Los Angeles Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 16,522 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 16522
  2. Mixed: 5,808 out of 16522
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16522
16522 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Avengers: Age of Ultron
    The uncomfortable reality remains that although this movie is effective moment to moment, very little of it lingers in the mind afterward. The ideal vehicle for our age of immediate sensation and instant gratification, it disappears without a trace almost as soon as it's consumed.
  2. Bass Clef Bliss
    The young man is inspiring all on his own, never more so than when he's being social or making music with others. It's only the movie around him that is so artless in its uplift.
  3. Lou!
    For anyone who's not a Francophone tween girl, the film likely will be a tedious, precious exercise in indulgence.
  4. Tangerines
    Tangerines is an example of lean, unadorned old-school filmmaking where familiar style and technique combine to unexpectedly potent effect because of the great skill with which they've been employed.
  5. Félix And Meira
    Co-writer and director Maxime Giroux's Felix and Meira is an unusual love story that, though shrouded in chill and shadow, has moments of true loveliness.
  6. Helicopter Mom
    Get past the wince-inducing premise of Helicopter Mom...and you're still stuck with a forced comedy that mines uneasy humor from stale stereotypes.
  7. Black Souls
    Once the stage is set and the more intense plot elements of Black Souls kick in, the film's emphasis on character and setting pays off, just as the muted nature of the storytelling adds to its considerable power.
  8. The Harvest
    McNaughton shows some signs of directing rust in pacing and tone, but in much the way "Henry" played out, he keeps sensationalism at bay and twisted character drama in his sights, which makes for a more pleasurably icky suspense.
  9. See You in Valhalla
    It all feels forced and fabricated.
  10. Road to Juarez
    With a succession of tangential flashbacks, the film gradually disengages viewers from the plot.
  11. The Forger
    In attempting to spin out its competing storylines, the crime drama The Forger never quite gets a handle on either one. Still, an array of strong performances, including a well-calibrated turn by John Travolta, and compelling emotional moments help counter the patchy narrative.
  12. Just Before I Go
    Anchored by a nicely understated performance by Seann William Scott, Just Before I Go effectively juggles a wealth of genuine, at times profound, emotion with quite a bit of nutty-raunchy humor.
  13. 24 Days
    Knowing the outcome behind the true-life tragedy 24 Days doesn't diffuse the horror, the tension or the sadness of watching one family's drama unfold day after agonizing day when a son is kidnapped and hope dies.
  14. The Water Diviner
    It's an unsurprisingly ambitious movie from the notoriously, proudly headstrong Crowe, which makes it such a disappointment that it feels so blandly earnest and unexpectedly hesitant, with none of the unnerving conviction the actor often brings even to lightweight promotional appearances.
  15. Laugh Killer Laugh
    Self-discovery through artistic expression is often trite, but Frank's rehabilitation and transformation readily win us over when we're least expecting it.
  16. Kung Fu Killer
    The plot is predictable, but the inevitable showdown is, appropriately, the movie's highlight, a ferocious hands-on battle — save for the balletic bamboo pole interlude — on a busy, night-lit expressway, with semis and cars roaring past. It's a climax worthy of the tribute thread running through Kung Fu Killer.
  17. Adult Beginners
    The kind of comedy that goes down easy even as it looks at the hard stuff.
  18. The Age of Adaline
    Not "An Affair to Remember," mind you, but a welcome change from the Nicholas Sparks brand of mush that has overtaken the hearts-and-flowers corner of movieland.
  19. Little Boy
    It's all simplistic sermonizing in director and co-writer Alejandro Monteverde's hands, devoid of any thoughtful messiness about wartime mind-sets or family despair, and quick to sand any edges with postcard-pretty coastal town vistas and cutesy music cues.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
    Morgen has crafted an often brilliant, sometimes overheated but always humane documentary, one in which Nirvana’s music and fame is just the scaffolding to Cobain’s inner life.
  21. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
    To his credit, director Andy Fickman (“The Game Plan,” “Parental Guidance”) keeps the inanity moving apace and there are a few chuckles to be had courtesy of the supporting cast. But, as is so often the case with big, star-driven studio laffers, “Cop 2” needed several more spins in the comedy punch-up machine before cameras rolled.
  22. Revolution
    We, unfortunately, learn very little in this Earth Day release (originally completed in 2012) that we haven't seen before in more evolved, better focused documentaries.
  23. John Doe: Vigilante
    The fatal flaw of "John Doe" is its focus on ideas, rather than people.
