Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,520 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 16520
  2. Mixed: 5,806 out of 16520
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16520
16520 movie reviews
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  1. 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.
  2. 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."
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Occupation
    The movie’s derivative but lively and has a surprising scope.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. Unfriended: Dark Web
    An initially clever exercise winds up feeling like the wrong kind of hackwork.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. Constructing Albert
    It becomes clear that fame isn’t what he’s chasing — it’s perfection in innovation. Anything less is eighty-sixed.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
  26. 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.
  27. 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.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. 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.
  31. 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.
  32. 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.
  33. 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.
  34. 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.
  35. 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.
  36. 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.
  37. Whitney
    The main reason to see Whitney is the way it explores the baffling conundrums of her life.
  38. Bleeding Steel
    Bleeding Steel is a cartoonishly crazy, completely nonsensical cyberpunk action flick that is torturous to behold, and well below Chan’s caliber.
  39. 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.
  40. 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.
  41. 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.
  42. 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.
  43. 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.
  44. 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.
  45. 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.
  46. Game Changers
    Pure gold, no Whammies.
  47. 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.
  48. 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.
  49. 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.
  50. The King
    The end result is sprawling and often unfocused, with a reach that exceeds its grasp.
  51. 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.
  52. 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.
  53. 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.
  54. 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.
  55. 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.
  56. 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.
  57. 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.
  58. 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.
  59. 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.
  60. 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.
  61. 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.
  62. Ideal Home
    Equal parts sweet and tart, director Andrew Fleming’s “Ideal Home” is the cinematic equivalent of Sour Patch Kids.
  63. Dark River
    It’s the superbly acted interplay between the embattled Alice and Joe that drives this lean, gripping, often profoundly tragic tale.
  64. Ant-Man and the Wasp
    Ant-Man and the Wasp is a movie of deliberately low stakes and, for that very reason, enormous charm.
  65. 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.
  66. 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.
  67. 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.
  68. 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.
  69. 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.
  70. 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.
  71. 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.
  72. 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.
  73. 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.
  74. 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.
  75. 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.
  76. Mrs. Hyde
    Among the movie’s more disquieting pleasures is the sight of this peerless actor — known for her ability to project an air of casual, chilly mastery over any situation — wilting under the mockery of her character’s unruly students, who treat her with only slightly more contempt than her colleagues do.
  77. Distorted
    What the movie does have going for it is Ricci, who in the past few years has become a master at playing offbeat heroines in violent stories. Ricci is convincingly terrified in a film that’s never scary enough to justify her performance.
  78. The Catcher Was a Spy
    While the always affable Rudd is up to the more serious task at hand, the overly studied direction by Australian Ben Lewin frustratingly keeps the audience at arm’s length from both its lead and that surprising chain of events, which feel as palpably pieced together as the stitching on Berg’s baseballs.
  79. Incident In a Ghostland
    There’s real ugliness here, with the creative torture visited on the victims being enough to unsettle all but the most hardened of horror fans. Unfortunately, the ugliness isn’t solely in the on-screen violence. Transphobia and misogyny flow through the film as much as blood, staining what might have been a solid genre effort.
  80. The Accidental Detective 2: In Action
    The humor is often broad to the point of being shrill — especially once an eccentric genius nicknamed “Hopper” (Lee Kwang-soo) joins the team. For the most part though, The Accidental Detective 2 whooshes by, easily and forgettably.
  81. Beach House
    Peppered with dream sequences and flashes of its protagonist’s thoughts, Beach House is a murky mess. It feels more like a draft for a college creative writing class rather than a finished work.
  82. Intersection
    The modestly watchable, at times intriguing romantic mystery Intersection is never quite skillful or convincing enough to forget for even a moment how many far better haunted hunk-meets-femme fatale thrillers have come before it.
  83. China Salesman
    The woodenness of China Salesman, coupled with the general oddness of a two-fisted adventure yarn about hyper-aggressive telecom companies, gives this movie some “weird cinema” appeal. But if you can’t tolerate stinky cheese, leave this one on the shelf.
  84. Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist
    It is the charm of Lorna Tucker's film that, her subject's reluctance notwithstanding, it provides a fascinating, involving glimpse of both who Westwood was back in the day and who she is at this particular moment in time, so much so that we genuinely miss her once the credits begin to roll.
  85. A Skin So Soft
    Côté’s film patiently paints a picture of men who are more than their bodies, revealing the emotions beneath the skin and muscles and challenging perceptions about them.
  86. Believer
    Throughout, Reynolds approaches the range of people and issues he encounters with warmth, candor and earnest support.
  87. En el Séptimo Día (On the Seventh Day)
    As we hang on the film’s plot twists, we also quietly absorb its points about the power of community and the purposeful determination of immigrants to create better lives for their families, not as special pleading but as something powerful and convincing.
  88. Affairs of State
    Nothing here is revelatory — at least not to anyone who reads the op-ed pages or has watched “The Good Wife.” But the movie is refreshingly smart about how real feelings can get in the way of callous calculation.
  89. Counterfeiters
    Counterfeiters is an amateurish first film, with inexperienced actors, clunky writing and a homemade ambiance. But the ambition and moments of inspired style are be lauded.
  90. Gotti
    Although this unsettlingly sympathetic biopic covering around the last 30 years in the life of famed New York mobster John Gotti is mostly well-acted and frequently entertaining, it bites off more than it can — or even needs to — chew, packing it all into a less-than-epic running time.
  91. The Yellow Birds
    Making a late appearance in the Iraq War movie cycle, the impressively acted “The Yellow Birds” manages to leave an affecting mark even as it constantly struggles to find a distinctive voice of its own.
  92. The Year of Spectacular Men
    Thompson’s directing is serviceable, if slightly scattered and derivative, using every rom-com trope and flourish available. “The Year of Spectacular Men” feels a bit long and self-involved — and a lot like the men whom Izzy dates, it’s fun but far from spectacular.
  93. Sunday's Illness
    Salazar’s deliberateness of image and tone can sometimes feel like its own archly overemphasized meaning, but it’s never less than an artfully sincere companion to the drama of missing years and reconsidered choices that fortifies Sunday’s Illness.
  94. Gabriel and the Mountain
    A beautifully filmed, subtly political travelogue with some central conundrums.
  95. Billy Boy
    Written by and starring a bleached-blond Blake Jenner, Billy Boy is ambitious in its structure, style and editing, but the final product is disjointed and irritating.
  96. Set It Up
    You don’t need to be well-versed in rom-coms to know that, in the process, Harper and Charlie will ultimately fall into each other’s arms, but getting there proves to be a slog courtesy of screenwriter Katie Silberman’s talky, sitcom-ready dialogue and director Claire Scanlon’s ponderously uneven pacing.
  97. Tag
    While Tag doesn’t get every character beat right, it nails the energy and enduring companionship that the game has engendered among the friends. It’s the kind of frothy escapist fare that goes down easy on a hot summer day, with a big old beating heart to boot.
  98. SuperFly
    Superfly may be suffused with political fury, but it is also unapologetically awash in cheap, disreputable B-movie thrills.
  99. Incredibles 2
    Though it would be unrealistic to expect "Incredibles 2" to have quite the genre-busting surprise of the original, it is as good as it can be without that shock of the new — delivering comedy, adventure and all too human moments with a generous hand.
  100. Saving Brinton
    Saving Brinton is an endearing, affectionate documentary, an examination not so much of film exhibition pioneer Frank Brinton and how his life's work was saved but of the genial and humane eccentric who did the saving.
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