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. Mute
    The references, conscious and not, serve as constant reminders to the audience of other, better, movies, rendering Mute more atonal hodgepodge than carefully orchestrated pastiche.
  2. Broken Ceiling
    The film feels like it doesn't hit its stride until two-thirds of the way through, when Davis unleashes Kendrick. It's a clever premise, and there are some great performances, including Kendrick's, but a few story elements are fumbled to the film's detriment.
  3. 7 Guardians of the Tomb
    7 Guardians of the Tomb should be a B-movie blast, but it never seems aware of its own silliness.
  4. Beast of Burden
    Experiencing Beast of Burden's inept dialogue and uninspiring direction on screen is a continual trial.
  5. The Chamber
    Ben Parker's feature directorial debut never takes full advantage of its small setting, resulting in a grim thriller that isn't as compelling as it might have been in stronger hands.
  6. The Lodgers
    The Lodgers isn't especially frightening, but as the story of people weighed down by their legacies, it is genuinely haunting.
  7. Every Day
    Adapted by Jesse Andrews, the movie speaks toward the truth that appearances — including one's race and gender — shouldn't matter in love and relationships. It's a thought-provoking concept that makes "Every Day" more ambitious than your average teen romance, which only makes it all the more disappointing that it simply remains an average teen romance.
  8. The Housemaid
    Writer-director Derek Nguyen's supernatural thriller settles confidently in a place between classy and trashy.
  9. Beuys
    Andres Veiel's documentary Beuys, plays like a fan's flip book divorced from meaningful resonance.
  10. The Boy Downstairs
    As the film moves elegantly between past and present, Brooks proves a keen observer of behavior and the pitfalls of overthinking. Finding complex beauty in what would be merely obvious in a lesser work, her delightful feature taps into a rarely broached, generally female coming-of-age dilemma: the fear of losing yourself before you know who you are.
  11. The Cured
    The confluence of rebellion, personal responsibility and genre violence never quite gels, perhaps because the realities of a zombie movie ultimately dictate where these things are headed.
  12. Half Magic
    As the writer-director's sly gaze shifts into an insistently upbeat appeal for female empowerment, the movie loses its comic steam.
  13. Survivors Guide to Prison
    While a fair amount of its subject matter overlaps with Ava DuVernay's incendiary "13th," Matthew Cooke's "Survivors Guide to Prison" nevertheless serves as a valuable primer for those estimated 13 million Americans who are arrested every year.
  14. Game Night
    Certainly you expect a good time from Bateman and McAdams, who give their banter just the right sly, sportive rhythm even when the lines and situations themselves come up short.
  15. Agenda: Payback
    Although director Giorgio Serafini keeps the action apace in what's largely a one-location setting (the movie was shot in Texas), Garry Charles' script at times lacks clarity and credibility, as well as sufficient back story about the showy Steve. Still, Flanery and Balfour keep us watching.
  16. Are We Not Cats
    The singular aesthetic is gritty, beautiful and expressive, and somehow, you want to root for the love story of Eli and Anya, thanks to the charismatic performances of Nicholson and Lopez.
  17. The Young Karl Marx
    Whatever else you think about Marx and his ideas, it's hard to imagine him as hot-blooded and young. Director and co-writer Raoul Peck, as it turns out, not only understands those contradictions, he is committed to embracing them, which is what makes The Young Karl Marx the audacious, engrossing film it is.
  18. Days of Power
    Unnerving camerawork, editing and sound design rule this nightmarish, nonlinear effort which features credible glimpses into the world of celebrity, if not the music business itself. But dialogue, characterizations and acting (Eric Roberts has a negligible cameo) feel decidedly secondary to the film's more jarring visceral elements.
  19. Curvature
    Curvature is a forgettable sci-fi thriller whose intriguing start gives way to an arcane, convoluted plot that fails to viscerally or emotionally engage.
  20. Annihilation
    Its most impressive achievement may be how easily it welds the mechanics of genre and the cinema of ideas. Garland's movie has its grisly flourishes, but unlike so many thrillers that preoccupy themselves with spectacles of death, it's more interested in pondering the strange, inextricable link between creation and destruction.
