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 Competition
    If the process of passing judgment at all fascinates you (and perhaps it goes without saying that it would fascinate a critic), it’s hard to resist The Competition’s extensive breakdown of how one weighs the merits of artistic goals and visions that tend to elude the usual scoring mechanisms.
  2. The Last Resort
    In 70 short minutes, directors Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch skillfully pack their Miami Beach-centric documentary, The Last Resort, with a wealth of visual, emotional, social, cultural and historical significance.
  3. Climax
    What makes the extended trip-tastic finale ultimately disappointing is that it remains a resolutely exterior experience, a set of wild but recycled gestures that reminds you just how tedious watching someone else’s LSD high can be.
  4. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
    The tale of a kid whose rebellion is in feeding his knowledge is rousing enough, but it’s to Ejiofor’s credit that he takes care to meaningfully dramatize how the systems around William — social, economic and political — create a perfect storm of obstacles for anyone in a struggling community trying to seed a future.
  5. Prosecuting Evil
    Self-aware, funny and articulate, blessed with a first-class temperament, Ferencz is front and center telling his own tale, which includes being the key player in what’s been called the biggest murder trial in history.
  6. Woman at War
    With a masterful melding of the serious, the comic, the ridiculous and the musical, Woman at War is joyful to experience though difficult to sum up.
  7. Touch Me Not
    Pintilie has a way of nudging the strangeness of her fiction/documentary hybridization so that your engagement isn’t predicated on narrative catharsis, but simply a desire for the continued frankness of it all.
  8. Virginia Minnesota
    Winning lead performances and some uniquely quirky touches keep this dramedy watchable from start to finish, but an over-reliance on indie film clichés — from the plucky folk-pop soundtrack to the generic “dredging up the past” plot — add up to squandered potential.
  9. 2050
    2050 has a meaningful subject, but is so dialogue-heavy and incident-light that almost the entire film feels like a pitch for the movie Holt didn’t make.
  10. Devil's Path
    Over-written dialogue and some stiff acting weigh Devil’s Path down, especially in the early going. But the action sequences are quite good, deriving nervous energy from the inherent risk of any illicit sexual encounter: that being in the wrong place with the wrong person could prove fatal.
  11. Tuftland
    Writer-director Roope Olenius (adapting a Neea Viitamäki play) struggles at times to maintain a consistent tone with a film which veers sharply between absurdist comedy and near-horror.
  12. The Cannibal Club
    Dryly funny and unsparingly acerbic, The Cannibal Club has one simple point to make about the hypocrisy of the aristocracy … and Parente makes it sharply.
  13. The Hole in the Ground
    It’s always welcome to see a chiller that builds suspense from ideas and characters — and where the beasts from beyond are almost beside the point.
  14. The Wedding Guest
    Twists and turns abound, but they're all smoke and mirrors that ultimately don't add up to anything.
  15. Greta
    Directed by the gifted but erratic Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan, the movie is thin, rote and silly but, Huppert being Huppert, it’s good for a diabolical chuckle or two.
  16. Run the Race
    Beyond its theme of the power of God’s love, Run the Race centers on the importance of forgiveness. Viewers who can overlook its flaws will find value in its message, but those outside its target demo will be unable to see beyond its cinematic sins.
  17. What Is Democracy?
    It all adds up to a kaleidoscopic, somewhat random, yet always involving approach to a major concept that, despite the wealth and breadth of Taylor’s offerings here, feels like just the first step in surveying anew where democracy stands — and falls — in our present universe. But what a crucial first step it is.
  18. My Stretch of Texas Ground
    This is a well-intentioned movie; it's just not a well-made one.
  19. Who Killed Cock Robin?
    While it’s disappointing as a mystery, Who Killed Cock Robin is effective as the study of a compulsively nosy man who follows his hunches whenever they lead, into some dark places.
  20. 1st Summoning
    This is just another buy-the-numbers POV fright-fest — like the B-movie version of walking through a professional Halloween haunted house.
  21. The Changeover
    Thanks to a focus on the setting and emotions of the story, by the time the life-or-death action kicks in, Harcourt and McKenzie have clearly delineated these characters and what they’re facing — bringing Mahy’s words to life.
  22. Paddleton
    A surprisingly tender and humorous shuffle down a weighty road.
  23. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
    Perhaps the highs feel so stirring, in part, because they are surrounded by so much conventional din and clatter.
  24. The Lears
    The Lears is a witlessly profane attempt at dark comedy that is beneath the talents of everyone on screen.
