Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,522 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 16522
  2. Mixed: 5,808 out of 16522
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16522
16522 movie reviews
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  1. Wish I Was Here
    For a film that purports to be about the process of maturity and growth, it is woefully un-evolved, lacking in understanding and insight.
  2. Brightest Star
    Beware any movie that talks about what it is before being what it is.
  3. The Outsider
    Fairbrass has a certain rugged sincerity and appealing sense of barely coiled rage, but it's mostly wasted in a screenplay (by director Brian A. Miller) of gaping plot holes, wan excitement and dumb action cliches.
  4. Welcome to the Jungle
    It is difficult to tell whether the filmmakers intended Welcome to the Jungle as a satire or a farce. It is neither funny enough, nor clever enough, to measure up in either case.
  5. A Farewell to Fools
    Call it a dark farce, human comedy or wartime satire. But however you slice it, the ill-conceived morality tale A Farewell to Fools is a bust.
  6. U Want Me 2 Kill Him?
    Andrew Douglas, who directed the 2005 "The Amityville Horror" remake, mishandles the standard noir as straightforward drama and gives it an unfortunate after-school-special vibe.
  7. Maladies
    [A] tedious cinematic exercise.
  8. Boys of Abu Ghraib
    The film hardly scratches Abu Ghraib's surface.
  9. 13 Sins
    A "Saw" knockoff without the torture porn.
  10. Brick Mansions
    Brick Mansions, Paul Walker's penultimate film (prior to "Fast & Furious 7"), is a dumb and ugly action picture that works strictly as a reminder of the late actor's head-turning good looks and modest charisma.
  11. Haunt
    Too often, Carter sacrifices characterization for one more flickery effect or carefully composed shot of moody elegance, then overdoes unlighted interiors to an almost absurd degree.
  12. A Stranger in Paradise
    Corrado Jay Boccia's directorial debut strikes as almost passable, with a relatively known cast and elaborate stunts. But his inexperience rears its ugly head as the film never musters real suspense and urgency.
  13. Angels in Stardust
    When it comes to finesse or originality the first-time filmmaker falls desperately short, relying on hoary clichés; dreadful, chicken-fried dialogue; and an often cracked moral compass.
  14. Chaplin of the Mountains
    At its best, the film seems as dreary a travelogue as that Nia Vardalos vehicle "My Life in Ruins." At its worst, Chaplin of the Mountains feels like an overambitious film-school thesis with superfluous political and philosophical posturing.
  15. Get Hard
    Get Hard... is certainly a better name than, say, Laugh Hard, which you won't do nearly enough.
  16. Chlorine
    The uninvitingly titled Chlorine is a flat, undercooked suburban comedy. Or is it a drama? Or maybe a kind of satire? Regardless, it's short on style, substance or any clear raison d'être.
  17. Entourage
    That the bonds of friendship between Vince and his pals are predicated so strongly on excluding others feels regressive and drags the movie away from harmless high jinks into something needlessly more spiteful and ugly.
  18. Moms' Night Out
    Moms' Night Out is a hectic mess that does just the opposite of what it clearly set out to do: It makes motherhood seem like one of the most ill-conceived ideas since New Coke.
  19. Alien Abduction
    Suffers from the tired POV gimmickry, the weak characterizations, the numbing sameness of stuck-in-the-woods-with-dolts narratives.
  20. A Night in Old Mexico
    This poky, clichéd, slackly told picture, directed by Emilio Aragón, would've felt dated a few decades ago; now it feels like a downright relic.
  21. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
    To his credit, director Andy Fickman (“The Game Plan,” “Parental Guidance”) keeps the inanity moving apace and there are a few chuckles to be had courtesy of the supporting cast. But, as is so often the case with big, star-driven studio laffers, “Cop 2” needed several more spins in the comedy punch-up machine before cameras rolled.
  22. Burning Blue
    [An] earnest but terribly ham-fisted drama.
  23. Bad Country
    [A] thoroughly routine, straight-to-video-reminiscent action thriller set in Louisiana.
  24. Go with Le Flo
    [An] amateurish, terribly acted piffle, which devolves from dull conversations behind store counters into witless farce on a movie set.
