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. Hidden Figures
    The film may not be restrained but stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe are powerfully effective and its little-known true story is so flabbergasting that resistance is all but futile.
  2. Live by Night
    The movie is handsomely mounted with upscale production values, but it feels sluggish and disjointed.
  3. Silence
    Building implacable dread and tension from scene to scene, the story is as simple as its underlying ideas are endlessly complex.
  4. I, Daniel Blake
    When I, Daniel Blake regrettably piles it on at the end, it’s Loach growing weary of humanizing details and desperate to shake you up with consequences, didacticism and speechifying. It’s the finger-pointer in him, but as this movie frequently shows in its best moments, he’s still a practiced veteran at open-arms affection for the dignity of the downtrodden.
  5. Toni Erdmann
    Ade has an unusual gift for planting more than one idea in each frame; I don’t think there’s a single one of the movie’s 162 minutes that can be reduced to a single emotional beat or narrative function. That hefty running time isn’t a sign of indulgence, but integrity.
  6. Julieta
    The movie may not have the audacity and emotional grandeur of a new Almodóvar masterpiece, but in every particular — its seamless manipulation of time, its sly infusions of comedy, its expert direction of actors and, yes, its fabulous wallpaper — it confirms his mastery nonetheless.
  7. Sing
    It's a cute movie with genuinely funny moments (keep an eye out for the koala car wash), and some great tunes to boot.
  8. Assassin's Creed
    Assassin's Creed will be polarizing, but it's fascinating as an entry in Kurzel's oeuvre. It is singularly his film — both in style and the obsession with hubris, power and violence.
  9. Passengers
    Part outer-space romantic comedy, part science-fiction thriller, Passengers leave us feeling we’ve been taken for a ride.
  10. Patriots Day
    An effective, efficient and quite dramatic examination of the events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured 264, Patriots Day is a tribute to people who earned it: the investigators and first responders who ensured that a horrible situation did not become even worse.
  11. American Wrestler: The Wizard
    It may be by-the-book, but American Wrestler is a story well worth telling.
  12. The Legend of Ben Hall
    Martin and Coffa may bear a strong physical resemblance to their real-life counterparts, but their contemporary-sounding line delivery has all the dramatic heft of a Foster’s beer commercial.
  13. Boy 23: The Forgotten Boys of Brazil
    Input from historians, political scientists and other observers, as well as archival footage and photos, and impressionistic reenactment bits, round out this resonant, not untimely portrait of a dark and frightening chapter in Brazil’s past.
  14. The Boatman
    Despite an atmosphere of simmering violence and criminal wrongdoing, Boatman is more art film than action film; deliberately paced, skillfully shot, emotionally challenging.
  15. City of Dead Men
    While City of Dead Men has an appealingly polished look and uses its unusual locations thoughtfully, it teeters on the edge of pretension.
  16. Sins of Our Youth
    With its saturated colors, swirling camerawork and aggressive techno beats, Sins of Our Youth is rarely dull, but it lacks the emotional resonance that one expects from a film with the death of a child at its heart.
  17. Two Weeks to Go
    Two Weeks to Go is not a movie, it’s a sketch of a character study or a possible outline for a future project. It’s most definitely self-indulgent drivel.
  18. Virtual Revolution
    Cinematic life...is in short supply in this ambitious but leaden cautionary tale, which tries to pep things up with energetic fight scenes in the avatar worlds, but can’t escape the wooden acting and zipless storytelling.
  19. The Bad Kids
    This isn’t just a necessary or powerful story; it’s a well-told one.
  20. The Ataxian
    More unity of style would have made a better final product, but Kyle’s story — coupled with vibrant cinematography from Schlanser — is strong enough to keep audiences engaged and moved throughout the brief running time.
  21. Solace
    The plot of Solace is ultimately too generic — and too silly — to take seriously, which is probably why the film’s taken so long to come out. But it has style, and throwback appeal.
  22. A Kind of Murder
    The story remains an academic argument, struggling to pierce the handsome surface.
  23. Slash
    The film is a respectful analysis of burgeoning sexuality, the sometimes embarrassing missteps that come along with figuring it out, and exploring that all through fiction.
  24. The Hollow Point
    The Hollow Point is all hollow, no point.
  25. Neruda
    Although informed by the busy workings of history, politics and personal affairs, Neruda proceeds like a light-footed chase thriller filtered through an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” by the end of which the audience is lost in a crazily spiraling meta-narrative. Who exactly is the star and author of that narrative is one of the film’s more enticing mysteries.
