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. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. A Girl Like Her
    Although the storytelling technique may feel innovative, the story itself is not.
  5. Jauja
    Jauja makes one cryptic leap too many at the end, but until then it evocatively confounds.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. Get Hard
    Get Hard... is certainly a better name than, say, Laugh Hard, which you won't do nearly enough.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. Home
    Tension is one of Home's biggest issues. There just isn't nearly enough of it. Story is another.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 3 Hearts
    The overwrought plot mechanics are exasperating, but the lead actresses' exquisitely modulated performances get under the skin.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. Like Sunday, Like Rain
    Whaley nicely calibrates this wistful dramedy's emotional quotient, never allowing sentiment to turn into sap.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. Ghoul
    Ghoul can't decide whether it should be about cannibals, serial killers, ghosts or demons.
  23. 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.
  24. Tracers
    As long as it shuts up and keeps moving, Tracers makes for a sufficiently diverting, not to mention zero-emission, vehicle.
  25. The Gunman
    Instead of a pot-boiling crime noir like the one that exists in the pages of the late French novelist Jean-Patrick Manchette's "The Prone Gunman" (which sounds better in French), the adaptation is a frustrating fiasco that kills the material and squanders its exceedingly fine cast.
  26. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
    Though it might not sound it, watching Kumiko brood is mesmerizing. Kikuchi uses her mournful eyes to take us to dark places, though she's equally adept at surprise and confusion, even joy when it comes along.
  27. The Divergent Series: Insurgent
    A more effective, adult-friendly film than its predecessor.
  28. 1971
    Don't mistake a lack of flash for an absence of substance. The story told here couldn't be more significant or more timely.
  29. The Lovers
    There's a veil of artifice clinging to every aspect of The Lovers, a thoroughly unconvincing time-traveling epic costume drama pairing a miscast Josh Hartnett and Bollywood beauty Bipasha Basu.
  30. Walter
    A lovely and touching third act helps make up for a wobbly, at times convoluted first hour in the quirky fantasy-dramedy Walter.
  31. October Gale
    The action unwinds with the mechanical artifice of a creaky play, though Nadda creates a few strikingly cinematic moments.
  32. Muck
    Rather than evincing any expertise or affinity for the genre, Wolsh's effort seems glib and hollow.
  33. Allure
    This portrait of strong, independent women grappling with change in their individual lives holds initial allure, but the effect proves ephemeral.
  34. Cymbeline
    Despite Almereyda's invention in approaching this tawdry Shakespearean tale, he misfires badly. All that is left is the semblance of Cymbeline.
  35. Home Sweet Hell
    A muddle of tired themes, bad behaviors and gruesome set pieces.
  36. The Cobbler
    The gimmick is marginally amusing as Max tests it out in ways both naughty and nice. But so many holes, questions and contradictions arise that it's hard to square the rules of the game.
  37. Champs
    Champs is all over the place and at times too polished for its own good — too many celebrity fan testimonials when more insider insights would have helped. But it comes from a place of caring for an oft-maligned sport.
  38. It Follows
    [A] smart, relentlessly chilling thriller that opts for originality over cheaply rejiggered jolts.
  39. Run All Night
    Rife with familiar elements given something of a different spin, Run All Night manages to leave you out of breath but hungry for more.
  40. The Wrecking Crew
    Once the singer-songwriter model became the norm for the rock business, the Wrecking Crew's star began to wane, but seeing this film makes it clear what its members accomplished in their prime.
  41. Cinderella
    As pure of heart as its heroine, Cinderella floats across the screen like a gossamer confection, full of elegant beauty and quiet grace.
  42. That Guy Dick Miller
    While the end result feels a tad overstuffed at 92 minutes, it's entirely understandable if, after more than half a century of being identified as "that guy," Miller's in no hurry to relinquish the spotlight.
  43. An Honest Liar
    An Honest Liar isn't simply a career recap or a fond portrait; the movie takes exhilarating turns as directors Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom follow present-day developments in Randi's personal life.
  44. The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest
    [A] fascinating film.
  45. On the Way to School
    [A] stirring, tenderly observed French documentary
  46. Hayride 2
    There are tangible improvements in the techniques of writer-director Terron R. Parsons. But some of the nagging plot holes remain unresolved.
  47. Hacker's Game
    Even if you do manage to make sense of the plot, it still doesn't make the film any more watchable.
  48. Wild Canaries
    Strip away all the flimsy copycat stuff, including the cheesy retro synth score, and what lurks beneath is a perceptive portrait of contemporary thirtysomething relationships, no silly sleuthing required.
