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. Out of Darkness
    Out of Darkness is effective enough — and gory — to function as a thriller of the loud-noise-springing variety. But a last-act grasp at profundity in Ruth Greenberg’s screenplay feels unearned.
  2. The Monk and the Gun
    At a time when extremes in discourse always seem loudest, the modest pleasures of The Monk and the Gun are appealingly reasonable. Brandishing new ways doesn’t have to mean holstering old ones.
  3. Perfect Days
    This film beams and buzzes inside its closed loop with the hard-won wisdom of acceptance. And it does so while staying in awe of what can never be understood, only appreciated — and if we’re lucky, enjoyed.
  4. Lisa Frankenstein
    There’s enough verve in the concept and performances — and in debuting feature-maker Williams’ exuberant direction — to carry Lisa Frankenstein through.
  5. How to Have Sex
    The extraordinarily perceptive How to Have Sex pulls off many feats of daring: Nicolas Canniccioni’s alcopop-hangover photography, James Jacobs’ chemical club-anthem score, Mia McKenna-Bruce’s star-making central turn. But the most impressive is first-time writer-director Molly Manning Walker getting us not just to forgive her central triad their brash and brainless bravado, but to grieve for it when it’s gone.
  6. Argylle
    Argylle has bone-deep structural issues on a fundamental level, but it is also a failure of directorial execution from top to bottom, resulting in what has to be one of the most expensive worst movies ever made. It’s honestly fascinating — something that should be studied in a lab.
  7. The Promised Land
    This is the finest work of Arcel’s collaboration with longtime cinematographer Rasmus Videbæk. They craft this Nordic western epic with an eerie beauty and an eye toward the kind of startling violence that can erupt unexpectedly in lawless frontiers.
  8. Tótem
    It takes a confident storyteller to avoid the trap of overexplanation, to give us only a partial glimpse of her characters’ lives, and these narrative elisions have the effect of deepening rather than undercutting the story’s realism.
  9. Sujo
    [A] tender, harrowing and beautifully modulated coming-of-age drama.
  10. Girls State
    There’s also a fascinating dive into the inequalities that bedevil Boys State and Girls State themselves, reminding us how organizations often embody, at a structural level, some of the very problems they’re ostensibly trying to rectify.
  11. Freaky Tales
    It diverts for a while, only to dissipate almost immediately upon conclusion.
  12. Presence
    If the genre trappings seem familiar, it’s the prowling, ghostlike vantage of the camera that makes all the difference: Soderbergh has elected to tell this haunted-house story entirely from the perspective of the haunter. Shooting in wide-angled long takes that range in tenor from voyeuristic languor to nerve-shredding anxiety, he transforms a domestic horror exercise into another Soderberghian tour de force.
  13. The Breaking Ice
    It’s bracing to watch a movie whose very flow communicates how to experience it, which can also be said of Zhou’s captivating turn as a young woman committed to being elusive as a ward against what being still and reflective might bring up.
  14. Miller's Girl
    The movie strikes that wild, so-bad-it’s-entertaining chord vigorously. I can’t recommend Miller’s Girl but I also can’t recommend it enough.
  15. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
    Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell reminds us that confusion is often a necessary first step toward enlightenment, and that bafflement and beauty often go hand in hand. This is a lesson that Thiên must learn as well. The gift of this movie is that it invites us to learn it alongside him.
  16. Mean Girls
    So why does it all feel so laborious and overworked, so frantically self-regarding? It has something to do with the insipid quality of the songs, none of which threaten to lodge themselves in your brain the way the first movie’s lines so effortlessly do.
  17. Good Grief
    Good Grief ultimately promises more than its starter kit of rom-com elements and good intentions can deliver. But within that inviting aura are a number of pleasures, starting with Levy’s homo-neurotic appeal as a cynically romantic gay lead.
