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. Best in Show
    Has both bark and bite. Its low-key but sharp and amusing sense of humor is a nice fit with the frenetic world of competitive dog shows.
  2. Boogie Nights
    A true storyteller, able to easily mix and match moods in a playful and audacious manner, he (Anderson) is a filmmaker definitely worth watching, both now and in the future.
  3. The Cooler
    Director Wayne Kramer and co-writer Frank Hannah pull off a sleight-of-hand trick here, playing a gritty surface reality against dark Vegas mythology and getting away with it through a combination of shrewd, witty characterization and sure-footed storytelling skills.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Corky Romano
    Truly makes you laugh. At its best it recalls the animated antics of a Jerry Lewis escapade, the pratfall follies of a Buster Keaton flick and Rowan Atkinson's outsized physicality.
    • Los Angeles Times
  5. Waiting for Guffman
    A sly and gleeful comedy showcase that pokes clever fun at the American musical, amateur theatricals and anything else that's not nailed down.
  6. Changing Lanes
    Frustrating yet deeply watchable melodrama that makes you think it's a tougher picture than it is.
  7. Violet Perfume: No One Is Listening
    Very strong stuff, and Sistach has inspired such young actors as Ayala and Gutiérrez to give sustained and harrowing portrayals.
  8. Selena
    Selena is in part a completely predictable Latino soap opera that should satisfy those who complain they aren't making movies like they like used to.
  9. Callas Forever
    The result is not only one of Zeffirelli's sumptuous productions but also a film that celebrates the sacredness of artistic integrity that to Zeffirelli Callas embodied fully.
  10. The Corporation
    The Corporation takes great and successful pains to be as visually diverse and clever as it is intellectually provocative.
  11. I'm Not Scared
    With a graceful confidence Salvatores has made a movie in which good and evil flow into each other as easily as day and night.
  12. The Bourne Identity
    This is an entertainment that really entertains because any number of interesting and unexpected choices were made, starting with the selection of Doug Liman as the director.
  13. Open Range
    Say what you like, think what you will, scoff if you have to (and you will definitely have to), but in the final analysis Kevin Knows Westerns.
  14. Magnolia
    Drunk and disorderly on the pure joy of making movies. A frantic, flawed, fascinating film that is both impressive and a bit out of control, often at the same time.
  15. Everything Put Together
    The carefully crafted Everything Put Together is unpredictably venturesome, and cinematographer Roberto Schaefer makes virtuoso use of digital video to create the images and movements that play so large a part in the film's success.
  16. 'R Xmas
    Few directors can put loneliness on screen as persuasively or capture the eerie quiet of people waiting for something, anything to happen. It's in moments such as these, when all sense of time disappears and all that remains are bodies in motion and Ken Kelsch's limpid cinematography, that you remember just how good Ferrara can be.
  17. The Haunted Mansion
    A fright show artfully designed for the whole family, a comedy that all but the most impressionable children will likely get a kick out of.
  18. Galaxy Quest
    Fast, light and funny, Galaxy Quest has a wide, generation-spanning appeal--and you don't have to be a die-hard Trekkie to enjoy it.
  19. The Usual Suspects
    The Usual Suspects is a maze that moviegoers will be happy to get lost in, a criminal roller coaster with twists so unsettling no choice exists but to hold on and go along for the ride.
  20. An Everlasting Piece
    This late-in-the-year gem glows with Levinson's characteristically warm embrace of a wide range of people and his superlative sense of time and place.
  21. Bandits
    An amusing tale of larceny triumphant, Bandits is an entertainment with a rogue's imagination.
  22. Bridget Jones's Diary
    Cheerful, cheeky entertainment, a clever confection.
  23. Total Recall
    If the movie sometimes seems overwhelmed by its budget and its legendary third-act problems, it's still entertainingly raw and brutal, full of whiplash pace and juicy exaggeration. [1 June 1990, Calendar, p.F-1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  24. The Sixth Sense
    So disarmingly eerie it's virtually guaranteed to rattle the most jaded of cages.
