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. In Search of Greatness
    As for Polsky’s own directorial style, it’s breathlessly, haphazardly eccentric, a little too prone to the clichés sports docs use to pump up our adrenaline. But his subjects — kings of the puck, the pigskin and the pitch — are engagingly self-analytical and honest.
  2. Walk the Line
    The movie is less an uncharted journey than a 2 p.m. bus tour of a music industry legend. But like an expert guide, Mangold shepherds the story with enough grace, energy and skill to make it worthwhile.
  3. Six Degrees of Separation
    What seems to start out as a burlesque against the rich -- a satire of class-consciousness -- ends up mutating into something stranger and richer and more ambiguous. [10 Dec 1993, p.F4]
    • Los Angeles Times
  4. When Marnie Was There
    It deals with friendship, loneliness, abandonment and forgiveness, and though its curious narrative arc means you're never sure exactly where it's going, the film works up a considerable emotional charge by the end.
  5. Pusher III: I'm the Angel of Death
    If Pusher III is the trilogy's least effective, that may be because the soured-deal plot line is by now a given, and its theme is the simplest: Old habits die hard.
  6. Control
    Kontroll is in fact an allegory, but one that oozes a gritty, dynamic realism.
  7. Terri
    It's potent stuff, laced with smart, sensitive humor, and extremely well handled by Wysocki and the excellent ensemble of young actors that become Terri's intimates.
  8. Dormant Beauty
    The proportions of the narrative strands sometimes feel off, but the movie pulses with the unpredictability of full-blooded characters.
  9. The Storms of Jeremy Thomas
    More discursive than comprehensive, the film does seem to capture Thomas’ fierce, swashbuckling spirit.
  10. Obit
    A fun and informative documentary.
  11. Amer
    Consistently outrageous and relentlessly surreal, the Belgian film is, intentionally or not, frequently funny; it's also compelling and distinctive.
  12. Daylight
    Replete with superior acting and visual splendor, the film is a fine instance of the overly familiar made fresh.
  13. Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
    At almost two hours, the film feels a bit long and suffers from multiple endings, but Okada is clearly a talent to watch.
  14. Mary and Max
    Mary and Max’s jauntiness fades into a sadness that culminates on a note of self-acceptance -- and a great gratitude for the sustaining, redemptive power of friendship.
  15. Rosemead
    Enough can’t be said about Liu’s astonishing, naturalistic turn. She’s a physical marvel here, making herself as small and inconspicuous — yet also as quietly resolute — as her complex character requires.
  16. Nas: Time Is Illmatic
    Since many of the themes from Illmatic have become mere clichés in contemporary rap, this film serves as a reminder of the potential and the promise that hip-hop truly holds.
  17. Match Point
    It pretty much keeps its pulse steady, its blood cold and its nerves tamped down -- which, combined with cinematographer Remi Adefarasin's architectural Hitchcockian flourishes, lends a queasy, cool air to the proceedings.
  18. Still Alice
    Elements of its plot have the standard quality of a Hallmark production, and the work of some of the film's costars is a bit too on the nose. But, with Moore and Stewart on the case, we feel the presence of something real here, something that can't be shrugged off or ignored.
  19. Late Night with the Devil
    This is a pressure-cooker film, an exercise in small-budget simplicity that leans on one set and one goal: Keep ’em watching.
  20. Sound of Noise
    Without pounding home its avant-garde cred, this fresh ode to found sound and the music of silence casts an amused gaze at careerism, classical-music reverence and notions of artistic purity and ends with a pitch-perfect change of tune.
  21. A Space Program
    A Space Program may find cheeky humor in our quest for meaningful science. But it certainly hints that there's something worshipful in the details.
  22. Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold
    It's that the closeness with Dunne, as well as his complete familiarity with the boldface-names life she and her husband led in both Los Angeles and New York, has given this film a quality of personal intimacy that makes it moving and involving.
  23. Ethel & Ernest
    While time inevitably marches on, director Roger Mainwood has a splendid constant at his disposal in the pitch-perfect voice performances of Blethyn and Broadbent, who inhabit their hand-drawn characters with a vivid, fully-dimensional authenticity.
  24. My Donkey, My Lover & I
    Calamy delivers a beautifully open performance at the center of an utterly winning comedy about the most important journey a person can take: toward finding themselves.
  25. Siddharth
    Mehta explores matters more complex and unsettling than movie-tidy, against-the-odds heroism. In Tailang's fine performance, the enormity of Mahendra's mission registers in all its devastating weight.
  26. Dear Santa
    There’s a much appreciated sweetness and innocence to what we witness, a truly diverse group of Americans selflessly helping one another, joy being their only compensation.