  18. Night Swim
    The ambition here is invigorating and, during its most exhilarating stretches, Night Swim seems to be actually pulling it off — until suddenly it’s not, a victim of overplotting, pushing the water thing a little too hard.
  19. The Teachers' Lounge
    Ilker Çatak, a German writer-director of Turkish descent, has shrewdly crafted a taut and tight examination of the concept of justice folded into an absorbing character study.
  20. The Color Purple
    The craft is gorgeous, but The Color Purple would be nothing without its star turns, and Bazawule’s cast takes your breath away.
  21. Memory
    A guarded Jessica Chastain and a rumpled Peter Sarsgaard make mysterious, sweetly dissonant music together in Memory, a touch-and-go drama about connection that’s as steeped in discomfort as it is cautiously hopeful about one’s ability to find peace within it.
  22. Society of the Snow
    Bayona mixes a sense of survivalist adventure with an otherworldly spirituality — the idea that they were somehow touched by something bigger, but also that the answers to what they needed were there with them all along.
  23. Ferrari
    Amid the roaring motors and screeching tires of “Ferrari,” Michael Mann’s operatic saga of fast cars, furious women and the powerful human citadel who toyed with them all, a moment occasionally rises from the smoke with the grace and clarity of an aria.
  24. Freud's Last Session
    The leads give it their all — Hopkins’ vinegary parrying is especially lively — but the overall takeaway is of historical puppets playing philosophical gotcha, when we yearn for three-dimensional humans filling up a room with their lives, learnings and flaws.
  25. Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom
    Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom may not be consequential in the long run, but it’s a mostly diverting, upbeat closer, one that could hint at the tone of things to come.
  26. Migration
    Migration isn’t exactly unique, but it’s different enough. And in today’s factory filmmaking, that’s almost as unlikely as milking a duck.
  27. American Fiction
    It’s a thoughtful and complex film that unfolds under repeat viewings and signals the arrival of an exciting new filmmaker.
  28. Anselm
    The result is also one of the year’s most memorable theatrical experiences, because it’s Wenders’ return to 3-D (after 2011’s “Pina”), proving again how versatile and intimate the format can be when skillfully applied outside the genre of blockbusters.
  29. Immediate Family
    If anything, you want even more stories from these guys who started out as rock and roll dreamers, transitioned to individual contractors, then came to feel part of something larger than themselves.
  30. The Taste of Things
    Despite its generally frictionless flow from meal to meal, its showstopping delicacies and subtly comical asides, The Taste of Things is haunted, from the start, by an awareness of the passage of time.
  31. Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire
    Boutella often has an otherworldly screen presence that makes her perfectly suited for this kind of material, but the fussiness of all that is happening around Kora means that the character and performance never get a chance to breathe and blossom, or to fully come to life.
  32. Wonka
    There may have been skepticism about “Wonka,” but there’s no need to worry all that much, especially not about Chalamet, who gives himself over fully to the wonderment and vocal demands of the role. See it and enjoy it for what it is: a playful, heart-tugging take on a beloved character that’s smarter than it lets on.
  33. Silent Night
    Woo is capable of bigger and better.
  34. Origin
    By the end, DuVernay has, with editor Spencer Averick’s fleet stitching, massaged her adaptation’s various threads into a collage of insight and emotion worth treasuring.
  35. Concrete Utopia
    Though the humor and acting in “Concrete Utopia” can occasionally feel broad, Lee’s viscerally monstrous performance grounds a high-stakes drama.
  36. The Three Musketeers - Part I: D'Artagnan
    What this installment energetically proves is that you can ruffle the feathers of a totemic tale and still capture what’s good, galloping fun in Dumas’ storytelling: nefarious plots to be untangled, villains to be exposed and principled heroes to shoulder the risk of certain death while they tease each other mercilessly with heaps of panache.
  37. Fioretta
    A well-meaning but slapdash travelogue, Fioretta does find gratifying closure in the company that the Schoenbergs find: curators of a collective memory that won’t fade on their watch.
