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. The Boss Baby
    Mistaking cliché for comic insight, and lacking the kind of conceptual rigor that a Pixar intern could probably muster, the script falls back repeatedly on the kinds of assumptions about human behavior that are meant to be cute and relatable to grown-ups and kids alike, but which instead offer an unflattering glimpse into the movie’s lazy, cynical soul.
  2. Rings
    At no point does the movie manage even a single sequence of sustained tension, or a frisson of genuine terror.
  3. Knock Knock
    Roth, who is no Michael Haneke (or even Adrian Lyne), seems unconcerned with creating genuine tension or digging into an allegory of moral consequence.
  4. Home Sweet Hell
    A muddle of tired themes, bad behaviors and gruesome set pieces.
  5. Beyond the Reach
    Beyond the Reach is a grueling, unsatisfying thriller that fails the logic test in spectacular ways.
  6. The Lovers
    There's a veil of artifice clinging to every aspect of The Lovers, a thoroughly unconvincing time-traveling epic costume drama pairing a miscast Josh Hartnett and Bollywood beauty Bipasha Basu.
  7. Cut!
    Rountree and Banks have come up with a nonsensical and pointless genre exercise.
  8. The Business of Disease
    The Business of Disease seeks to cast suspicion on Big Pharma, but it proves to be a glorified PowerPoint presentation interspersed with commentary by people of questionable qualifications who aim to incite paranoia with propaganda, conspiracy theories and straw-man arguments.
  9. Nightlight
    Filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods water down the element of surprise, even if they get the found footage shtick down to a science.
  10. The Boy
    If only writer Stacey Menear and director William Brent Bell took the very real horrors of domestic abuse as seriously as they do the virtual horror of paranormal activity.
  11. Ghoul
    Ghoul can't decide whether it should be about cannibals, serial killers, ghosts or demons.
  12. Helicopter Mom
    Get past the wince-inducing premise of Helicopter Mom...and you're still stuck with a forced comedy that mines uneasy humor from stale stereotypes.
  13. See You in Valhalla
    It all feels forced and fabricated.
  14. Monsters: Dark Continent
    Whereas the original "Monsters" was a road movie about an odd couple fleeing an alien-infested zone, "Dark Continent" cribs from contemporary war movies like "The Hurt Locker" and "American Sniper," then tosses in extraterrestrials as an afterthought.
  15. 3 Holes and a Smoking Gun
    Director Hilarion Banks dutifully captures all of it in a series of nicely shot extended takes, which would have been fine if the cast had been able to interact in some sort of uniform tone.
  16. Shut In
    Despite a strong effort from Naomi Watts, Shut In is more effective as a 90-minute commercial for the L.L. Bean aesthetic than as a pseudo-psychological thriller.
  17. The Living
    What could have been a taut and tense thriller is ankled by the inert characters, clunky screenplay and nonexistent back story.
  18. Candlestick
    Despite Presswell's evident enthusiasm, the tediously talky, dramatically stilted results offer conclusive evidence that mastering suspense requires artistic skill beyond sampling the Master of Suspense.
  19. The Hand That Feeds
    Unfortunately, directors Rachel Lears and Robin Blotnick have squandered a worthy subject.
  20. Reality
    The bizarro plot threads, and dippy characters fail to connect in any rewarding way, resulting in a largely unfunny film that proves as repetitive and tedious as the 1971 Philip Glass snippet that provides its entire score.
  21. Survivor
    Amid the choppy action and whirl of sketchy characters lie muddled messages about revenge, greed, war, hubris and the endless ripple effects of 9/11.
  22. Superfast!
    While fans can appreciate all the winks and nudges, the film is a wreck for the uninitiated.
  23. Bravetown
    First-time director Daniel Duran, working from a screenplay by Oscar Torres that abounds in the maudlin and risible, isn't able to lift the ham-handed material to a place where it might ring true.
  24. Reset
    An unpleasant exercise in self-indulgence
  25. The Secret Life of Pets
    Resisting the temptation to invest its characters and storytelling with any particularly winsome, distinctive qualities, the film quickly devolves into an infernally busy and overextended chase sequence crammed with desperately unfunny comic patter and noisy, pointless action.