  26. Collateral Beauty
    This movie doesn’t rise to the level of so-bad-it’s-good. But no less impressively, perhaps, it’s just bad enough that you actually wish it were worse.
  27. Fences
    Every moment on screen may not be enthralling, but the moments that are are such knockouts they make the enterprise essential viewing.
  28. Barry
    In some ways, Barry the film takes its personality from Barry himself. Always pleasant and companionable but a little pro forma in its early going, it gains in texture and interest as Obama's life and his reaction to it get more complex.
  29. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
    A swiftly paced, rough-and-ready entertainment that, in anticipating the canonical events of “A New Hope,” manages the tricky feat of seeming at once casually diverting and hugely consequential.
  30. 808
    Everything you ever wanted to know — or perhaps never knew you wanted to know — about the wildly influential Roland TR-808 drum machine is laid out with entertaining, if exhaustive, brio in the documentary 808.
  31. Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America
    It may lack focus in its approach to its subject, but Davis’ compelling character and powerful message keep the audience engaged.
  32. The C Word
    While the information presented might not come as news to many, the way that O’Hara synthesizes the massive volume of it into a personal story of herself and Servan-Schreiber, is immensely captivating and persuasive.
  33. Blood Brothers
    It’s hard to recommend Blood Brothers, which is mostly unpleasant and shrill. But it is unusual enough to suggest that Prendes’ next film might be better.
  34. Confessions of a Womanizer
    Somehow, despite the sexist, foul-mouthed rancor, there are messages to be found about the false promises of toxic masculinity and learning to be the person you want to be without repeating the sins of your parents. Though it’s rough going to get there.
  35. Best and Most Beautiful Things
    Smith is certainly a worthy advocate for the mainstreaming and acceptance of “outcasts” or “others.” Unfortunately, Zevgetis doesn’t dig deeply enough here.
  36. Sword Master
    Slick and silly, Sword Master rarely reaches the thrilling heights of the many kinetic twirl-and-slice epics directed by its producer, the legendary Tsui Hark.
  37. The Brand New Testament
    Again and again, Van Dormael delights in finding romantic solutions to existential problems, in forging the kinds of topsy-turvy emotional connections between his characters that enable them to overcome their natural impulses toward suspicion, hostility and even violence.
  38. Sugar Mountain
    Pretty but oh-so-dumb, Sugar Mountain is the cinematic equivalent of a himbo.
  39. Stevie D
    The borrowed concept is all it has going for it, and at nearly two hours it stretches the conceit and the performers far beyond their range. It’s a minor effort overly indebted to its references.
  40. Land of Mine
    Crisply and efficiently put together by writer-director Zandvliet, Land of Mine has the inherent edge-of-your-seat concern about what kind of damage the bombs will inflict on which of these boys, but it is the psychological qualities of the situation that hold the greatest interest.
  41. La La Land
    For a movie that all but demands that you swoon into its arms, La La Land doesn’t always seem to know exactly how to surrender to itself.
  42. Kill Ratio
    Kill Ratio is a laughably inept political thriller that would have been right at home on the USA Network lineup circa 1990.
  43. I Am Not Your Negro
    What makes I Am Not Your Negro a mesmerizing cinematic experience, smart, thoughtful and disturbing, goes well beyond words.
  44. Abattoir
    Ultimately, this film has a memorable villain and a stunning location, and not much else.
  45. Harry Benson: Shoot First
    As the intriguing documentary Harry Benson: Shoot First demonstrates, the fact that an art-for-art's sake modus operandi is alien to Benson makes his work and the personality and philosophy behind it more compelling than they would otherwise be.
  46. Contract to Kill
    Contract to Kill looks remarkably cheap for a film whose characters wear Rolexes and take private planes. The money also wasn’t spent on the script from writer-director Keoni Waxman, which confuses a stream of expletives for wit.
  47. Old Stone
    [A] stunningly assured, darkly gripping first feature.
  48. Beyond the Gates
    Beyond the Gates is more imaginative than frightening, and Stewart and co-writer Stephen Scarlata take too long to get to the good parts, killing time with long dialogue scenes where the characters pause interminably between lines.
  49. Frank & Lola
    Ross is to be commended for taking chances on his first outing. He delivers grown-up shivers with a strong cinematic sensibility. But however suspensefully the score groans and cries, the emotional stakes dwindle with each overemphatic narrative curve.
  50. Burn Country
    There’s plenty of intelligence and atmosphere in play here.... But the prevailing tone is of pressure applied and nothing released, a genre exercise that plays as educational rather than exhilarating.
