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. Mike Boy
    None of this makes a lick of sense, but it’s fascinatingly asinine. It feels wrong to encourage this kind of misbegotten DIY project, but if you’re a fan of the likes of “The Room” or “Birdemic,” honestly, you can’t miss “Mike Boy.”
  2. The Layover
    Second-tier airline safety videos are more entertaining than this fourth-rate comedy. Flight attendants on Southwest’s less-traveled routes are far funnier than the cast here. Watching a lonely suitcase circle a baggage claim conveyor belt is more diverting.
  3. Polina
    Shevtsova, until recently a dancer with the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, doesn’t quite pierce the narrative’s two-dimensionality. Through Preljocaj’s ecstatic choreography, though, she goes deep, and Polina’s story finds its language and its pulse.
  4. Unlocked
    A straight-ahead political thriller that fails to ratchet up the requisite tension despite its timely subject matter and (largely) effective cast.
  5. A Very Sordid Wedding
    As broad as the side of a barn but much more amusing.
  6. Jackals
    The movie does what it sets out to do: stranding the viewer in a dark place, surrounded by remorseless predators. It’s an old recipe that can still please a crowd.
  7. The Nile Hilton Incident
    As doomed as Noredin’s actions often seem, they’re tinged with enough simmering humanity to keep us caring.
  8. Temple
    The Temple has competent visuals with a few particularly nice shots that establish mood. However, its script is poorly structured and opaque, offering little insight into what is terrorizing the tourists and why.
  9. Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story
    “Beside Bowie” could use more structural rigor in the edit, but it’s an illuminating film about a man who deserved more shine.
  10. Get Big
    Although much of what happens in Get Big feels borrowed from most every teen comedy from “Risky Business” to “Superbad,” this micro-budget effort from 23-year-old newbie writer-director Dylan Moran (who also stars), whips up plenty of humor and charm as well as several organic, well-served life lessons.
  11. After Love
    Messy and ungovernable at its strongest, Lafosse’s film is a story of heartbreak and real estate and, not least, money, viewed from within the still-smoldering ruins.
  12. Viceroy's House
    This elegant, lushly mounted film, which involves classism, communal fighting, political machinations, and religious and cultural discord, still proves timely given such world events as the Syrian refugee crisis, the Brexit controversy and Pakistan’s ongoing anti-terror campaign.
  13. I Do... Until I Don't
    Bell jettisons any possibility for radical ideals or emotional poignancy in favor of a hackneyed rom-com ending tacked onto a movie that’s both stale and unpleasantly madcap.
  14. Goon: Last of the Enforcers
    A raunchy, ploddingly unfunny comedy sequel to 2012’s equally crass but disarmingly endearing “Goon.”
  15. England Is Mine
    Mark Gill’s debut feature, England Is Mine, tackles the early life of Moz, but unsatisfyingly stops just short of the Smiths, telling a rather disjointed origin story.
  16. California Typewriter
    Doug Nichol’s documentary California Typewriter is a rich, thoughtful, meticulously crafted tapestry about the evolution of the beloved writing machine for purists, history buffs, collectors and others fighting to preserve or re-embrace analog life.
  17. Birth of the Dragon
    It’s unusual to see a film like this make its nominal hero into a jerk, who learns something essential from his nemesis. True or not, the complex characterization does make for a better story.
  18. All Saints
    The cinematic execution of All Saints is serviceable at best. It's stilted at times, with too much dead air hanging around, and the stakes and roller coaster of ups and downs in the script often seem out of step with the emotion on-screen.
  19. Revelator
    As writer, director, producer, star, editor and more, J. Van Auken brings a cool central concept and strong visuals, but the film ultimately never finds solidity.
  20. Leap!
    Though the distressingly large lollipop heads of the characters are often disconcerting, some of the animation is striking and near photorealistic. At times though it seems all of the resources have been put into the background environment instead of the characters.
  21. Unleashed
    Unleashed, written and directed by Finn Taylor, works because of the collective commitment to the magical realism on-screen.
  22. Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman
    Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman is an involving film that tells a more complicated story than its unexciting title would indicate.
  23. Served Like a Girl
    A truly inspirational, emotional and profoundly moving film.
  24. Ghost House
    Visually, Ghost House makes good use of its setting, offering Instagram-ready images of its location shot by Pierluigi Malavasi. Unfortunately, Thai people are used in ways that rely on cultural stereotypes, a blemish on an otherwise effective and unsettling film.
  25. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World
    Inevitably cursory, it’s nonetheless a fascinating introduction to the ways that core components of Americana wouldn’t be eradicated. Or silenced.
