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. Brotherly Love
    The movie, based on the novel “Seventy Times Seven,” is so laden with hoary gay stereotypes and references (enough with “The Golden Girls”!), anachronistic name-checks (Charo? Jeff Stryker?), groan-worthy silliness, overplayed emotion and amateurish crafting it never had a prayer.
  2. The Forest of the Lost Souls
    The Forest of Lost Souls is a bit of a puzzle, which some viewers might find too much trouble to solve — especially given that in the middle it becomes shockingly violent. But the black-and-white images are lovely to look at, and whatever’s true or untrue about the characters, they’re all clearly alienated.
  3. Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days
    While “The Last 49 Days” is awkwardly bloated, it does eventually develop some momentum. Once viewers get accustomed to a movie that can move within minutes from courtroom drama to dinosaur attacks, they may enjoy the overwhelming spectacle of it all.
  4. Love is Tolerance - Tolerance is Love
    The intentions are admirable, but the execution and ideas are far too vague.
  5. Citizen Clark... A Life of Principle
    The unstructured and rather amateurish documentary Citizen Clark …A Life of Principle, directed by Joseph C. Stillman, depicts the compassionate Clark’s remarkable life in his own words and the memories of those around him.
  6. The Bleeding Edge
    Combined with the forces of anti-regulation in government and profit-driven companies who know how to market to doctors and cover up their mistakes, the movie lays bare a blueprint for countless suffering.
  7. Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
    As a candid and involving socio-sexual time capsule of postwar to pre-AIDS Hollywood and how one free-thinking pioneer made a secret society of legendary artists and performers undeniably happy, “Scotty” definitely succeeds.
  8. Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
    Tsui tries to preserve that human element in fits and starts throughout “Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings” but to little avail.
  9. Puzzle
    Macdonald has never starred in a film until Puzzle, and her delicate but deeply felt performance, along with the work of top Indian actor and costar Irrfan Khan and the rest of the cast, make this gentle, thoughtful yet pointed film the undeniable success it is.
  10. Dark Money
    No one has to see a documentary to understand that large sums of untraceable political campaign contributions are a bad thing. But Dark Money does need to be seen because it reveals with fascinating specificity how that crooked system works and details how one state decided to take it on.
  11. Killer Bees
    The bread and butter of good kids with talent and dreams, a committed coach, loyal followers and game footage does the expected task of charming us into becoming new fans, wherever we are.
  12. The Citizen
    An involving, stacked deck of a story plus strong acting and a mix of vital themes combine to make The Citizen a solid drama about immigration, nationalism and survival in an often unforgiving world.
  13. Far from the Tree
    This is a powerful movie about human nature and how no matter where we end up — and who we end up with — we wake up each day and adjust.
  14. Milford Graves Full Mantis
    Despite its singular star and bursts of audio-visual vibrancy, the film may prove more ponderous and patience-testing than enlightening or involving for all but the most intrepid viewers.
  15. Hot Summer Nights
    Although every cinematic experiment and story beat doesn’t always work, Hot Summer Nights is downright intoxicating, oozing with panache and sensuality from every pore.
  16. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
    Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is loud, cheery and fairly relentless in its assault on your rib cage. The pleasingly rudimentary visual design, all bright colors and madly expressive eyebrows, is no more and no less than what the material requires.
  17. Hell Mountain
    Unfortunately, Hell Mountain lacks basic cohesiveness in its storytelling, taking strange, unnecessary detours and not fully developing its details.
  18. Snapshots
    Snapshots nicely shuttles between past and present to tell its affecting, evocative tale of familial and romantic love among several generations of women. But it’s the flashbacks that prove more wholly compelling here, so much so that they could have made for their own standalone film.
  19. 14 Cameras
    A tedious exploitation picture not even sleazy enough to find offensive.
  20. Our House
    When the movie shifts more toward fright in its final third, Burns and Parker don’t have much new or exciting to offer. But with the help of a strong performance from Mann, they do a good job capturing one family’s feelings of brokenness, and how far they’d go to get back what they lost.