  51. The Earthquake
    Sporadic dips into melodrama, some on-the-nose dialogue and acting, and an occasionally intrusive score hinder but don’t negate this ambitious film’s power and conviction.
  52. All We Had
    Holmes’ helming is unremarkable — unlike her and Owens’ acting, which is excellent.
  53. Office Christmas Party
    The greatest strength of Office Christmas Party is its casting. If you’ve got fabulous weirdos Kate McKinnon and T.J. Miller in lead roles, there are bound to be more than enough laughs.
  54. The Founder
    [Hancock] turns the unlikely subject of a fast-food chain into a quasi-religious satire, a parable of American striving and, ultimately, a study of artisanal integrity gradually caving in to commercial compromise.
  55. Incarnate
    Dense with plot and mythology, the film is refreshingly unpredictable — if only because guessing what comes next would require understanding what the hell is going on.
  56. Solitary
    The penetrating Solitary is a sobering account of life (without parole) inside the Red Onion, a super-maximum security prison ensconced in Virginia’s Appalachians.
  57. Rooted in Peace
    While its own roots never go quite as deep as they might, there’s still something goofily endearing about seeing Reitman, armed with that trusty bonsai, traipsing around the country on a healing mission.
  58. 77 Minutes
    Like the prolific Minn’s other disturbing docs, “8 Murders a Day” and “A Nightmare in Las Cruces,” this is a gritty, no frills, at times sensationalistic immersion into grim criminal territory.
  59. Fools
    It’s an interesting concept and Fools executes it well enough, though too often it leans on ambiguity and odd interactions.
  60. Anonymous
    Director Akan Satayev’s hacker thriller looks gorgeous, featuring locations around the world shot with crisp cinematography by Pasha Patriki. However, the script from Sanzhar Sultan is poorly structured and silly, revealing the emptiness beneath the shiny facade.
  61. Evan's Crime
    It’s a bit of a structural and thematic hodgepodge, and a few key moments feel cursorily handled, but Evan’s Crime remains an effectively scrappy and involving us-against-them drama.
  62. Sky on Fire
    Keeping up with the betrayals and shifting allegiances is more tedious than fun, while the simplistic moralizing about callous corporate greed, and the detours into tragedy, fall flat.
  63. Finding Babel
    When it’s merely a guided tour marked by sites and talking historians, Finding Babel can feel a little color-by-numbers. (Which may explain the Schreiber-read interludes.) But there are excursions that feel invigorating.
  64. Behind 'The Cove'
    It’s too scattershot to be persuasive, even if occasionally it sparks thought about issues of cultural tradition, unfair international agreements, and nationalistic defensiveness.
  65. Always Shine
    While the foreshadowing proves more fascinating than the upshot, the two leads breathe jittery life into every sinister twist.
  66. Mifune: The Last Samurai
    As directed by Oscar-winning documentarian Steven Okazaki, "Mifune" is thorough and insightful enough to enlighten the man's numerous fans and serve as an introduction to those unfamiliar with his gifts and his influence, which were huge.
  67. Run the Tide
    In his first feature outing, director Soham Mehta overplays the significance of virtually every aspect of Rajiv Shah’s script, no matter how minor, with painfully slow pans and needlessly lingering establishing shots.
  68. SiREN
    For the most part this is a clever and confident expansion of a terrific short. It stings less but packs plenty of poison.
  69. The Comedian
    De Niro’s scenes with Mann glow with warmth and wit, but something in his performance clenches up whenever Jackie gets behind a microphone and starts railing about masturbation, incontinence and other below-the-waist targets.
  70. Pet
    Pet isn’t much more than a twist on an old conceit, and the character beats are painted with overly broad strokes, but it’s sharply shot with a crystalline sense of unease, and Monaghan and Solo lean into their creepy performances wholeheartedly.
  71. Pocket Listing
    Enjoy a marathon of Bravo’s real estate reality shows for more nuanced characters and compelling story lines instead.
  72. One More Time with Feeling
    The aesthetic that Dominik has crafted is a pitch-perfect expression of Cave’s grappling with matters of time and space. It’s gorgeous and ghostly.
  73. Things to Come
    Things to Come holds us completely. A life is unfolding here, under our eyes, and we never lose sight of how special that is.
  74. The Duelist
    The sumptuously shot, costumed, designed and scored Russian import The Duelist dazzles and provokes as it makes little real sense beyond the confines of its hermetic milieu.