  25. Birds of Passage
    Birds of Passage tells a story of a traditional culture fighting for its life against incursions from the outside world, of how insidiously clan ways and spiritual values can be compromised, and it certainly has familiar elements. But the electric filmmaking, sense of tragedy and cultural specificity are far from usual.
  26. A Tuba to Cuba
    Just sit back and enjoy.
  27. Patrick
    Though the family-friendly comedy has all the good intentions of a motivational puppy poster, it unfortunately also has the same level of intelligence and plot.
  28. The Breaker Upperers
    The Breaker Upperers features a distinctly New Zealand style of comedy: dry, awkward and utterly hilarious. But directors, writers and stars Jackie van Beek and Madeline Sami still give this film a wild energy that’s absolutely their own, with jokes that take the audience from giggles to cackles to all-out shrieks.
  29. To Dust
    The movie could use a little more energy — this is Paul Mazursky territory, after all, not Andrei Tarkovsky — but in its sick-but-sweet attempt to reclaim grief from the trappings of tradition, To Dust is its own well-measured godsend.
  30. The Maestro
    Amid the glorious music, the fine period re-creation and burnished photography, the emotionally sound portrayal of artistic endeavor and that award-worthy turn by Berkeley, The Maestro often scores.
  31. Donnybrook
    Anchored by a quartet of fierce performances, “Donnybrook” is an intense, visceral tone poem, a rumination on money and drugs and bloodshed as a means of making ends meet in the heartland of modern America.
  32. Pig
    With its parade of finger-pointing vloggers, picture-posting stalkers and hijab-wearing, smartphone-clutching schoolgirls, Pig (“Khook”) makes it savagely clear Western society hasn’t cornered the market on selfie-centered behavior.
  33. 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.
  34. Parkland: Inside Building 12
    The simplicity of “Parkland” is often quite affecting.
  35. The Bellwether
    Though it never rises above the level of “interesting experiment,” the dystopian thriller The Bellwether teems with so many ideas that even the bad ones don’t weigh it down too much.
  36. Yucatán
    From the exotic ports of call to the occasional musical numbers, Yucatán is a mostly enjoyable ride. It’s meant to be a throwback to glamorous old Hollywood movies. Like a typical American pleasure cruise, it’s a serviceable facsimile of something fancy.
  37. Fighting with My Family
    Within the context of a sport that thrives on artifice, writer-director Stephen Merchant spins a story whose emotions feel entirely genuine.
  38. Lords of Chaos
    Ultimately it all adds up to a hodgepodge of styles and attitudes with hardly any insight into what made this corrosive clique so magnetic to its adherents.
  39. The Image Book
    The Image Book is an 85-minute cinematic brainstorm, a swirling, dazzling, maddening frenzy of disconnected sights and sounds that have been compiled and arranged according to a rhythmic and rhetorical logic that only its maker can fully divine.
  40. Happy Death Day 2U
    Like most sequels, Happy Death Day 2U can’t quite replicate the feelings of joy and discovery of the original, but Landon deserves credit for varying the tune, while still playing the hits that will please the fans of its predecessor.
  41. Isn't It Romantic
    Isn’t It Romantic walks the line between subversive and sendup. It gleefully makes fun of the well-known tropes of romantic comedies, while also satisfying our desire to delight in said tropes.
  42. Alita: Battle Angel
    If you’re in the mood for a movie like “Alita,” “Alita” is the movie you’re in the mood for.
  43. Darkness Visible
    Darkness Visible is disjointed and drags out for far too long, but it features some effectively creepy visuals.
  44. Chokehold
    Chokehold provides a poorly written and terribly acted framework as a thin context for the action.
  45. Beneath the Leaves
    A committed cast fails to elevate Beneath the Leaves, an otherwise draggy and derivative thriller.
  46. Pinsky
    It’s as unfocused as its heroine, roving between subplots, but there’s still plenty to admire in this frank, funny film.
  47. The Divorce Party
    Although it hardly reinvents the genre, the film, nicely directed by Hughes William Thompson, offers just enough smarts and charm to feel fresher than most in its class.
  48. A Violent Man
    Writer-director Matthew Berkowitz’s crime drama A Violent Man has all the pungent cynicism of a classic film noir but lacks the urgency. A slower-than-necessary pace drags on a movie that’s otherwise well-written and well-acted, and which makes good use of its setting in the world of mixed martial arts.
  49. The Amityville Murders
    The effect is like watching a bar band do a cover version of “The Amityville Horror” — spirited enough, but hardly ready for the big time.
