Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,523 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: 8,698 out of 16523
  2. Mixed: 5,808 out of 16523
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16523
16523 movie reviews
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  1. The Revisionaries
    Director Scott Thurman presents a largely even-handed recounting, wisely letting folks - and events - speak for themselves. It's riveting stuff.
  2. The Zen of Bennett
    This is when the movie earns its hushed exclusivity and kitschy title, when we see an art form bridge generations with a strange mixture of grace, joy and melancholy.
  3. Burn
    Vividly captures a year in the life of eastside Detroit's Engine Company 50.
  4. Dangerous Liaisons (2012)
    Visual sumptuousness trumps the coldly erotic dastardliness of previous incarnations, but where this version feasts is on close-ups, with exchanges between pairs of eyes - the predatory versus the hesitant, the manipulatively comforting opposite the blindly vulnerable - that recall the silent era.
  5. Price Check
    Writer-director Michael Walker keeps a firm grip on his smart material, offering up big laughs, lots of recognizable behavior and, in the end, a wistful glimpse at life's inevitable priorities.
  6. Saving America's Horses: A Nation Betrayed
    A revealing, disturbing look at how political and corporate forces have seemingly undermined the freedom and safety of our nation's equine population.
  7. Beware of Mr. Baker
    Writer-director Jay Bulger combines warts-heavy interview footage of Baker with vivid archival bits, concert clips, jaunty animation and chats with various musical greats to paint a lively portrait of yet another brilliant but wildly self-destructive artist.
  8. Honor Flight
    They all share their amazing war stories and life memories with great humility and warmth.
  9. The Rabbi's Cat
    It's a wild and vivid ride and a spirited reminder of the kinship between Jewish and Arab cultural traditions.
  10. Let Fury Have the Hour
    Kudos to writer-director Antonino D'Ambrosio for taking such an eclectic and disparate number of aims, thoughts, subjects and mediums and creating the smart and inspiring - and uniquely whole -documentary that is Let Fury Have the Hour.
  11. Lost Angels: Skid Row Is My Home
    These folks, who were also extras in "The Soloist," largely discuss their tough pasts and thorny presents with haunting candor, strength and grace - words that also apply to this vivid cinematic portrait.
  12. Aquí y Allá (Here and There)
    Esparza's cast of unknowns is so fresh and raw that the drama could be mistaken for a documentary if the camera work weren't so controlled.
  13. Stolen Seas
    What really elevates the film, though, is the crucial context that Payne provides to explain — but not justify — the pirates' actions.
  14. The End of Love
    An exceptionally intimate, human-scaled picture. It's also quite a special piece of work.
  15. Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
    Herzog has become a master of the understatement — knowing just how long the images can sustain you without a word being said. Vasyukov and his team of cameramen gave him a stunning range to work with, so the filmmaker keeps his own narration to a minimum.
  16. Sound City
    High-spirited, emotional and funny, Sound City is, of all things, a mash note to a machine. Not just any machine, however, but one that helped change the face of rock 'n' roll.
  17. Yossi
    Predictable if measured uplift aside, Fox keeps Yossi effortlessly affecting, graced with deadpan humor and a knowingness about lonely lives.
  18. Resolution
    In its gently atmospheric camerawork and nicely underplayed moments between Mike and Chris, Resolution manages to keep its eerier moments surprising and its emotional life arresting.
  19. Lore
    At its heart Lore qualifies as a coming-of-age story, but it is far from the ones we usually see.
  20. Koch
    Barsky does a good job of taking all the complexity of such a major personality and the times in which he flourished and boiling it down to the essentials.
  21. Somebody Up There Likes Me
    The film has a sarcastic tone, like that of a friend who you never can tell is kidding or not, which eventually breaks through into a place of unexpected sincerity. Meeting this odd, idiosyncratic "Somebody" is a rare delight.
  22. The Jeffrey Dahmer Files
    Far from closing the case, The Jeffrey Dahmer Files opens up a whole new perspective, acknowledging the banal and the baffling.
  23. Blue Jasmine
    The movie is among the filmmaker's most emotionally affecting.