  26. Every Secret Thing
    Crushingly listless and at times as off-putting as a needle scratching vinyl, this corkscrew tale of questionable (and questioned) parenting, youthful misjudgments, grudges and disappointments doesn't even have the disciplined domestic-evil allure of a Lifetime movie.
  27. John Doe: Vigilante
    The fatal flaw of "John Doe" is its focus on ideas, rather than people.
  28. Road to Juarez
    With a succession of tangential flashbacks, the film gradually disengages viewers from the plot.
  29. Dirty Weekend
    That Les isn't one of LaBute's garden variety sadists is the best thing you can say about Dirty Weekend.
  30. Lou!
    For anyone who's not a Francophone tween girl, the film likely will be a tedious, precious exercise in indulgence.
  31. Bass Clef Bliss
    The young man is inspiring all on his own, never more so than when he's being social or making music with others. It's only the movie around him that is so artless in its uplift.
  32. Fifty Shades Darker
    This is a surprisingly dull and tedious affair where nothing is even remotely plausible, the romance and the sex least of all.
  33. Fifty Shades Freed
    If liberation is the endgame of Fifty Shades Freed, most of the time we feel trapped right alongside the characters, immobilized by the pointless, suffocating beauty and the stultifying dramatic inertia of the world James has created for them.
  34. Freedom
    We get too little character development to be invested in the story and barely a glimpse at the horrific plight of enslaved people.
  35. American Heist
    Despite a few strong emotional beats, the crime drama American Heist proves as undistinguished as its generic title.
  36. Dark Was the Night
    The script, the special effects and Jack Heller's direction simply don't add up in the profile of the mythical creature. It's quite obvious the filmmakers didn't put a lot of thought into it and went straight for the cheapest thrills.
  37. Into the Grizzly Maze
    Rarely do you sense that any key performer was ever in the vicinity of a real animal.
  38. Miles to Go
    What really hampers Miles to Go is its aimless wandering. Many things could be forgiven with some growth or movement in the journey, but ultimately, this one just ends up running in circles.
  39. Unfreedom
    In writer-director Raj Amit Kumar's heavy-handed political theater, characters are little more than avatars of opposing cultural currents.
  40. Phantom Halo
    Although the performances, including that of Rebecca Romijn channeling Cybill Shepherd as a femme fatale type, are sturdy, their characters have been given absolutely nowhere interesting to go.
  41. Big Stone Gap
    The movie mostly plays so strained and corn pone that it undermines its sincere emotional core and good intentions.
  42. The Pardon
    Except for a reliably flavorful turn by John Hawkes, compelling in a few key scenes as Henry's accomplice, The Pardon remains stubbornly uninvolving.
  43. Charlie, Trevor and a Girl Savannah
    Flashily shot and cut like a long-form music video, the film is merely an empty vessel for a Guy Ritchie-esque stylistic exercise.
  44. Beyond the Mask
    The faith-based impetus behind this redemptive, family-friendly, American Revolution-era yarn is placed front and center amid all the digitally assisted derring-do and skulduggery.
  45. The Stranger
    Seeking existential, noirish heft, Amoedo coyly avoids articulating what Martin is. (He calls himself "sick.") But it only comes across like an amateur play at gravitas, one unsupported by dully weighted scenes and clunky dialogue, delivered mostly by English-speaking actors straining to hide Latin accents.
  46. Redeemer
    Unfortunately for English speakers, nothing here is lost in translation. Everything is exactly as lame as it sounds.
  47. Dragon Blade
    The movie's grandiose emotional quotient never feels any more real than its ham-fisted dialogue, dubious accents, strained "Kumbaya" moments or eclectic hairdos.
  48. Faith of Our Fathers
    This evangelical "Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam" by way of "The Dukes of Hazzard" takes a mighty ridiculous route to righteousness.
  49. Gone Doggy Gone
    The film's oddball assortment of broadly played characters feel like sketch comedy escapees stretched beyond their limits, an attempt to fill the demands of a feature-length canvas.
  50. Some Kind Of Beautiful
    A treadmill sex comedy, huffing and puffing in place until its time is up.
  51. Safelight
    First-time filmmaker Tony Aloupis, formerly frontman of the New Jersey rock band Shadows of Dreams, serves up Americana like a stale slice of apple pie.
