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. Flatliners
    It’s the same dreary hooey, made more tedious and witless through repetition.
  2. 'Til Death Do Us Part
    ’Til Death Do Us Part takes on the admirable task of depicting life with an abuser and the very real obstacles to starting over. But its stereotypical writing, which errs on the side of cheesy and hackneyed, rather than deep and psychologically rich, dooms “’Til Death.”
  3. 30-Love
    It ends on a rather strange and unsettling note. Framed in a different context, this story could almost be a horror film.
  4. Soy Nero
    Unlike many issue-oriented movies, the artfully crafted film isn’t designed to stir up outrage or sympathy through emotional engagement. At its strongest it’s an unpredictable ride with a winningly sharp absurdist slant; at its weakest, it leans too hard on pointed symbolism.
  5. Tam Cam: The Untold Story
    The romantic adventure Tam Cam: The Untold Story begins like “Cinderella,” finishes à la “Beauty and the Beast” and in between runs the gamut of action-fantasy tropes with entertaining, if at times overly broad and narratively choppy, results.
  6. Don't Sleep
    Even with a solid cast at his disposal, Bieber can’t make Don’t Sleep anything more than a disconnected compendium of time-tested shock tactics.
  7. Literally, Right Before Aaron
    The audience will likely spend most of the film squirming and grimacing in recognition at Aaron’s awfulness — especially when the film rewards him with an ending that is far kinder than the character deserves.
  8. Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton
    Hamilton's story is so filled with dramatic incident and personal and psychological complexity, not to mention spectacular visuals of waves upward of 100 feet tall, that it compels attention whether surfing means anything to you or not.
  9. Lucky
    The better one knows Stanton’s life and his movies, the more the long silences and gently meandering rhythms of Lucky resonate.
  10. American Made
    American Made is a smart, nervy film, a very modern entertainment made with energy, style and a fine sense of humor that keeps us amused until gradually, almost imperceptibly, the laughter starts to stick in our throats.
  11. Heartstone
    Despite its need for serious narrative compression, this remains an emotionally authentic, often poignant look at growing up and growing aware.
  12. Indivisible
    There's plenty of tawdry glamour, exploitation and grime on offer in this tale of awakening, and through it all, the sisters' bond is its own abracadabra.
  13. 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.
  14. Window Horses
    Refreshingly devoid of talking animals and anthropomorphic vehicles, Ann Marie Fleming’s Window Horses is a lovely surprise of a stirringly original animated feature.
  15. Realive
    Unfortunately, the movie’s over-dependence on voice-over and its overwritten script interfere with the audience being able to fully engage.
  16. The Sound
    McGowan is excellent in what she’s claimed will be her last acting role; and Christopher Lloyd is equally memorable as one of the lost souls the heroine encounters in Toronto’s labyrinthine underground.
  17. Stopping Traffic
    Shree’s film offers insight and intimacy, with survivors being incredibly honest and vulnerable, which will help to drive awareness of the problem and how to fix it.
  18. Before the Sun Explodes
    Director Debra Eisenstadt, who also edited and co-wrote with Zeke Farrow, effectively draws us into Ken’s challenging world and conflicted psyche, aided immeasurably by actor-comic Dawes’ dimensional, empathetic performance.
  19. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
    Not every historical drama has to be a masterpiece of verisimilitude, but in a movie about intelligence professionals whose very job is to analyze every detail and sniff out damning discrepancies, instances of visual and narrative sloppiness stand out all the more glaringly.
  20. Different Flowers
    First-time feature writer-director Morgan Dameron attempts to craft a love letter to her native heartland and to sisterhood, but falls short on both fronts, rarely digging beneath the surface of small-town bonhomie and what makes Millie and Emma tick.
  21. Welcome to Willits
    Welcome to Willits has a loopy energy that in short spurts can be pretty amusing. More often than not though, the film is clever to a fault, packing in too many characters and gimmicks.
  22. Our Souls at Night
    Made with care and conviction as it explores this unexpected relationship, "Our Souls at Night" understands both what changes in people as they age and what remains the same. It covers quite a bit of emotional territory, and it covers it well.
  23. Pearl Jam: Let's Play Two
    Music and sports are a fascinating blend, as both baseball and rock offer collective community celebration and catharsis, with Wrigley as the host. Mostly though, it’s fun to see rock god Eddie Vedder reveling in his own fandom, the joy he shares with all of Chicago and Cubs fans everywhere.
  24. Super Dark Times
    What makes Super Dark Times one of the most exciting American filmmaking debuts in recent years is how well Phillips and company grasp both the intensity and ephemerality of adolescence.