  25. Holes
    It's got an involving, adventurous story to tell and the wherewithal to tell it correctly. And while young adults may think this is intended only for them, in truth it's their elders who are especially starved for this kind of entertainment.
  26. Independence Day
    Cities engulfed by rolling walls of flame, sinister aquamarine power blasts turning beloved national monuments to toast, even the roiling clouds the spaceships appear out of, they are all disturbing, unsettling and completely convincing.
  27. The Thin Red Line
    An art film to the core. If it's an epic, it's an intimate, dream-time epic, an elliptical, episodic film, dependent on images and reveries, that treats war as the ultimate nightmare, the one you just cannot awaken from no matter how hard you try.
  28. Woman Thou Art Loosed
    There's a bedrock honesty in Woman, Thou Art Loosed in its grasp of human nature and behavior. This is one faith-based film that pulls no punches.
  29. Gods and Monsters
    There are so many colors to McKellen's performance, so many diverse emotions fleetingly play on his face, that resisting his art is out of the question. Better work by an actor will not be seen this year.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Elizabeth
    Period movies inevitably reflect more about the period in which they're made than the period of their subject, and rarely has that been more evident -- or more distracting -- than it is with Elizabeth.
  31. Dig!
    Should be required viewing for youngsters thinking about a music career. It's a great reminder to be careful what you wish for.
  32. Jump Tomorrow
    Many try but few succeed as well as writer-director Joel Hopkins with his beguiling first feature, Jump Tomorrow, in giving a fresh spin to '30s screwball comedy.
  33. One Swallow Brought Spring
    Wise, understated, warm and witty, it presents stars Michel Serrault and Mathilde Seigner in roles that fit them so perfectly they could have been tailor-made.
  34. The Barbarian Invasions
    Bristling but finally surprisingly moving film.
  35. Cure
    With its gift for infusing uneasiness into every frame, Kurosawa's moody, unnerving film continues to spook us even after the lights have gone on.
  36. Stage Beauty
    Sly and witty.
  37. Suzhou River
    Daring and edgy, it's a German co-production (critical for avoiding censorship) that's filled with the intoxicating excitement of creating images for the screen.
  38. Girls Will Be Girls
    Writer-director Richard Day has come up with a delicious cliché of a plot to allow talented female impersonators Jack Plotnick, Clinton Leupp and Jeffery Roberson to strut their stuff. The result is a nonstop hoot.
  39. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
    Has a sense of humor that is intellectual, even academic, at heart.
  40. Not One Less
    Has a warmth and sweetness that is especially hard to resist.
  41. Happy Times
    This is a film that goes its own way to the end as it asks the audience, "What you just saw, were they happy times or not?" The question is a good one, and the answer, like this film, is sure to stay with you.
  42. Defying Gravity
    A straightforward drama done with a maturity and conviction impressive for a first film.
  43. Girlfight
    A powerful and empathetic melodrama with feminist underpinnings.
  44. Eyes Wide Shut
    This is finally a film that is better at mood than substance, that has its strongest hold on you when it’s making the least amount of sense.
  45. Being Julia
    The filmmakers have brought such breadth and depth to the material. Everyone counts in this film, not just Julia Lambert.
  46. Nico and Dani
    An exceptional coming-of-age film--subtle, humorous, compassionate, acutely perceptive.
  47. American Pie
    Unusual in its ability to mix bodily functions humor with a sincere and unlooked-for sense of decency.
  48. Connie and Carla
    The result is pure, unabashed and unpretentious entertainment of a sort once a staple of the movies but now rare.
  49. The Fighting Temptations
    A rousing, warmhearted comedy, as infectious as the gospel music it celebrates.
  50. Promises
    Promises takes a simple idea and just about breaks your heart with it.
  51. Scary Movie 3
    It is consistently entertaining and frequently hilarious, the violence of the slapstick so cartoonish that it does not spoil the fun.
  52. Scary Movie
    While undeniably silly and violent in a cartoon-like manner, is by and large a hilarious skewering of the clichés of teen pix.