  25. The November Man
    It's called The November Man, but it's really just another forgettable August release.
  26. Walking with the Enemy
    This film from writer Kenny Golde and director Mark Schmidt slaps a clichéd war-movie dressing over everything so that what should have felt heart-poundingly incredible comes off as heavy-handed, ludicrous and unintentionally queasy.
  27. The M Word
    Jaglom is too spiritually and cinematically lazy to do anything but evoke glib, artless solidarity, and let us know he's heard of Twitter and Facebook.
  28. Friended to Death
    Only during the movie's sweet epilogue do we get a sense of what Friended could have been had the filmmakers taken a smarter, gentler, more human approach.
  29. All Cheerleaders Die
    With all the finesse of a bullhorn that sprays noise and blood, All Cheerleaders Die shows just how difficult it is to pump life into the shopworn teen horror-comedy genre.
  30. London Has Fallen
    As long as there are enemies in Islamic lands, we'll probably have to endure risible time-wasters like London Has Fallen, designed to justify blinkered foreign policy attitudes and stoke jokey hatred.
  31. Farmland
    The slickly produced documentary Farmland often comes off like lobbyist propaganda, profusely extolling the virtues of the independent American farmer.
  32. Where We Started
    For all the emotional onion-peeling here, little is revealed that's surprising, unique or particularly deep.
  33. Journey of a Female Comic
    The invitingly loud Melendez posits herself as both a victimized failure and a triumphantly persevering pioneer, and though one can certainly be both, the film doesn't say anything new or meaningful about the industry she's been dying to join for the last two decades.
  34. Geostorm
    When the long-promised global barrage of tornadoes, lightning strikes, tidal waves and extreme temperatures hits in the final half-hour, the special effects are stunning. But the razzle-dazzle arrives too late, and is strangely unmoving.
  35. Anna
    First-time Spanish director Jorge Dorado aims for Hitchcock and misses by a mile with Anna.
  36. Chapman
    The gratingly underdeveloped plot has all the dramatic effect of a toddler with her hands behind her back chirping, "Guess what I've got?" for more than an hour.
  37. Rage
    There's a late-breaking twist that might seem impressive if it didn't make all the previous mayhem feel so intensely pointless.
  38. The Song
    The melody may be as old as the Bible, but The Song could have benefited from a fresher voice.
  39. Point Break
    The newly released Point Break remake is tedious and overblown — as though the filmmakers were so preoccupied with "updating" the material that they forgot what made it so popular in the first place.
  40. Good People
    Good People goes from being simply pedestrian to outright preposterous without batting an eye.
  41. La Bare
    If La Bare had snarky voice-over narration, it could be a segment on "The Colbert Report."
  42. The Moment
    The Moment is a psychological thriller more muddled than the mind and the maze it is caught up in.
  43. The Odd Way Home
    The clichés alone doom the movie.
  44. The Big Ask
    Self-conscious, tonally uncertain and thematically vague, The Big Ask is a premise in search of a movie, one that co-directors Thomas Beatty and Rebecca Fishman never quite find.
  45. The Possession of Michael King
    Although this film doesn't miss the whole point of found footage as the recent "Into the Storm" did, Jung does little to help suspend our disbelief.
  46. Nothing Bad Can Happen
    The method to Von Trier's madness is that he provokes thought alongside outrage in his parables. Here, Gebbe musters only outrage, as her antagonists are without nuance, mercy or any redeeming quality.
  47. Affluenza
    The movie opens with the suggestion that it will address the generational divide, but it has nothing of substance to say.
  48. Ironclad: Battle for Blood
    The title's promise of violence is dutifully met in gory, sonically squishy close-quarter melees shot in Confuse-o-vision, as if the camera had been strapped to a whirring blender before the footage was edited with the puree button.
  49. The World Famous Kid Detective
    This flatly shot picture remains cramped by its homespun roots.
  50. Premature
    A rapidly wearying comedy that mistakes crudeness with humor.
  51. Radio Free Albemuth
    First-time writer-director John Alan Simon simply doesn't have a strong enough grip on the movie's narrative, pacing or performances to surmount the pitfalls of this ambitious, budget-conscious effort.