  21. The Row
    This latest entry in horror’s tradition of sorority-set slashers appears to have been made on a college student’s budget, shot by a horny frat dude and edited by a drunken pledge.
  22. King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen
    Is it possible to be a great filmmaker and not make great films? Steve Mitchell’s entertaining documentary “King Cohen” makes that case for prolific writer-director-producer Larry Cohen.
  23. Heels
    Like a wrestler struggling to balance his real-life and in-the-ring personas, the grappling comedy Heels feels torn between its dual personalities, one warm, one coarse. Though individual parts work, this indie film from actor-writer-director Ryan Bottiglieri never fully unites its various elements and disparate tones into a well-crafted whole.
  24. Larger Than Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story
    Larger Than Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story is a rich, deeply dimensional documentary looking back at the legendary makeup artist who died in 2002 at 40.
  25. Winter Brothers
    The cast, including Victoria Carmen Sonne, as the object of both Emil and Johan’s affections, and Lars Mikkelsen, as the quarry boss, is uniformly strong and singular.
  26. Path of Blood
    The movie is both a painful reminder of how Muslims are most often the victims of terrorism and the kind of behind-the-scenes glimpse at everyday evil...that reveals a confounding bizarro world where the inexplicable and mundane mix.
  27. Love, Cecil
    38 years after his death, Beaton's name is not so much on everyone's lips, and one of the pleasures of this film is to revisit his gifts beyond his best known work, the Oscar-winning production design and costumes for "My Fair Lady."
  28. Generation Wealth
    The mix of essay, history, critique, laughable spectacle, and reflection starts to feel unwieldy and steered toward easy assessments about the perils of loving money and worshiping appearance over substance.
  29. Damascus Cover
    The serviceable but astonishingly generic Damascus Cover features the usual political-thriller tropes — tough but haunted protagonist, zigzag of foreign locales, rival spies, arcane twists, shifting allegiances, wedged-in romance — without adding much that feels unique or exciting.
  30. Occupation
    The movie’s derivative but lively and has a surprising scope.
  31. The Equalizer 2
    Not everything in Equalizer 2 is successful, including a subplot about a Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivor played by Orson Bean that misses the mark. But the film is effective where it needs to be, and if there is an "Equalizer 3," in line to see it is where you'll find me.
  32. 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.
  33. Pin Cushion
    Scanlan is stunning as the odd but fiercely loving Lyn. She regards Iona warily, knowingly, seeing into her future and what she’s walking into, but with no way to stop it.
  34. Unfriended: Dark Web
    An initially clever exercise winds up feeling like the wrong kind of hackwork.
  35. McQueen
    Even if the dramas and dictates of couturiers and catwalks mean little to you, it is hard to resist the propulsive energy that director Ian Bonhote and co-director and writer Peter Ettedgui bring to the story of a designer whose background, beliefs and gifts were not what one would expect.
  36. Euthanizer
    It is a dark and often disturbing, boundary-pushing film, but the detached, almost ironic performance style provides a means to talking about taboo topics.
  37. Broken Star
    The situation and the performances are strong, but without a good story to hold everything together, it all falls apart in the end.
  38. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
    Everything old is shockingly, stirringly new again in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, the rare sequel so unexpectedly enchanting that it plays less like a rehash than a reclamation.
  39. Blindspotting
    There is something about the calculation of Blindspotting, a movie all too aware of its own impressive ambition, that somehow resists the poetic abandon, the electrifying spontaneity that Estrada and his collaborators are trying to pull off.
  40. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
    This is a film that wants you to live in the moment, to enjoy what is on screen when it is there in front of you and not worry how it fits into a plot that can be confusing but clears up in time for the inevitably rousing conclusion.
  41. Marsha Hunt's Sweet Adversity
    As long as the world worshiped fame, Hunt realized, that light could be redirected where it was most needed, and in our toxically fused celebrity-political climate, that focused, principled, humane simplicity of purpose feels as resonant as ever.
