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 Witches
    For much of this movie you may find yourself hoping that Zemeckis might somehow recapture the entrancingly macabre spirit of “Death Becomes Her,” still one of his greatest pictures and one of the few in which his flair for ever more outlandish visual effects feels perfectly in sync with the story he’s telling. But despite a few flashes of novelty . . . The Witches is pretty thin brew by comparison, concocted from mostly secondhand ingredients.
  2. Unplanned
    With its solid production values, Unplanned has all the appearances of being a real film, but viewers in favor of abortion rights will find it to be pure propaganda. Writer-directors Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon spend more time making their talking points than developing their characters, who exist merely to make their arguments.
  3. Child's Play
    Fans of the real-deal Chucky movies, with their cheerfully low-rent effects and bawdy, impish humor, may well regard this slick new offering as a desecration masquerading as an upgrade. Which is not to say that this Child’s Play is entirely without its brutish, haphazard pleasures.
  4. Yesterday
    It is hard to blame the audience for a movie that keeps daring us to envision a richer, funnier, more intelligent and imaginative version of it at every turn.
  5. Ma
    Spencer succeeds much more than the movie itself does; even when the writing and the filmmaking fail her, which is annoyingly often, she’s awfully good at using her beatific smile and tough-talking charm to elicit your nervous chuckles.
  6. The Tree of Blood
    Unlike Medem’s best films, The Tree of Blood feels way too haphazard. It hops freely between timelines and characters, such that it becomes more of a compilation of sensual, stimulating scenes than a movie with anything in particular to say.
  7. Combat Obscura
    Due to the movie’s deliberate lack of narrative arc, thematic stance and clear characterizations (the soldiers feel interchangeable and Logaze’s interview style is weak), we’re never always sure what we’re watching — or why.
  8. Poms
    The story is thin and merely serviceable at best, and it often feels like the film has barely been written.
  9. White Chamber
    In order to make the situation more universal and existential, Raschid keeps the issues and stakes so vague that there’s no way for the characters or story to develop. The film, like its title location, becomes just another featureless box, designed to agitate and confound anyone who enters.
  10. Smaller and Smaller Circles
    Despite Smaller and Smaller Circles being visually proficient, stagy performances fueled by formulaic dialogue do little to steer the film’s narrative.
  11. The Glorious Seven
    While the European locations are picturesque, the cast lacks the chops and charisma to make this collection of killers and thieves imposing. Weight-room-sculpted muscles aside, everyone here comes across like too much of a lightweight — as if they’re just playing pretend.
  12. Bruce!!!
    Unfortunately Marryshow, in his various capacities, has neglected to instill his terminally obnoxious character with a vital shred of audience empathy, let alone to provide sufficient comedic beats that would have better engaged his thoughtfully diverse cast.
  13. The Perfect Date
    From the casting of Centineo to the climax at a school dance, The Perfect Date feels engineered by Netflix algorithms. The resulting film, directed by Chris Nelson, feels as inauthentic and unsure of its identity as its hero.
  14. Instant Dreams
    As long as he maintains his focus on the notoriously private Land and the painstaking efforts of Impossible Project’s chief technology officer and Polaroid vet Stephen Herchen to recapture lightning in an SX-70, Baptist delivers something reasonably compelling. Unfortunately the bulk of the overly artsy production is preoccupied with the exploits of others.
  15. The Holy Fail
    Perhaps he was too distracted by wearing so many hats (Dara also performs the self-penned Once-style ditties on the twee soundtrack), but both he and Lancaster didn’t bother to imbue their sketchy characters with sufficient likability.
  16. Thriller
    Thriller falls back on the old horror formula of bland, often mean-spirited young folks, getting slaughtered one by one … and without near enough flair.
  17. Know Your Enemy
    While Feldman — a veteran screenwriter making his directorial debut — brings plenty of storytelling craft to the picture, Know Your Enemy falls short of being as eye-opening as he intends. A strong sense of mystery and two searing lead performances can only counteract so much of the contrivance here.
  18. Dreamland
    The new Margot Robbie vehicle Dreamland seems to be about legends, the price of escape, maybe unreliable narrators — but ends up not saying much about any of them.
  19. Isabelle
    Amanda Crew and Adam Brody give bracingly realistic performances as a grief-stricken couple in “Isabelle,” a supernatural thriller ultimately too sensationalistic to make proper use of the stars’ excellent work.
  20. The Convent
    The film’s well-made, thick with spooky 17th century atmosphere. But it’s also as dreary as its setting, with little original or exciting to add to an already limited horror sub-genre.
  21. Lying and Stealing
    The jaunty, neo-noirish crime outing Lying and Stealing has its moments — chiefly the engaging performances of sexy leads Theo James and Emily Ratajkowski — but is too short on depth and logic to prove much more than a glossy, forgettable trifle.
  22. Tesla Nation
    Less would have been more here; a less scattershot approach would have yielded a more resonant film.
  23. Clara
    Writer-director Akash Sherman gives the film a handsome look, and gets two strong lead performances, but his picture still comes out too static and somber.
  24. Daughter of the Wolf
    Daughter of the Wolf could’ve used a jaw-dropping set-piece or two (or three or four), but Hackl does at least embrace the challenge of shooting outside in the cold, and the movie’s moderately better for it.
  25. Project X
    Project X strains credibility. Too often it seems an overreaching variation on "WarGames."
  26. Coyote Lake
    The setting and the characters are fairly unique. But they’re put to fairly mundane use, in service of a blah coming-of-age tale.
  27. Head Count
    Most of the first half of director Ellie Callahan’s supernatural thriller Head Count feel like a waste of time, made all the more frustrating once the movie starts to improve.
  28. The 16th Episode
    In the end, the most disturbing thing about The 16th Episode is how good it might’ve been if Cohen-Olivar had figured out how to fill the whole picture with the personality at its center.
  29. We Have Always Lived in the Castle
    Heightened but airless, this “Castle” is like a checklist of the novel’s peculiarities, rather than its singular soul brought to life.
  30. The Professor
    The movie, which comes off strangely wide-eyed about such “outré” things as marijuana and same-sex attraction, evokes some 1970s-era George Segal vehicle as it struggles to pair hip defiance with come-to-Jesus-style pathos, the latter of which provides a few of the film’s more compelling moments.
  31. Slaughterhouse Rulez
    There’s nothing particularly awful about the film (title aside), but it never develops into the “Shaun of the Dead”-like social satire it strains to be.
  32. Supervized
    The actors all look like they had a wonderful time making Supervized, but the material they were given to play is pretty dopey, and way too basic. It’s an insult to superhero fans and senior citizens alike.
  33. Assimilate
    There’s nothing especially original about “Assimilate.” But director John Murlowski and a talented young cast — including Joel Courtney, Calum Worthy and Andi Matichak as the plucky high schoolers trying to save their town — do at least keep the action lively and unpretentious.
  34. Find Me
    As the true purpose of the quest becomes clearer, Huang raises the film’s stakes, aiming for a profundity that he can’t quite hit — though he takes a solid shot.
  35. Saving Zoë
    The mystery plot isn’t surprising enough — and it takes at least a few good jolts to create the cinematic equivalent of a page-turner.
  36. Astronaut
    A sluggish drama about aging and holding onto your dreams.
  37. Summer Night
    Meant to feel either lived-in or spontaneously passionate, these poorly written relationships don’t project the effervescence of living in the moment nor the fickleness of what’s to come.
  38. Vault
    The movie too often plays like a regional theater production of “Goodfellas,” marred by some hammy dark comedy and off-the-rack tough-guy dialogue. The passion of the people behind this project is evident, and appreciated.
  39. Cold Blood
    Cold Blood is well-made but hard to warm to — although it might satisfy nostalgic Reno fans, eager to see him playing a silent, hulking assassin yet again.
  40. Rad
    It lives on its action and dies on its gab. It also would have been better without all those songs about catching the thunder and grabbing the lightning and going for the glory. They sound like a rejected ad campaign for Old Milwaukee. In movies like this, action is often enough--but here, it's just not radical.
  41. Killer Unicorn
    The strong sensibility and the unabashed sensationalism overcome some (but not all) the movie’s amateurism. The raggedness is part of the charm, making “Killer Unicorn” feel like the filmmakers’ deeply personal craft project.
  42. Iron Sky: The Coming Race
    Just like the first Iron Sky, the sequel is frustratingly unfocused as a commentary on the modern world — and even more so as a story. It has the seeds of several nifty ideas, scattered loosely, left untended.
  43. Into the Mirror
    Into the Mirror is deliberately opaque, for better or worse, more concerned with images and mood than concrete details.
  44. Madam Yankelova's Fine Literature Club
    It’s a workable fantasy setup that’s undermined by a seemingly deliberate lack of detail about the characters, the Club and the world at large. Midway, the story takes a potentially intriguing turn but becomes more muddled than masterly.
  45. MAD?
    Rifkin’s crafty determination to embellish production value constraints with campy transitions and an eerie use of colored light is commendably spirited. Ultimately, however, its aesthetic ambitions trample the substance that occasionally shines through.
  46. Hot Pursuit
    Romance and comedy are dumped in favor of carnage: a self-sabotaging decision for what might have been a cute, enjoyable movie.
  47. Funny Farm
    Funny Farm --a weak-fish-out-of-water comedy about a New York City couple who see their rural paradise turned into a rustic hell--is a movie with a doubly deceptive title. This movie isn't about a farm, and it isn't very funny, either.
  48. Bright Lights, Big City
    While Bridges is a capital stylist, "Bright Lights" needed a great deal more than style. (Real emotion, for one thing. Believability might also have been nice.) And while Fox is puppyish and charming, his character, Jamie, has to go through a real epiphany during the film's weeklong time frame and Mr. Fox is hard-pressed to suggest a two-Excedrin headache.
  49. Next of Kin
    After a fairly good, tense opening, it keeps rolling up one preposterous scene after another.
  50. Desolate
    While the story’s nothing special, the world of Desolate is memorable, with its tribal rivalries and sleazy black markets. It’s a vision of the end-times that disturbingly resembles the dying small towns of America in 2019.
  51. Brahms: The Boy II
    Like its predecessor, “The Boy II” is a fairly corny and stodgy spook-show, with a few good jolts and one genuinely creepy killer toy.
  52. The Price for Silence
    An unconvincing, late-breaking tragic turn; several dubious, go-nowhere supporting characters; and a blurrily provocative ending don’t help.
  53. Ring Ring
    The three principal actors are all pros, with plenty of TV and movie credits; and they’re charismatic enough to be good company. But the story around them keeps changing every 20 minutes and lacks payoffs. It’s like a series of uncompleted writing prompts.
  54. Kings of Beer
    Directed by Sean Mullin, this is 83 minutes of marketing for mega-brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev, but it’s made with enough skill that it might bring some former fans back to the fold.
  55. Thor: Love and Thunder
    As this latest gets under way, Thor has recovered his enviable god-bod but still has little sense of purpose. The problem with “Love and Thunder” is that it seems to reflect this identity crisis while pretending to solve it.
  56. Don't Let Go
    The time-traveling investigation is indeed optimistic, but in reality and execution, it’s just magical thinking wrapped up in a fussy, overly convoluted plot.
  57. Sextuplets
    The movie surely isn’t meant to be mean. But there’s an underlying sourness that makes Sextuplets much less fun than the pictures it’s imitating.
  58. To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
    Unconvincing and annoying, a miscalculation on numerous fronts, it is finally sugary enough to make the sentimental Priscilla play like a model of icy restraint.
  59. Seberg
    Stewart is enough of a force to give Seberg’s darkest moments their due, but it’s too little, too late for the superficial soup that is the movie that bears her name.
