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. Winter in the Blood
    Winter in the Blood is a difficult film to get a handle on, not least because it often feels like it should be easier to dismiss. But then it locks onto a moment that is unexpectedly arresting and little jabs of poetic meaning or hard-earned truths reel a viewer back in.
  2. The Aviation Cocktail
    There are rich veins to mine here had writer-director David R. Higgins bothered.
  3. Force Majeure
    This is a director's film, and Ostlund knows precisely the effects he is after. This filmmaker is in control at each and every moment, and does he ever know what he is doing.
  4. Nightcrawler
    Nightcrawler is pulp with a purpose. A smart, engaged film powered by an altogether remarkable performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, it is melodrama grounded in a disturbing reality, an extreme scenario that is troubling because it cuts close to the bone.
  5. Warsaw Uprising
    Warsaw Uprising is not only a unique, remarkably assembled documentary-narrative hybrid but also a powerful look at the personal and public devastation that can occur during wartime. Movies rarely feel as authentic as this.
  6. Missionary
    Director Anthony DiBlasi, working off an efficient script by Bruce Wood and Scott Poiley, skillfully tightens the screws on a story that leads to much collateral damage and an effective final showdown.
  7. The Pact 2
    Writer-directors Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath, picking up the baton from first film creator Nicholas McCarthy, do a serviceable job aping the original's clean, mostly lo-fi atmospherics and nervy framing... The story's a wash, though.
  8. Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show
    For wannabe, seasoned pro and curious observer alike, these tales from the creative front lines are, like good TV, as insightful as they are entertaining.
  9. Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago
    To penetrate beyond the camaraderie and capture the depth of the experience would require less conventional filmmaking.
  10. Hit by Lightning
    An offbeat rom-com that ventures down the film-noir path, Hit by Lightning manages to make dark comedy fresh by combining two formulas.
  11. Blood Ransom
    Dela Torre tinkers with some of the undead's best-known traits, yet his reinvented wheel still feels like a retread.
  12. Horns
    As things turn irrevocably supernatural, the movie's anything-goes quality ends up deepening instead of torpedoing the narrative, as can sometimes happen in horror flicks.
  13. Before I Go to Sleep
    Some eerie answers are revealed, and there are a few decent left-field jolts en route. But the plot is hardly airtight — at times the holes are downright gaping — and viewers will likely have their fair share of questions once the film's final corner is turned.
  14. The Great Invisible
    The Great Invisible gives voice to many of the previously nameless and faceless victims of the disaster. Some worked on the oil rig that fateful day; others have suffered its environmental and economic consequences.
  15. Rhymes for Young Ghouls
    Writer-director Barnaby weaves a surprising amount of tenderness into the fabric of violence, as well as a good measure of magic realism, to keep the gritty story engaging.
  16. The Hadza: Last of the First
    The film proves most valuable when Hadza subjects candidly discuss their clashes with modernity.
  17. Yakona
    A film that would have been more potent had it been a 40-minute short rather than a feature-length proposition.
  18. Listen Up Philip
    While the intolerance fueling this dark, existential comedy won't be to everyone's liking, the film's cerebral beat-down is a strange and sardonic thing of beauty.
  19. Camp X-Ray
    By boiling too much down to black and white, Camp X-Ray's ability to say something significant is diluted.
  20. Eternity: The Movie
    Eternity: the Movie, a purposely cheesy sendup of mid-1980s pop music, offers committed performances and a few chuckles, but it's a largely one-note rendition.
  21. Lakay
    The mood is somber, as cued by the contemplative voice-over narration. Sights of rubble, tent cities and an orphanage are devastating. But these seem to be mere backdrop for a very different movie.
  22. 1,000 Times Good Night
    The film can be intensely moving, yet there's a self-congratulatory tone to much of it, especially in the domestic drama.
  23. Revenge of the Green Dragons
    Fredric Dannen's reportage, which appeared in a 1992 issue of the New Yorker and serves as the film's basis, contains lurid details that leap off the page in a cinematic way. The "Dragons" script by Michael Di Jiacomo and co-director Andrew Loo preserves many, but few register on-screen.