  50. The Isle
    The Butler-Harts built their story around the place, and don’t squander any of the spectacular scenery. This island looks like something from a dark fairy tale — so that’s exactly what the filmmakers have made.
  51. St. Agatha
    Kern and Hennessy are always incredibly entertaining, going toe-to-toe, as Mary defies the convent’s rules and a smiling Mother Superior makes her pay.
  52. The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot
    Krzykowski’s pacing and tone is off as he tries to meld his comic book instincts – visually atmospheric if susceptible to arch cheesiness — with the requirements of a small-scale drama.
  53. One Million American Dreams
    One Million American Dreams lacks a cohesive structure, but it is bound together by the tears and grief of the people left behind.
  54. Under the Eiffel Tower
    The film is light and follows a distinct formula, but Walsh is incredibly charming, and shares a potent chemistry with Godrèche.
  55. Cold Pursuit
    The body count goes up, but our interest level doesn’t rise with it.
  56. Untogether
    The Kirkes are attractive and intriguing actresses, Mendelsohn again proves one of the best screen actors around and Dornan looks great in scrubs. But it’s hard be sure exactly what Forrest is trying to say here and the film isn’t compelling or appealing enough to sufficiently care.
  57. High Flying Bird
    What makes High Flying Bird so welcome and unexpected is its combination of immediacy and drama, its provocative creation of here and now energy and smart dialogue around the unlikely subject of professional sports in general and pro basketball in particular.
  58. What Men Want
    Henson is a gifted actress and physical comedian. She manages to hold together What Men Want with the sheer force of her powerful charisma, but the film around her is harried, messy and woefully underwritten.
  59. The Wild Pear Tree
    The movie is undeniably long, talky and dense, but it is never uninteresting. You might call it slow too, though at the risk of mischaracterizing the speed of its verbiage and the dizzying complexity of its ideas.
  60. Berlin, I Love You
    For every poignant keeper...there’s a clunker.
  61. The Prodigy
    It could have been smarter without sacrificing pacing or chills. That’s not a dealbreaker — target audiences will likely be satisfied by its many pluses — but the film is good enough that you wish it went all the way.
  62. The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
    The puns and one-liners are jauntily amusing, the gags clever and well-timed. The tone is a familiar, infectious blend of sincerity and snark — or, if you will, earnestness and cynicism, which might as well be Emmet’s and Wyldstyle’s respective nicknames.
  63. The Souvenir
    If The Souvenir seems to move assuredly to its own unconventional rhythms, it’s because Hogg isn’t telling a straightforward story; she’s showing us, piecemeal, how an artist’s sensibility comes into being.
  64. The Report
    The Report parcels out its intel efficiently enough, though it creaks a bit more than it crackles.
  65. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
    A patchwork of impressions, ruminations and unsolved mysteries, The Last Black Man in San Francisco teems and even overflows with life and love, some might argue at the cost of narrative focus or momentum. That strikes me as precisely the point.
  66. The Farewell
    With exquisite poise, wry humor and delicate swells of feeling, The Farewell addresses and gently critiques the stoicism that Asians and Asian Americans are often taught to project as a matter of pride and dignity.
  67. Clemency
    It’s a sterling piece of American realism, powered by the transfixing spectacle of a great actor at the peak of her powers.
  68. Outlaws
    Nable’s script isn’t always clear on its characters’ motivations, and it drags on even at a brief 92 minutes. However, Outlaws should largely satisfy audiences who like their action movies savage and bleak.
  69. Then Came You
    In the overstuffed plot of Then Came You, Skye’s terminal illness isn’t even about her. Her life merely serves as a lesson for Calvin to overcome his fears and seize the day. It’s a shame this manic pixie dream sick girl can’t even get her own movie.
  70. A Breath Away
    Even as it treads on familiar Stephen King (“The Mist”) and John Carpenter (“The Fog”) territory, the film has moments that will leave you gasping for oxygen — as long as you choose to avoid all those gaping plot holes.
  71. St. Bernard Syndicate
    There are enough curiously deadpan, cringeworthy bits in Laerke Sanderhoff’s loopy script to keep you hooked, even as you search for the point of it all.
  72. The Nightingale
    This is a profound and difficult film, an attempt to grapple with the existence and mindless perpetuation of evil, and to suggest both the fleeting satisfaction and the eternal futility of vengeance. Nothing about it is easy, and everything it shows us matters.
  73. Tito and the Birds
    Tito and the Birds is a small marvel. Only 73 minutes long, it marries an adventurous visual imagination with a darkly provocative political parable. Its heroes may be children, but its themes are definitely adult.
