Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,523 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: 8,698 out of 16523
  2. Mixed: 5,808 out of 16523
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16523
16523 movie reviews
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  1. The Cup
    Charming, slyly comic and far from conventionally religious.
    • Los Angeles Times
  2. Fast Food Fast Women
    An intimate, small-scale movie in the nicest sense.
  3. Princesa
    The well-made Princesa is daring, for it ends on an upbeat note in circumstances that are traditionally treated otherwise.
  4. Ha-Hesder
    One of the most successful, provocative and intensely contemporary of Israeli films, so much so that to watch it is to feel the country having a passionate argument with itself.
  5. In This Tricky Life
    The movie is, above all, a splendid showcase for stunning Santangelo, who gives a powerhouse portrayal of a vivid, sexy woman more hotheaded than truly stupid.
  6. Drift
    Drift is a slender, intimate tale that is thoughtful and revealing, nicely written, directed and acted.
  7. Luminarias
    Consistently entertaining and offers some sharp observations of the Latino experience.
  8. Circuit
    At once a sexy soap opera, at times lurid and bathetic, and also a gritty cautionary tale made by a filmmaker honest enough to have it both ways.
  9. Splendor
    The pleasing Splendor is surely more likely to appeal to a wider audience than any of Araki's previous films.
  10. Shanghai Ghetto
    A serious and thoughtful documentary.
  11. Smokers Only
    A venturesome, beautifully realized psychological mood piece that reveals its first-time feature director's understanding of the expressive power of the camera.
  12. Piglet's Big Movie
    Parents may find their attention wandering, but the simple tale contains valuable life lessons for their youngest offspring, who will likely be enchanted.
  13. Scarlet Diva
    It's a demented kitsch mess (although the smeary digital video does match the muddled narrative), but it's savvy about celebrity and has more guts and energy than much of what will open this year.
  14. Injeong sajeong bol geot eobtda
    For all his mastery of his medium, Lee is no less effective in directing actors than in creating images.
  15. Murder by Numbers
    Though Schroeder makes you squirm more than you want to at the inevitable scenes of the trussed-up female murder victim, he also has the proclivity and the skill to make at least the B-picture half of Murder by Numbers of more than passing interest.
  16. Isn't She Great
    Ah, what glorious casting!
    • Los Angeles Times
  17. Brown's Requiem
    An uncommonly satisfying private-eye mystery that is at once classic in form and deeply personal in feeling.
  18. Earth
    Telling things through the eyes of a spoiled, precocious, troublemaking 8-year-old narrator is both an overdone device and not a particularly engaging one.
  19. Southpaw
    Warm and appealing, but there clearly was a far more informative and comprehensive film to be made of the life and world of Francis Barrett.
  20. An American Rhapsody
    Made with care and respect, American Rhapsody manages to skirt the edge of excessive sentiment without falling victim to it.
  21. Innocence
    The film never quite shakes its self-consciousness about just how special it is and that is a hindrance.
  22. Novocaine
    Martin is marvelous; through sheer charisma, he takes over certain scenes as if no one else is there.
  23. East Is East
    Above all a man's confrontation with self in middle-age and his need to accept the fact that his children, beyond their mixed ancestry, are after all native-born English citizens.
  24. CyberWorld
    Will delight video game fans in search of over-scaled eye candy.
  25. Long Time Since
    Porizkova and Sands seem too young for their roles, but then the film seems as timeless as a fable.
  26. The Way Home
    Has inherent sentimental appeal, but Lee balances it with considerable humor and an unblinking eye toward the realities of a primitive way of life.
  27. Brown Sugar
    Proves as appealing as its title.
  28. The Bank
    The sleek, well-oiled, well-acted The Bank, while as meaty as a steak, is short on sizzle.
  29. The Real Cancun
    The result is surprisingly genial, even innocent -- a movie without a screenplay that echoes countless coming-of-age-at-the-beach movies, except maybe "Weekend at Bernie's."
  30. Himalaya
    Complexity and personality among key figures keeps Himalaya involving throughout its grueling journey and lifts the film above the merely ethnographic.
  31. Aimee & Jaguar
    With key scenes so vivid they barely feel scripted, this is more than a same-sex success, it's a most affecting, most sensual on-screen love affair, period.
  32. L'ennui
    Such a rigorous exploration of sexual obsession that it proves to be a most demanding film.
  33. No One Sleeps
    An adroit, ambitious, richly detailed and keenly observant piece of filmmaking by the director of the haunting Rio drama "Via Appia" (1990).
  34. Just One Time
    In Just One Time, sexual fantasy gives way to a consideration of values without being heavy-handed. Janger draws winning performances from everyone.
  35. Pandaemonium
    It's unfortunate and ironic that Temple risks so much so successfully in evoking an atmosphere of literary imagination as well as Coleridge's drug-induced fantasies only to conclude his film in a thud of fustian staginess.
  36. Smiling Fish & Goat on Fire
    A film of much gentleness, tenderness and keen observation into the way laughter and pain have a way of colliding into each other.
    • Los Angeles Times
  37. The Simian Line
    These formidable actresses [Redgrave and Daly], abetted by a persuasive Connick, and by Hurt as the most genteel and benevolent of ghosts, set a high standard for a splendid ensemble cast.