  52. The Girl on the Train
    Writer-director Larry Brand is all too eager to show off his cleverness. Bad dialogue and Cinemax aesthetics make all the clichés seem even more clichéd.
  53. Audrey
    The comedy unfolds mostly in real time, but its grasp of real human behavior is shaky.
  54. K Missing Kings
    Making sense was never a top priority for "K," and its sequel is just as much of a hot mess.
  55. Sinister 2
    Nothing about Sinister 2 comes close to the feel-bad ode to literally and figuratively dark interiors that distinguished the title-earning original.
  56. Rabindranath Tagore: The Poet of Eternity
    It's essentially a glorified PowerPoint presentation that juxtaposes archival footage — an echo chamber of interviews, readings and performances taken entirely out of context — with amateurish stock footage and a short running time.
  57. The Transporter Refueled
    Cheap silliness abounds, including car chases that are more about loud crashes and CGI than the thrill of speed.
  58. Reclaim
    Carmine Gaeta and Luke Davies' screenplay is constructed from plot mechanics, and the emotional stakes grow less convincing with every twist of the screw.
  59. 37: A Final Promise
    37: A Final Promise comes off as a paranormal and schizophrenic take on a Lifetime movie with themes of terminal illness and assisted suicide.
  60. Coldwater
    Too many roles remain underdeveloped — if developed at all. A lack of cohesion or camaraderie among the inmates compounds the film's impersonal vibe.
  61. Jake Squared
    Koteas and the rest of the cast (including Jane Seymour, Virginia Madsen and Jennifer Jason Leigh) struggle gamely with the material, but they're defeated by the nonstop chatter, Goldberg's flat-footed direction and the needlessly choppy cutting.
  62. Exists
    Like so many movie stars, Bigfoot has been sold out by movie opportunists, in this case as ho-hum fright bait in the aggressively unimaginative Exists.
  63. Men, Women & Children
    A few steps further and Reitman might have turned Men, Women & Children into parody — at least that might have made for some laughs.
  64. Miss Meadows
    Besides never knowing where to stick a camera, or how long a given scene should last, Hopkins quickly ditches any potentially subversive joy in her cartoon vigilante by saddling her with a redemptive love story opposite James Badge Dale's kind-eyed sheriff.
  65. The Identical
    The Identical is ultimately too schematically sentimental, even with Liotta playing against type, to have much of an impact.
  66. The Pyramid
    The obnoxious sound design and score divest the film of much of its suspense, and perhaps more important characters have no survival instincts. The audience never has a chance to build some false hope that someone might make it out alive.
  67. Thunder and the House of Magic
    Directors Ben Stassen and Jérémie Degruson have assembled so many clichés and bits borrowed from other films that "Thunder" feels like a rerun on its first viewing.
  68. Dirty Grandpa
    Bright spots are found in the supporting cast.... They just are not enough to pull "Dirty Grandpa" out of its ill-conceived and poorly executed gutter.
  69. Burying the Ex
    Burying the Ex is a genre-mashing low for Dante.
  70. Playing It Cool
    Playing It Cool is a strained romantic comedy that seems to exist only to show how many talented, successful actors — first and foremost "Captain America" star Chris Evans — can be featured in one unworthy movie.
  71. Autumn Blood
    Whereas Haneke's films grapple with the blunt force of violence, novice filmmaker Markus Blunder just lets the violence snowball all the way down a slippery slope.
  72. Iceman
    Simultaneously overblown and underdeveloped, "Iceman" fails equally at showcasing the talent of its star and resolving its baroque plot.
  73. Wolves
    Writer-director David Hayter revisits much-trod territory with wan results in Wolves, a werewolf tale that quickly loses its initial bite.
  74. Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse
    The aim here seems to be to replace startled gasps with shocked guffaws. The results are contrary to Scout Law — not Kind, Clean or Reverent.
  75. Reach Me
    A kitchen-sink mess with no discernible narrative drive or thematic resonance beyond uninspired batches of bad behavior, gunplay, eccentricity and weak uplift.
  76. Meet the Mormons
    The film operates under the assumption that the average Joe associates Mormonism more with "Sister Wives" than Mitt Romney, so the film will be an eye-opener only for subscribers to such stereotypes.