  42. Jim Gaffigan: Noble Ape
    If the show’s hilarious first half gives way to a more modestly amusing second part, Noble Ape remains good, clean, relatable fun.
  43. Constructing Albert
    It becomes clear that fame isn’t what he’s chasing — it’s perfection in innovation. Anything less is eighty-sixed.
  44. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
    In interposing haunting footage of the destructive wake of the Fukushima tragedy with Sakamoto’s evident, childlike delight in coming up with the perfect tonal combinations, the film serves as a stirringly poetic meditation on the pursuit of creation in the face of mortality.
  45. Poor Boy
    Despite its frustrating lack of narrative cohesion, there’s something intoxicating about the vibe of Poor Boy. It’s a world you want to explore more, and Pucci’s Romeo is a character worth falling in love with.
  46. The Night Eats the World
    No matter how spare and arty The Night Eats the World is, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been done before.
  47. 7 Splinters in Time
    Trying to straddle the space between “Primer,” “Dark City” and “Memento,” 7 Splinters in Time ends up a frustrating trip to no man’s land. Despite an ambitious premise and style, the neo-noir sci-fi indie is a fractured narrative that can’t achieve what its lofty ideas intend.
  48. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
    Van Sant pays tribute to the restorative power of faith, discipline and perseverance, but he also resists the temptation to follow these themes into an overly pat or complacent groove.
  49. Angels on Tap
    Angels on Tap is an ill-conceived comic-fantasy filled with strained and creaky humor, cardboard characters, an inane framing device and, as directed by Trudy Sargent, zero cinematic style.
  50. The Devil's Doorway
    Roddy and Bereen in particular give fully fleshed-out performances, playing agents of a religious institution they both disrespect in subtle and blatant ways. Clarke and company inject some old-fashioned scares into the context of a deeper moral rot.
  51. A Midsummer Night's Dream
    Mott, who started out in Hollywood working in the fabled William Morris Agency mailroom, nimbly choreographs all the updating, resulting in a breezy, cute-and-clever confection that’s tailor-made for a sultry midsummer’s night.
  52. Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
    Hotel Transylvania 3 may lack the indelibility of the medium’s best offerings for kids, but hopefully its clear theme of acceptance lingers long after the inoffensive odor of its fart jokes dissipates.
  53. Eighth Grade
    Fisher neither wilts under the camera’s scrutiny nor succumbs to the temptation to stare it down. She gives precise form and delicate feeling to emotions and experiences that, despite the specificity of the circumstances, most everyone will recognize.
  54. Siberia
    Despite its pro-forma nature, the setup for Siberia — a lone hero in over his head in an unfamiliar world — actually starts out well but refuses to play out in satisfying ways.
  55. Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti
    The film takes liberties with certain truths about Gauguin and his time in the tropics, yet despite — or maybe because of — its concoctions manages to produce a highly compelling central character.
  56. Custody
    Custody can be difficult, even wrenching to watch, but it always plays fair with the audience, and the experience, worth every minute expended, is impossible to forget.
  57. Skyscraper
    Johnson doesn’t get to pledge his love for unicorns and Molly Ringwald in this relatively straight-faced outing, but his versatility is more than intact: He’s a human wrecking ball, a human bridge and a human teddy bear rolled into one. He’s a towering Dwayneferno.
  58. King of Peking
    The movie isn’t just an excuse for the filmmaker to declare his love for “Lethal Weapon”; it dives into family dynamics, focusing on the son’s relationship with his unconventional father with some sweet and more serious moments.
  59. No Postage Necessary
    Techie buzzwords like “hacking” and “bitcoins” fly, but it’s all just for show. It’s not about the tech, despite a convoluted subplot with an FBI agent in pursuit. The real story is of Sam and Josie, but uneasy romance is misguided to be sure.
  60. Moss
    Given the script’s basic dialogue and narrow characterizations, it’s fortunate that there’s such an evocative locale to help us further imagine the lives of the film’s idiosyncratic folks.