  38. Birthday Girl
    Butterworth guides us through the world of chaos and romantic confusion he's created as if it's the most natural place in the world. After a while, we actually believe it is.
  39. The Five Senses
    An elegant, deliberate film about loneliness and hope, connection and loss.
  40. Girls Can't Swim
    Birot is an engaging storyteller who can inspire luminous, spontaneous portrayals, but her ending is so drastic that it feels unearned, a note of bleakness struck merely for its own sake.
  41. The Color of Paradise
    As worthy and moving as The Color of Paradise is, it is not entirely free of the manipulative, the arbitrary and the downright punitive.
  42. ZigZag
    ZigZag is also richly cinematic. Los Angeles locales have been chosen with a keen eye to freshness and pungent atmosphere, and they have been masterfully photographed by James L. Carter with a notably effective play of dark and light.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    20 Dates
    A laugh-out-loud chronicle of the struggling filmmaker's hunt for a girlfriend.
  44. Mad Love
    Succeeds as a full-bodied diversion because it takes even its silly elements seriously. If you're in the mood for impressive castles and sumptuous costumes, torch-lit processions and decorative nudity, this is the place to turn.
  45. An Affair of Love
    A film as romantic as its title.
  46. The Importance of Being Earnest
    The result is a film that is at best highly uneven and perversely at odds with itself. Luckily, Wilde's delicious sense of absurdity and peerlessly witty dialogue are pretty indestructible, and "Earnest" itself remains a peerless comedy of manners.
  47. Home Movie
    There is something reassuring in seeing free-thinking individuals express their personalities so emphatically yet invitingly in the places they live.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Naqoyqatsi
    Much of this is involving, although the pace is so relentless that it leaves little time to breathe or grasp precisely what Reggio is attempting to say.
  49. City of Ghosts
    For his atmospheric debut as a feature director, the actor Matt Dillon has cast himself as a guy in need of saving. It's a nice fit.
  50. The Event
    Has such quiet power that it is actually not depressing, and the cast follows suit with Dukakis, Carver and Posey, rising to the occasion.
  51. Laurel Canyon
    In its milieu and parallel story lines, the film suggests a bantam "Short Cuts," but for better and for worse, this is Altman without the razored edge. Cholodenko elicits appealing performances from her ensemble, but she never pushes their characters anywhere there isn't an easy out.
  52. The Source
    An ambitious and largely successful documentary testimony-tribute to the founders of the so-called Beat movement.
  53. The Dogwalker
    This is, after all, a film in which no one leads life according to script -- but, then, that's also the reason it works.
  54. Boys Life 4: Four Play
    Brent Sloan is the executive producer for the 87-minute Boys Life 4, each segment of which is polished, succinctly developed and well-acted. It deserves as warm a reception from audiences as its predecessors.
  55. The Believer
    Admirably ambitious and utterly unsparing, but as credible as the arc of Danny's odyssey is in itself, the all-important need to evoke a profound sense of the enigmatic and paradoxical in relation to Danny's fate has eluded Bean.
  56. All Over the Guy
    A romantic comedy of wit and substance that actor-writer Dan Bucatinsky and director Julie Davis have moved gracefully from stage to screen with a change of title and sexual orientation.
  57. Francis Ford Coppola Presents: The Legend of Suriyothai
    Not the place to go look for nuanced, deeply emotional performances. The acting is inevitably on the formal side, suitable for the pageant this film is. But don't let that dissuade you. They won't be making another film like this any time soon, and the chance to see all those elephants is not one you get every day.
  58. Stevie
    Of course, James is exploiting Stevie, but the peculiar power of this film lies in James' indirect acknowledgment of it and his hope that his film has some point and value.
  59. The Hurricane
    With power, intensity, remarkable range and an ability to disturb that is both unnerving and electric, it is more than Washington's most impressive part.
  60. Time and Tide
    Visually, the film is a stunner with its impossibly mobile camera work. It is also all but impossible to hold on to the story line.
  61. Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
    Mr. Death, which is shot through with one dark absurdity after another, emerges as a cautionary tale if ever there was one.
  62. The Contender
    It does move right along and it's enlivened by stronger, more enjoyable acting than this kind of picture usually provides.
  63. My Kingdom
    Gaunt, silver-haired and leonine, Harris brings a tragic dimension and savage full-bodied wit and cunning to the aging Sandeman.
  64. Two Ninas
    It is amazing how writer-director Neil Turitz, a seasoned journalist, has taken the familiar ingredients of the spiky New York dating game movie and made them seem so fresh and original, filled with individuals acutely detailed and compassionately observed.
  65. Yves Saint Laurent 5 avenue Marceau 75116 Paris
    Engrossing and illuminating.
  66. Kiss of the Dragon
    The non-fighting parts of Kiss of the Dragon are, despite the presence of co-star Bridget Fonda, completely non-compelling. It's a proud convention in films like this for fans to mark time during exposition, waiting patiently for the action to start up again, and Kiss is very much in that tradition.