  38. Mr. Monk's Last Case: A Monk Movie
    Just as pure fan service, it’s a welcome return. If you liked “Monk” you’ll obviously want to watch it — and if you’ve never seen “Monk,” you should watch “Monk.” (The entire series is streaming on Peacock as well. It’s a lot of fun.)
  39. Monster
    This exquisitely rendered work from Kore-eda is a delicate web of compassion and embattlement: three separate views of one stretch of momentous time, spun and re-spun with care and craft.
  40. Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros
    Minute by minute, it’s a roving, inquisitive, elegantly expansive portrait of an establishment whose many constituent and tangential elements — farms and markets, kitchens and dining rooms, chefs and sous-chefs, servers and customers — function together in a kind of whirring, bustling day-to-day harmony.
  41. Eileen
    Oldroyd and McKenzie keep us adroitly off-balance.
  42. Candy Cane Lane
    You want to see Eddie Murphy surrounded by some Christmas-themed silliness. And on that score, it’s fine enough, but destined for regifting.
  43. The Boy and the Heron
    As you leave The Boy and the Heron, you may feel strangely bereft, emptied out in a way that I suspect Miyazaki both intends and hopes to console us against.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé
    It’s a celebration of talent, yes, but also of the commitment, the sacrifice, the sheer tenacity required to pull off the illusion of effortlessness.
  45. Napoleon
    Its glimmers of comic rage and generous helpings of battlefield carnage, though patchily entertaining on their own, never coalesce into a coherent reason for being.
  46. Wish
    The only time Wish shines bright is when it dares to get a little bit weird.
  47. Fallen Leaves
    The year’s most succinctly perfect film, Fallen Leaves aims to do for us what companionship does for its couple: make this treacherous life a bit more bearable.
  48. Maestro
    Maestro holds its contradictions in balance; it sees the complexity and the tragedy of Lenny and Felicia’s romance, and also its undeniable tenderness and passion.
  49. The Killer
    The Killer is an opportunity for America’s most stylish director to reboot, to get back to basics, to come in under two hours.
  50. The Disappearance of Shere Hite
    Most gratifying in Newnham’s investigation is how Hite reclaimed her own positive sense of self in exile through some key female friendships: a love goddess finding refuge with like-minded souls after a bruising battle with unenlightened, resentful mortals.
  51. Orlando, My Political Biography
    Orlando, My Political Biography is cheekily unclassifiable, which, considering its source and subject, isn’t surprising. But at its core, the film is sparklingly intelligent, Godard-puckish and moving, capable of deadpan wit and the most intimate swirl of ideas and emotions.
  52. Saltburn
    Fennell has an ear for cadence, and her editor, Victoria Boydell, has impeccable shock-comic timing. The film is put together with precision.
  53. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
    There’s so much that works about The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, it’s unfortunate that it’s all been crammed into one overly-long film.
  54. Next Goal Wins
    The overall flavor profile indicates that Waititi, whose own cartoonish appearance as a priest feels like an afterthought, has become bored with his signature brand of goofy uplift. Going by the unfunny self-referential gags (“The Karate Kid,” “The Matrix,” “Taken”), you’d swear the Oscar-winning filmmaker was struggling with the impulse to go full parody.
  55. May December
    Less a movie about a scandal than a movie about a movie about a scandal, it seeks to interrogate and even subvert its own promise of ripped-from-the-tabloids titillation, even as it challenges the predilections of an audience that might seek out such a movie.
  56. Thanksgiving
    If Thanksgiving had to be any specific dish on the holiday table, it would be stuffing: disparate chunks tossed together and baked. Stuffing is a dish where old bread goes to shine — a cheap and easy crowd-pleaser. But this particular serving of it is missing a crucial element, the binder.