  27. Truly Madly Deeply
    The point of this film seems to be that wholesomeness is a sign of maturity, and it partially cancels out the performers. Juliet Stevenson breaks through anyway. She has a charged core, like Judy Davis, and she makes you root for her passage to happiness. [8 May 1991, p.6]
    • Los Angeles Times
  28. The Talent Given Us
    It's difficult, though, to see how this picture -- essentially chronicling a long car trip -- could mean much to anyone but the Wagners and their friends and relatives.
  29. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea
    As externalized visions of high school hellishness go, Shaw’s doesn’t always translate into the most cohesively entertaining of mash-ups, but his techniques are attention-grabbers.
  30. Manifesto
    Whatever Rosefeldt intended, Manifesto doesn’t quite set forth a manifesto of its own. But it’s a blast of fresh air. And like many of the gauntlet throwers it cites, it risks looking foolish and, in the process, creates something gorgeously defiant.
  31. Strictly Ballroom
    The movie musical may not have been dead after all, just resting up until this lot came around. [12 Feb 1993, p.F10]
    • Los Angeles Times
  32. Surfwise
    What Surfwise reveals is that the dark side of the surfing doctor was that he could be a terrible tyrant, someone whose controlling, self-centered rigidity limited his children in ways large and small as much as it gave them richer lives.
  33. Step Into Liquid
    Brown has expertly captured the exhilarating and terrifying experience of watching surfers attack waves so preposterously large and ridiculously beautiful they defy description.
  34. Mulan
    Mulan has its accomplishments, but unlike the best of Disney's output, it comes off as more manufactured than magical.
  35. Despicable Me
    The film throws so much ersatz cleverness and overdone emotion at the audience that we end up more worn out than entertained.
  36. The Silence
    The Silence is an exemplary German-language thriller, a complex and disturbing examination of guilt, violence and psychological torment that chills us to the core not once but two times over.
  37. Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony
    Despite the good intentions, structurally it's all over the place with an excess of montages, archival footage, interviews and information practically drowning out any chance to appreciate the richness of the German composer's beloved achievement.
  38. Donald Cried
    Touches of empathy and self-awareness invariably crystallize the unsettling emotions of revisiting one’s past life.
  39. The Incredible Jessica James
    Strouse demonstrates a contagious affection for his characters, and he invests in them in a way that makes us do the same.
  40. In the Intense Now
    The combination of archival bounty with Salles' touching analysis has a hypnotic effect, serving up the past plus reflection, garnished with a resonant melancholy about the ebb and flow of uprisings.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Year of the Everlasting Storm
    By cycling through humor, joy, sentimentality and surrealism, The Year of the Everlasting Storm reminds viewers of the myriad possibilities of daily life. The film’s poignancy comes from its confirmation that even in tumultuous times, our senses of wonder, love and loyalty remain integral to the human experience.
  42. Aloners
    While the message is pat, the way it’s presented is poignant, thanks to an arresting lead performance from Gong, who manages a tricky balance of chilliness and charm.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Angels in the Outfield
    Forget the wan 1994 remake and check out the sweet 1951 original. The great Paul Douglas, Janet Leigh and Donna Corcoran star in this fantasy about how the hapless Pittsburgh Pirates get help at bat from angels who were former baseball players. [27 Dec 1996, p.F24]
    • Los Angeles Times
  44. Eileen
    Oldroyd and McKenzie keep us adroitly off-balance.
  45. The Shrouds
    If this ends up being Cronenberg’s last, he’ll have gone out with a worldly, weighty epitaph.
  46. Kiss of Death
    With a fine piece of work in his hands, Schroeder has brought all his skill to bear on Kiss of Death, and it has made all the difference.
  47. Great World of Sound
    Enthusiastically received at Sundance, "Great World" is an intriguing look at our obsession with being successful and famous.
  48. The Kill Team
    A harrowing picture of the casualties of war — and the unchecked madness that may drive those entrusted to defend us.
  49. Sweet Virginia
    Dagg (who previously made the very good chase picture “River”) tries too hard to give the material a highbrow frame. The movie is dimly lighted and hushed to a fault. But the China brothers’ script is strong, and Dagg elicits terrific performances from Abbott, Bernthal and Poots.
  50. The Double Hour
    For what makes this tale something more than a puzzle to be solved is a level of emotional impact that genre exercises don't often provide, emotion traceable to sensitive acting that is similarly rare.