  21. Detective K: Secret of the Living Dead
    It's a pity such memorable characters are stuck in a story so middling.
  22. Hidden Light
    The Aussie crime-thriller "Hidden Light" manages to be an involving ride despite its sometimes murky storytelling and elliptical character connections.
  23. The Monkey King 3
    The Monkey King 3 is more about eye-popping spectacle than narrative sweep, but it's generous with images that make audiences go, "Oooh!"
  24. Poop Talk
    Poop Talk is at its best when the actors and comics are telling jokes and ruminating on the nature of why these jokes are so funny and their appeal is so universal.
  25. Looking Glass
    Looking Glass ultimately feels trapped between leaning toward Lynchian identity weirdness and suggesting a classically character-driven slice of indie exploitation, despite a suitably retro Tangerine Dream-like score that vibrates suspensefully when needed.
  26. Irreplaceable You
    The film's first half is so annoyingly glib and faux-amusing, it sets a misguided tone that distances instead of engages.
  27. Honor Up
    There's a distinction to be made between old school and old hat, but it's lost on Honor Up, a criminally inept throwback to '90s urban gangsta movie posturing that plays like a stone-faced version of the 1996 Wayans brothers spoof, "Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood."
  28. The Party
    With The Party, availing herself of a zinger-heavy script and an unimprovable cast, the director has made not only her most accessible picture to date, but also a shrewd demonstration of the less-is-more principle.
  29. Nostalgia
    The actors can't turn the strained stabs at poetry into the affecting meditation that was clearly intended.
  30. Golden Exits
    This exquisitely textured ensemble portrait is a gentler, more forgiving piece of work, not least because the filmmaker's jabs — and his sympathies, such as they are — feel more evenly distributed.
  31. Early Man
    A droll romp through prehistoric times, filtered through Park's beyond antic imagination.
  32. Double Lover
    What gives the film its surprising coherence is not only the fluidity of Ozon's technique but also his mastery of tone, the ease with which he applies serious craft to a resolutely un-serious endeavor. The filmmaker's cackle is always audible beneath the story's glassy, deadpan surface.
  33. Signature Move
    Adding wrestling to the rom-com mix doesn't quite disguise how by-the-numbers this girl-meets-girl story is. But with its likable characters, local color and cross-cultural sparks, "Signature Move" has unsentimental sweetness and pluck.
  34. Mama Africa: Miriam Makeba
    What ultimately stands is a portrait of a woman for whom the term "cultural ambassador" was meant, whose dynamic range and earth-wide smile made the words and sounds pouring from her like a hand extended, a heart exposed, a story of the world made achingly real.
  35. The Next Big Thing
    There are a few early laughs, but the film from first-time director Brody Gusar is a tonal mess with feelings of disgust as its sole constant.
  36. Still/Born
    There's nothing all that original about Still/Born. But it's sharp and shocking, and parents especially should appreciate how it turns caring for a screeching newborn into an inescapable nightmare.
  37. Black Hollow Cage
    González maintains a glacial pace and a hushed tone, while withholding so much information that the film is confusing and only comes together in retrospect. It's a grueling experience, with a modest payoff. By the time it finally ends, every word in its title feels apt.
  38. The Ritual
    The Ritual is efficient and highly effective in its style, relying on sound, creepy production design, and the men's own fear and misjudgment to create the sense of pervasive doom. We don't see the monster in too much detail, leaving the mystery intact, but the creature design is stunningly original.
  39. Fake Blood
    Even at its most confounding, this is a challenging and entertaining film, delivering suspense and drama even as it's asking if it should.
  40. Bomb City
    The message is lost in this laughably deck-stacked journey, a movie-long version of "They started it!"
  41. Entanglement
    Director Jason James, working off a darkly amusing, often lovely script by Jason Filiatrault, effectively juggles the film's disparate, tone-shifting parts and bits of magic realism while coaxing memorable performances from Middleditch, Weixler and Bang.