  77. Default
    Director Simon Brand devotes so much running time to fear-mongering and grotesque stereotypes that a last-ditch effort at moral ambiguity and a critique on muckraking barely register.
  78. Hitman: Agent 47
    Writers Skip Woods and Michael Finch have a few tricks up their sleeves as betrayals emerge and allegiances shift. But it's not enough to make us care or to keep the third act from being a head-scratching mess.
  79. The Last Witch Hunter
    The Last Witch Hunter is one of those artlessly restless, exposition-dialogue fantasy-action slogs that, thanks to Breck Eisner's untamed direction, never manages to corral all the potion talk, mythology rationale and leaps back and forth in time into anything remotely entertaining.
  80. Blood Ransom
    Dela Torre tinkers with some of the undead's best-known traits, yet his reinvented wheel still feels like a retread.
  81. The Aviation Cocktail
    There are rich veins to mine here had writer-director David R. Higgins bothered.
  82. Beside Still Waters
    Lowell, a sitcom actor ("Enlisted") and photographer, lards his "The Big Chill" ripoff with plenty of arty touches... He assumes this will lend the needed heft to paper-thin characters, witless exchanges and emotional recriminations you can see coming a mile away.
  83. We Are the Giant
    Barker just hammers home the human-interest angle with a stirring score that serves to instruct the appropriate emotional response to each scene. The tacked-on uplift in the end is beyond comprehension, given that some of its subjects remain in peril.
  84. Murder of a Cat
    A plodding comic caper that fails to deliver.
  85. Poker Night
    Francis has a few moments of inspiration, nonchalantly deploying visual gags. If he were going for cult status, perhaps gonzo is the way to go. The rest of his stylistic flaunts, plot twists and contrivances are joyless.
  86. Unfinished Business
    A sluggishly paced collection of go-nowhere sight gags, flat-footed set pieces and incoherent business chatter that offers few laughs and little real payoff.
  87. Me
    The comedy isn’t so much sharply observed as it is obvious and obnoxious.
  88. The Key
    The arty visual effects, backed by a soundtrack of ambient noise, may recall the experimental work of early practitioners such Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger, but the ponderous, headache-inducing results do the story and the actors no favors.
  89. Inside the Mind of Leonardo
    Though billed as a 3-D experience, Leonardo is flat in more ways than one.
  90. Strange Magic
    The look of the animation has limited charm. The story is primarily a string of life lessons for little ones, impossible to miss. And there is a great deal of singing. I don't think even fools will fall in love with Strange Magic.
  91. Little Boy
    It's all simplistic sermonizing in director and co-writer Alejandro Monteverde's hands, devoid of any thoughtful messiness about wartime mind-sets or family despair, and quick to sand any edges with postcard-pretty coastal town vistas and cutesy music cues.
  92. Everly
    Feels precision-engineered for a morally torn fanboy who likes the idea of female empowerment but needs it served with a heavy dose of torture porn and glistening flesh.
  93. The Visit
    Shyamalan's script puts down reality shows, but this shocker works on the level of a game show, compelling audiences to yell out advice for Becca and Tyler as they steer through one trouble spot after another. This writer-director depends on hoary provocations.
  94. Kidnap
    For all of Berry’s breathless, screechy effort, Kidnap doesn’t contain any suspense or tension.
  95. The Great Wall
    If ever a film was made with more money than sense, this is it.
  96. Black November
    There's little going on in the final product other than good intentions, as Jeta Amata always seems overreaching for the right buttons to push.
  97. Kill Me Three Times
    The neo-noir crime comedy Kill Me Three Times works overtime to seem unique and clever. The result, however, is a derivative, gimmicky, at times dizzying puzzle that fails to engage.
  98. Americons
    Director Theo Avgerinos seems preoccupied with making the film look expensive, but no amount of flair could make it less vacuous.
  99. The Principle
    One just wishes that the filmmakers had made this a more open debate on religion versus science instead of a documentary that too often feels manipulatively Machiavellian in its presentation of all those "irrefutable" facts and findings.
  100. Out of the Dark
    A movie lovely to look at but on-the-nose and crushingly dull, a pair of qualities a ghost yarn can't live on.
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