  52. SlingShot
    SlingShot has about enough material to fill one interesting "60 Minutes" segment.
  53. Return to Sender
    Revenge is a dish served lumpy and tasteless in the tonally muddled Return to Sender.
  54. The Curse of Downers Grove
    The Curse of Downers Grove seems to be jumping on that 1990s teen slasher bandwagon two decades too late.
  55. Capital C
    Touted as a documentary "about the crowd revolution," Capital C devotes its entire running time to just one aspect of crowd-funding: small entrepreneurs raising capital.
  56. Zipper
    Instead of taking the audience in unfamiliar directions, filmmaker Mora Stephens (who wrote the script with Joel Viertel) is in such a heated rush to get to all the salacious bits, the story doesn't build crucial dramatic tension.
  57. Contracted: Phase II
    Novice screenwriter Craig Walendziak has followed England's template, charting the daily worsening of the symptoms. But he doesn't get that the 2013 "Contracted" was special because it was much more than a zombie flick.
  58. Goon: Last of the Enforcers
    A raunchy, ploddingly unfunny comedy sequel to 2012’s equally crass but disarmingly endearing “Goon.”
  59. War Room
    Preachy doesn't begin to describe War Room, a mighty long-winded and wincingly overwrought domestic drama.
  60. The Diabolical
    The Diabolical is a tepid horror-thriller that never manages to sell, much less clarify, its potentially ambitious concept.
  61. Some Kind of Hate
    Despite all the mayhem, Mortimer never whips up any real sense of dread or tension.
  62. Patient Zero
    Matt Smith (sporting a jarring Midwest American accent) and Natalie Dormer (sounding like she stepped directly off the set of “Game of Thrones”) inject what little life there is in Patient Zero, a post-apocalyptic pandemic movie that's more grade-Z than “World War Z.”
  63. After Words
    The good news about After Words is that it offers Marcia Gay Harden a rare film lead. The bad news: Harden's role in this groan-worthy dramedy is so dreary and ill-conceived that even her formidable talents can't bring it to life.
  64. Paulette
    Far too broad and simplistic to enjoy as the offbeat soufflé it so desperately aims to be.
  65. Big Sky
    Director Grau seems to be making up the film as he goes along — never a good idea when tackling the sort of genre piece that requires building tension and some semblance of dread to succeed.
  66. Shanghai
    Under Mikael Håfström's visually clunky, rhythmless direction, it's a snooze of epic sameness: choppy action scenes, a blankly stern Cusack, and too many allegiance shifts to count or care for.
  67. Norm of the North
    While the film, with its preponderance of potty jokes, might placate the very young already primed by boisterous singing chipmunks, older viewers will likely find it all harder to, uh, bear.
  68. Fathers and Daughters
    No amount of star power can save the script by Brad Desche.
  69. When Bette Met Mae
    The performances are cringe-worthy, the appeal of the material marginal.
  70. Chloe and Theo
    The climax is overwrought and cheesy, which doesn't match with the quiet dignity of the Inuit man. He carries a profound and sage warning, but Chloe and Theo just isn't the right dramatic package.
  71. My Voice, My Life
    The film might have gained some heft had director Ruby Yang let the transformations unfold before our eyes instead of force-feeding us testimonials.
  72. Blood Punch
    Writer Eddie Guzelian's grindhouse-meets-"Groundhog Day" scenario is not without its clever plot turns, but his terrible faux-noir dialogue is mostly crass, witless snark, and the fresh-faced, hollow actors don't have the scuzzy charm or fatalistic comic rhythms needed to make this material disreputably fun.
  73. Love the Coopers
    The celebrity soup that is Love the Coopers is, indeed, a mess, the kind in which the screenplay by Steven Rogers...is made more chaotic by Jessie Nelson's tonally smeary direction.
  74. Pay the Ghost
    Tidbits that would make the film interesting have been squandered. Instead, we get the standard-issue haunted-house fodder. The ghosts manifest in so many different ways that it seems like the movie is grasping for straws.
  75. My All American
    Strict adherence to the playbook may work in sports, but My All American shows the pitfalls of that approach with movies.