  75. The Eyes of My Mother
    [Pesce’s] sense of horror craftsmanship is at once meticulous and oblique.
  76. Jackie
    Larraín told his producers he wouldn't do Jackie unless Natalie Portman agreed to take on the role, and her superb performance, utterly convincing without being anything like an impersonation, vindicates his determination.
  77. This Is Life (Sheng Men)
    What emerges is a portrait of doctors and staff who work hard to do the right thing for their patients and the babies, who have no voice. It is life, fought for and forged in the most difficult of circumstances.
  78. Trezoros: The Lost Jews of Kastoria
    As impactful as its rarely told story might be, “Trezoros” would have been better served by a shorter running time or a more focused approach to its central story.
  79. Adrift
    Lopez’s first feature comes across as fragmented and overwrought, with characters and performances that seem to have been egged on by the score’s achingly purposeful piano.
  80. On the Map
    Israeli director Dani Menkin has been especially thorough in telling this classic against-all-odds sports story.
  81. A Boy Called Po
    The film over-relies on blunt messaging, one-note villains (bullies, bosses, administrators, worst mall cop ever) and several stacked-deck situations to align us with David and Po, even if we’re inherently on their side from the start.
  82. Notes on Blindness
    The film’s quiet impact comes as it leads us along John’s journey to understanding this disability as an unexpected, but ultimately accepted, gift.
  83. Magnus
    The loneliness of the long-distance chess grandmaster is affectingly conveyed in Magnus.
  84. Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened
    How the then-newbie performers’ jackpot roles in the heady, heartbreaking show informed their lives and careers forms much of the movie’s stirring narrative spine.
  85. Tank 432
    A few memorable shots don’t offer enough justification to watch a film that’s not scary, rarely exciting and never as engrossing a puzzle as it means to be.
  86. Seasons
    As a mood killer and conscience-raiser it’s woefully obvious, but also unlikely to erase the sense memory of all the scintillatingly captured fauna that came before it.
  87. Miss Sloane
    See this smart, showboating movie now, before its simmering sense of justice begins to feel like a thing of the past.
  88. Baden Baden
    Rachel Lang’s first feature isn’t about placing Ana on the road to her life’s purpose; it’s a serpentine trip through impetuous leaps forward and messy retreats.
  89. Evolution
    A striking and maddening delivery system for art house creepinesss.
  90. Lion
    Once Lion's can't-miss conclusion hovers into view, the film's periodic over-dramatization matters less. A story like this is finally impossible to mess up, and pretending otherwise is beside the point.
  91. Bad Santa 2
    Bad Santa 2 relies entirely too much on the salty stuff, offering an opportunity for audiences to titter at the firehose of vile gutter humor that leaves no one unsullied, and delves into some truly dark places.
  92. Rules Don't Apply
    Rules Don't Apply, as its name implies, is a movie intent on going its own way. It's not without its charms, but there aren't enough of them and they don't readily cohere.
  93. Allied
    Even when Allied loses its footing, there is something unmistakably touching about Zemeckis’ commitment to evoking a world so quietly, heroically out of step with the times.
  94. Moana
    The moral of Moana is that playing it safe can have its limits. It’s hard not to agree, even when this lovely, reassuring hug of a movie doesn’t entirely heed its own advice.
  95. Nobody Walks in L.A.
    Nobody Walks in L.A. rides on the easy, sunny charm of the lead duo, as well as the beauty and personality of the city.
  96. Goldbricks in Bloom
    Writer-director-editor Danny Sangra takes on the complicated relationship between art and commerce in the sharp, surprising Goldbricks in Bloom.
  97. A Street Cat Named Bob
    Veteran director Roger Spottiswoode, whose output has been spotty in recent years, returns to form with a perfectly weighted redemptive story that engages the heart without shying away from the darker aspects of Bowen’s recovery.
  98. I Am Not Madame Bovary
    The hyper-dramatic touches help disguise that this is essentially a film about paperwork. The rest of the weight is carried by Fan, who’s funny and heartbreaking. She’s a hero for our times: a stubborn woman, willing to inconvenience the powerful to get a fair hearing.
  99. Asperger's Are Us
    If you have an affection for puns or off-kilter humor, it’s hard not to be charmed by Asperger’s Are Us.
  100. Blood on the Mountain
    The movie is practically a textbook about how ravenous corporations and feckless government can strip-mine the souls of workers, and replace them with a political narrative about their problems that keeps reality forever hidden behind a fine, dusty fog.
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