  24. Sweetgrass
    Sweetgrass is an unexpectedly intoxicating documentary, unexpected because it blends high artistic standards with the grueling reality of one of the toughest, most exhausting of work environments.
  25. Hava Nagila: The Movie
    It's a fun, nostalgic, informative journey. Aided by vivid archival footage and photos, the movie charts the evolution of the song through the Holocaust, the birth of Israel and the modern Jewish Diaspora.
  26. Beyond the Hills
    With its long takes and deliberate pacing, Beyond the Hills is demanding but always engrossing, even during its repetitive middle section.
  27. Genius on Hold
    Marquette, aided by Frank Langella's precise narration, has crafted an engrossing and disturbing tribute.
  28. In the House
    François Ozon can usually be counted on for dark irony of the juiciest sort...But the filmmaker has an especially deft touch when a dash of comedy is mixed in. He uses this to delicious effect in his latest, In the House.
  29. The We and the I
    Moving somewhat obviously toward denouement, the film hits a false note or two. But mainly it's exhilarating in its refusal to make smooth what's messy, inchoate and tenaciously alive.
  30. Ain't Them Bodies Saints
    Mara is the captivating center of the film, all the emotions of the men and the child hinge on her moods. She continues to be one of those actresses able to shape-shift into different places, times and characters.
  31. Violeta Went to Heaven
    Francisca Gavilán's lead performance burns with a dark radiance that's anything but self-congratulatory.
  32. Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington
    For Hetherington, the front line was not just a set of coordinates in a bloody battle, but a space where true artists operated, and Junger's film goes a long way toward celebrating that mind set, but also recognizing how treacherous it can be.
  33. Eden
    Eden is never less than suspenseful, but rather than sentimentally pander to easy outrage, or indulge in icky women-in-distress titillation, the movie...zeros in on the details of how dignity can be stripped like bark from a tree, and the queasy determination it takes to stay alive in a living hell.
  34. The Wall
    The Wall is a remarkably involving film, especially given its brave, self-imposed limitations.
  35. Rescue in the Philippines
    "Rescue" features excellent archival footage plus a rich array of recent interviews.
  36. Renoir
    Renoir is a lush, involving film.
  37. Venus and Serena
    This is a story as involving as you'd imagine it would be.
  38. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
    It has an irresistibly sure touch, an easy command of its audience. It hits the right buttons, strikes the right chords, plays with our expectations with the right blend of savvy, guile and imagination. [26 Nov. 1986]
    • Los Angeles Times
  39. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
    Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is as much a spiritual odyssey as a space adventure, and it's all the richer for it. It has high adventure, nifty special effects and much good humor, but it also has a wonderful resonance to it. [9 June 1989]
    • Los Angeles Times
  40. Sightseers
    It is the almost accidental way Tina and Chris go about going bad that provides Sightseers with its twisted humor and its unexpected charm.
  41. Pieta
    Pieta, which won last year's Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, is disturbing, for sure, but its larger points save it from being a quick and dirty wallow.
  42. Don Jon
    Who would have thought one of the most amusing and oddly insightful romantic comedies would be built around the power and the potent pull of porn?
  43. Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story
    As intriguing as the facts are, much of the documentary's charm is the way in which it embeds the work.
  44. The Hunt
    It is a devastating film to watch.
  45. Mr. Jealousy
    Its easygoing and engaging quality masks how rare an accomplishment it is to create something achingly true as well as amusing, as wise about people as it is about the craft of film.
  46. Furious 7
    Furious 7 is the fuel-injected fusion of all that is and ever has been good in "The Fast and the Furious" saga.
  47. Bidder 70
    [A] vital and involving documentary.
  48. Computer Chess
    Director Andrew Bujalski makes a serious play for his own place in the pantheon of hysterically pretentious pretend.
  49. Drinking Buddies
    Swanberg achieves an occasionally heady aura of improvisational flirtatiousness mixed with a churning will-they-or-won't-they suspense.