  76. Florence Foster Jenkins
    It’s a film that dares you to give it a bad review, simply so it can turn around and call you a bully who picks on the people who try. It invites you to giggle at Florence’s horrible singing and then promptly scolds you for laughing, creating a contradiction that goes unreconciled.
  77. The Martial Arts Kid
    The film has the vibe of something you might see on Nickelodeon or ABC Family but with a lower budget.
  78. Wrecker
    Aside from a few good jump-scares and a couple of original plot twists, Wrecker spends most of its running time cutting between footage of the roadster and footage of the truck, apparently assuming viewers will take those images and use them to imagine something more exciting.
  79. Uncle John
    Perhaps the vapid existence of millennials is precisely the point that co-writers Erik Crary and Steven Piet (who also directs) are driving at, but the film itself proves inarticulate and unsubstantial.
  80. Eden
    Commercial director Shyam Madiraju, making his feature debut, demonstrates a spare, sinewy visual grip on the low-budget film, especially during that crash sequence. But the mechanical script strands a capable young cast in a sea of hackneyed character types and soggy platitudes.
  81. The Man Who Saved the World
    The film is a disingenuous, thoroughly dramatized reenactment at best and a reality show at worst.
  82. Olvidados (Forgotten)
    By cramming in as many tangents as imaginable, Olvidados ultimately loses sight of what the story is even about.
  83. Mr. Right
    It feels at once overwritten and thematically thin, coasting on a cutesy concept before descending into relentless, and therefore meaningless, violence.
  84. Me You and Five Bucks
    A dull, meandering romantic comedy with serious believability issues.
  85. The Anomaly
    There's infinitely more than one anomaly to be found in The Anomaly, a thoroughly nonsensical futuristic sci-fi thriller that makes a case for the perils of vanity projects.
  86. Manhattan Romance
    Despite what the film might want us to believe, if he walks, talks and acts like a selfish, predatory creep, he is, and there's just no sympathizing with him.
  87. Heist
    As vapidly generic as its title, British director Scott Mann's Heist is a by-the-numbers crime thriller that squanders a decent cast, including Robert De Niro, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Dave Bautista.
  88. Tower to the People: Tesla's Dream at Wardenclyffe Continues
    Tower to the People means well, and Tesla deserves his own movie, but it's like being cornered by a zealot: an educational slog that morphs into an infomercial.
  89. Darling
    By the umpteenth disruptive shock-cut and patiently framed shot of Carter staring us down, Darling has worn out its welcome even as a mood piece.
  90. Godspeed: The Story of Page Jones
    The film never gives a real sense of the daily travails associated with traumatic brain injury.
  91. Submerged
    Even the movie's brighter spots are undermined by ineptly staged action sequences, flatly functional dialogue and stock characters. Ultimately, Submerged is all wet.
  92. Shelter
    The story on screen comes off as a naive interpretation of the homeless experience as imagined from a place of great privilege.
  93. Western Religion
    A one-dimensional movie painted in painfully broad strokes and whizzing, hurry-scurry action sequences.
  94. Lost in the Sun
    Despite some scenic territory, there's just not much to this journey, leaving Lost in the Sun feeling like a short story stretched way too thinly toward feature length.
  95. Kill Your Friends
    The movie — glibly admiring of its hero's awfulness — is tone-deaf about genuine satire, assuming anything ugly (insults, nihilism, bloody violence) qualifies as sharp cultural commentary as long as the unceasingly venal, knowing narration explains it all for us.
  96. Ratchet & Clank
    From a storytelling perspective, the obsession with guns in a movie aimed at children is troubling, in poor taste and is lazy writing to boot.
  97. Bleeding Heart
    Writer-director Diane Bell suggests that these women are so steeped in low self-esteem and codependency that they would not be able to leave their men if they didn't have each other.
  98. Condemned
    Aggressively ugly and gross, the movie boasts a certain low-rent authenticity, but the auteur never figures out how to fill his grubby little rooms.
  99. The Girl on the Train
    The empathy that Taylor summoned so effortlessly in his previous films feels strained and unpersuasive here, and moments that should be lacerating...are overplayed to ghastly effect.
  100. The Ridiculous 6
    The jokes are often juvenile and gross, unsophisticated and insensitive, but one does not wish to strike juvenility or grossness or even insensitivity outright from the comic tool kit; these just aren't all that good.
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