  24. El Niño
    Director Daniel Monzón delivers a conventional genre exercise — albeit a very effective one, with twists and turns that manage to surprise.
  25. The Living
    What could have been a taut and tense thriller is ankled by the inert characters, clunky screenplay and nonexistent back story.
  26. Futuro Beach
    If director-co-writer Karim Aïnouz has set out to depict soulless gay lives, he has more than succeeded.
  27. 1915
    Amid thespian antics, it contemplates weightier ethical dilemmas such as personal tragedy versus collective grief, artistic license versus historical responsibility, revisionist history versus corrective narrative, forgetting versus moving on. It's one creative way to do justice to such a monumental topic when full-blown reenactments aren't within the budget.
  28. Song from the Forest
    A strikingly poetic documentary that illustrates the push and pull of life's opposing forces.
  29. Welcome to New York
    This frank, unruly look at sex, privilege and power unfolds so much like real life that it proves an intriguing and strangely immersive experience.
  30. Dior and I
    Since Dior and I was made with the house's cooperation, the film is not exactly a slashing piece of investigative journalism, but it does give us glimpses of the reality of this kind of business.
  31. Monsters: Dark Continent
    Whereas the original "Monsters" was a road movie about an odd couple fleeing an alien-infested zone, "Dark Continent" cribs from contemporary war movies like "The Hurt Locker" and "American Sniper," then tosses in extraterrestrials as an afterthought.
  32. The Dead Lands
    The only aspects of the tale that seem uniquely Maori are the action sequences featuring the martial art of mau rakau. Aside from intermittent dream sequences in which Hongi communicates with his late grandmother (Rena Owen), the storytelling is Westernized.
  33. The Road Within
    The Road Within suffers from midfilm wandering and a hasty ending, but the message of self-acceptance rings true and clear.
  34. The Squeeze
    Between plot and character, there are definitely 18 holes in The Squeeze.
  35. Beyond the Reach
    Beyond the Reach is a grueling, unsatisfying thriller that fails the logic test in spectacular ways.
  36. Child 44
    Problematic but involving, Child 44 offers a picture of what individuals did to survive in a world turned upside down. The film's singular premise allows it to survive its various shortcomings, but it is a near-thing.
  37. The Human Experiment
    Co-directors Dana Nachman and Don Hardy haven't attributed all of their facts and figures, hence the proverbial grain of salt.
  38. True Story
    Unfortunately this "Story" never finds its footing as either a creepy morality play or a performance-driven two-hander.
  39. Monkey Kingdom
    The film offers a valuable life lesson in the powers of determination and timing, but most of all it's darned entertaining.
  40. Unfriended
    As a harangue about cyberbullying, it's purely exploitative, but when Unfriended zeros in on the whiplash mixture of freedom and torment we get from multitasking our online lives? It's srsly fun, imo.
  41. WA-SHOKU ~Beyond Sushi~
    Despite its clumsiness, the film conveys the melding of modern and ancient, sensuous and sacred.
  42. The Reconstruction of William Zero
    Byrne does a fine job fragmenting William's innocent, scary and guilt-ridden sides, and Amy Seimetz makes his wife a compelling, grief-stricken figure. But The Reconstruction of William Zero has its own identity problem, essentially, being a solid sci-fi story with a welcome emotional component, yet never fully effective at either.
  43. The Hand That Feeds
    Unfortunately, directors Rachel Lears and Robin Blotnick have squandered a worthy subject.
  44. Candlestick
    Despite Presswell's evident enthusiasm, the tediously talky, dramatically stilted results offer conclusive evidence that mastering suspense requires artistic skill beyond sampling the Master of Suspense.
  45. The Sisterhood of Night
    What director Caryn Waechter does best is artfully and lyrically capture moments of teenage abandon where the girls feel free, self-possessed and full of friendship love.
  46. Desert Dancer
    Ghaffarian's story plays out within such a generic framework, and with such self-importance, that it's all too easy to remain untouched by the onscreen events.
  47. Below Dreams
    From bus stations to jazz concerts, Bradley finds epiphanies in public spaces, expressed visually, musically and, in the way the practical entwines with the philosophical, in dialogue spoken by friends and strangers alike.
  48. Dial A Prayer
    Snow is excellent, though, as she attempts to inhabit her murky character. If only we had a better sense of what the movie was trying to say about faith — or the lack thereof.
  49. The Riot Club
    Although the performances are uniformly on point and the dialogue is tartly British, the film ultimately fails to earn its riotous stripes.