  57. It's a Wonderful Knife
    Try as it does to mash slasher and Christmas picture together into some kind of a yuletide “Scream,” “It’s a Wonderful Knife” so badly miscalculates both genres that you count down the minutes, wishing for a guardian angel to save its likable young stars from the movie they’re stuck in.
  58. Dream Scenario
    It’s amusing, up to a point.
  59. The Marvels
    The film flies but never lets any emotional weight fully land.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Robert Irwin: A Desert of Pure Feeling
    A Desert of Pure Feeling is structured as a conventional biographical chronology. That predictable form finally conflicts with such unconventional art.
  61. Radical
    If the script can sometimes feel a tad pro forma, the film still proves an authentically moving and involving crowd-pleaser.
  62. Beyond Utopia
    Documentaries with life-or-death stakes, not to mention wider resonance in our increasingly unsettled geopolitical world, don’t get much more nerve-racking or heartbreaking than “Beyond Utopia.” At the same time, the film is inspiring about the lengths people will go to for a better life.
  63. The Marsh King's Daughter
    When we need the churning dread of an intimate tale of generational trauma, The Marsh King’s Daughter goes formulaic, and when we’re primed for exploitation sweats, it gets flabby.
  64. Rustin
    Rustin is on firmer footing when detailing the creative spit-balling that created the framework that made the March on Washington possible, as well as the competing egos and interests that almost doomed it. You’d need a 10-part limited series to really do all this justice, but the movie puts across the complexities with a nimble shorthand.
  65. Four Daughters
    This is a heartbreaker about mothers and daughters, the cruelty of repression and the slippery but revealing nature of performance. And to the end, it remains steadfast in its conviction that a woman’s truth and her beauty are never at odds.
  66. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
    This is a movie that teaches you how to watch it.
  67. The Delinquents
    From unsettled beginning to wondrously open-hearted finale, The Delinquents is wise enough not to offer clear or easy answers, beyond its certainty that getting lost is the only way to be found.
  68. Five Nights at Freddy's
    “FNAF”’ instead spins out of control as it attempts the fool’s errand that has befallen many a video game movie: shoehorning a weird and immersive experience into the bones of Hollywood narrative convention.
  69. Suitable Flesh
    Despite its bumpy execution and general thinness, Suitable Flesh boasts a playfulness that feels ripe for slicing up and serving anew.
  70. Fingernails
    For some, Nikou’s deliberate intent to portray a subtly warped reality may read as forced. But there’s an endearing bizarreness to “Fingernails,” his first film in English, that allows him to grasp at some of the intricacies of the human condition, steeped in silences as much as heartfelt analysis.
  71. Priscilla
    With piercing matter-of-factness, Coppola ends this movie, her strongest in more than a decade, at just the right moment.
  72. The Holdovers
    The Holdovers is a flat, phony, painfully diagrammatic movie masquerading as a compassionate, humane one.
  73. The Persian Version
    Keshavarz spins a lot of plates in The Persian Version and we can see the effort, but she keeps them all in the air.
  74. More Than Ever
    This is Krieps’ show, another elegantly virtuosic, intelligent turn that, in this case, imbues sickness with dignity so that every strained grasp for breath feels like a victory for autonomy.
  75. The Pigeon Tunnel
    In truth (there’s that word again), Morris’ movie isn’t so much a debriefing as a very entertaining recruitment tool for the pleasures of Cornwell’s storytelling.
  76. Divinity
    A movie destined for a cult following and subsequent midnight showings, “Divinity” does commit the sin of placing style over substance, but there’s enough of the latter to keep one’s mind spinning along with it, even if it’s all a jumble
  77. The Mission
    In its voices tinged with sorrow and re-examined history, this expertly tuned film is simply pro-introspection: a heavy-hearted look at an unnecessary death and a cultural superiority long deserving of scrutiny.