  49. These Final Hours
    Writer-director Zak Hilditch, with a strong assist from cinematographer Bonnie Elliott (who's bathed her frames in a kind of eerie sulfuric yellow), has crafted an urgent yet strangely simple and humanistic doomsday scenario.
  50. Avenged
    Otherwise fairly routine, the film draws fear from ancient mythology and historical grudges in a way more reminiscent of Japanese horror than its American contemporaries. Had Ojeda delved into that a bit more, he could have really set the film apart.
  51. Road Hard
    It's the movie's slow drift toward happiness, though, when Bruce meets a widow (Diane Farr) with a sweetly razzing sense of humor that spurs a more refreshing less patently abrasive comedy from Carolla.
  52. Two Men in Town
    The setting is striking, the cast impressive. But Two Men in Town, a drama that's built on dread and circles the question of redemption for a newly released prisoner, falls short of the mythic territory it aspires to.
  53. Faults
    The wan drama is enlivened by bursts of black comedy, some bits more effective than others, and though it ultimately disappoints, there's promise in the understated creepiness of Riley Stearns' debut feature.
  54. Buzzard
    The rightfully disturbing Buzzard emerges as a true original.
  55. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    The film has only the sheer charm of its cast to get it by, and it says a lot about the actors that they nearly pull it off.
  56. Kidnapping Mr. Heineken
    Despite its true-events pedigree, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is woefully captive to B-movie crime saga tropes.
  57. Unfinished Business
    A sluggishly paced collection of go-nowhere sight gags, flat-footed set pieces and incoherent business chatter that offers few laughs and little real payoff.
  58. Chappie
    Chappie is a movie about the evolution of artificial intelligence that's as dumb as a post. It also marks the continuing devolution of the work of director and co-writer Neill Blomkamp.
  59. Deli Man
    Much to its credit, the documentary Deli Man wisely chooses not to bemoan the decline but to celebrate the robust survivors that remain as well as the culture they preserve.
  60. Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead
    The Roache-Turners prove to have the right mix of micro-budget filmmaking ingenuity, action sass and undead splatter to make "Wyrmwood" a tastier than usual exploitation nosh.
  61. Out of the Dark
    A movie lovely to look at but on-the-nose and crushingly dull, a pair of qualities a ghost yarn can't live on.
  62. Anita Ho
    Although the film purposefully traffics in stereotypes, the Myungs' earnest, been-there approach helps soften the spoofy blows.
  63. The Business of Disease
    The Business of Disease seeks to cast suspicion on Big Pharma, but it proves to be a glorified PowerPoint presentation interspersed with commentary by people of questionable qualifications who aim to incite paranoia with propaganda, conspiracy theories and straw-man arguments.
  64. Kung Fu Elliot
    Whether the con is truly on or the filmmakers have simply taken an awful lot of poetic license where the post-Michael Moore documentary format is concerned, moviegoers certainly have less amusing ways to be bamboozled.
  65. Boy Meets Girl
    The profoundly sensitive, often wryly funny look at friendship, romance, sexual attraction and gender identity carries themes and dynamics that feel as timeless as they do up-to-the-minute.
  66. Queen and Country
    Queen & Country — though often charming — has a tendency to wander and strain.
  67. The Hunting Ground
    Fear of retaliation often keeps faculty and administration from speaking up for students or talking at all, and six university presidents declined to be interviewed here. If it does nothing else, The Hunting Ground should make that kind of evasion more difficult in the future.
  68. Drunktown's Finest
    Unfortunately, each main character serves as an avatar emblematic of a societal symptom instead of a real person in whose shoes we can stand. As a result, their trajectories are didactic and predictable.
  69. Everly
    Feels precision-engineered for a morally torn fanboy who likes the idea of female empowerment but needs it served with a heavy dose of torture porn and glistening flesh.
  70. My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
    If you are a cinephile or an aspiring filmmaker looking for some behind-the-scenes edification, there's little.
  71. The Widowmaker
    Despite confusing information about the role of diet and lifestyle, The Widowmaker is a lucid and important work of advocacy journalism. It illuminates yet another way that mainstream medicine thrives on crisis rather than health.
  72. The Salvation
    The movie has a few bursts of energy and invention — a cleverly executed jailbreak is one. But the story drifts and the pacing drags, failing to gather much steam until the final moments.
  73. Ana Maria in Novela Land
    The script, co-written by director Georgina Garcia Riedel and Jose Nestor Marquez, plays like a first draft that misses out on comic opportunities.
  74. Maps to the Stars
    In its own disturbing, slithery way, the train-wreck watchable melodrama Maps to the Stars is as much a horror show as any that the film's director, David Cronenberg, has helmed over his long and provocative career.
