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. Wash Dry and Spin Out
    For histrionic wretched excess this movie would be hard to surpass.
  2. Blackwoods
    Always a welcome presence in any film, Howard, as a simple-minded hick, gives Blackwoods whatever humor and life it has.
  3. The Art of War
    This is a film that almost is not there.
  4. The In-Laws
    They (Brooks and Douglas) are so out of sync with each other that they seem to be looking for different movies to take their acts, though neither makes you want to see those hypothetical films. Not even as an option to this one.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Plunkett & Macleane
    Everything is stunningly photographed by John Mathieson, but to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a cockroach is a cockroach is a cockroach.
  6. 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.
  7. Texas Rangers
    A routine shoot-'em-up, with the triteness of Scott Busby and Martin Copeland's script exceeded only by the flatness of Steve Miner's direction.
  8. The Watcher
    Neither acutely suspenseful nor particularly thrilling but instead mainly numbing.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Eye of the Beholder
    It isn't insultingly bad; it's just incompetent.
    • Los Angeles Times
  10. The Wash
    A knucklehead operation, all glands and attitude with no heart or brains.
  11. The Next Best Thing
    A misguided romantic serio-comedy aimed at women and gay men that ends up caricaturing both.
  12. Love's Labour's Lost
    It ought to be delightful, but it isn't.
  13. Lost Souls
    A dreary tale of supernatural horror.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Pokémon 4: The Movie
    There isn't much to Pokémon 4Ever.
  15. 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
  16. 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.
  17. Friends and Family
    It is an inept, inane Mafia comedy with a gay angle, all the more insufferable because director Kristen Coury and writer Joseph Triebwasser clearly think they're being wonderfully cute and clever.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Bachelor
    A flat-footed film.
  19. Half Past Dead
    Absent one original moment and bathed in de rigueur steel blue punctuated by sporadic bursts of flaming orange, the movie is notable only for its creative approach to Seagal's bulky gracelessness: Not since "Apocalypse Now" has a film gone to such lengths to hide what its star looks like.
  20. Simply Irresistible
    The two leads are unappealing, the story is dragged on for days and the rather random magical element renders any human factor irrelevant..
  21. Blindness
    It's a glum, stale soap opera, tediously paced but mercifully running only 75 minutes, its sole virtue.
  22. Wing Commander: Space Will Never Be the Same
    You won't feel anything. Period. Oh, maybe bored or disoriented by the inside jargon and alien references that will be comprehensible only if you happen to have played the computer game on which Wing Commander is based. [12 March 1999, Calendar, p.F-10]
    • Los Angeles Times
  23. Juwanna Mann
    When the outtakes at the end don't make you laugh, what does that tell you about the movie that preceded them?
  24. I Dreamed of Africa
    This is a Laura Ashley on Safari meditation on bored rich people searching for fulfillment and a new life among the photogenic wildlife of Kenya. Just wake me when it's over.
  25. Domestic Disturbance
    So TV-movie-of-the-week that you wonder throughout why you can't use a remote to find a decent ballgame.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    My 5 Wives
    It's hard to tell if My 5 Wives is so completely dumb that it's impossible to be offended by it, or so completely offensive that it's just dumb.
  27. Jakob the Liar
    The latest in what feels like an endless string of movies ... in which the actor's parts have ruinously overdosed on sentimentality and schmaltz at the expense of humor and even sanity.
    • 14 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Omega Code
    A hokey doomsday/millennialist thriller.
  29. High Heels and Low Lifes
    A broad and stale British crime comedy that wastes the considerable talent and presence of Minnie Driver.
  30. Simon Sez
    A lackluster international action adventure.
  31. All the Queen's Men
    Let's hope -- shall we? -- that the "true story" that allegedly "inspired" All the Queen's Men was a lot funnier and more deftly enacted than what's been cobbled together here.
  32. Langrishe Go Down
    Unearthing even the roughest gems serves a programming purpose, but in this case it has also led to a theatrical release of a movie that looks like a muddy second-generation Xerox and contains all the emotional and intellectual appeal of cold tea and soggy toast.
  33. Crossroads
    Spears acquits herself as well as anyone might, in a movie as contrived and lazy as this one.
  34. Thomas and the Magic Railroad
    Lays thick, goopy layers of uplift on what should be lighter on the heart and stomach.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Urban Legends: Final Cut
    Has promising raw material to burn--and that's pretty much what's been done.
  36. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
    Anyone who goes to Halloween 4 deserves what they get: stale, sordid tricks and no treats. [25 Oct 1988, p.C6]
    • Los Angeles Times
  37. Lana's Rain
    Michael S. Ojeda's film is so relentlessly shallow and excessive that it hardly matters whether Lana is eventually able to turn the tables on Darko. When it rains in Lana's Rain, it pours -- and what comes out is trash.