  25. Loving Vincent
    Beyond explanation is the art itself. Animating Van Gogh’s bold impasto, already kinetic on the canvas, could have been merely superfluous. As moving pictures, though, the brushstrokes have an unexpected pull in this uneven but deeply felt homage.
  26. White Sun
    That so packed (and pictorially arresting) a scenario is not only well-acted — from the kids to the elders — but handled with emotional intelligence and even eye-rolling humor, speaks to Rauniyar’s narrative gifts regarding matters of his homeland.
  27. Unrest
    Unrest is a sensitive and arresting rally cry for increased awareness about this disease, and an existential exploration of the meaning of life while battling a crippling chronic illness.
  28. Spettacolo
    Theater lovers and Italophiles alike should savor the documentary Spettacolo.
  29. Two Trains Runnin'
    As we watch these once-marginalized artists thrillingly bring their past to bear on tense times, so does this look-and-listen complement the urgency of our newly charged civil rights moment.
  30. Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives
    Although Chris Perkel’s two-hour documentary can feel like an extended episode of “Behind the Music”...it’s admittedly tough to condense half a century of such remarkable musical diversity.
  31. Scareycrows
    Though it’s never really scary, it is appropriately silly and a fun time for genre fans who prefer giggles to gore.
  32. Motherland
    An extraordinary vérité portrait of Manila’s Fabella Hospital.
  33. Slipaway
    Slipaway is a simple and sweet film, occasionally to a fault, but Partnow is a revelation. The material could feel manipulative, but she convinces viewers that every moment is real.
  34. Machines
    It never succumbs to making poverty a graphic ornament.
  35. Boston
    A bit of tightening, largely involving segues abroad to Australia, Japan and Kenya, would have helped the picture’s pacing. But it’s the pride and strength of Boston’s leaders and citizens, as well as the marathon’s devoted contenders and planners that ultimately fuel this affecting portrait.
  36. Time to Die (1966)
    Time to Die turns the showdown narrative of so many oaters into an actively intelligent, darkly funny and no less suspenseful rumination on the pull of the horizon versus the ill wind at the back.
  37. Big Bear
    Eventually, it loses steam while riding a line between outrageousness and earnestness and never quite comes together.
  38. Elizabeth Blue
    The film clearly comes from a place of deep knowledge about the intricacies of schizophrenia but has an unfortunate tendency to overexplain itself.
  39. Last Rampage
    While Little has a assembled a sharp ensemble, including Bruce Davison as the sheriff who hunts down the felons and the late John Heard as the prison warden, it’s ultimately the hardened intensity of Patrick’s commanding portrayal that gives Last Rampage its take-no-prisoners tautness.
  40. EX LIBRIS: The New York Public Library
    Frederick Wiseman's Ex Libris: The New York Public Library is more than a magisterial mash note to that distinguished establishment, it’s a heartening examination of the vastness of human knowledge and the multiple ways we the people endeavor to access it.
  41. The Tiger Hunter
    There has been no shortage of films tracking the immigrant pursuit of the American dream, but few have been as laugh-out-loud delightful as The Tiger Hunter, a sparkling first feature by Lena Khan.
  42. Happy Hunting
    More than a few times, the film feels choppy, sloppy or paltry. But Wall gives a sympathetic performance as a man facing his final stand. And even at its pulpiest, Happy Hunting has a point to make — about how in modern society we often use the pretense of morality to justify base savagery.
  43. Gaga: Five Foot Two
    The problem with “Five Foot Two,” which arrives Friday on Netflix and in theaters, is that it’s a disjointed pastiche of generic pop-star clichés.
  44. Victoria and Abdul
    For all the anti-colonialist sentiments expressed in Victoria & Abdul...those criticisms are ultimately subsumed in a warm, troubling glow of British Empire nostalgia.
  45. The Force
    The result, unusual in a documentary involving the police and the public, is a film that does not advocate for anything but the truth, one that aims to show what happens on both sides of an issue rather than coming down in favor of one or the other.
  46. Woodshock
    With its gauzily surreal touches, Woodshock reflects the Mulleavys’ romantic flair for texture and embellishment. But as Theresa’s guilt and self-medication mount, along with the film’s profoundly muddled ideas about assisted suicide, the curated trance grows mind-numbing. It’s a death trip with pretty lingerie.
  47. The Houses October Built 2
    These vignettes are only sporadically entertaining, and sap a lot of the narrative momentum before the extended climax — which itself is largely a retread of the first film’s big finish.
  48. Shot
    Kagan employs a purposeful, if at times distracting, use of split screen, along with subjective camera and mind’s-eye visuals to capture the story’s visceral and emotional tension. But it’s the fine acting and the film’s plea for sensible gun control that carry the day.