  53. The Take
    Plays out like a Frank Capra movie with the "little people" taking on corrupt and indifferent officials. In the process the film strikes a strong blow for the dignity of labor and introduces an array of brave individuals.
  54. After the Sunset
    An unalloyed delight, bright and breezy escapist fare that's pure entertainment, filled with romance, adventure, humor, action, suspense, beautiful scenery and beautiful people.
  55. Birth
    What the intelligently spooky Birth does best is disturb us.
  56. Freaky Friday
    Turning ordinary life into movie magic is one of the most difficult, least-heralded challenges for any filmmaker. What makes Freaky Friday a charmer isn't how far-out things get for this mother and daughter, but how sweet and distinctly un-freaky a kid, her mom and their love for each other can be.
  57. Scream 3
    Genuinely scary and also highly amusing.
  58. Stander
    Crackles with forceful portrayals. Funny, violent, impassioned and inescapably poignant, Stander in no way sanctions Stander's turning to a life of crime yet has the courage to see him as a victim of apartheid himself.
  59. Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
    Seven years in the making, it demands to be experienced not just because of the good it does but because of how unexpectedly good, even buoyant, it makes you feel.
  60. A Talking Picture
    An honest title for a film that is almost entirely conversation. Yet its rich contemplative tone proves deceptive, for its director, Portugal's preeminent filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, at 96, still knows how to pack a wallop.
  61. Beau Travail
    A ruggedly beautiful landscape of desert and sea provides a dramatic setting for a psychological drama told with the utmost rigor--and unabashed eroticism.
  62. The Clearing
    A beautiful and consistently engaging film, but that the filmmakers dared cast all three lead roles with actors who are over 40 makes it especially rewarding.
  63. Control Room
    Think of Control Room as a through-the-looking-glass movie. Like Lewis Carroll's Alice, viewers of this remarkable documentary will be disconcerted by a glimpse of a world where everything is reversed.
  64. Ed Wood
    Turns out to be a thoroughly entertaining if eccentric piece of business, wacky and amusing in a cheerfully preposterous way. [28 September 1994, Calendar, p.F-1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  65. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
    What saves Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is what created it in the first place: J.K. Rowling's enrapturing imagination. At those sporadic moments when the film allows us to share in Harry's wonder, it lets us recapture our own as well.
  66. The Lion King
    Even with its flaws, this latest Disney animated feature once again delivers what its audience wants.
  67. Noi the Albino
    An impeccably made bleak comedy with an exactly calibrated, almost musical sense of timing, Nói is singular enough to have swept the Eddas, the Icelandic Academy Awards.
  68. Party Monster
    For all its decadence, it moves effectively from outrageous camp humor to stark pathos and in the process manages to be oddly touching. As for Culkin, he succeeds as an adult actor in completely unexpected ways.
  69. Never Been Kissed
    An easygoing and amusing romantic confection.
  70. Rush Hour
    Rush Hour effectively teams Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in a formulaic but funny action comedy that should please fans of both stars.
  71. Dawn of the Dead
    Good zombie fun, the remake of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead is the best proof in ages that cannibalizing old material sometimes works fiendishly well.
  72. Girl with a Pearl Earring
    Even if Girl With a Pearl Earring is not nearly as remarkable dramatically as it is visually, it is, finally, a film of great beauty, and that is something worth appreciating.
  73. Dazed and Confused
    It's a highly enjoyable spree that doesn't add up to a whole lot by the end. But you don't necessarily want it to add up to anything -- that's part of its charm. [24 Sept 1993]
    • Los Angeles Times
  74. Waking Life
    The effect is dazzlingly beautiful and surreal.
  75. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
    At a time when crassness and dumbing down pervade popular entertainment, especially movies aimed at youthful audiences, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen dares to be smart.
  76. Blade II
    Like the original, Blade II has superior production values and visual and special effects. Snipes and Kristofferson build on the resonance of their original portrayals.