  26. Bushwick
    Realistically depicting full-scale domestic terrorism is one thing, but directors Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott seem unaware of how their long-take gimmick — the cuts are easily determined — destroys logic, emboldens the use of stereotypes, and kills suspense.
  27. Sidemen: Long Road to Glory
    It may have been a long road to glory, but seeing Perkins (then 97) and Smith (75) enthusiastically accept a 2011 Grammy for their album “Joined at the Hip,” it’s readily apparent that it was worth the trip.
  28. Tales of an Immoral Couple
    It won’t replace your favorite girl-meets-boy classics, but it yo-yos between the heart and the loins with admirable verve, and it boasts a few richly comic turns.
  29. Crown Heights
    Acted with gravity, emotion and a sense of the serious issues involved by stars Lakeith Stanfield, Nnamdi Asomugha and Natalie Paul, Crown Heights deals with the intensely human factors tragic events bring into play — perseverance and despair, love and longing.
  30. The Villainess
    While I’m generally inclined to applaud an action movie that seeks to be more than just an exercise in carnage, The Villainess turns wearyingly stop-and-go whenever it tries to fill in the void of its protagonist’s emotional and psychological history.
  31. Beach Rats
    Harris Dickinson, the spellbinding British newcomer who plays Frankie, rewards the director’s scrutiny with piercing emotional depth and a startling lack of self-consciousness.
  32. Death Note
    What Wingard has delivered is a fitfully entertaining, clearly compromised hybrid of action, horror and science-fiction.
  33. Red Christmas
    Mostly, it’s a tightly constructed, unapologetically nasty little thriller, given depth and weight by Wallace’s interpretation of a sweet woman suffering for her past.
  34. The Monster Project
    While there are some cool creature effects and committed, physical performances by the actors playing the monsters, the movie’s worst sin isn’t the found-footage rules it ignores. Instead it breaks the cardinal rule of the larger horror genre, running 95 minutes without a single scare or moment of dread.
  35. Gook
    The low-budget movie, shot in artful black-and-white by Ante Cheng, pulses with yearning and sorrow and love for its characters. Its brightening touches of underplayed humor strengthen and comment on the main action.
  36. Women Who Kill
    Women Who Kill is delightfully specific in its approach to its characters and their community. It takes a familiar theme of romantic comedies — the fear of commitment — and gives it new life by adding a morbid element to the mix.
  37. The Fencer
    Director Klaus Härö, working from a script by Anna Heinämaa, deftly captures the grayish gloom and day-to-day paranoia of postwar Soviet life, while infusing this absorbing tale with affecting emotion.
  38. Planetarium
    Although Planetarium may not wholly satisfy as the kind of statement film it so ambitiously aims to be, this intriguing drama, confidently directed by Rebecca Zlotowski (who co-wrote with Robin Campillo) proves a singular, at times haunting experience.
  39. The Queen of Spain
    Had the comedy been sharper, this movie-loving movie might have convincingly meshed its Technicolor caricatures and antifascist heroics.
  40. What Happened to Monday
    Fans of outsized genre fare should appreciate how much fun Rapace appears to be having, showing off different skills in different wigs. Her enthusiasm doesn’t make this a good movie, but it does makes it likable.
  41. Lemon
    In Lemon, Bravo and Gelman find a transcendent absurdity in the mundane that’s awkwardly enchanting. It’s more tart than sweet, but deliciously weird nonetheless.
  42. Lycan
    While its DIY spirit is admirable, this tedious shocker feels like it was cobbled together from a kit.
  43. Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey
    Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey lacks a sense of what is essential to its story. It dwells on insignificant moments and inserts transition shots without logic, but skips over scenes or dialogue that could support Liza and Brett’s characters, their relationship and the choices they make.
  44. The Ice Cream Truck
    While writer-director Megan Freels Johnston makes some unusual choices that set her film apart from run-of-the-mill low-budget horror, too much of her movie feels warmed-over.
  45. Dave Made a Maze
    While the dramatic underpinnings could have used more work, the labyrinth that’s the focus of Dave Made a Maze is truly an amazingly inventive sight to behold.
  46. Whitney: Can I Be Me
    "Whitney's" story makes for strong and compelling viewing even though it has something of a cobbled together feel to it.
  47. Shot Caller
    It always feels like an exercise instead of an examination, a flow chart of bad decisions and explosive violence that may not glorify the poisonous nature of hard time but rarely skims below the surface of what it means to break bad.
  48. 6 Days
    6 Days can’t help but feel like a missed opportunity.
  49. The Hitman's Bodyguard
    Uncertain whether to be a cheerfully weightless killing spree, an earnest odd-couple comedy or, most hilariously, a straight-faced Eastern European political thriller, Tom O’Connor’s screenplay falls back on shopworn snark and half-baked bromantic attitudes.