  42. Pad Man
    A few plot contrivances aside, Padman is a well-told and performed film that compellingly fills its lengthy running time with hope, resolve and exuberance.
  43. Peter Rabbit
    The movie...resembles a sloppily tended garden plot where crude sight gags and violent set-pieces flourish like weeds, but anything resembling actual humor or delight refuses to take root.
  44. The Female Brain
    With such a fractured narrative, it's difficult to get into a groove with these short, shallow and over-simplified stories.
  45. Seeing Allred
    Made with its subject's cooperation and talking to people like comrade in arms Gloria Steinem and Allred's daughter, fellow attorney Lisa Bloom, the film allows us, at least to a certain extent, to get behind the public persona to the private person.
  46. When We First Met
    This watered-down rom-com doesn't fully deliver but it's a diverting twist on the genre nonetheless.
  47. Monster Family
    The colorful animated comedy Monster Family relies so heavily on pratfalls, slapstick and other bits of rude or raucous action that it undercuts whatever good intentions its workable story may have had.
  48. Permission
    Permission asks difficult questions and doesn't offer easy answers. But while it deals with heavy relationship issues including the validity of monogamy, it manages an easy, seemingly effortless humor that seduces the audience while simultaneously breaking filmgoers' hearts.
  49. Basmati Blues
    Despite his attempt to graft an environmental message onto a traditional musical template, there's little about director Danny Baron's feature debut that feels convincingly organic to either the plotting or the characterizations.
  50. Becks
    Sexy and sexually frank, Becks works thanks to the musical talent and offbeat charms of its lead. Hall feels authentic at each moment, whether she's strumming a guitar in a dive bar, fighting with her mother or falling in love.
  51. The 15:17 to Paris
    Though the sequences of the actual heroism on the Paris-bound train are fully as crisp and involving as you'd expect, the other sections of the film, intent on demonstrating how undeniably everyday the three participants were up to that crucial moment, fall regrettably flat.
  52. Fifty Shades Freed
    If liberation is the endgame of Fifty Shades Freed, most of the time we feel trapped right alongside the characters, immobilized by the pointless, suffocating beauty and the stultifying dramatic inertia of the world James has created for them.
  53. Black Panther
    Energized to a thrilling extent by a myriad of Afrocentric influences, Black Panther showcases a vivid inventiveness that underscores the obvious point that we want all cultures and colors represented on screen because that makes for a richness of cinematic experience that everyone enjoys being exposed to.
  54. The Cloverfield Paradox
    Narrative incompetence is one of the more venial sins of big-budget filmmaking, but there is something particularly ugly and cynical about the sloppiness of The Cloverfield Paradox, as if its status as a franchise stepping stone excused its blithe contempt for the audience's satisfaction.
  55. Winchester
    No matter how many non-sequitur jolts they manage to squeeze into these jumpy proceedings, the ability to sustain a sense of dread, to create tension that lasts beyond the immediate moment, seems dispiritingly beyond their grasp.
  56. Braven
    It's Momoa's show and he brings strength, warmth and gravitas to a part that, thanks to an emotionally-grounded script by Thomas Pa'a Sibbett, based on Mike Nilon's story), proves more than just "Conan, the Lumberjack."
  57. Wastelander
    Ultimately, Wastelander is a movie for fetishists, who likely won't care about the emptiness at its center so long as its surfaces are as smothered with cheese as the straight-to-VHS junk they loved as a kid.
  58. The Music of Silence
    The pedestrian filmmaking and community-theater pacing mostly recalls PBS pledge drives hawking Bocelli records.
  59. Scorched Earth
    A decent premise — and a game Gina Carano — get left in the dust kicked up by Scorched Earth, a dull, draggy post-apocalyptic western set in the not-too-distant, environmentally toxic future.
  60. A Ciambra
    Amid the verisimilitude of location shooting and a cast of mostly nonprofessionals playing fictionalized versions of themselves, Carpignano inserts poetic touches.