  61. Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts
    It’s a sporadically tense and ominous four-chapter ride that slowly envelops you in its near mythical — at times mystical — neo-western spell.
  62. Whitney
    The main reason to see Whitney is the way it explores the baffling conundrums of her life.
  63. Bleeding Steel
    Bleeding Steel is a cartoonishly crazy, completely nonsensical cyberpunk action flick that is torturous to behold, and well below Chan’s caliber.
  64. Sorry to Bother You
    Not every joke here lands, and not every experiment proves successful, but it scarcely matters. The genius of the picture is that even its wildest, most boundary-pushing formulations are tied to a thoughtful, rigorous thesis about how disparities of race, class and money conspire to keep ruthless systems of human oppression in place.
  65. The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter
    The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter is more of a wistful character sketch than a fully realized wilderness comedy.
  66. Sunset Society
    Devotees of Sunset Strip rock decadence may enjoy the general seediness. Horror hounds will likely feel bored, confused and more than a little ripped-off.
  67. Under the Tree
    Screenwriters Sigurdsson and Breidfjord are fiendishly good at imagining the complimentary ways things spiral out of control, and the actors are expert at making us believe in what the director accurately calls “a war film where home is the battlefield.” On another level, however, with situations so grotesque it is often an effort to laugh.
  68. The Lighthouse
    The Lighthouse builds to a tragic incident and its disturbing aftermath, depicted with the dread and sick irony of an old “Tales From the Crypt” comic. But for the most part, the fears here are social, not supernatural.
  69. The First Purge
    It’s not difficult to decipher where McMurray and DeMonaco’s true allegiances are, but by delivering the story within the framework of genre cinema at its most trashy and garish, the filmmakers convey any message as a bit of rough pleasure amid the kicks and thrills of a movie.
  70. Fireworks
    For all its temporal twists and lyrical, sometimes remarkably photorealistic backdrops, Shinbo’s movie has none of “Your Name’s” narrative intricacy or stunning visual richness, much less its radical cross-gender empathy. These Fireworks look depressingly flat from any angle.
  71. Game Changers
    Pure gold, no Whammies.
  72. Calling All Earthlings
    Given all the intriguing stuff he had at his disposal...it’s a shame Berman isn’t able to bring the enigmatic man of the hour (plus 17 minutes) into greater focus.
  73. Recovery Boys
    In a state fighting the scourge of opiate addiction, Sheldon presents Jacob’s Ladder as a bright light, building a recovery community on the values of love, compassion and understanding.
  74. Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf
    As directed by Thomas Piper, a filmmaker who specializes in arts-related docs, "Five Seasons" does two things with grace and skill, starting with immersing us in what Oudolf's work looks like.
  75. The King
    The end result is sprawling and often unfocused, with a reach that exceeds its grasp.
  76. Woman Walks Ahead
    Deviations from the historical record aren’t a problem in and of themselves; it’s what those deviations add up to (or don’t), and what they say about the motivations of the artists behind them.
  77. The Cakemaker
    Culturally specific to its joint Berlin/Jerusalem setting but with themes that are universal, it joins an exploration of sexual fluidity and the nature of love and relationships with a strong plot that keeps you involved and guessing until the very end.
  78. Three Identical Strangers
    The tricky, twisty structure of this documentary, a scientific and philosophical inquiry by way of a detective story, suggests a joyous earthquake followed by a series of grim, unsettling aftershocks. It careens wildly from near-comic disbelief to unspeakable tragedy, dragging a trail of intense, contradictory emotions in its wake.
  79. This Is Congo
    This Is Congo is a vivid and immersive — if not all that neatly structured or focused — documentary about the Democratic Republic of Congo.
  80. Hover
    By the time the film reaches a third act low on logic and heavy on exploding heads, it's clear that "Hover" never had the right parts to take flight.
  81. Love All You Have Left
    This is writer-director Matt Sivertson’s first film, and he and his cast and crew are able to offer only a maudlin drama that inspires eye rolls rather than tears.