  50. In a World...
    In a World… stands as a very entertaining first crack at what one can only hope will be a long career behind the camera. That is where it seems the actress can truly make her mark.
  51. 22 Jump Street
    A great deal of insanity ensues, none of which would work if Tatum and Hill weren't so disarming in their roles. Their level of comfort with the characters and each other helps 22 click.
  52. Out of the Furnace
    Bale, Affleck and Harrelson are in their element as men battered by life, delivering exceptional performances that hold nothing back. Bale and Affleck are as nuanced as Harrelson is unhinged. It is among the finest work done by all three.
  53. Fury
    What makes this film distinctive is the adroit way it both subverts and enhances old-school expectations, grafting a completely modern sensibility onto thoroughly traditional material.
  54. Nymphomaniac: Volume I
    It provides, perhaps like the experiences of love and sex, a shifting variety of insights, emotions, unexpected lightness and moments of visceral shock.
  55. Europa Report
    While Europa Report does quite well dramatically without breaking any new ground, its great strength is how striking it is visually and the stratagems it employs to make itself memorable.
  56. You Will Be My Son
    A strongly acted, character-driven melodrama, concerned with the dynamics of family in general and father-son issues in particular, it presents situations so emotionally supercharged that the whole story could have come straight out of Balzac.
  57. Big Hero 6
    Amid all the nerd-inspired firepower that gives the movie much of its flash, the big boy's droning tone proves to be the film's stealth weapon, perfect for pulling off highly targeted comic strikes.
  58. Augustine
    The film's dark beauty and the quiet intensity of the performances have a discomforting pull.
  59. Lone Survivor
    Berg, who wrote and directed, is more interested in how men deal with battle than the ideals or the politics that put them there. What the movie achieves, with a gruesome energy and a remarkable reality, is a firefight.
  60. Valentino's Ghost
    It's a provocative, absorbing — and at times dicey — study.
  61. The Congress
    In conjuring a fantastical slippery slope in which technology, pharmaceuticals and the entertainment industry co-star in a takeover of our lives, The Congress boasts a propulsive image-making pull.
  62. The Immigrant
    Though the film is sometimes as fraught as the immigrant experience, in the end the ideas are so rich, the look so lovely, Ewa's journey so heartbreakingly real, even the flaws seem to suit it.
  63. Only Lovers Left Alive
    The unhurried film is a beauty. Shooting digitally — a first for Jarmusch and a paradox for a movie that so ardently celebrates the artisanal — cinematographer Yorick Le Saux uses nocturnal lighting to eloquent effect. The titular lovers are beauties too, soulful and captivating. Swinton and Hiddleston make their love story one for the ages.
  64. The Selfish Giant
    The Selfish Giant is devastating social realism in the mode of Ken Loach's "Kes."
  65. A Touch of Sin
    A Touch of Sin, the powerful if uneven new film by highly regarded Chinese director Jia Zhangke, is a corrosive depiction of the New China.
  66. Call Me Kuchu
    The civil rights arguments and the activism are handled in remarkably objective fashion, though it is no mystery where the directors' sentiments lie.
  67. The Prey
    For moviegoers who prefer cheeky wit, down-and-dirty mayhem and grown-up suspense in their air-conditioned escapism, The Prey deserves to light up the summer art house.
  68. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
    A crafty, brainy and uniquely stirring concoction.
  69. High Hopes
    The actors, many of whom are part of a loose Mike Leigh stock company, are miraculously deft at erasing that line between performing and being.
  70. Career Girls
    Though its plot frequently falls back on coincidence, so much so that the characters joke about it, Career Girls has the almost magical ability to involve us emotionally with these women even though there are points when we would've sworn that wouldn't be possible.
  71. Fame High
    It's not only this idealism that makes the subjects of Fame High so compelling, it's also their honesty, their willingness to open a window into their lives at that pivotal moment when they're taking their first tentative steps toward becoming their own person personally and professionally.
  72. Museum Hours
    It's a film whose pleasures are much more visual than dramatic, but that doesn't mean there aren't serious things on its mind.