  38. Soul Survivors
    The actors are game, but their roles lack color and depth, and it's a real struggle to survive Soul Survivors to the finish.
  39. Woman on Top
    If Penélope Cruz were any less attractive, maybe someone would have noticed how dull this mild, would-be romantic fairy tale has turned out.
  40. Dungeons & Dragons
    Whalin is awful, Birch is saddled with lines that would make a silent film star blanch and Irons devours huge chunks of scenery with the ferocity of one of those dog-fighting dragons.
  41. Don't Tempt Me
    What ensues is so glum and disjointed that the film becomes an even bigger mess.
  42. 54
    Decadence has rarely looked so pathetic, lethargic and dispiriting as it does in this listless film.
  43. 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.
  44. 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.
  45. Loco Love
    Might have been offensive with its stereotypical, one-dimensional characters and Spanglish-laden "jokes" if it wasn't so utterly bland. With about as much flavor as iceberg lettuce, the movie really doesn't offer enough to get worked up about.
  46. 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.
  47. Loser
    Formulaic new teen opus
  48. Species II
    The best advice to give anyone who wants to see Species II--other than "don't go!"--is "don't eat!"
  49. Palmetto
    Revelations of betrayals, faked identities and double-crosses come in waves in the last half-hour of Palmetto, but by then, the film has raised the one question it can't answer: Who cares?
  50. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
    The result is a comedy of errors. Errors, yes. Comedy . . . we're not so sure.
  51. But I'm a Cheerleader
    Works against its goals.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back!
    Pokémon isn't even good animation, unless the standard of measure is the crude LCD graphics of a Game Boy.
  53. The Adventures of Pluto Nash
    It's not awful, but the high cost of a movie ticket these days seems like a steep price to pay for 90 minutes of air conditioning and production design.
    • Los Angeles Times
  54. Hotel
    Figgis certainly was after something different, but like "Timecode," in which four linked stories unwind in separate panels, Hotel proves to be a fundamentally insipid bid at experimental narrative.
  55. Hollywood Ending
    It's as sad and painful to report as it is to experience, but Hollywood Ending makes the conclusion inescapable: Woody Allen has become his own worst enemy.
  56. 50 First Dates
    Has nothing going for it -- and much going against it.
  57. American Psycho
    Stillborn, pointless piece of work.
  58. The Other Sister
    By coddling viewers and micromanaging our responses, The Other Sister shows almost as little respect for the audience as Elizabeth does for her feisty, underappreciated daughter.
  59. Enemies of Laughter
    Paymer and many others in a large cast are well-established players with strong credits, and they do the best they can to pump life into remorselessly glum material.
  60. Going Down
    Teen sex comedies don't come more mindless than Joseph A. Pineda's Going Down, a movie so seriously underinspired it's hard to imagine it appealing to anyone but fantasy-prone middle schoolers who can barely wait to live it up like their older brothers and sisters.
  61. Quills
    Soon becomes a sadistic experience in its own right. Experiencing this pretentious wallow -- overwritten, under-thought and overdone -- is a very sophisticated form of torture.
  62. Catch That Kid
    Serviceable trash. It looks and moves like a low-end action movie, complete with thumping soundtrack, nanosecond-fast edits, stunts that probably look scary to anyone who doesn't know better and even a third-act police chase through downtown L.A. In other words, it's Bruckheimer for babies.
    • 11 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    3 Strikes
    The bad news is that it's also vile, not to mention sophomoric and unfunny.
    • Los Angeles Times
  64. View from the Top
    Worth commenting on only for its shocking ineptitude.
  65. Swordfish
    A kind of dirty fairy tale in which people with nasty attitudes inhabit a trash-talking, macho world of fast cars and complaisant women.
  66. How It All Went Down
    The only element that keeps the film from falling apart entirely is powerful physical presence of Pollio, an experienced, impassioned young actor.
  67. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
    Almost completely lacking in genuine thrills. Even the attractive presence of star Angelina Jolie can't keep this leaden, plodding, completely underwhelming film from playing like "Lara Croft: Yawn Inducer."
  68. 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.
  69. Superstar
    If Superstar were meatloaf--and that would be an improvement--the recipe would be 4 pounds bread crumbs to 3 ounces sirloin. Make that chuck.
  70. Very Bad Things
    Hollow, simple-minded and about as profound an experience as stepping in a pile of road kill.
  71. 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.
  72. Romance
    As pretentious as it is hard-core specific, this fiercely anti-erotic film makes even the chilly "Eyes Wide Shut" play like "The Big Easy."
  73. Bait
    But what little humor there is in the movie becomes subservient to the grisly violence, gratuitous cruelty and ugly car chases.
    • Los Angeles Times
  74. 28 Days
    Too glib too often to make much of an impression any way you look at it.