  50. Kill Me Three Times
    The neo-noir crime comedy Kill Me Three Times works overtime to seem unique and clever. The result, however, is a derivative, gimmicky, at times dizzying puzzle that fails to engage.
  51. Manos Sucias
    Though the plot turns aren't necessarily surprising and characterizations a bit facile, Wladyka manages tense moments.
  52. Ex Machina
    Shrewdly imagined and persuasively made, Ex Machina is a spooky piece of speculative fiction that's completely plausible, capable of both thinking big thoughts and providing pulp thrills. But even saying that doesn't do this quietly unnerving film full justice.
  53. Lost River
    Turns out Lost River is indeed a mess, but it's the best mess possible, an evocative grab-bag of images and moods with a heartfelt sincerity and conflicting impulses of romantic melancholy and hardscrabble hopefulness.
  54. Broken Horses
    While Chopra attempts to crack the American market with a slice of cinematic apple pie, he holds up a mirror to how Hollywood's tried-and-true narrative of vigilantism connotes who we are, at home and overseas.
  55. Clouds of Sils Maria
    Stewart does exactly what Valentine describes as Jo-Ann's great gift — she becomes the character, completing disappearing inside Valentine. It makes the interplay between Binoche, a master of that sort of disappearing act as well, and Stewart mesmerizing to watch.
  56. The Longest Ride
    The two-plus hours is mostly marked by an emptiness born of scene after scene designed to blatantly manipulate emotions rather than trigger them.
  57. Superfast!
    While fans can appreciate all the winks and nudges, the film is a wreck for the uninitiated.
  58. My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes
    Get past what sounds like a melodrama about a forbidden love affair, and director Oren Jacoby's carefully crafted film deftly blends archival footage with dramatic re-creations and interviews with surviving family members to illuminating effect.
  59. She's Lost Control
    She's Lost Control is a quiet triumph, a true herald of a distinctive and necessary voice in cinema.
  60. Can't Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police
    The more recent concert and backstage material, assembled by director Andy Grieve, lacks the energy and immediacy key to dynamic performance films.
  61. Boychoir
    With "Whiplash" setting the new bar for depicting the rigorous discipline and competitiveness in a music academy, the stale, one-note narrative seen in Boychoir sounds even more out of tune.
  62. Cupcakes
    Though the comic confection's clunky moments keep it from achieving soufflé delicacy, its bright zingers and seamless fantasy sequences amp the playfulness, and the mostly unforced performances complement the production's cartoonish exuberance.
  63. 5 to 7
    The banter between Brian and Arielle is easy and often amusing. But despite all the tangled sheets and entwined bodies during assignations at the St. Regis hotel, the relationship never moves beyond the look of puppy love.
  64. The Forecaster
    The Forecaster, a documentary study of the rise and fall of commodities advisor Martin Armstrong, would have paid greater dividends by taking a more impartial approach to its subject.
  65. White God
    By turns Dickensian, Marxist and dystopian, it's a movie as deliriously unclassifiable as it is expertly focused in its desire to provoke and entertain.
  66. Ned Rifle
    When the writer-director is on his game, as he is in Ned Rifle, the effect is bizarre black comedy that is designed to set you thinking about what his satire is really saying.
  67. Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation
    La Sagrada is always going to be a spectacular building, but cinematographer Patrick Lindenmaier does an especially fine job of showing us the play of light in the cathedral's enveloping interiors.
  68. Last Knights
    The medieval-tinged adventure Last Knights will test your patience for speeches about honor, grim declarations of loyalty and pre-battle glowering.
  69. Effie Gray
    Effie Gray is fortunate to have enough strong performances by Fanning, Thompson and top-flight costars (including cameos by James Fox, Robbie Coltrane, Derek Jacobi and even Claudia Cardinale) to eventually overcome the doldrums of decorum and create the feeling we've been needing.
  70. Cut Bank
    If only anything felt at stake in this story's dark spiral.
  71. Lambert & Stamp
    Under their all-encompassing tutelage the band originally billed as the High Numbers would go on to international renown as the Who, and the extent to which Lambert & Stamp can take credit for that transformation is thoughtfully weighed in this revealing film.
  72. Furious 7
    Furious 7 is the fuel-injected fusion of all that is and ever has been good in "The Fast and the Furious" saga.
  73. Woman in Gold
    It's regrettable that Woman in Gold is no more than adequate, more old-fashioned Hollywoodization than incisive modern dramatization.
  74. While We're Young
    This delicious satire about aging hipsters and their discontents is everything we've come to expect from the best of Noah Baumbach, as well as several things more.