  49. Stronger
    The movie is a straightforward, even familiar, tale of survival and recovery, but its grave respect for the unique extremity of its protagonist’s ordeal cancels out any impulse toward exploitation. It doesn’t make the mistake of assuming that your tears are its natural entitlement, which is precisely why you might find yourself shedding a few before it’s over.
  50. Kingsman: The Golden Circle
    It pulls off the impressive feat of feeling both hyperactive and lazy. This is hardly the first time a major Hollywood franchise has succumbed to narrative flabbiness, or invested in grand, elaborate world building with the kind of devotion that far outstrips the viewer’s interest.
  51. Battle of the Sexes
    Enjoyable and entertaining.
  52. 1 Buck
    Dufils vividly captures the locale’s seedy, swampy vibe, with its dive bars, shabby homes, ubiquitous convenience stores and underground fight spots. If only there were a more compelling, engaging narrative to match.
  53. Vengeance: A Love Story
    Any hope of prestige is dashed by the heavy-handed, cliché-ridden direction of former stuntman Johnny Martin and his star’s detached portrayal of a guy whose mind is permanently elsewhere.
  54. Infinity Chamber
    Infinity Chamber (renamed from the original “Somnio”) may accurately convey the oppressive perpetuity of its title, but all that repetition in the absence of more inspired plotting results in a payoff that feels inescapably contrived.
  55. Justice
    Richard Gabai’s film is too preoccupied corralling all the genre clichés to come up with anything original or compelling.
  56. The Show
    The movie attempts to comment on reality-show culture, but it offers little insight beyond its ill-conceived premise. With suicide at its center, The Show is both tone-deaf and a tonal mess.
  57. The View from Here
    It’s all too sterile and stilted, distracting from the deeply emotional story of love and loss at its core.
  58. Ryde
    This slick and stylish exterior belies a rotting core underneath. Ryde thinks little of its characters or its audience; it's an exercise in misanthropy with a nasty streak of misogyny running through it.
  59. Against the Night
    The director gives the audience a story that takes off in as many directions as the prison corridors, leaving us lost and dazed. But unlike the characters, the viewers never feel a moment of fear.
  60. Clash
    The filmmakers cultivate a dynamic portrait of Egypt, with its dense social, political and religious layers.
  61. The Unknown Girl
    Forcing their usual ethical query into the structure of a whodunit, the Dardennes have emerged with a narrative that, as compelling as it is, can also feel prosaic and even a bit predictable, especially in the overly aggressive melodrama of the closing scenes.
  62. Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards
    At times it is a bit unfocused, following a loosely chronological but otherwise haphazard structure. Yet it’s still a treat to spend time in the company of a true artist, never before illuminated with such clarity.
  63. American Assassin
    American Assassin is a serviceable, workman-like thriller that makes the familiar as involving as its going to get. It demonstrates that even Jason Bourne lite is better than no Bourne at all, if you're in the mood.
  64. Wetlands
    There are occasionally atmospheric shots of depopulated boardwalks and streets, but the strain to give the visuals meaning becomes its own clue in the worst crime committed here: the killing of good storytelling.
  65. Year by the Sea
    Unfortunately, this overlong picture rarely feels particularly authentic.
  66. School Life
    School Life is as charming, intimate and warm-hearted an observational documentary as you'd ever want to see.
  67. The Wilde Wedding
    There’s barely a convincing — or amusing — situation or interaction, including the film’s climactic nuptials, which also turn fatally contrived.
  68. First They Killed My Father
    Though this story couldn't mean more to Jolie, she hasn't been able to make it mean as much to us. Scrupulous and perhaps constrained at the thought of overdoing things, Jolie has allowed the enormity of the story to get the best of her, creating a film that is more disturbing than moving.
  69. Red Trees
    Cinematically and emotionally it’s a mixed bag, a slow-moving visual treatise and occasional vanity piece that requires — but doesn’t always earn — our indulgence.
  70. Brad's Status
    Starting from a single key insight into human behavior — the natural compulsion to compare oneself to others — White has spun a funny, empathetic and surprisingly grounded comedy that itself defies obvious comparisons.
  71. mother!
    The movie is a savage attack on the egomania that enables a director to fancy himself a deity, as well as the rotten patriarchies that govern the worlds of art, industry and religion alike, with Lawrence embodying the wise but perpetually ignored voice of the divine feminine.
  72. Strong Island
    As fingers move Polaroids around in the frame, or faces in jarring close-up grapple with unresolved tragedy, you realize Strong Island is a state-of-mind piece, surveying the wreckage from within.
  73. Trophy
    With lines drawn along politics, class, race and economics, the strange-bedfellows issue of top-dollar killing and queasy conservation is one that Trophy...lays bare with gruesome, grim exactitude.