  75. '71
    Nothing is extraneous, no moment that doesn't enhance the tension of this nightmare scenario is allowed to survive, until the proceedings become, in the best possible sense, almost unbearable to watch.
  76. The Lazarus Effect
    Director David Gelb, switching gears from his fine 2011 documentary "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," keeps the mayhem moving briskly as an effective host of obstacles pile up in the script by Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater.
  77. Focus
    The film is breezy from start to finish.
  78. The Last: Naruto the Movie
    If "The Last" lacks some of the emotional punch of the previous feature, "The Road to Ninja," Kobayashi compensates with flamboyant visuals that mix CG, drawn animation and elegant calligraphic figures.
  79. My Way
    With Snyder-Starr producing the film, My Way impresses as an exercise in narcissism.
  80. Treehouse
    Treehouse is a lackluster backwoods thriller that takes far too long to get — well, not very far. There's more tension in a round of Final Jeopardy.
  81. Digging Up the Marrow
    The results are decidedly more mind-numbing than bone-chilling.
  82. All the Wilderness
    All the Wilderness seems tailor-made to play to the actor's strengths — Johnson's script is as lean as Smit-McPhee, both proving adept at doing more with less.
  83. The DUFF
    Romance, or the desire to find someone special, isn't a bad thing — if it's not the only thing. But as it stands in DUFF, the denouement at prom has cliché written all over it.
  84. Hot Tub Time Machine 2
    Ultimately, "2" is hit-and-run humor as hit or miss as any comedy of its ilk. If one has to sit in front of a jet spray of degradation gags, better it feel like the occasional seltzer spritz than a fire hose blast to the crotch.
  85. McFarland USA
    A canny combination of elements unites with an unlikely true story to make this more effective than you might be expecting.
  86. Cut!
    Rountree and Banks have come up with a nonsensical and pointless genre exercise.
  87. An American in Hollywood
    There's a lot of truth in writer-director Sai Varadan's observant depictions of the battle of the sexes, the East Coast-West Coast cultural clash and struggling artists in soul-crushing showbiz. Too bad he isn't particularly sympathetic or fair toward his female characters, because there's much to commend otherwise.
  88. Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine
    The film is enough to prompt soul-searching among parents, educators and the LGBT community on how to provide adequate guidance and support for LGBT youths.
  89. Ballet 422
    Intimate and unusual behind-the-scenes look at the creation of a ballet, it may sound rarefied but has enough moments of truth and beauty to engage general audiences.
  90. Old Fashioned
    As written, directed and played by Swartzwelder, Clay is such a self-absorbed, judgmental jerk that anyone who would willingly subject themselves to his endless pontificating could rival Anastasia Steele in the masochism department.
  91. Hits
    Unfortunately, by the end, thanks to a misguided use of a few offensive slurs against gays and African Americans, the whole thing turns needlessly ugly, undermining the goodwill Cross had mustered.
  92. White Rabbit
    The sense of place is as strong as the narrative is wobbly. The strongest character is the Louisiana.
  93. What We Do in the Shadows
    What might seem unlikely to endure beyond standard sketch length proves surprisingly resilient in the hands of directors Clement and Waititi, the team responsible for the equally droll "Flight of the Conchords."
  94. The Rewrite
    It's far from perfect, but The Rewrite is the kind of witty, enjoyable star vehicle in sadly short supply on screens these days.
  95. Da Sweet Blood of Jesus
    While this return to indie roots frees up Lee's often gifted image making, his usual pace issues and penchant for jagged flourish over sustained feeling keep it from achieving a rich, strange, sexy and sad whole.
  96. The Last Five Years
    The Last Five Years is not unpleasant to watch — the leads are delightful — but as a movie experience, it's not especially satisfying either.
  97. Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
    The tragedy here is not a single story but that a process so inequitable and so inane continues in a place that is considered to be enlightened. Gett, in moving and infuriating ways, exposes a very bleak corner of that world.
  98. Kingsman: The Secret Service
    Directed by "Kick-Ass" action specialist Matthew Vaughn with slightly more vigor than necessary and a shade less restraint than needed, it's a bit too too to be "brilliant," as the Brits say. But it's not half bad either.
  99. Fifty Shades of Grey
    Fifty Shades encourages us to buy into this credulity-straining scenario because the actors go well together (casting director Francine Maisler did the heavy lifting), Dornan's steely resolve facing off nicely against Johnson's engaging feistyness as each tries to make this cross-cultural relationship work on his or her own terms.
  100. Above and Beyond
    Grossman doesn't step back for a broader, contextualizing view of the Middle East; the film contains a single comment on the 1948 war's ramifications for displaced Palestinians. But as an oral history of the pilots' experiences, it's indispensable.
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