  24. Ouija
    The ghost scenario that this boring, CW-ready, "Scooby-Doo" gang uncovers isn't nearly as shocking as the blasé attitude they have toward friends dying off.
  25. E-Team
    Although their work involves interviewing eyewitnesses and gathering photographic evidence to build a case for violations of international law, the procedural stuff tells just half of E-Team's compelling story.
  26. Stonehearst Asylum
    On the surface, Anderson seems to have all the necessary pieces for a surreal psycho pop. But the fear factor eludes him, leaving Stonehearst Asylum more insipid than insane.
  27. Laggies
    The director is increasingly adept at getting her actors to bask in emotions without any pretensions. It makes for easy watching. Seigel's breezy script makes the dialogue easy listening.
  28. John Wick
    It's a B movie made with A-student love for the relentless thrill of bodies in brutal motion.
  29. Citizenfour
    Citizenfour is a formidable viewing experience, but it's not necessarily a problem-free film.
  30. 23 Blast
    Once tragedy strikes, the clichés in Bram and Toni Hoover's screenplay win out, and Baker never stirs up enough energy to make it feel any different from a thousand other tales of underdog triumph.
  31. Exists
    Like so many movie stars, Bigfoot has been sold out by movie opportunists, in this case as ho-hum fright bait in the aggressively unimaginative Exists.
  32. Giuseppe Makes a Movie
    This is a weirdly compelling look at a weirdly compelling auteur.
  33. Guardian Angel
    Aside from too many characters and story strands, the dialogue is hackneyed and the acting subpar, starting with the movie's lead.
  34. Private Violence
    Private Violence makes painfully clear the emotional and legal hurdles battered women endure just to feel safe again in or outside the home.
  35. The Golden Era
    Though it hasn't the sweep to be greater than the sum of its parts, the movie offers an absorbing mix of melodrama and historical detail.
  36. Inner Demons
    Credible performances, effective visuals and tight pacing round out this chilling effort.
  37. Life Inside Out
    Engaging, naturalistic performances and nicely explored real-world issues add to this absorbing film's down-to-earth appeal.
  38. Young Ones
    Paltrow's kitchen-sink visual sense may keep your eyes engaged, but it sucks dry any inherent drama, leaving you with a bunch of characters who feel pegged by a conjurer rather than nurtured from a wretched new Earth.
  39. The Houses October Built
    The documentary style makes the proceedings all the more frightening.
  40. Housebound
    The mishmash that results is by turns creepy, silly, inventive, darkly funny and, at one point, mind-blowingly bloody. Still, some smart streamlining would have sharpened the focus and amped up the power of this well-shot and edited spookfest.
  41. Default
    Director Simon Brand devotes so much running time to fear-mongering and grotesque stereotypes that a last-ditch effort at moral ambiguity and a critique on muckraking barely register.
  42. Dear White People
    The complicated narratives don't distract from what this film does best: make you laugh about the things that make you furious.
  43. Felony
    Working from a screenplay by Edgerton, rising Australian director Matthew Saville has expertly constructed a low-key, realistic drama in which the malleability of morality in an increasingly murky situation takes center stage.
  44. The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
    The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is a marvel of Japanese animation, a hand-drawn, painterly epic that submerges us in a world of beauty.
  45. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
    The director's surrealist portrait of modern times and the cult of celebrity is brilliant on so many levels that even the occasional downdraft can't keep Birdman from soaring.
  46. The Book of Life
    The Book of Life juxtaposes overwrought visual imagery with an undernourished, familiar story.
  47. Fury
    What makes this film distinctive is the adroit way it both subverts and enhances old-school expectations, grafting a completely modern sensibility onto thoroughly traditional material.
  48. Addicted
    Addicted doesn’t know whether it wants to be a modern-day bodice-ripper, a morality-tinged cautionary tale or a serious snapshot of sexual compulsion. Whatever the case, it fails on all fronts.
  49. The Culture High
    Director Brett Harvey has gotten the documentary look and format down pat, complete with generic and gratuitous nature and cityscape shots. Where he shows an amateurish hand is in the term-paper-like voice-over narration and the inclusion of underqualified talking heads.
  50. The Decent One
    At its most effective, though, The Decent One reveals a psychological portrait of a man devoted to his family yet consumed by a soul-blackening and horrifically destructive cause.