  74. Who Will Write Our History
    Though its form is complex, including archival scenes that include concentration camp-type footage, the film’s emotional through line is clear and direct.
  75. Daughter of Mine
    Mothers are complicated. Children are complicated. Daughter of Mine doesn’t try to explain this bond — it just wants to revel in its glorious, enriching messiness.
  76. Piercing
    Piercing is decidedly not for everybody, but it somehow avoids exploitative luridness, thanks in part to the peculiar aura of uneasy innocence that Abbott and Wasikowska create around their roles (which are really more constructs than characters).
  77. The Unicorn
    Directed by Robert Schwartzman (“Dreamland”), The Unicorn is more silly than sexy, but it also has moments of seriousness with an emphasis on the value of honesty and trust in relationships.
  78. Braid
    Peirone’s first feature is marked by a daring style and a willingness to dive deeply into the darker psychology of female friendship. A uniquely feminine horror film, Braid is a bold debut worth watching.
  79. The Golem
    A well-crafted and idiosyncratic supernatural thriller, the film plays like a mix of “Frankenstein,” “The Witch,” and some of the Coen brothers’ more explicitly Jewish movies.
  80. Jihadists
    Margolin says we should “fight with ideas,” but Jihadists misses an opportunity to make vivid how that method of struggle would look.
  81. Miss Bala
    It’s understandable that Hardwicke didn’t want to mimic her predecessor’s moves. But in chop-chop-chopping the action into standard Hollywood fragments, she has drained the material of its tension, its meaning and its purpose, to say nothing of its beauty.
  82. Velvet Buzzsaw
    While the art world caricatures are hardly fresh, there’s a lot about Velvet Buzzsaw that’s pretty savvy and even inspired.
  83. Arctic
    Somehow, despite that minimalistic approach, we are emotionally swept up in Overgård’s desperate fight to stay alive.
  84. Hunter x Hunter: The Last Mission
    Hardcore “Hunter” devotees may enjoy “Last Mission,” but the film lacks much of the good cheer and frisky élan of the broadcast series.
  85. The Gandhi Murder
    Its timely messages become muted amid a kaleidoscope of settings, characters, brusque action scenes, blunt speechifying and wan romance.
  86. Serenity
    The off-kilter, colorful, cartoonish fantasy of Serenity is just so odd and appealing that you want to spend time with the characters, aboard this ship, among the people of Plymouth in this crazy, upside-down world.
  87. Extreme Job
    It’s all quite amusing up to a point, but unfortunately that point arrives early on in this practically two-hour-long take on a one-gag premise.
  88. An Acceptable Loss
    There’s the kernel of an intriguing political thriller buried beneath all the strained exposition and pompous speechifying enveloping An Acceptable Loss, but writer-director Joe Chappelle never manages to find it.
  89. Heartlock
    Heartlock is a daring and well-acted drama that can’t quite get the timing right.
  90. In Like Flynn
    With its incoherent, episodic script, In Like Flynn lacks the worth of even a minor Flynn film.
  91. The Invisibles
    Although this movie’s unusual mix of first-person interviews, archival footage, voiceover narration and dramatic reenactments is a bit awkward, it still makes for a gripping, involving and affecting experience.
  92. King of Beasts
    Directors Tomer Almagor and Nadav Harel simply let the cameras roll, giving Neilson enough rope to hang himself with his actions and words.
  93. The Kid Who Would Be King
    The occasional creakiness of the narrative machinery is largely dispelled by Cornish’s flair for brisk, energetic action and his ability to keep the journey flowing from one mini-adventure to the next.
  94. Polar
    Too bad the only thrill you get from all the bloodletting is that you know each cartoony death brings you that much closer to the end credits.
  95. King of Thieves
    If only this post-heist section had more tension, suspense and surprise, “King” could have been a real contender.
  96. West of Sunshine
    In the modest but sneakily affecting Australian father-son drama West of Sunshine, your sympathies for a problematic dad come and go in waves, sometimes within the span of a few seconds.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ánimas
    The Spanish spook show Ánimas is so powerfully atmospheric that it barely matters when the rest of the picture turns out to be a bit sparse.
  98. Goodnight, Charlene
    Zuhdi’s story is ambitious; and there’s something poignant about the way these characters’ roundabout schemes keep pushing them further away from what they really want. But the audience rarely gets to see these plans play out.
  99. The Final Wish
    The film’s biggest issue is its balance between setup and payoff.
  100. Dead Ant
    The film is unapologetically “low art” … yet fun, in its own way.
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