  50. Marjorie Prime
    Beautiful untruths and half-truths abound in Michael Almereyda’s quietly shimmering new movie.
  51. Patti Cake$
    The movie is a canny mixture of flash and grit, an unabashedly contrived Cinderella story in Dirty Jersey drag. And in Macdonald’s winning performance, it gets the hoop-earringed, heavy-set, frizzy-blond princess-to-be it deserves.
  52. The Adventurers
    At every turn, the Chinese globe-trotting heist flick The Adventurers, with Andy Lau as international master thief Zhang and Jean Reno as his Javert, calls to mind better, craftier precursors.
  53. Logan Lucky
    If it verges on being a little too pleased with itself for its own good, that's an acceptable price to pay for something that makes you smile.
  54. Nocturama
    Bonello’s approach, always seeking to evoke rather than explain, doesn’t allow us either the clarity of analysis or the comforts of condemnation.
  55. Whose Streets?
    Filmmakers Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis were among those on the front lines of the protests against police violence and their on-the-ground, from-the-heart documentary Whose Streets? communicates that urgency from the inside out — not as news story or social theory, but as communal experience and awakening.
  56. The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature
    It’s an unexpectedly radical, if otherwise rather rote animated sequel.
  57. All the Rage (Saved by Sarno)
    The dearth of input from medical practitioners and others who have opposed Sarno’s controversial methodology makes this feel like an awfully one-sided exploration.
  58. The Trip to Spain
    A certain exhaustion sets in well before the end, collapsing any meaningful distinction between camera-hogging self-indulgence and critical scrutiny.
  59. Annabelle: Creation
    The result may not be much more than an exercise in craft, a skillful demonstration of all the games you can play with long takes, moving cameras, blurred focus and cavernous pools of darkness. But craft is hard to overrate these days, and Sandberg’s technique, far from feeling assaultive or bludgeoning, has the effect of heightening your concentration.
  60. Escapes
    Escapes is as unconventional as its subject, demonstrating the charming things that can happen when a life in no way ordinary gets documented by a filmmaker most unusual.
  61. The Last Dalai Lama?
    Unfortunately, the director’s breezy approach doesn’t always make for a captivating viewing experience.
  62. In This Corner of the World
    In its visualization of a life that feels exceptional as well as ordinary, In This Corner of the World draws us in with the beauty of its animation and the specificity of its detail.
  63. Once Upon a Time
    It’s best not to attempt to fathom too much of what goes on in this colorful fantasy-adventure and simply take in its lushly shot and designed visuals, eye-popping effects, lively action and often lovely score.
  64. Pilgrimage
    For all its bloody and violent genre trappings, Pilgrimage — directed by Brendan Muldowney and written by Jamie Hannigan — is a gorgeously shot film that carefully renders the details of this fascinating historical period.
  65. A Taxi Driver
    Grafting the buddy picture onto the framework of the classic political thriller, director Jang Hoon also manages to find time for lighter moments of human comedy, and those seemingly disparate elements are deftly navigated by Song and his fellow fully dimensional characters.
  66. The Pulitzer at 100
    Serving as something of an overstuffed sampler platter, the documentary The Pulitzer at 100, marking the centenary of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer’s effort to place journalism on equal footing with arts and letters, is big on variety but comes up frustratingly short on substance.
  67. Ingrid Goes West
    Ingrid might be a lying, manipulative stalker, but Plaza also lets us see her humanity, engendering a crucial empathy for the desperation that drives her.
  68. Bedeviled
    Despite a few meta moments in which the characters comment on how their plight is like “a bad horror movie,” Bedeviled ultimately embraces clichés rather the subverting them. The evil technology’s up to date, but the storytelling’s too old-fashioned.
  69. Good Time
    At once a swift, relentless chase thriller and an exhilarating mood piece that recalls the great, gritty crime dramas of Sidney Lumet and Abel Ferrara, Good Time is also exactly what it says it is: a thrill, a blast, a fast-acting tonic of a movie.
  70. The Only Living Boy in New York
    "Only Living Boy" fails to convince as a character study, romance or love letter to the CBGB-era New York City. It drops a plot bombshell close to the end of its 88-minute running time, but the filmmakers haven’t laid the track to make it plausible.
  71. The Glass Castle
    Though he is on less certain ground during the narrative's moments of warmth than when things are grim, director Cretton manages it all successfully. With Woody Harrelson as its dependable lodestar, "The Glass Castle" never loses its sense of direction or its belief in where it’s going.
  72. Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry
    In lieu of a literal fulfillment of the title’s promise, Dunn gives us a spiritual one, an aggressively poetic elegy to the pre-industrialized agrarian work/life ethic Berry made his most deeply felt cause.