  75. 3 Holes and a Smoking Gun
    Director Hilarion Banks dutifully captures all of it in a series of nicely shot extended takes, which would have been fine if the cast had been able to interact in some sort of uniform tone.
  76. Little Feet
    It's excusable for a sheltered novice filmmaker to be out of touch like this, but not for a veteran.
  77. The Mafia Only Kills in Summer
    Ambitious, sometimes clever but largely sputtering, The Mafia Kills Only in Summer works better as a childhood memory piece than as an adult tale of love and larceny.
  78. Marfa Girl
    For all its meanderings and indulgences — verbal and visual — this free-form snapshot of a circle of townsfolk in tiny Marfa, Texas, proves a sneakily immersive, weirdly memorable affair.
  79. Apartment Troubles
    With the excruciating gal-pal comedy Apartment Troubles, writer-director-stars Jess Weixler and Jennifer Prediger have created such blurry, unappealing characters that their film is hamstrung from the get-go.
  80. Nightlight
    Filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods water down the element of surprise, even if they get the found footage shtick down to a science.
  81. A Girl Like Her
    Although the storytelling technique may feel innovative, the story itself is not.
  82. Jauja
    Jauja makes one cryptic leap too many at the end, but until then it evocatively confounds.
  83. Backcountry
    Backcountry inevitably brings on the bloody, but it finds atmospheric ways to depict how the bucolic hush of a nature getaway can morph into a survival nightmare for the unprepared.
  84. Man from Reno
    Like any good purveyor of noir, Boyle, who wrote the film with Joel Clark and Michael Lerman, understands that identifying someone is only one endgame while the mystery of identity is naggingly, tragically endless.
  85. Get Hard
    Get Hard... is certainly a better name than, say, Laugh Hard, which you won't do nearly enough.
  86. Serena
    It's absorbing, well-played stuff until Serena's emotional baggage turns her into a kind of lethal Blanche DuBois and melodrama overtakes the film's muscular bearing.
  87. A Wolf at the Door
    A Wolf at the Door is undoubtedly effective and well-crafted, but its tale of reckless obsession and its inevitably unhappy ending are finally too unsavory for its own good.
  88. The Barber
    Screenwriter Max Enscoe and director Basel Owies — enamored of twists at the expense of logic and character — might as well have made a clip reel of their favorite cat-and-mouse movies, because their fever-pitch story is as tension-free, transparently obvious and ludicrous as they come.
  89. Home
    Tension is one of Home's biggest issues. There just isn't nearly enough of it. Story is another.
  90. Sex and the Single Alien
    Had Daskaloff found an appropriately campy groove, he might have eked out some sexy-silly fun. As it stands, the film proves a cheesy, half-baked and decidedly retrograde effort.
  91. Earth's Golden Playground
    It might also have been nice to have included some archival footage that would have illustrated how little the Yukon River setting has changed over the last century, but Horvath appears to have no interest in digging any deeper.
  92. 3 Hearts
    The overwrought plot mechanics are exasperating, but the lead actresses' exquisitely modulated performances get under the skin.
  93. Dreamcatcher
    While Dreamcatcher lays bare some of the horrific violence and victimization that many women face, the film is ultimately hopeful, a testament to the strength and resilience that can be found in sisterhood.
  94. Seymour: An Introduction
    Ethan Hawke's documentary on pianist Seymour Bernstein is very much like the sonatas Bernstein plays so beautifully, teaches so insightfully — quietly moving, infinitely deep.
  95. Like Sunday, Like Rain
    Whaley nicely calibrates this wistful dramedy's emotional quotient, never allowing sentiment to turn into sap.
  96. Danny Collins
    Ostensibly exploring a monumental what-if in a musician's life — a late-career reckoning that aims to make up for lost time — the movie is itself a missed opportunity, especially given that it stars Al Pacino.
  97. Amour Fou
    That writer-director Jessica Hausner moves things along at such a glacial pace and fills her velvety frames with the equivalent of museum-quality oil paintings instead of with living, breathing humanity, only adds to the film's turgid quality.
  98. Lost and Love
    By ambitiously aiming to encompass the full scope and complexity of the social pandemic, Lost and Love winds up being all over the map.
  99. Ghoul
    Ghoul can't decide whether it should be about cannibals, serial killers, ghosts or demons.
  100. Zombeavers
    Despite the deliberately schlocky effects and puppetry, other aspects of the filmmaking are surprisingly satisfactory. It needs to be only one notch more bonkers to help its chances for cult status.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »