Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,550 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 2.2 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: 8,714 out of 16550
  2. Mixed: 5,819 out of 16550
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16550
16550 movie reviews
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  1. The Cut
    Atom Egoyan's 2002 "Ararat" had been perhaps the most notable film to tackle the Armenian genocide, but it did so only anecdotally. The historical epic approach seems long overdue, and Akin does it justice.
  2. Hellions
    Hellions is art book horror, something to flip through but never truly eerie or scary.
  3. Captive
    Oyelowo and Mara's riveting, embodied performances rise above the material.
  4. Pawn Sacrifice
    The film's straight-ahead approach matters less than the complete and utter strangeness of the true story it convincingly tells.
  5. The Perfect Guy
    Despite its serious imperfections, the soapy escapism provided by The Perfect Guy at least arrives at an opportune time.
  6. 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
    Though not as thrilling as the original, this third installment is an improvement over the paint-by-number 2013 direct-to-video “12 Rounds 2: Reloaded.”
  7. 90 Minutes in Heaven
    Although this well-meaning film may appeal to its intended audience on a spiritual level, the result is a sluggish, clinical, largely dreary portrait that tends to mistake trauma for drama.
  8. Listening
    To call it amateurish would be kind.
  9. Paulette
    Far too broad and simplistic to enjoy as the offbeat soufflé it so desperately aims to be.
  10. Blind
    It's a fascinating exploration of the things that can thrive in the soil of a jealous mind, fertilized by suspicion and a lack of sight.
  11. The Beauty Inside
    It's satisfying, charming and surprising — a film that keeps its supernatural elements grounded in reality, with the focus on the spirituality of true love.
  12. Wolf Totem
    There's no denying the beauty of the film's imagery, violent and tender, or the emotional power of the final moment in the boy-and-his-dog love story.
  13. Goodnight Mommy
    Beginning with a gentle lullaby and ending with a tightly packed wallop, Goodnight Mommy is one viscerally chilling, seriously unsettling horror film.
  14. The Visit
    Shyamalan's script puts down reality shows, but this shocker works on the level of a game show, compelling audiences to yell out advice for Becca and Tyler as they steer through one trouble spot after another. This writer-director depends on hoary provocations.
  15. A Brilliant Young Mind
    A Brilliant Young Mind doesn't fit into any familiar inspirational box. Many of its characters are complex, contrary individuals who are not even close to being comfortable in their own skins, and this film refuses to shortchange how frustratingly edgy and difficult they are to interact with.
  16. Sleeping with Other People
    Though the leads lend charm and comic timing to the unpersuasive material, it would take a ground-up rewrite to make the fate of their characters matter.
  17. Time Out of Mind
    Given what it attempts, Time Out of Mind should be considered a success. An attempt to use a movie star to shine a dramatic light on the intractable problem of urban homelessness, the film's tone of austerity helps it to avoid sentimentality and simplistic answers.
  18. Meet the Patels
    Meet The Patels is more than just a hoot. Its candor and empathy allow it to make keen points about love, marriage, family and the unexpected complications that American freedoms can bring to immigrant lives.
  19. Coming Home
    Zhang and his sterling actors have made something fairly unforgettable about the tragedy of forgetting.
  20. The Transporter Refueled
    Cheap silliness abounds, including car chases that are more about loud crashes and CGI than the thrill of speed.
  21. Slow Learners
    Being big on improvisation doesn't necessarily mine nuggets of comic brilliance, and there are times you wish Argott and Joyce would have adhered more closely to the Matt Serword-penned script.
  22. Contracted: Phase II
    Novice screenwriter Craig Walendziak has followed England's template, charting the daily worsening of the symptoms. But he doesn't get that the 2013 "Contracted" was special because it was much more than a zombie flick.
  23. My Voice, My Life
    The film might have gained some heft had director Ruby Yang let the transformations unfold before our eyes instead of force-feeding us testimonials.
  24. Dirty Weekend
    That Les isn't one of LaBute's garden variety sadists is the best thing you can say about Dirty Weekend.
  25. Dragon Blade
    The movie's grandiose emotional quotient never feels any more real than its ham-fisted dialogue, dubious accents, strained "Kumbaya" moments or eclectic hairdos.
  26. Bloodsucking Bastards
    The film takes a long time to get going because of all the prolonged, glib chit-chat that loses whatever satirical edge it might have initially possessed.