  51. I Am Ali
    I Am Ali may never truly wow as the umpteenth portrait of a living legend, but it has its charms in reminding us of one fighter's singular ability to knock us all out with his talent, personality and convictions.
  52. #Stuck
    Acher makes some astute observations about the contemporary dating scene, but this airless vehicle ultimately feels more like a stage piece than a feature proposition.
  53. Meet the Mormons
    The film operates under the assumption that the average Joe associates Mormonism more with "Sister Wives" than Mitt Romney, so the film will be an eye-opener only for subscribers to such stereotypes.
  54. Dracula Untold
    As effective and fat-free as its sinewy star, Luke Evans, Dracula Untold proves an absorbing, swiftly comprehensive origin tale.
  55. Catch Hell
    While Phillippe's tongue seldom ventures far from his cheek in addressing the cult of celebrity, he maintains a nice technical grip on the tension and intensity — at least until things start to unravel toward the end.
  56. Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead
    As bad-taste splatter comedies go, "Dead Snow 2" is one of the more charitably nutty ones, less about gorging on gore than reveling in how silly the whole genre can be.
  57. Autómata
    Visually inspired but thematically derivative.
  58. Whiplash
    It is one of those scorching films that burns through emotions, uses up actors, wrings out audiences. And the jazz, well, it has its own moments of brutal, breathtaking fusion.
  59. The Judge
    However unwieldy the final result, Dobkin and company deserve credit for helping Duvall and Downey create vibrant, dramatic characters that involve the performers in rousing, stem-winder ways.
  60. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him
    No matter how he shuffles the pieces, Mr. Benson can’t shake free of the old storytelling ideas, from his steamroller plot to his programmatic characters and narrative beats that, by their very existence, signal that everything will slide into place as expected.
  61. Björk: Biophilia Live
    For all their layered complexity, the songs can slip into a musical and rhetorical sameness. But the concert's aesthetic power is undeniable. The swirl of sound and motion burns with a bright intensity, not unlike like the onstage Tesla coils that have been reconfigured as instruments.
  62. St. Vincent
    In a roundabout way, St. Vincent delivers, though less as a film than a platform for an object lesson by St. Bill in effortless acting.
  63. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her
    "Him" and "Her" are hardly groundbreaking cinema, but they are more rewarding than "Them."
  64. Drive Hard
    The stars' banter is insipid and unfunny, the wacky shocks short out and, most unforgivably, the car chases are a snooze, filmed as a series of stationary close-ups and diced in the editing room until they suggest anything but movement.
  65. The Hero of Color City
    The story and characterizations never get much deeper than "We're all special in our own way."
  66. Kill the Messenger
    This pulpy, energetic film is a fast-moving and entertaining tale.
  67. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
    At the moment, modestly amusing does not stave off that desire for a really great live-action family film after years of watching the terrain land-grabbed by animation.
  68. The Blue Room
    What tantalizes is the way the story moves between their private passion and their public shame, the way then and now become synchronous. Amalric navigates the shifts with a lapidary precision.
  69. Stephen King’s A Good Marriage
    Seasoned pros Allen and LaPaglia are terrific as longtime mates forged together in an unexpected game of cat and mouse.
  70. Copenhagen
    The will-he-or-won't-he question becomes the focus of director Mark Raso's film, and how William responds under the mercy of Effy's whims ultimately determines whether he can emerge from his self-absorption at long last.
  71. Bitter Honey
    For Westerners, Lemelson offers an eye-opening look behind Bali's profile as a tourist Shangri-la. The documentary's ultimate value, though, may be in local education.
  72. The Little Bedroom
    A small-scale gem of a movie, both dramatically aware and psychologically astute.
  73. Harmontown
    There's the unfettered access to Harmon's brilliant comic mind, of course, yet also a warts-and-all portraiture of a difficult personality, by turns boyish, self-involved, abusive and exhilaratingly self-analytical.
  74. Lilting
    Teasing out the vagaries of language, how confusing communication can be, is such a good idea. Despite a strong start, the filmmaker doesn't exactly know where to go with it. Still, there are moments before things get away from him that are captivating to watch and lovely to listen to.
