable and well-paced, and director Tony Goldwyn brings to it an all-too-rare buoyancy and breeziness.
  58. Spy Kids
    Lively, imaginative, with a playful sense of humor.
  59. Tomcats
    Raucously energetic and replete with a barrage of graphic sexual humor.
  60. The Brothers
    While all of the actors are excellent, we sat up whenever Gabrielle Union walked on screen. As the ever-sensible woman who disrupts Jackson's bachelorhood, she projects the pluck, gravitas and beauty of a younger Alfre Woodard.
  61. Heartbreakers
    As Hollywood diversions go, this gleaming MGM release still leaves you wishing the filmmakers took as many risks as their grifters do.
  62. Say It Isn't So
    Ultimately a sweet movie, but one made by people who can't stoop to conquer without an almost audible strain on their own intelligence.
  63. Too Much Sleep
    Unfolds as a shaggy-dog story, full of hilarious and outrageous twists that suggest that weirdness lies just below the surface of daily life seemingly at its most ordinary.
  64. Exit Wounds
    It's a pastiche of pulpy elements culled from all the "Dirty Harry" movies you can think of.
  65. Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
    Meanders, dawdles, doubles back on itself but finally gets us somewhere fascinating and worthwhile.
  66. Memento
    A provocatively structured and thrillingly executed film noir, an intricate, inventive use of cinema's possibilities that pushes what can be done on screen in an unusual direction.
  67. Enemy at the Gates
    Has little to occupy us once its battle scenes recede. One of those goofy movies where devil-may-care Russian soldiers unwind by playing the balalaika far into the night, it takes itself far more seriously than anyone else will be able to manage.
  68. The Dish
    It unfolds in a hearty, good-natured Australian comedy that affectionately depicts how the citizens of a small town become connected to the Apollo moon flight.
  69. Kissing Jessica Stein
    For an American film it is a groundbreaker in exploring the realm of sexual fluidity, and it does so with wit, wisdom and in a completely entertaining fashion.
  70. Simon Magus
    Poetic and ambiguous, it manages to be magical in both the beautiful and terrifying senses of the word.
  71. Biandan, guniang
    The result is a film that is wise, fatalistic and romantic in just the right proportions--in the best noir tradition.
  72. When Brendan Met Trudy
    A plucky comic valentine for those who love the movies more than their own mothers.
  73. Long Night's Journey Into Day
    Not merely affecting and illuminating; it concludes on a note of hope.
  74. 15 Minutes
    Both audacious and unwieldy, exciting and excessive, this dark thriller is too long, too violent and not always convincing. But at the same time, there's no denying that it's onto something, that its savage indictment of the nexus involving media, crime and a voracious public is a cinematic statement difficult to ignore.
  75. Get Over It
    A blithe-spirited comedy in which teenagers discover their romantic vicissitudes mirrored in their high school production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." It's being directed by their nasty drama teacher (Martin Short, hilarious), who has written 12 original songs for the production.
  76. Blow Dry
    Despite its dollops of good-natured humor and sentiment, Blow Dry is likely to play better on the tube as a likable-enough diversion.
  77. The Gleaners & I
    Captivating new documentary, The Gleaners and I, is charged with the pleasure of discovery.
  78. Me You Them
    An adroit, beautifully acted, sophisticated film with some drier-than-dust humor about unsophisticated people and is impressive as such. It's too bad that it's not more engaging much earlier on.
  79. Hit and Runway
    A little gem, a sparkling comedy with serious undertones about friendship, self-discovery and artistic integrity.
  80. The Caveman's Valentine
    As impressive as Jackson is and as thought-provoking as director Kasi Lemmons' movie is, it's ultimately satisfying neither as a genre piece nor as an art film.
  81. See Spot Run
    The gags, almost all of which involve the passage of gases and liquids, move at a fast-enough clip to keep you awake throughout. For which this review expresses a sorrow as profound as the sympathy it feels for all the actors.
  82. The Mexican
    If The Mexican proves anything, it's that eccentric features need a particularly delicate touch to be successful. With a film like this, how close you come doesn't matter: Off by a little is as debilitating as off by a lot.
  83. Series 7: The Contenders
    Getting progressively less involving as it goes along, the strongest feeling Series 7 creates is the passionate desire to change the channel and move on.
  84. Monkeybone
    Grand fantasy, in which Brendan Fraser and stylish design and energetic special effects play off one another for maximum fun.
  85. Last Resort
    This is the best class of poetic realism, the kind you can believe in without a trace of hesitation.
  86. 3000 Miles to Graceland
    One of those movies that makes you want to throw up your hands in despair, disgust, or maybe both.
  87. The Widow of Saint-Pierre
    Faraldo's most engrossing and inventive script, alternately serious and comic, is beautifully realized by Binoche, Auteuil and Kusturica, all of whom reveal a nobility of spirit and stylish gallantry so cherished by the French.
  88. Company Man
    Too often we feel that left-out-in-the-cold draft that blows over the shoulder whenever actors appear to be having more fun than the audience.
  89. Down to Earth
    Rock is undisputably gifted and charismatic, but when Down to Earth takes his edge away, the film's energy goes with it. And without energy, no comedy can survive.
  90. Sweet November
    A film that means to be seductive but merely progresses from the contrived to the manipulative.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Recess: School's Out
    Complacent yet competent animation kids will enjoy despite its mundane nature.
  92. The Price of Milk
    It's weird, wacky territory you enter in The Price of Milk, and we don't just mean New Zealand.
  93. Bad Company
    Succeeds by never tipping its hand or losing its equilibrium while its characters often seem to be doing nothing but.
  94. Hannibal
    Creepy and grotesque rather than terrifying. It's more distasteful than anything stronger, a sour bottle of a celebrated vintage that a gourmet like Lecter wouldn't hesitate to send back with the sommelier.
  95. Journey to the Sun
    Sensitive, gritty and courageous, this film gathers a power and focus not foreshadowed in its deliberately rambling earlier sequences.
  96. Signs & Wonders
    Abounds in psychological suspense and plays like a mystery film, even though the mystery at hand may be purely one of the human heart.
  97. Saving Silverman
    A standard-issue numskull comedy that aims low but is high in energy.
  98. The Taste of Others
    All of this romantic back and forth unfolds gradually and in charming ensemble style. As the characters think about seducing each other, as they inevitably complicate their lives without being able to help themselves, the film is simultaneously seducing us.
  99. The Invisible Circus
    There are any number of aspects to The Invisible Circus that simply don't ring true.
  100. The Million Dollar Hotel
    A fantasy, a fairy tale, but its characters and the emotions they elicit become painfully real.
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