  27. Before We Go
    There's so little urgency, cleverness or romantic comedy zing to this effort from four credited screenwriters (including Oscar winner Ron Bass) that the whole effort seems to run solely on the smiles of its photogenic leads.
  28. 7 Chinese Brothers
    An intelligent actor whose sad sack demeanor has often been put to good use by director Wes Anderson, most effectively in "Rushmore," Schwartzman does similarly well by Byington, whose slight portrait (taking its name from the title of an R.E.M. song) might not otherwise sustained its quirky charm without him.
  29. Break Point
    This light comedy stretches beyond sports to find emotion at its core, without sacrificing laughs.
  30. Chloe and Theo
    The climax is overwrought and cheesy, which doesn't match with the quiet dignity of the Inuit man. He carries a profound and sage warning, but Chloe and Theo just isn't the right dramatic package.
  31. Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine
    While the filmmaker's trademark mixture of talking heads, archival footage and investigative ethos is familiar, Gibney is certainly good at what he does, and "Steve Jobs" is at its best in providing a brisk summation of the man's life. Or, more accurately, lives, for Jobs seemed to have been more people than one would have thought possible.
  32. A Walk in the Woods
    Despite Redford's enthusiasm and best efforts, A Walk in the Woods is a tedious journey to nowhere special.
  33. War Room
    Preachy doesn't begin to describe War Room, a mighty long-winded and wincingly overwrought domestic drama.
  34. Blood Punch
    Writer Eddie Guzelian's grindhouse-meets-"Groundhog Day" scenario is not without its clever plot turns, but his terrible faux-noir dialogue is mostly crass, witless snark, and the fresh-faced, hollow actors don't have the scuzzy charm or fatalistic comic rhythms needed to make this material disreputably fun.
  35. A Reason
    Unfortunately, A Reason doesn't have enough story to justify its running time of nearly two hours, and though the performers are skilled, the melodramatic score and deliberate pace result in a piece that is overwrought but underdone.
  36. The Golden Dream
    The movie exists in a space beyond arguments about immigration policy and border security, and while sometimes a little too willfully pokey, it speaks to something indelibly human about dreams and their costs.
  37. Windsor Drive
    There isn't a whole lot to the script, and the exasperating direction by Natalie Bible only makes the film look like an extended trailer that teases but never delivers.
  38. When Animals Dream
    Though the careful mood is invariably dissipated when it comes time to kill, kill, kill, Arnby's ace in the hole remains Suhl, a young actress of Streep-ian intensity.
  39. The Mend
    By turns opaque, harsh, self-aware, indulgent and wickedly funny. It's never dull, pummeling you with its prickly smarts.
  40. Unsullied
    It's almost inconceivable that this effective, nerve-racking thriller is the first feature from former NFL defensive end Simeon Rice. It requires the usual suspension of disbelief, and pacing problems are a sign of Rice's directorial inexperience. But the tension he creates is unrelenting.
  41. Guidance
    Mills peppers his fresh script with an assortment of throwaway lines, kooky character beats and off-kilter emotional truths. That he packs so much memorable silliness into one 80-minute film is quite the feat. Sequel, please.
  42. Butterfly Girl
    Sometimes it's those with the hardest struggles in life who remember to appreciate life more than anyone else. This message comes through loud and clear in Cary Bell's documentary, Butterfly Girl.
  43. I Touched All Your Stuff
    It's too bad that Bühler and Mariani take Kirk's tall tale at face value instead of doing their own investigative work and tracking down other characters for interviews.
  44. Zipper
    Instead of taking the audience in unfamiliar directions, filmmaker Mora Stephens (who wrote the script with Joel Viertel) is in such a heated rush to get to all the salacious bits, the story doesn't build crucial dramatic tension.
  45. Z for Zachariah
    What should be a sexually and emotionally charged atmosphere instead ends up feeling like an intellectual exercise, with the actors attempting mightily to simulate chemistry that simply doesn't exist.
  46. The Second Mother
    The Second Mother is a satisfying contradiction. It's a soap opera with a social conscience that casually mixes dramatic elements about serious class issues with a crowd-pleasing audience picture sensibility.
  47. Rosenwald
    As revealed by writer-director Aviva Kempner, it's not just the amount of money he donated that makes Rosenwald special, it's the specifics of who he gave it to and how and why he did it that sets him apart.