  60. One Last Night
    While the tone of One Last Night is appropriately breezy — and while newcomer Schank makes a wonderful first impression — in a “strangers spend a long evening talking” story, the characters should be more witty and wise, and not as vaguely defined as this pair.
  61. High Strung Free Dance
    This follow-up to 2016’s “High Strung” has its visual dazzle and performance highs but the story and characters are just too fake, chaste and grit-free to take seriously.
  62. Halloween Ends
    Halloween Ends has the feeling of dour obligation, and it’s clear that no one’s heart is really in this anymore, the limits of narrative possibility in Haddonfield stretched beyond their max.
  63. Slam Dance
    It would be tempting to say that inside “Slamdance” is a remarkable movie struggling to free itself from conventional trappings. But the opposite is true. The trappings are what dazzle you; the interior of “Slamdance” is exactly what isn’t remarkable.
  64. South Central Love
    South Central Love tries to deal with heavy issues with grace, but its clumsiness undercuts its message.
  65. Wicked Witches
    Wicked Witches is almost like a segment from an old British horror anthology. It’s simple, direct, rich in local color and dripping with irony. But it’s been stretched to about triple its ideal length.
  66. Navy Seals
    The reactionary empty-headedness of this R-rated movie gets to you, spoiling whatever comic-strip enjoyment it might have had. In the “Rambo” movies, you’d have to be almost as much of a lunkhead as Rambo to take their “politics” seriously. But “Navy SEALS,” directed by Lewis Teague, isn’t scaled to be a cartoon; it’s more like a hypercharged military training film.
  67. Lionheart
    Being able to kick people in the head, at least while they’re standing up, is no negligible talent--though Lionheart is a pretty negligible movie. It has that grotesquely off-scale exaggeration of many post-'80s action movies.
  68. Empathy, Inc.
    A killer concept falls frustratingly short of the finish line in Empathy, Inc., a dark morality tale that ambitiously casts contemporary technology in a throwback visual setting.
  69. I Still Believe
    Those looking for inspiration will find it without looking too hard, but those who don’t attend church regularly will be as bored as they would be by a sermon.
  70. Mary
    The idea of this boat as a last-ditch play to save a marriage is fine as an inciting incident, but it ends up steering the story way too much. Oldman and Mortimer play the drama in “Mary” well. Too bad they don’t get much chance to play the horror.
  71. Mister America
    Prolific actor-comedian-musician Tim Heidecker may have a sizable cult following but it’s doubtful he’ll find many new fans with his latest effort, the tedious and laugh-free mockumentary Mister America.
  72. Revenge
    The plot for Revenge, based on Jim Harrison’s 1978 novella, seems ideal for a great galvanizing pulp thriller, but the movie bogs down in melodramatic murk.
  73. A Rainy Day in New York
    As with even the worst of Allen’s films, there is just enough to satiate fans and make the whole thing seem maybe, possibly worth the effort.
  74. Dilili in Paris
    The flatly visualized characters and tinny, stiff English-language voice performances are busts, often creating the paradoxical vibe of a cartoon with an uncanny-valley problem, as if you were watching the rough specs for an animatronic theme-park installation.
  75. She's Out of Control
    They’ve made a sometimes funny, mostly media-referential movie without much real life; a high-tech, high-pro job that has a glamor-robot feel.
  76. Color of Night
    It is sad, truly sad, to have to report that Color of Night is a disappointment in almost every respect.
  77. Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
    Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael isn't truly terrible, it's truly confused. It's as though director Jim Abrahams wanted to do heartfelt comedy-drama but couldn't quite shake off the wicked edge of his alma mater, ZAZ: Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker, the dementos behind "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun."
  78. Groupers
    It has an intriguingly radical and gung-ho core concept, but shallow implementation.
  79. Ambition
    Even with an old pro like Shaye behind the camera, Ambition is too slight.