  75. Last Hijack
    Disjointed and unfocused.
  76. The Liberator
    The admittedly simple premise — that El Libertador fought the good fight, for a worthy cause — is refreshingly escapist. By only briefly addressing the complications of Bolívar's later life as a ruler, it lets us revel in the antiquated notion, if only for a couple of hours, that there are some battles worth fighting.
  77. The Supreme Price
    Unlike documentaries that tie things up in a tidy bow, Supreme Price wants viewers to understand that the status of democracy in Nigeria remains very much in flux.
  78. The Good Lie
    The pieces don't always fit together as neatly as you might wish, but if you let it, The Good Lie's heartwarming soul will win you over.
  79. Annabelle
    Annabelle works enough devil figurine juju to make for a modestly hair-raising prequel to the more satisfying scares of its predecessor, "The Conjuring."
  80. Left Behind
    Cheesy visual effects, flat shooting, slack directing and pacing, risible dialogue and characterization, lots of crummy acting, plus a painfully dull first act make this anything but a rapturous experience.
  81. Waiting for August
    Waiting for August" is an impressive, if muted, debut documentary.
  82. For Those in Peril
    Fine performances (MacKay is a revelation), bristling tension, strong atmospherics and a wealth of superbly wrought, often heartbreaking scenes add up to make "Peril" a must-see for serious filmgoers.
  83. Field of Lost Shoes
    The war scenes and their aftermath are involving and emotionally sound as well as skillfully shot and edited. And if several moments smack of revisionist history, perhaps best to ascribe them to dramatic license.
  84. Fishing Without Nets
    Although director and co-writer Cutter Hodierne tells the story from the pirates' viewpoint, he adds no more dimension to them than the one we saw in "Phillips."
  85. The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin
    Filmmaker Nicholas Mross takes a straight-ahead, even-handed approach to the controversial payment system.
  86. Good People
    Good People goes from being simply pedestrian to outright preposterous without batting an eye.
  87. This Ain't No Mouse Music
    The narrative of Strachwitz as preserver of obscure music just repeats like a broken record with the introduction of each region, genre and musician.
  88. Nas: Time Is Illmatic
    Since many of the themes from Illmatic have become mere clichés in contemporary rap, this film serves as a reminder of the potential and the promise that hip-hop truly holds.
  89. Men, Women & Children
    A few steps further and Reitman might have turned Men, Women & Children into parody — at least that might have made for some laughs.
  90. Filmage: The Story of Descendents/ALL
    Though the breathless tale and full-throttle tunes give "Filmage" plenty of rollicking energy, it's the through-line of genuine soulfulness and tireless artistic commitment that sets it apart.
  91. Tazza: The Hidden Card
    The film seems to have an entire deck of cards up its sleeve, and they're dealt out with more tedium than fun.
  92. Bridge and Tunnel
    In addition to flat visuals, logy pacing and lots of first-draft dialogue, "Bridge" plays host to such an uninspired — and uninspiring — circle of friends and lovers it's hard to invest in their mundane journeys.
  93. Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire in the 60s
    Fascinating anecdotes unfold, illuminating the spontaneity and daring that went into producing the groundbreaking periodical.
  94. Print the Legend
    Filmmakers Luis Lopez and J. Clay Tweel achieve the fairness and balance so rarely seen in documentaries nowadays.
  95. At the Devil's Door
    At the Devil's Door goes right up to the threshold of being an interesting possession saga but never truly gets inside.
  96. The Song
    The melody may be as old as the Bible, but The Song could have benefited from a fresher voice.
  97. Born to Fly
    Dance purists might dismiss Streb's work as circus gymnastics, but a bracing aesthetic is inseparable from the corporal shocks, as is an insistence on challenging accepted constraints. Through Gund's film, a wider audience stands to be not just amazed but provoked.
  98. Swim Little Fish Swim
    An art-versus-commerce drama that consists of one beautifully aching performance surrounded by a whole lotta twee.
  99. Bird People
    Ferran's eccentricity is an acquired taste, but the light, emotional artfulness of Bird People — a cry for the senses in a world that so often dulls — is welcome.
  100. Plastic
    As mindless entertainment goes, it's a pretty watchable time-passer.
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