  48. Steak (R)evolution
    Ribière and Le Bourdonnec get almost hypertechnical with all the cattle breeds, feeds, grades, cuts, marbling, dry-aging and preparation. Nevertheless, most any carnivore would find this absolute torture on an empty stomach.
  49. We Are Your Friends
    The movie is visually inventive and with enough good moments and smart moves to never be entirely dismissible, while not strong enough to overcome its essential thinness.
  50. Home Run Showdown
    A pleasant if somewhat by-the-numbers family film that lacks any real crack-of-the-bat energy.
  51. No Escape
    It's hardly essential viewing, but No Escape is a tense, at times riveting action-thriller about innocents abroad. Supersize your popcorn, check your logic at the door and settle in for a pretty good ride.
  52. The Park Bench
    A sweet tale with a smart storytelling device and charming performers, but not much more beyond the cute.
  53. When Bette Met Mae
    The performances are cringe-worthy, the appeal of the material marginal.
  54. The Curse of Downers Grove
    The Curse of Downers Grove seems to be jumping on that 1990s teen slasher bandwagon two decades too late.
  55. We Come as Friends
    Because Sauper views himself as a storyteller first, as political as "We Come as Friends" may be, it is always dramatic, never didactic.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Station to Station
    Its individual moments are quite seductive. But if there is a deeper meaning — of what it means to hit the rails in the 21st century, to peer into America's de-industrialized guts — it lies well beyond the scope of this film.
  57. One & Two
    Gorgeous and naturalistic shots by cinematographer by Autumn Durald speak volumes, and the atonal, foreboding score by Nathan Halpern creates a sense of dread, though they are ultimately squandered in an underdeveloped story.
  58. Mateo
    What begins as a quirky portrait of the artist as a gringo mariachi troubadour proves to be a telling study of a lost soul whose palpable passion for his music acts as a surrogate for more meaningful human contact.
  59. Searching for Home: Coming Back From War
    Searching for Home: Coming Back From War touches on wide-ranging veterans' issues, but goes no deeper than that.
  60. She's Funny That Way
    [It] is it all forced and regrettably laugh-free, despite the considerable energy the actors put into it.
  61. Some Kind Of Beautiful
    A treadmill sex comedy, huffing and puffing in place until its time is up.
  62. Being Evel
    The rise-and-fall trajectory of Knievel's career is colorfully captured in Daniel Junge's Being Evel, a savvy documentary that gives the granddaddy of extreme sports his due while gauging the national climate that welcomed his shrewdly timed arrival.
  63. After Words
    The good news about After Words is that it offers Marcia Gay Harden a rare film lead. The bad news: Harden's role in this groan-worthy dramedy is so dreary and ill-conceived that even her formidable talents can't bring it to life.
  64. Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery
    The details are mesmerizing as is the rule-breaking psychology behind it.
  65. The Iron Ministry
    Filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki withholds judgment and resists editorializing, but the result is frustratingly nebulous and devoid of context.
  66. Learning to Drive
    Learning to Drive is a richly observed, crosscultural character study that coasts along pleasurably on the strengths of its virtuoso leads.
  67. Hitman: Agent 47
    Writers Skip Woods and Michael Finch have a few tricks up their sleeves as betrayals emerge and allegiances shift. But it's not enough to make us care or to keep the third act from being a head-scratching mess.
  68. Top Spin
    Top Spin grips, exhilarates and breaks hearts like the 1994 film "Hoop Dreams."
  69. American Ultra
    The action set-pieces and the comedic character scenes in the film seem to be taking turns and are rarely brought together in a meaningful way.
  70. Sinister 2
    Nothing about Sinister 2 comes close to the feel-bad ode to literally and figuratively dark interiors that distinguished the title-earning original.
  71. Grandma
    Weitz's film moves from clunky domestic dramedy to genuine feminist odyssey.
  72. Brothers ... Blood Against Blood
    Bollywood veteran Jackie Shroff, assuming Nick Nolte's part as the recovering alcoholic father, delivers the kind of acting reel that would guarantee an Oscar nomination for some Hollywood actors. It's a pleasure to marvel at his performance alone.
  73. The Kindergarten Teacher
    Lapid confidently peppers the film with enough provocative beats, unsettling behaviors and bold camera moves to keep us intrigued — if not necessarily invested.