  80. Lord of the Flies
    This version not only doesn’t surpass or match Brook’s, it makes the material look bad.
  81. Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer
    As pop culture narratives go, “Scandalous” wants to be as colorful and fun as a flip through of the rag itself at the supermarket. But in these truth-challenged times, the jovial tone of “Scandalous” all too often outweighs the judgmental.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sink or Swim
    Veering between sentimental and salty, philosophical and goofy, writer/director Gilles Lellouche’s Gallic stab at a “Full Monty”-style uplifter is too waterlogged with the genre’s well-worn staples (training comedy, bite-sized humiliations) and too uninterested in story/character details (turning paunchy mopers into athletic competitors) to offer anything truly refreshing about the solution to middle-aged dejection.
  83. Class of 1999
    Class of 1999 swiftly short-circuits on unspeakable, incessant brutality and bloodshed.
  84. 6 Underground
    After a strong start the movie steadily declines, one set piece after another, and there are many moments where the mind wanders and then asks: “Is this still going on?”
  85. House II: The Second Story
    Sadly in need of renovation. [28 Aug 1987, p.8]
    • Los Angeles Times
  86. Albanian Gangster
    That raw looseness is too often just sloppy filmmaking, and the gangster clichés ultimately win out over even Rezaj’s roiling, ripped-from-the-streets vitality.
  87. Doubting Thomas
    A mostly hackneyed lesson on racial biases desperately stumbling to appear provocative. It does, however, occasionally raise inquiries worthy of pensive consideration.
  88. Cousins
    Corny to its core but with enough charisma to avert total insufferableness, it’s a bubbly counteraction of a movie boasting a progressive conclusion.
  89. Radioflash
    Given how visually inventive and unusual the film’s first five minutes are, it’s disappointing that, by its last half hour, it essentially turns into one undistinguished chase scene after another. A heroine as strong as Reese deserves a more consistently exciting plot.
  90. The Three Musketeers
    The film's tone wobbles between straight-arrow action and curdled camp. [12 Nov 1993, p.F1]
  91. The Last Color
    Melodrama and an overstuffed plot often overshadow the genuine feeling here.
  92. Mob Town
    In Mob Town, the cast’s definitely got the goods, but the writing and direction consistently fail to seal the deal.
  93. Honey, I Blew Up the Kid
    It's one more example of minuscule ideas inflated to preposterous proportions: An Attack of the 50-Foot Marketing Hook. [17 Jul 1992, p.F10]
    • Los Angeles Times
  94. Badland
    The storytelling’s smart, but the style’s tediously reverential and somber.
  95. Crepitus
    This picture is just one upsetting scene after another, which then only belatedly coalesce into a story — too late really to pay off any investment in those remarkable early moments.
  96. Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit
    Even by sequel standards, a minimal amount of creativity has gone into Sister Act 2, and not even the talents of its cast, including several likable young people, can compensate for this thrown-together feeling.
  97. Waxwork
    Hickox, the son of Douglas (Theatre of Blood) Hickox, shows a derivative, choppy, jagged style in his feature debut. He makes an uneasy stew of this mix of hip, flip teen-slasher gore and movie-buff aestheticism, of callous black humor and smarmy sentimentality. There’s a big problem here: too much waxy buildup.
  98. The Courier
    As the heroine of the chase thriller The Courier, Olga Kurylenko brings a lot of personal magnetism and awesome athleticism — and she needs to, because her director, Zackary Adler, has stuck her in an action movie that rarely moves.
  99. Candyman
    Candyman, the latest Clive Barker shocker, is his worst to date: an ambitious would-be morality play/thriller of the supernatural involving racism and mythology that seems merely pretentious and preposterous as it drowns in gallons of blood and guts. [16 Oct 1992, p.F6]
    • Los Angeles Times
  100. Melody Makers
    Melody Makers never becomes more than a set of disconnected sound bites and archival photos, loosely assembled. At times the film feels like outtakes from another, more cohesive documentary about Melody Maker’s legacy.
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