  61. On Body and Soul
    Like the best of dreams, familiar yet wondrously different, On Body and Soul adroitly mixes recognizable cinematic tropes with extraordinary ideas that are very much the filmmaker's own.
  62. A Lesson in Cruelty
    A Lesson in Cruelty tries to affect a dark comedic tone, but fails spectacularly. There's no comedy, despite Lebrun's over-the-top vamping, and the dark elements are far too disturbing and violent.
  63. Have a Nice Day
    Liu gives you plenty to listen to, but don't forget to look: Beyond the formulaic thriller plotting and the showy verbiage, it's the movie's richly textured vision of urban decay that stays with you.
  64. Bucky and the Squirrels
    It's a no-go from the get-go with its labored stabs at humor and satire, doltish characters, utter disconnection from reality (even for a spoof) and scenes stretched to the breaking point.
  65. Lies We Tell
    Truth be told, Lies We Tell is a pretentious and muddled dud of a melodrama.
  66. The Lucky Man
    Writer-director Norman Gregory McGuire needed to better flesh out his inconsistent main characters, clarify their goals and motivations, and deepen their journey with more vivid set pieces and fewer clichés.
  67. Living Among Us
    Writer-director Brian A. Metcalf avoids the usual found-footage looseness, instead relying on scripted dialogue and professional actors (including former child star Thomas Ian Nicholas, who also produced). The cast is strong but their lines are painfully stilted.
  68. Before We Vanish
    If Before We Vanish isn't nearly as focused or accomplished as Kurosawa's horror masterpiece "Cure" (2001), or as shattering as his magnum opus "Tokyo Sonata" (2008), it's nonetheless a reminder that he has few equals when it comes to spinning even the flimsiest B-movie template into a cinema of ideas.
  69. The Cage Fighter
    At just 81 minutes, The Cage Fighter has been whittled down to its fighting weight, trimmed of every ounce of fat. Unay tells Carman's story without interviews or narration, but the film lands every punch without their help.
  70. Shot in the Dark
    Shot in the Dark is a sobering reminder that places like Chicago are more than sensationalistic national headlines about crime and sports: they're where kids struggle every day to balance their dreams with the obstacle course of their surroundings.
  71. The Campus
    Horton shows clear affection for the genre, but only the most indiscriminate horror fan could love this lumbering five-headed monster.
  72. Maze Runner: The Death Cure
    Ball and screenwriter Nowlin keep a tight grip on the tone and the relentless pace, but they often back the story and characters into corners that only a deus ex machina can fix.
  73. A Futile and Stupid Gesture
    Wry, head-shaking smiles at bad behavior are many — open laughter is lacking. Wain maintains a frenetic, near-vaudevillian pace, but this is a tribute flick that rejoices in anarchy and tastelessness without being exhilaratingly either thing itself.
  74. Vazante
    Grimly powerful and intersectionally acute, Thomas' serious, haunted period saga is a portrait of colonial rot and patriarchal cruelty as experienced by characters inextricably linked — male and female, free and chained, native and not, even sane and otherwise — in one remote outpost.
  75. Lover for a Day
    Lover for a Day, which completes a thematic trilogy of sorts with Garrel's "Jealousy" (2014) and "In the Shadow of Women" (2016), is one of his more enchanting specimens.
  76. The Clapper
    Writer-director Dito Montiel, adapting his novel, takes an ill-conceived premise and drives it into the ground with a painful, tone-deaf approach to both social satire and romantic comedy.
  77. American Folk
    The songs are lovely, and the first-time actors give performances that grow warmer as the film progresses, and their characters release, relax and find a groove, if only for this moment in time.
  78. Desolation
    It wants to be a commentary on the depravity of Hollywood and what people find entertaining, but instead it mostly just mirrors the media's habit of using sexual trauma as a plot device and surviving such horrors as a character trait.
  79. Kickboxer: Retaliation
    Director Dimitri Logothetis, again scripting with his Kickboxer: Vengeance co-writer James McGrath, barrels through the chockablock action with requisite energy. But dialogue and performances (including Mike Tyson as Kurt's prison mate), are often laughably subpar.