  51. The Rainmaker
    Though he's adapting the same story Grisham always tells, that of an ethical, talented and inexperienced attorney taking on and outwitting powerful and corrupt legal opponents, Coppola has infused The Rainmaker with enough humor, character, honest emotion and storytelling style to make it one of the year's most entertaining movies.
  52. Bobi Wine: The People's President
    Its narrative flaws (and there are serious ones) are more or less overcome by its compelling protagonist and the loving marital relationship at its center.
  53. 12
    There is an unnerving and hopefully implausible twist at the end, but for the most part, Mikhalkov's 12 is magnetic.
  54. The Invisible Man
    It’s elegant and diabolically poised, a familiar story expertly retooled for an era of tech-bro sociopathy and #MeToo outrage, but also graced with an insistently human pulse. Studio brand extensions rarely feel this intimate, this personally unnerving.
  55. The Batman
    It’s a movie of alternately promising and frustrating half-measures, in which Reeves’ shrewd storytelling instincts and the usual franchise-filmmaking imperatives repeatedly fight to a draw.
  56. The Ice Storm
    As frigid as its name. Burdened with a story of some of the world's least interesting people going through a holiday crisis, director Ang Lee and screenwriter James Schamus get as close as any creative team could to making matters involving, but the task is finally too much for them.
  57. Arctic
    Somehow, despite that minimalistic approach, we are emotionally swept up in Overgård’s desperate fight to stay alive.
  58. Real Genius
    It's a brisk, smart satirical comedy from the writers of "Police Academy" and the director of "Valley Girl," set in a Caltech-like institution for the whiz kids of the sciences. How refreshing it is to see young people depicted as having a capacity for thought as well as emotion.
  59. Definition Please
    Definition Please is one of those debuts that doesn’t fully cohere on its own but hints at the promise of what the filmmaker can do.
  60. Tuya's Marriage
    Thoroughly gratifying in its consistent inventiveness and has a grasp of human nature so universal that there's no feeling of the exotic about the film and its people.
  61. Undefeated
    Like all memorable sports documentaries - Undefeated is really an examination not of how games are won and lost but how lives are lived, how young people faced with daunting challenges come to see, often in the most dramatic fashion, what is important going forward and what is not.
  62. Stolen Seas
    What really elevates the film, though, is the crucial context that Payne provides to explain — but not justify — the pirates' actions.
  63. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
    It finally can't transcend the limitations inherent in being no more than a way station in an epic journey, a journey whose cinematic conclusion is several years away.
  64. Fed Up
    Soechtig puts mainstream clout to work to deliver a hard-hitting message. Her mix of archival material, punchy graphics and concise talking-head commentary traces a troubling modern history.
  65. Smashed
    Winstead, who appears in nearly every scene, can be compelling but, like the material, often pushes too hard, especially in Kate's climactic dive off the wagon. In a far more limited role, Paul is lower-key and convincing.
  66. Paradise Now
    A powerful, poignant, provocative drama, it gets its strength from its dispassion, from an uncompromising determination to explain rather than justify or condemn, to put a human face on incomprehensible acts.
  67. Cry, the Beloved Country
    Fortunately, in image and structure Roodt and Harwood go for a steadfast simplicity that builds to a beautiful moment of rekindled faith for the grieving Rev. Kumalo that lifts Cry, the Beloved Country to a climactic moment of redemption.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What Doesn't Kill You
    Ruffalo's feral vulnerability gives the familiar form a jolt.
  69. Swimming
    Ambrose's Frankie, who is more intelligent and capable of reflection than those around her but is even more unworldly than she realizes, is tremendously appealing.
  70. Manito
    As a dramatist Eason has a classicist's sense of structure and movement to complement his sense of the cinematic. Manito, which has a special grand jury prize from Sundance among its 10 awards, is a small film with a big impact.
  71. Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII
    Artfully, even elegantly constructed, Secret Lives skillfully probes issues of conflicting emotions and allegiances in a dark time, yet emerges as a loving affirmation of humanity's remarkable potential for goodness in the face of pervasive evil.
  72. Exit 8
    It wants you to feel that nightmare scenario of being stuck, but it also wants to be meditative. It’s not always successful at merging those experiences — as experimentation it falls short, and the horror label is also a stretch — but it ultimately earns a liminal fascination as it fuses your perspective to the protagonist’s.
  73. Tyrel
    Tyrel is a lab experiment with no insight into feelings of otherness beyond the blinding light directed at its wigged-out subject.
  74. Waking Ned Devine
    A roguish and delightful comedy of duplicity that's as entertaining as it is sly.
  75. F/X
    A love of the world of movies permeates the first-class, crackling excitement of F/X, giving a rare dimension to this thriller.