  78. Silver Dollar Road
    If your recipe for outrage needs a villainous presence, Peck isn’t interested in stoking it that way, and shouldn’t need to. That’s not the oxygen Silver Dollar Road, building off a 2019 ProPublica article by Lizzie Presser, wants to breathe. Rather, it’s the warmth, togetherness and persistence of a family fighting a ruthlessly unfair system, holding onto each other as forces move to expel them.
  79. Dear David
    it is a boring paint-by-numbers ghost movie, a jumble of tropes borrowed from movies like “The Ring,” and a poor facsimile of its influences.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Magic Flute
    I am at a loss to understand why this film has been marginalized. Branagh’s "Flute" is a joy.
  81. Anatomy of a Fall
    Triet’s movie is a monument to the ambiguous and unknown, a labyrinth of half-glimpsed causes and vague, sinister effects.
  82. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
    One of the pleasures of “The Eras Tour” is the way it destroys the facile notion of a pure individual self. With its labyrinthine arc, jumbled chronology and dazzling changes of tone, milieu and costume, it’s Swift’s ode to invention and self-reinvention, the many different lives she’s lived and faces she’s presented over the course of her career.
  83. The Burial
    Betts, whose first feature was the absorbing monastic drama “Novitiate,” has a gift for subverting and fulfilling expectations at once, and also for turning the strictures of traditional establishments inside out.
  84. Mami Wata
    It’s easy to be reminded of silent film’s who-needs-words heyday while watching Mami Wata, even when the foreboding sound design is doing its part and the actors are delivering their sparely written lines as if their characters’ lives depended on it.
  85. Cat Person
    If anything, the new stuff’s brazenness is truer in tone to what this “Cat Person” clearly wants to be: a slick, snarky, pulverizing horror-comedy rather than the compressed, low-key Mary Gaitskill-meets-Eliza Hittman cringefest that Roupenian’s delicate storytelling conjured with every peek into Margot’s drifting psyche.
  86. Foe
    Everyone here really wants to make something good and moving, but they’re all working so hard to make something out of nothing.
  87. Dicks: The Musical
    “Dicks” can’t maintain that level of performative thrust all the way through; it sags a bit in the middle, as one might expect from making the considerable jump from the stage and through the hoops of major revisions. But the film bounces back toward its back nine.
  88. The Royal Hotel
    It’s all so horribly familiar — even for those who have never traveled, never tended bar, and never found themselves the only female in a roomful of drunken, lonely men. The central terror of Green’s ferociously tense, intelligent movie is the terror of recognition.
  89. She Came to Me
    It’s only October but your Thanksgiving turkey has arrived. It’s called She Came to Me, a mishmash of flimsy, fanciful and far-fetched notions dressed up as a screwball New York rom-com. Given its pedigreed cast and filmmaker, the results are doubly sad.
  90. When Evil Lurks
    This is a film that delights in unspoken terrors and audience misdirection.
  91. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
    In The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Friedkin holds you rapt with the nimbleness of his camera placement (the sharp cinematography is by Michael Grady), the crispness of Darrin Navarro’s editing and, above all, the initially stiff but ultimately spellbinding rhetorical force of the actors.
  92. The Exorcist: Believer
    The Exorcist: Believer is an exhausting affair, an unrelenting film that attempts to cover up its lack of shock and suspense with a kind of cinematic bludgeoning: a battering delivered via smash cuts, jump scares, overlapping sound design and chaotic camerawork.
  93. PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie
    Throw in a whole heck of a lot of puns and sand all the edges down so everything is gently charming, inoffensive and just silly enough but not too silly to be annoying.
  94. Reptile
    Reptile, a studiously atmospheric, layer-peeling mystery from director and co-writer Grant Singer, foregrounds Del Toro — playing a calloused detective investigating a young woman’s murder — in a way that makes you want more of him. But also, regrettably, less of movies like “Reptile,” which tries to match its star’s unpredictable magnetism with a forced eeriness, only growing more ponderous and unfocused, like a case getting colder.
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