  80. Like Me
    Both impish and melancholy, with Timlin and Fessenden handily shifting the molecules in the air each time they share a scene, Like Me has an eccentric bravura to it.
  81. The Neighbor
    Although it has some commitment issues in terms of wanting to be both a probing domestic drama and a flat-out thriller, Aaron Harvey's The Neighbor finds a sturdy constant in its thoughtfully delineated performances and handsome production values.
  82. Please Stand By
    Please Stand By has its surface charms...but if you look under the hood, the film just doesn't work.
  83. The Misguided
    Nibali and Galati deliver their lines in matching monotones, in scenes that are simply deadening. None of the trio of leads has the presence to carry the film, though Mihaljevich displays a flicker as the dangerous sociopath Wendel. Alexander's limited style doesn't help these performances either, nor does the wildly underwritten script.
  84. Dance Baby Dance
    Writer, director, producer and star Stephen Kogon is clearly trying his hardest to create an entertaining film fueled by a passion for tap dance, but what’s on screen demonstrates an utter lack of filmmaking knowledge.
  85. 12 Strong
    What makes 12 Strong objectionable — and what will also make it appealing to some — is its attempt to induce a kind of amnesia in the audience, to ask that we forget about the subsequent moral and strategic failures of America’s “war on terror” or the limits of military retaliation when it comes to the pursuit of justice.
  86. Showdown in Manila
    This is a visually inept, nonexciting slog, from the dialogue scenes in which the image shakes because one assumes the camera operators were laughing, to the action shots that you would have re-staged if you were just filming your pets at home.
  87. Step Sisters
    Director Charles Stone III and screenwriter Chuck Hayward have made an overlong film at 108 minutes that may try the audience’s patience at times, but their movie hits its beats enough to make fans of the genre tap their feet along with the action on screen.
  88. Mom and Dad
    The comic incongruity of doting parents stalking children becomes less funny over time; and often it feels like Taylor hasn’t thought through the particulars of his premise, or the places he could’ve taken it.
  89. Small Town Crime
    Engagingly anchored by character actor John Hawkes, Small Town Crime is a satisfyingly quirky serving of frisky pulp fiction.
  90. Kangaroo
    Co-directors Kate McIntyre Clere and Mick McIntyre paint a decidedly damning picture.
  91. The Road Movie
    Between the defensive driving and offensive behavior, and vice versa, The Road Movie is a gleeful rubbernecker’s large popcorn’s worth of crazy.
  92. My Art
    My Art is an amusing riff on the way one’s creative work bleeds into one’s personal life, and Simmons expresses a singular voice and style, despite the missteps in storytelling.
  93. Django
    Although Kateb carries a certain arrogant genius’ authenticity with his opaque portrayal, Django will leave fans of the legend merely eager to return to their beloved recordings and let their ears take in the greatness.
  94. Delirium
    The apparitions are cool. The schmoes they’re haunting hardly seem worth the effort.
  95. The Midnight Man
    The Midnight Man would feel like a hodgepodge of other fright flicks even without England and Shaye’s familiar faces.
  96. This Giant Papier-Mâché Boulder Is Actually Really Heavy
    With an affection for nerd culture that is inversely proportional to its budget, this lo-fi sci-fi comedy is destined for laugh-filled late-night viewing.
  97. Freak Show
    Freak Show is carried by a fully committed performance from Lawther, who quivers and swans and roars like the best of the Hollywood grand dames.
  98. Humor Me
    If writer-director Sam Hoffman’s charming, well-performed tale feels at all familiar, it’s territory worth revisiting.
  99. The Revival
    The often difficult squaring of religious fervor and sexual longing receives poignant, powerful treatment in The Revival, deftly directed by Jennifer Gerber from a sensitive script by Samuel Brett Williams, based on his stage play.
  100. Den of Thieves
    Gudegast's twisty, turny tale of heists and homies is an action-packed romp with a good sense of humor and self-awareness. It's rendered with a startling attention to detail, but one has to wonder if with that detail, he can't quite see the forest for the trees.
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