  74. In Search of Fellini
    The quasi-magical realist film In Search of Fellini has its heart in the right place but wears its studied quirks on its sleeve, leading with influences and references rather than a strong story.
  75. Kill Me Please
    Kill Me Please acknowledges the dark and riotous physical energy of teen girls in this tribute to slasher films and coming-of-age comedies that proves to be a new classic from first frame to last.
  76. Dayveon
    A creeping naturalism inhabits virtually every frame of Dayveon.
  77. 9/11
    9/11 trades on the emotional weight of its namesake day, manipulating audiences into feelings that have nothing to do with the mess that is actually on screen.
  78. The Wound
    Trengove’s direction keeps things firmly grounded in the play of glances and intimacies under shelter of nature’s seclusion — dusk-lit silhouettes stealing moments, a waterfall rendezvous.
  79. September Morning
    Frost memorializes his experience of this day, but it’s just not enough to make a significant comment about the event.
  80. It
    Mama maestro Andy Muschietti directs this visually splendid but thematically toned-down interpretation with finesse, crafting a world rich in detail where menace lurks in every shadow.
  81. Dolores
    The unexpected thing about Dolores, finally, is that if its political story makes it important, its human story makes it involving.
  82. Lipstick Under My Burkha
    The rousing Indian drama Lipstick Under My Burkha, co-written and directed by Alankrita Shrivastava, takes on the repressive traditions around gender and sexuality in that country with refreshing candor and humor.
  83. Anti Matter
    Because the actors deliver every line in a breathless rush, their performances are monotone; and because Burrows throws in new characters and ideas every few minutes, the resolution to this story comes out rushed and goofy, and not as poignant as intended.
  84. Napping Princess
    Inventive and imaginative, Napping Princess confirms [Kamiyama] as one of the most interesting writer-directors working in Japanese animation.
  85. Embargo
    Embargo plays like a freshman college paper that’s long on reference material but comes up short in establishing an overriding premise.
  86. Man in Red Bandana
    Those with the fortitude to relive the events of the morning of 9/11 should find the documentary Man in Red Bandana a powerful and inspiring experience.
  87. True to the Game
    The movie has enough of Woods’ flavor to put a memorable spin on a familiar genre — so much so that it’s almost a crime it isn’t better.
  88. Fallen
    Had a minimal effort been made to address policing controversies in the context of an honest argument that the job is grueling and perilous, Fallen might have been more powerful.
  89. Twenty Two
    There’s no artifice in this documentary, with the director simply presenting the women’s lives as they tell them, one after another. Slow-moving and sad, Twenty Two isn’t easy to watch, but it isn’t meant to be.
  90. Jesús
    Guzzoni’s movie is an unsparing portrait of aimlessness told mostly in the queasiest shades.
  91. Free in Deed
    The fact-based story, which is allowed to quietly unfold in a series of extended takes, has been stripped of all artifice, especially in regard to the pared-back performances of Harewood, a British actor with regular roles on “Homeland” and “Supergirl,” and Findley, who starred in Ava DuVernay’s 2012 breakthrough feature, “Middle of Nowhere.”
  92. Gun Shy
    The biggest problem for Gun Shy isn’t its ridiculous premise or its frequently silly tone; it’s that it doesn’t fully commit to either.
  93. Fallen
    It’s faithfully formulaic, but the cast makes it appealing.
  94. The Good Catholic
    Though there’s never any real doubt that the rules of rom-com (even the platonic kind) and the sanctity of Catholicism will be given a once-over, what’s annoying in this otherwise well-meaning movie is how the barbs become a kind of armor against real feeling, and the bland direction offers nothing.
  95. The Limehouse Golem
    A perfectly watchable if overtly theatrical whodunit.
  96. Rebel in the Rye
    The journey of J.D. Salinger from young wiseacre to world-celebrated author and notorious recluse is absorbingly traced in Danny Strong’s Rebel in the Rye.
  97. Rememory
    Despite a soulful turn by Dinklage and some thoughtful themes and emotions, the film, capped by an anti-climactic ending, never coheres into the gripping, mind-bending package that was clearly intended.
  98. The Vault
    The Vault is a combination heist and horror picture; and it’s the rare genre mash-up where each element’s equally strong.
  99. Tulip Fever
    At 107 minutes, Tulip Fever has been trimmed of every ounce of fat. But connective tissue, muscle and even the heart are gone too, leaving a lifeless frame.
  100. The Teacher
    Like the remarkable films Eastern European countries turned out regularly during the Soviet era, it marries a character-driven story with social concerns, in this case a deft parable about the kind of corrupt privileged society nominally egalitarian Socialism created.
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