  67. Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat
    Lawrence is a no-holds-barred stand-up comedian who gets away with the strongest, most graphic language because he is so funny and because he makes himself the object of so much of his humor.
  68. The World Is Not Enough
    Not enough to add up to a fully satisfying movie.
  69. U-571
    Gets high marks for tension and excitement.
    • Los Angeles Times
  70. Vertical Limit
    Vertical Limit, despite its weaknesses, finds the right director in Martin Campbell to energize this high-altitude thriller.
  71. Eight Legged Freaks
    So why does Eight Legged Freaks make one laugh out loud even though there is nothing revolutionary about its approach to the giant bug genre? -- the movie is so unapologetic in its crassness that it disarms even the fussiest connoisseur of throwaway disaster flicks.
  72. Nicholas Nickleby
    McGrath, who adapted the novel, manages to catch the flavor of it without its tang.
  73. Get Bruce
    An accurate sense of how today's Hollywood works.
  74. Bulworth
    Frequently awkward, peppered with moments that make you shake your head, Bulworth's singular nature makes it a film that can't be shrugged off.
  75. The Closer You Get
    A droll, hearty Irish comedy with a serious undertow all the more effective for its unexpected candor and depth.
  76. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
    Blends great cinematic energy with an awkwardly mixed multinational cast and aggressively over-modernized dialogue.
  77. Two Weeks Notice
    It is a lovely, amusing diversion from the start, but the depth of its poignancy by the time it's over comes as a surprise.
  78. The Sum of All Fears
    Has vast scope, unflagging energy, a rousing Jerry Goldsmith score and a horrendous disaster sequence that conveys much in discreet fashion in keeping with post-Sept. 11 sensibilities yet is needlessly evasive in telling us the precise extent of its magnitude.
  79. Willard
    The new Willard, which has taken the original's humanity and the psychological validity, leavened with a dollop of dark humor, and replaced them with a technically impressive but essentially heartless spoof.
  80. After the Life
    Central to the last film's success are Manise and Blanc, who invest the story with intensity unmatched since Belvaux stormed through the first feature.
  81. The Heart of Me
    Perhaps The Heart of Me's greatest success is the way it avoids turning any of its characters into villains. They all act badly at times, but we feel for them just the same; they never lose our sympathy. Weepy or not, that's an accomplishment any kind of film can feel proud of.
  82. Porn Theater
    Not for everyone, but the open-minded should find it enlightening as well as entertaining.
  83. Km. 0 - Kilometer Zero
    Made from a sophisticated European perspective, this is a light summer entertainment with an able, highly attractive cast.
  84. On_Line
    A fine example of digital filmmaking, and Weintrob and his co-writer, Andrew Osborne, manage to raise some serious issues regarding the Internet without taking themselves too seriously.
  85. 200 Cigarettes
    A light comedy, pure and simple (and hardly unfamiliar), but its makers sustain its energy through the unraveling of an intricate plot and bring to it a certain edge through a witty, sharp sense of observation.
  86. Big Eden
    An accomplished heart-tugger, a serious romantic comedy that tackles two dilemmas with honesty and compassion.
  87. I Am Sam
    A warm, hard-to-resist story.
  88. Menace II Society
    Their instincts as filmmakers override their instincts as moralizers. Menace II Society is best--and most shocking--when it just sets out its horrors and lets us find our own way. [26 May 1993, Calendar, p.F-1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  89. Thirteen Days
    Dealing with all these crises and decisions gives Thirteen Days a surprising amount of tension and watchability for a story whose outcome we already know.
  90. Rana's Wedding
    The film effectively conveys the fears and frustrations of Palestinians struggling in a country that treats them as the enemy.
  91. Kadosh
    Gitai has created a film that is as beautiful as it is all but unbearable to watch.
  92. The Experiment
    As an exploitation picture, Das Experiment is mindlessly potent; subtitles are no guarantee of sophistication and subtlety.
  93. Welcome to Collinwood
    There isn't much else to the film beyond slapstick antics and professional gloss, but the results are diverting enough, in great measure because it's essentially a scene-by-scene remake Mario Monicelli's 1958 satire, "Big Deal on Madonna Street."
  94. Panic
    A lot of this is quite well done, but Bromell has a tendency to have too schematic an aesthetic agenda for his story: treating film noir like kabuki is not necessarily the best way to go, no matter how beautifully you do it.
  95. Ghost River
    Directed by Olivier Dahan, Isabelle Huppert takes the most familiar type of material and attains impeccable results.
  96. The Big Tease
    A cheerful and smart mock documentary about hairdressing and Hollywood that knows enough not to take itself too seriously.
    • Los Angeles Times
  97. Little Secrets
    Its greeting card look and feel aside, Little Secrets is an otherwise worthy family entertainment.
  98. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag
    Consistently inventive...Comeau comes across likably.
    • Los Angeles Times
  99. Boat Trip
    Boat Trip is happily a no-holds-barred, all-out farce in which zany complications escalate rapidly and continually.
  100. My Life Without Me
    A splendid cast, coupled with Isabel Coixet's deeply committed writing and direction, goes a long way to make this movie affecting to watch even it if doesn't hold up well to reflection once the lights go up.
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