  77. Ocean's Eleven
    A champagne bubble of a movie, lively, effervescent and diverting. If it bursts earlier than we'd like -- and it does -- that takes nothing away from the considerable pleasure it provides along the way.
  78. Absolute Power
    Sleek and satisfying....Almost a drawing room thriller, unhurried and genteel but enlivened with suspense and surprising bursts of sly, even biting, humor.
    • Los Angeles Times
  79. Space Cowboys
    This is a mostly genial film that gets as much mileage as it can out of the undeniable charisma of its stars.
  80. The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
    Kitano uses exaggerated acting, choreo-graphed violence and, most radically, the rhythms of everyday life -- farmers pounding the earth, the syncopated plop of falling rain -- to turn this genre story into a crypto-Kabuki play and one blissfully idiosyncratic diversion.
  81. Michael Jordan to the Max
    Made with such verve and clarity that you don't have to be a basketball fan to enjoy it.
    • Los Angeles Times
  82. Cowboy Bebop the Movie: Knockin' on Heaven's Door
    Demonstrates how exciting and vital contemporary animated filmmaking is in Japan. The characters may not move with the fluidity of their American counterparts, but the story unfolds with a sinister grace that any live-action director might envy.
  83. The Green Butchers
    Mikkelsen and Kaas are up to the demands of their roles, revealing impressive range and skill.
  84. May
    A stylized work of unflinching control and discipline, reflecting an artistic maturity unusual in a first film.
  85. Wild at Heart
    The drawback to Lynch's pile-it-on method is that it is reductive. One reason Wild at Heart, for all its amazements, isn't quite as stunning as "Blue Velvet" is because it seems less the working out of a single fixed obsession than an entire smear of obsessions. [12 Aug 1990, Calendar, p.29]
    • Los Angeles Times
  86. John Q
    An all-stops-out rabble-rouser that hurls a broadside at America's medical insurance crisis.
  87. Notre musique
    A film of flowing, redemptive beauty and poetry, at once immediate yet classic in its simplicity of form.
  88. Shrek 2
    Its cleverness and its good heart enable it to overcome a slow start, which is how all good fairy tales end.
  89. This So-Called Disaster: Sam Shepard Directs the Late Henry Moss
    Surprisingly compelling viewing.
  90. Friday After Next
    Fast and raunchy, Friday After Next surely stands apart from other holiday-themed movies for its gleeful low-down humor and a raft of uninhibited characters involved in one outrageous predicament after another.
  91. The Terminal
    Entertainment like this is too hard to find to second-guess for too long.
  92. The Aryan Couple
    This handsome film is a splendid, stirring feat of the imagination.
  93. Dangerous Liaisons
    In addition to its photography, the film's details of costuming (by "The Last Emperor's" James Acheson) and production design (by Stuart Craig of "Gandhi" and "The Mission") are ravishing. [21 Dec 1988, Calendar p.6]
    • Los Angeles Times
  94. Fahrenheit 9/11
    Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 has launched an unapologetic attack, both savage and savvy, on an administration he feels has betrayed the best of America and done extensive damage in the world.
  95. Finding Nemo
    The best break of all is that Pixar's traditionally untethered imagination can't be kept under wraps forever, and "Nemo" erupts with sea creatures that showcase Stanton and company's gift for character and peerless eye for skewering contemporary culture.
  96. They Live
    Has its share of underthought or overwrought moments. The tone keeps shifting radically. It has some silly lines, plot lapses and goofball action scenes. But you can forgive the movie everything because of the sheer nasty pizazz of its central concept. [4 Nov 1988]
    • Los Angeles Times
  97. The Keys to the House
    Though it is a work of fiction, we have the sense every minute that we are watching something real, something with the unmistakable taste of life.
  98. NASCAR: The IMAX Experience
    A splendid example of pure cinema.
  99. A Love Song for Bobby Long
    Among other things, the characters in A Love Song for Bobby Long really know how to turn a phrase, in itself a pleasure so rare it all but demands any flaws be forgiven.
  100. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    It's a deeply affecting performance, and it drives this quietly powerful, unrelenting film.
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