  82. Leave No Trace
    Fiercely involving in a way we're not used to, made with sensitivity and honesty by director/co-writer Debra Granik, it tells its emotional story of a father and daughter living dangerously off the grid in a way that is unnerving and uncompromising yet completely satisfying.
  83. Uncle Drew
    Make no doubt about it, Uncle Drew is a very silly film, old-age makeup and all. But it's got humor, heart and a killer soul soundtrack. You'd be soulless to not find some joy in this movie that's pure summer fun.
  84. Never Steady, Never Still
    Hepburn’s eye for detail and nuance is exceptional, especially as she evocatively captures the extremes of the film’s imposing landscapes. This is an austere, demanding, deliberately paced picture that will reward the patient.
  85. Black Water
    Everything about this movie seems ripped from the ’80s, including the woefully sexist gender politics. But that’s only one of many reasons that this B-movie dreck should have stayed underwater.
  86. The Elephant and the Butterfly
    Belgian director Amélie van Elmbt’s lovely trifle The Elephant and the Butterfly is as sweet and gentle — and at times simplistic — as its storybook title may imply.
  87. Ideal Home
    Equal parts sweet and tart, director Andrew Fleming’s “Ideal Home” is the cinematic equivalent of Sour Patch Kids.
  88. Dark River
    It’s the superbly acted interplay between the embattled Alice and Joe that drives this lean, gripping, often profoundly tragic tale.
  89. Ant-Man and the Wasp
    Ant-Man and the Wasp is a movie of deliberately low stakes and, for that very reason, enormous charm.
  90. Sicario: Day of the Soldado
    The trouble with this muscular, fitfully absorbing, confusingly titled action movie — a bigger, brasher and less memorable picture than its predecessor in every respect — is that its cynicism too often feels like a put-on.
  91. Paul, Apostle of Christ
    There is no triumph or easy uplift here, only an urgent emphasis on Christ’s message of sacrificial love and a principled rebuke to anyone who would cheapen the gospel with politics — a conclusion that has lost none of its sting or relevance 2,000 years later.
  92. Christian Audigier the Vif
    Christian Audigier the Vif lacks the strong narrative structure that would make it a better documentary, and it often skips details about Audigier’s life and experience that might have offered deeper insight into the designer.
  93. 6 Dynamic Laws for Success (in Life, Love & Money)
    In the absence of more intricate, involving plotting, the tongue-in-cheek characterizations and eye-catching production design only take things so far, and the novelty begins wearing off well before that dog-eared copy of “6 Dynamic Laws” reveals its final chapter.
  94. Racing Colt
    There’s some well-crafted dialogue and decent acting, including from Joseph R. Sicari as a besieged producer. But this overly talky and stagey film, which takes place mostly in Colt’s hotel room and trailer — and frustratingly off-set — lacks the requisite catharsis and charisma to sufficiently engage.
  95. Boundaries
    Feste...has been known to elicit strong performances even from thuddingly obvious, maudlin material. But her attempts to establish an atmosphere of drab, low-key realism — evident in the dim lighting, wobbly framing and Laura’s penchant for rumpled plaid shirts — can scarcely conceal the essential phoniness of the material.
  96. Damsel
    There is something inspired about the idea of fusing old-school aesthetic brio and revisionist politics, but the instant you see what Damsel is up to, its power begins to dissipate.
  97. Half the Picture
    With careful craftsmanship, Half the Picture is an important piece of testimony in the fight for the civil rights of female directors in Hollywood.
  98. Eating Animals
    The message is clear, and memorably rendered: Care about where your meat comes from, because then you might eat less of it, feel better when you do eat it, and cause a little less suffering in the world.
  99. Spiral
    The startling spike in anti-Semitism over the last two decades is certainly a vast and vital topic for documentary exploration, but director Laura Fairrie’s Spiral proves a largely underwhelming look at an overwhelming problem.
  100. Izzy Gets the F*ck Across Town
    Papierniak’s film is energetic, jam-packed with talent and has a likable indie throwback feel with some memorable moments.
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