  73. The Farthest
    The film is a stirring salute to human ingenuity.
  74. 4 Days in France
    This is a beautifully shot film whose visuals work well with its philosophical approach to life and relationships.
  75. Icarus
    Even if you’re familiar with the facts, Icarus casts the depth of deception with an immediacy that’s often astounding.
  76. I Dream in Another Language
    This is an unusual venture, both charming and serious, that goes in more directions than anticipated, including more than a touch of magic realism.
  77. Wind River
    The focus here is always on character and storytelling and the acting that brings it all alive. With thrillers this good becoming a lost art, Wind River is definitely one to savor.
  78. Step
    Heartening and unashamedly emotional, it's a certified crowd pleaser that doesn't care who knows it.
  79. The Battleship Island
    The troubling whiff of nationalist sentiment doesn’t entirely blunt the force and sweep of Ryoo’s multi-pronged narrative, even when the story generally proceeds in fits and starts.
  80. The Dark Tower
    From start to finish, the movie exudes a stiff, joyless coherence.
  81. Savage Dog
    There’s not enough story here but every time David pops up on the soundtrack to spout dime-novel clichés like, “Fear the hanged man, because he’s dead already,” this movie takes on the quality of classic storybook, not straight-to-video schlock.
  82. 68 Kill
    The story suffers diminishing returns as it unwinds with increasing violence and absurdity. Or maybe it’s just that “68 Kill” puts the best material upfront.
  83. Kidnap
    For all of Berry’s breathless, screechy effort, Kidnap doesn’t contain any suspense or tension.
  84. Columbus
    What’s remarkable about this wondrously assured debut is that technique never overwhelms feeling, in part because Kogonada makes the two seem inextricably, harmoniously linked.
  85. It's Not Yet Dark
    Although “Dark” eschews overly graphic depiction of the more horrific physiological aspects of MND and barely touches upon the financial toll the illness clearly takes, this is as real a human story as it gets.
  86. The Girl Without Hands
    “Girl” is a welcome reminder that animation doesn’t have to be synonymous with realistically rendered CG, but can be a means of artistic expression as uniquely personal as a signature.
  87. From the Land of the Moon
    Garcia never gets a grasp on her protagonist’s contradictions, or those of her story — certainly not enough to pull off the movie’s jaw-dropper of a twist. But she conjures a powerful sensuality, and Cotillard burns ferociously bright, even when the center does not hold.
  88. Brave New Jersey
    The story is spread too thin, or perhaps there just wasn’t that much substance to begin with.
  89. Fun Mom Dinner
    This raunchy, female-driven comedy should be able to rely on the strength of its cast, but even the collective talents of Katie Aselton, Toni Collette, Molly Shannon and Bridget Everett aren’t enough to make the movie worth a babysitter’s hourly rate.
  90. Armed Response
    By the time one of the gun-toting members of Team Snipes growls “Let’s finish this!” viewers would be hard-pressed to disagree.
  91. Some Freaks
    This visceral and anxiety-laden vision ends on an uneasy, though hopeful, note.
  92. Chronically Metropolitan
    The result is a chronically “meh” coming-of-age meets dysfunctional-family tale, with a particularly unsatisfying ending.
  93. The Untamed
    Escalante draws remarkable performances out of his cast of mostly newcomers in this film about the consequences of pleasure and the many meanings of flesh; where animal intelligence fills the void left by emotional disconnect.
  94. Wolf Warrior 2
    While Wolf Warrior 2 is blandly generic more often than not, there’s something bracing about its patriotic fervor, which asserts that the Chinese will act in the best interests of the world’s downtrodden, while the rest of the world just exploits them.
  95. Birthright: A War Story
    With its chilling evidence of fetus-centric policies in practice, Birthright shows Big Brother in action, and at his most misogynistic.
  96. Santoalla
    It focuses on how the best intentions toward humanity are not enough if an ability to actually get along with fellow human beings is not part of the mix.
  97. 500 Years
    Pamela Yates’ 500 Years is a palpably passionate if somewhat less contained effort than the two films preceding it.
  98. The Conway Curve
    The Conway Curve wants to be a world of colorful characters, wacky high jinks and happy endings, but it’s just so stilted and blandly unfunny that it can’t support its own frantic antics.
  99. The Incredible Jessica James
    Strouse demonstrates a contagious affection for his characters, and he invests in them in a way that makes us do the same.
  100. Imperfections
    While Henner and Begley bring a seasoned ease to their secondary roles, their presence, and that of a lively Zach McGowan as Cassidy’s drug-dealing ex, can’t compensate for wobbly dramatic stakes and glib main characters who don’t lend themselves to audience empathy.
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