  73. Dallas Buyers Club
    Even with some flaws and flailing, Dallas Buyers Club is a rough, raw, ragged and exhilarating ride.
  74. How to Make Money Selling Drugs
    As the filmmaker unfurls the harsh, essential facts, both past and present, about America's complex relationship with drugs — along with tobacco and alcohol's longtime place in the equation — the movie gains serious power and momentum.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Close Encounters of the Third Kind
    It is a warm celebration, positive and pleasurable. The humor is folksy and slapstick rather than cerebral, as if to confirm that our encounter is with a populist vehicle.
  76. Into the Woods
    What makes Into the Woods so entertaining is the cleverness of the tale itself and the way specific characters match the talents of its storytellers.
  77. Alan Partridge
    In taking Partridge to the movies, the writers go broader and deeper than they typically do with the story.
  78. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
    The sense of film craft here is so delicate and assured that, even at its most razzle dazzle-prone moments, the movie never seems to be straining for effect.
  79. Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction
    At the film's heart is a fitful conversation that unfolds like a string of koans, epigrams, jokes and silences.
  80. Gasland Part II
    With continued arguments and legislation over fracking, this follow-up seems inevitable and necessary.
  81. The Crash Reel
    The Crash Reel asks pointed questions about hazard, reward and consequence, forcing us to look anew at the rush attached to so many high-stakes sports.
  82. Still Mine
    The estimable James Cromwell splendidly anchors this tender, true-life tale.
  83. Terms and Conditions May Apply
    In inverse proportion to typically long-winded, inscrutable terms of service, the film is concise, direct and thoroughly engaging.
  84. Big Words
    Drumming is able to swing from lighter comedic moments to dramatic insights while making it seem effortless.
  85. Pusher
    The film practically vibrates with youthful aggression, sly humor and gathering tension, hurling itself forward like a junkie toward the next fix.
  86. Pusher II: With Blood On My Hands
    The introduction of a baby that Tonny supposedly fathered feels worrisome initially...but in Refn's skilled street-realist hands, the child becomes a potent, wailing metaphor for Tonny's own dilemma of rudderless need.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Our Nixon
    It's a haunting, thoroughly evocative ride.
  88. Terraferma
    A stirring commentary on our better angels.
  89. Snowpiercer
    [Bong Joon-ho] combines a great cast, a gripping idea and a gorgeously grimy retro aesthetic to keep this eerie examination of the train wreck of humanity racing along.
  90. The Artist and the Model
    The lovely and poignant drama The Artist and the Model stirringly presents art, life and death as one irrevocably tangled trio.
  91. A Single Shot
    The film charts no new territory but is terrifically cast and, like its source novel, long on atmosphere.
  92. Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers
    The world's most successful ring of diamond thieves is inventively and insightfully explored in the documentary Smash and Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers.
  93. The Trials of Muhammad Ali
    The Trials of Muhammad Ali is a complex and involving documentary.
  94. Off Label
    With its focus on intimate detail, Off Label is not a conventional "issue film" reaching for conclusions. Palmieri and Mosher have taken on a huge and urgent topic, and their work's impact rests on their refusal to tell viewers how to feel.
  95. 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film
    This gripping, innovatively constructed flashback commands attention.
  96. Neighbors
    This raunchy unrooting of a settled suburban idyll exposes the considerable angst of emerging adulthood with a kind of scatological fervor designed to elicit oodles of inappropriate laughs. It succeeds.
  97. The Good Son: The Life of Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini
    [A] colorful, absorbing documentary.
  98. Muscle Shoals
    Director Greg "Freddy" Camalier skillfully, unhurriedly unfurls a wealth of classic music-biz tales as told by a who's who of R&B, soul and rock 'n' roll royalty and various other players and purveyors.
  99. Inequality for All
    Reich and documentary director Jacob Kornbluth turn out to be the ideal collaborators to tell the story of what that gap is, why it happened and why it's important, all in a totally engaging way.
  100. Night Moves
    What happens when a seemingly righteous operation goes wrong and anxiety threatens to overtake ideals? It is the question Night Moves asks and answers in chilling ways.
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