Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,520 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 16520
  2. Mixed: 5,806 out of 16520
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16520
16520 movie reviews
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  1. Valentino's Ghost
    It's a provocative, absorbing — and at times dicey — study.
  2. White on White
    In White on White, what permeates is a merited sense of dread, by design too starkly impenetrable on emotional grounds, but direct in its fierce thematic intent.
  3. Paranoid Park
    Youth and death meet again in Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, a gorgeously stark, mesmerizingly elliptical story told in the same lyrical-prosaic style that has characterized his latest films.
  4. Out of Sight
    Engaging and consummately entertaining.
  5. In the Shadow of the Moon
    The riveting documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, is an unexpected knockout.
  6. The Big Risk
    To come across Classe Tous Risques is like discovering a bottle of marvelous French wine you didn't remember you had, opening it and finding it every bit as delicious as its reputation promised. That's how good this classic fatalistic French gangster film is.
  7. Get on the Bus
    Director Spike Lee has made angry films, epic films, even sentimental films. But he's not made anything as heartfelt and finally celebratory as Get on the Bus. [16 Oct 1996, p.F1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  8. 76 Days
    We are likely to be watching films on this subject for years to come, but for it’s sheer in-the-moment rawness, 76 Days is one that will stick in your consciousness for some time.
  9. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
    What a wonder that the film adaptation of Judy Blume’s beloved 1970 young adult novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is as lovely, heartfelt and, indeed, deeply radical as the original text.
  10. Children of Men
    Made with palpable energy, intensity and excitement, it compellingly creates a world gone mad that is uncomfortably close to the one we live in. It is a "Blade Runner" for the 21st century, a worthy successor to that epic of dystopian decay
  11. Judas and the Black Messiah
    As reinforced by every capacious widescreen frame of Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography, the movie is both a portrait and a panorama, a story about Black self-determination as an individual and collective enterprise.
  12. Broadcast News
    Broadcast News is so diabolically clever that you rather expect it to be heartless, in the way that so much surface cleverness can be. No such thing. Heartless is the wrong word for this movie: It's insightful and understanding and marvelous fun, while giving up none of its thoughtfulness. [16 Dec 1987, p.1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  13. Revanche
    A darkly compelling film from Austria, can be viewed as either a thriller with psychological overtones or a psychological drama with thriller elements.
  14. The Man Without a Past
    Offers up a subversive comic sensibility, one that somehow combines Buster Keaton's deadpan stare with Frank Capra's tireless optimism and filters them both through a black-ice Finnish point of view. Welcome to Aki World.
  15. American Movie
    Although overly long at 107 minutes, American Movie is an incisive, largely absorbing work and a far more mature effort than Smith's "American Job."
  16. Husbands and Wives
    Despite the presence of a college-aged siren that Allen’s married, fiftysomething character becomes intoxicated with, this assured, penetrating film is no sentimental homage to May-December infatuations. Rather, Husbands and Wives is a lacerating comedy about love turned sour, a painful, deeply pessimistic yet somehow funny look at how caring relationships wind up as destructive emotional dead-ends.
  17. Flipside
    It’s all music, Wilcha’s sweetly philosophical movie seems to be saying — and being present enough to listen.
  18. Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
    Tarantino was a boy of 6 in 1969, living far from the center of Los Angeles, and in a sense what he’s done here is re-create the world he’s imagined the adults were living in at the time. If it plays like a fairy tale, and it does, don’t forget the first words in the title are “Once Upon a Time.”
  19. After the Storm
    Kore-eda is too scrupulous a filmmaker to prescribe Ryota an easy redemptive arc or happy ending. Nonetheless, the lingering optimism that suffuses After the Storm’s closing scenes is honestly achieved; nothing on the surface has changed, but on a deeper level something has.
  20. Moonrise Kingdom
    Here the writer-director's tendency toward the allegorical casts a magical spell with Anderson finding a near perfect balance between the humanism and the surreal that imprints all of his work.
  21. Calle 54
    Visually as pleasing as it sounds.
  22. Up the Yangtze
    One of the real pluses of Up the Yangtze, aside from its empathy with its subjects, is its striking visual quality. Beijing-based cinematographer Wang Shi Qing has an impeccable eye, often coming up with haunting images that show both the beauty and uncertainty of this pivotal time.
  23. Farewell My Concubine
    Old-fashioned in form but modern in psychological dynamic, it’s a film that you can lose yourself in, that washes over you like a warm and enveloping mist.