  75. The Whole Ten Yards
    Disastrously unfunny sequel.
  76. Gigli
    Nearly as unwatchable as it is unpronounceable.
  77. The Avengers
    So how then do you duplicate a magic aura from 30 years ago? You don't.
  78. Dancer in the Dark
    So exasperating in its contradictions, so frustrating in its fakery, so deeply irritating in its pretensions, it's frankly hard to know where to begin to dissect it.
  79. What Lies Beneath
    Feels more planned than passionate, scary at points but unconvincing overall.
  80. Digimon: Digital Monsters
    It's an awfully confusing journey, unless you're of pro-Digi-ous intelligence. Or a digimaniac. Or just 6.
  81. What Planet Are You From?
    Sporadically funny, often strange and almost never poignant.
  82. The Salton Sea
    Taking issue with efforts like The Salton Sea, cold and unemotional films that couldn't be more pleased at the opportunity to enthusiastically drag audiences through unhappy material, is as futile as getting mad at the wind.
    • Los Angeles Times
  83. Batman & Robin
    Lacking most kinds of inspiration and geared to undemanding minds, this project is so overloaded with hardware and stunts, it's a relief to have it over.
  84. Resident Evil
    A ditsy and dizzying spook-house thriller in high-tech, high-hemline gear.
  85. 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.
  86. The Butterfly Effect
    As the requisite love interest, Amy Smart gives the film's only professional performance, while co-star Eric Stoltz, as the story's villain, walks somnolent through the scenery with what seems to be barely suppressed mirth. Given the deeply unpleasant plot machinations and amateurish direction, the actor's amusement is understandable.
  87. Garfield
    Bill Murray completists, tots under 5 and their unfortunate chaperons are the only ones who need experience the soulless excuse for an entertainment called Garfield: The Movie.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    House on Haunted Hill
    Soon enough, it becomes clear how much this movie disrespects both the audience and the genre.
  89. Darkness
    Some movies should never come to light, either, and Darkness, bearing a 2002 copyright, might well have been better left on the shelf.
  90. Billy Madison
    Director Tamra Davis and screenwriters Sandler and Tim Herlihy scatter the bad jokes like fertilizer. Nothing sprouts.
  91. Excess Baggage
    Excess Baggage, a scruffy romantic comedy about a despairing rich girl who hatches a kidnapping scheme to test her father's love, is an aimless waste, a star vehicle without a compass. It wants very much to be both funny and poignant, but is more often just noisy and pointless. [29Aug1997 Pg 14]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 25 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Spy Hard
    It could have used several more passes on the screenplay to strengthen the gags and flesh out the characters.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Hush
    Hush is a would-be suspense film without a single major plot twist that isn't ham-handed. [9 Mar 1998, pg.F4]
    • Los Angeles Times
  94. Mrs. Winterbourne
    Ricki Lake, who occupies one of the lower links on the TV trash-talk food chain, is promoted to ugly duckling in Mrs. Winterbourne, a film that waddles through the movie-memory super-mart shoplifting everything but charm.
  95. The Basketball Diaries
    The Basketball Diaries is a lose-lose proposition. Although it masquerades as a cautionary tale about the horrors of heroin, this epic of teen-age * Angst is more accurately seen as a reverential wallow in the gutter of self-absorption.
  96. Vampire in Brooklyn
    There isn't a moment of genuine suspense or tension in the film, and the paltry laughs are supplied not by Murphy but by Hardison, whose character, a lowlife Brooklyn habitue forcefully turned into the vampire's bug-eating sidekick, spends the entire movie moaning about his decomposing body and embarrassing the boss with his earthy patter. [27 Oct 1995, p.1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  97. The Quick and the Dead
    The Quick and the Dead is showy visually, full of pans and zooming close-ups. Rarely dull, it is not noticeably compelling either, and as the derivative offshoot of a derivative genre, it inevitably runs out of energy well before any of its hotshots runs out of bullets.
  98. My Blue Heaven
    When director Herbert Ross is away from his dance numbers, he lets the pace sag frightfully. A lot of good talent on both sides of the camera goes down with this PG-13-rated ship. [20 Aug 1990, p.6]
    • Los Angeles Times
  99. Another 48 Hrs.
    Walter Hill, who also directed the first film, surely recognizes the hollowness of what he's doing here. He tries to ram through the muddled exposition as quickly as possible; essentially, the film is wall-to-wall mayhem, with more shots of hurled bodies shattering windows than I've ever seen in a movie. [8 Jun 1990, p.1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  100. Days of Thunder
    You can leave Days of Thunder feeling positively chafed. That clanking noise, however, comes from Robert Towne's tinny story and its malnourished characters. [27 Jun 1990, p.1]
    • Los Angeles Times
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