  74. Court
    Court invites comparisons with the 2011 Iranian film "A Separation," even if Court director Chaitanya Tamhane hasn't achieved the same level of mastery with his feature debut.
  75. Air
    The film is most effective when Bauer and Cartwright are battling the surroundings instead of each other.
  76. Meru
    Though the Meru climbing and outdoor footage is spectacular, it is the personal struggle of each of the climbers, and the candid way they talk about them on camera, that give this film its considerable impact.
  77. Big Sky
    Director Grau seems to be making up the film as he goes along — never a good idea when tackling the sort of genre piece that requires building tension and some semblance of dread to succeed.
  78. Amnesiac
    With no names given to the characters, you never have to remember them. But it's really best to forget about all of Amnesiac.
  79. People Places Things
    Small, smart and inescapably independent, People Places Things has its own offbeat and charmingly low-key way of seeing the world.
  80. Return to Sender
    Revenge is a dish served lumpy and tasteless in the tonally muddled Return to Sender.
  81. Prince
    Packing plenty of visual zip and terrific character faces into its compact running time, De Jong never allows the considerable quirkiness to upstage the storytelling.
  82. Tom at the Farm
    Tom at the Farm is strange, idiosyncratic tale that straddles a fine line between homoerotic camp and spider-and-fly thriller.
  83. Fort Tilden
    Fort Tilden is cringe-worthy but true. Maybe that's why it's so uncomfortable to watch.
  84. Ten Thousand Saints
    As always, Berman and Pulcini suffuse their movie with a let's-try-anything spirit — and liberate most of their actors. What keeps Ten Thousand Saints from being another "American Splendor" (2003) or "Cinema Verite" (2011) is that this time, their tapestry has a hole in the center, where their pale antihero cannot pull the colorful threads together.
  85. Straight Outta Compton
    Alternately riveting and wearying, up-to-the-minute relevant as well as self-mythologizingly self-indulgent — as much of a heroic origins story as anything out of the Marvel factory — Straight Outta Compton ends up juggling more story lines and moods than it can handle.
  86. The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
    Being a mildly pleasant, passingly amusing light entertainment isn't exactly saving the world, yet the film crosses its wires to blow up even that modest assignment.
  87. Reset
    An unpleasant exercise in self-indulgence
  88. The Pardon
    Except for a reliably flavorful turn by John Hawkes, compelling in a few key scenes as Henry's accomplice, The Pardon remains stubbornly uninvolving.
  89. Shooting the Warwicks
    The movie can't do much to address the inherent flaws in the premise.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tap World
    Tap World, also takes viewers around the world, and that, plus some flat out terrific performances, make this a surprisingly lovely little film.
  91. Two Step
    Giving flair to the inevitable and imbuing those stakes with emotional heft are key to this type of patiently nasty, slow-boil noir. That Johnson understands this makes his feature debut a particularly confident and enjoyable one.
  92. Sneakerheadz
    The film is more lifestyle puff piece than journalism.
  93. The Diary of a Teenage Girl
    A rare gem of a movie.
  94. The Gift
    Although the film builds an effective sense of dread and contains its share of unnerving visuals and well-timed scares, it proves far more psychological thrill ride than shockfest.
  95. Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
    The audience's response to The Prophet is likely to be determined by their feelings for the original book rather than the eclectic, imaginative visuals.
  96. Dark Places
    In writer-director Gilles Paquet-Brenner's hands, it's a convoluted, airless procedural that generates practically no suspense and little that's thematically resonant about lost souls and poisoned memories.
  97. Assassination
    The director nimbly orchestrates to entertaining effect this mass game of cat-and-mouse populated by paid and unpaid assassins, double agents and even the proverbial twins separated at birth.
  98. The Runner
    The plodding film goes awfully heavy on script exposition and all too light on character depth, leaving Cage and company — including a smartly cast Peter Fonda as his been-there, done-that alcoholic dad — to come up with their own complexity.
  99. Cop Car
    There's no denying Watts' skill at a certain kind of desolate cat and mouse, but it's in the service of what is ultimately a somewhat heartless exercise.
  100. Ricki and the Flash
    Ricki and the Flash is a sour movie masquerading as something more cheerful. In that attempted deception the film is both helped and hindered by an indispensable performance by star Meryl Streep.
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