  76. Land of the Dead
    Romero easily commands an enormous cast, a plethora of action sequences and a cornucopia of special effects -- some of them very gory -- and creates one darkly dazzling image after another that allows Land of the Dead to emerge without any nudging whatsoever as a bleakly humorous, hard-charging allegory.
  77. Brooklyn 45
    Most of what makes Brooklyn 45 so entertaining doesn’t cost a lot of money. It just takes talent, and diligence.
  78. After Class
    We’ve seen many versions of this kind of story before, but there’s something so spot-on and involving about the film, written and directed by Daniel Schechter — and performed with such a lived-in rhythm by its talented cast — that it proves surprisingly refreshing.
  79. Inspector Bellamy
    Recently deceased master filmmaker Claude Chabrol's 50th and final feature, Inspector Bellamy, proves a sadly bland footnote to an illustrious and influential career.
  80. Neo Ned
    Neo Ned is exactly the kind of production -- scrappy, flawed and a little odd -- that should exemplify the very notion of "independent film."
  81. The Boss of It All
    No one is likely to rank "Boss" on the same level as his more somber and ambitious efforts, but Von Trier admirers will be pleased to discover that, even while working in a far less consequential mode than usual, the ever-uninhibited filmmaker's distinctive flair is in full force.
  82. Sick of Myself
    As the satire retains its acridness to the very end, Sick of Myself proves itself well-aware that narcissists don’t learn lessons — they learn how to adapt.
  83. Mogul Mowgli
    Though not all its gyrating parts and magical realist flourishes congeal, this feverish visual parlance rouses.
  84. A Family Thing
    Neither flashy nor dishonest, a wizard with restraint, Pearce has a gift for discovering the excitement in honest human behavior, and working from an acute script by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson, he's able to dramatize the story's essence without forcing the issue.
  85. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
    A documentary as gentle as its subject: the story of a boy who realized his dream and, on the film's evidence, received a lot of encouragement and support along the way.
  86. Thirst Street
    There’s not much in the way of bruising insight into the makeup of a deteriorating personality, but for a compact spin through well-trod fields of lustful, sad-mad blindness, “Thirst Street” has its share of disreputably perverse pleasures.
  87. Monument Ave.
    Mike Armstrong's relentlessly downbeat script allows Demme to develop an ensnaring camaraderie coupled with a dark destructiveness that recalls Eugene O'Neill.
  88. The Imitation Game
    The disturbing, involving, always-complex story of British mathematician Alan Turing is a tale crafted to resonate for our time, and the smartly entertaining The Imitation Game gives it the kind of crackerjack cinematic presentation that's pure pleasure to experience.
  89. Smiley Face
    Gregg Araki's delirious Smiley Face is an unabashed valentine to Anna Faris, an opportunity for the actress to show that she can carry a movie composed of often hilarious nonstop misadventures.
  90. Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
    An engrossing, muckraking documentary about the retail giant that's been called "the world's largest, richest and probably meanest corporation." But if you're expecting an angry diatribe, you're going to be disappointed.
  91. London Road
    This enchantingly strange movie couldn’t possibly be called naturalistic, but at times, it feels somewhat disappointingly normalized.
  92. Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown
    Their personality types match up splendidly with the characters they play as well as each other, and Mrs. Brown's greatest pleasure is seeing and hearing them spar. Even with the gloves on, this is a battle well worth observing.
  93. Leap Year
    Might be too much for some audiences, but it is a potent and surprising work.
  94. Chasing Amy
    A little movie with big truths, a work of such fierce intelligence and emotional honesty that it blows away the competition when it comes to contemporary romantic comedy.
  95. Married to the Mob
    Strangely enough, Married to the Mob, which may prove to be Demme's long-overdue passport to mass audience adulation, may tickle everyone but die-hard Demme fans. [19 Aug 1988]
    • Los Angeles Times
  96. The Water Horse
    An enchanting tale of friendship and evolvingrelationships, The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep" engagingly grafts coming-of-age movie chestnuts onto Scottish folklore.
  97. A Monster with a Thousand Heads
    Although the title might suggest cheesy sensationalism, A Monster With a Thousand Heads serves as a sobering, all-too-relatable indictment of the bureaucratic Hydra that is the medical insurance industry.
  98. Sisters in Law
    You might start to seriously wonder if there's a way to get this woman to run for office here in America.
  99. Maria by Callas
    While Maria By Callas is short on facts and biographical detail, it expertly presents an emotional essence of this performer, leaving you both shaken and stirred by the extent of her gifts and the way they connected to both audiences and her tumultuous life.
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