  24. Sinners
    Sinners works more like a pop song than a grand statement, the kind of deceptively simple high-level craft that few people can pull off.
  25. High Hopes
    The actors, many of whom are part of a loose Mike Leigh stock company, are miraculously deft at erasing that line between performing and being.
  26. McQueen
    Even if the dramas and dictates of couturiers and catwalks mean little to you, it is hard to resist the propulsive energy that director Ian Bonhote and co-director and writer Peter Ettedgui bring to the story of a designer whose background, beliefs and gifts were not what one would expect.
  27. Earth Mama
    If the filmmaking feels poetic and subdued, it’s the opposite of coy. Leaf is confident enough to let her images, as much as her written dialogue, do much of the narrative lifting.
  28. Booksmart
    Booksmart leaves you feeling unaccountably hopeful for the state of humanity — and the state of American screen comedy too.
  29. Ascension
    Through her unfussy direction and sly editing, Kingdon’s collection of vignettes is a reminder that the destructively frenzied cycle of consumption and waste always trickles down.
  30. Lantana
    A remarkably thoughtful drama, Lantana makes it clear not only how hard to come by any emotional comfort is in this life, but more important, why we can't give up on the struggle.
  31. Reality
    Reality reaches beyond Winner’s experience on one momentous Saturday afternoon to prod us all into contemplating our own relationship to actions over words, and the powerfully wielded consequences that keep many — but thankfully, not all of us — from doing nothing.
  32. Séraphine
    What makes Seraphine, directed and co-written by Martin Provost, so exceptional is that it neither condescends to nor romanticizes its subject.
  33. Marx Can Wait
    Even at its most emotionally awkward or loose, it signals a filmmaking sensibility where Bellocchio — whose nearly 60-year career has been built on a provocative rendering of the social and political fractures around him — is refreshingly averse to viewing his own past through rose-colored glasses.
  34. 49 Up
    49 Up is more than a deeply satisfying movie; it's a reminder of the wonder contained in ordinary lives.
  35. BPM (Beats Per Minute)
    The beauty of BPM, and what connects its hard-fought, well-remembered battles to those of the present, lies in its willingness to embrace life in all its messiness, its refusal to pretend that the personal isn't also political and vice versa. You may well weep at the end, but you might also feel like snapping your fingers.
  36. The Joy Luck Club
    If The Joy Luck Club doesn’t make you cry, nothing will. In an age of contrived and mechanical sentimentality, its deeply felt, straight-from-the-heart emotions and the unadorned way it presents them make quite an impact. No matter how many hankies you bring with you, it won’t be enough.
  37. Sirât
    Sirāt is taut and riveting and nearly all mood. You feel the exhilaration of veering off the path, the self-exile of speeding toward nowhere, the dread that this caravan has veered too far for its own safety.
  38. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
    By making the political personal, Rasoulof warns us that repression starts at home.
  39. The Postman Always Rings Twice
    This 1946 version became a key film in postwar Hollywood film noir. Directed by Tay Garnett, it remains one of Lana Turner's (right) very best films. [02 Feb 1997, p.78]
    • Los Angeles Times
  40. To Leslie
    It’s a story often told, but this movie tells it well, energetically dramatizing the in-the-moment experiences Leslie has and showing how they inform the choices she makes. And Riseborough is a dynamo, making sure that even at her worst, Leslie has enough personality and humanity that the audience roots for her just to get through another day.
  41. American Beauty
    A blood-chilling dark comedy with unexpected moments of both fury and warmth, a strange, brooding and very accomplished film that sets us back on our heels from its opening frames.
  42. Blade Runner
    May be the best "new" American movie released this year.
  43. Harmonium
    Fukada’s take on family is genuinely bleak — what he sees is loneliness together instead of real companionship, and all the problems that arise from manufactured togetherness. But his storytelling instincts are solid, and his actors always bring humanity to their darkest impulses and saddest epiphanies.
  44. Far From Heaven
    The film's three leads are extraordinary, but what Moore does with her role is so beyond the parameters of what we call great acting that it nearly defies categorization.
  45. No Man's Land
    A savage comedy about the war in the former Yugoslavia that artfully mixes comic absurdism with a passion for what's right and a concern for the individuality of all concerned.
  46. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
    Raises it to the level of an art film with fully drawn characters, a serious underlying theme, and a sophisticated style and point of view.
  47. Heart of a Dog
    Heart of a Dog is that rarest of pieces, an unabashedly experimental work that's as inviting as a visit with an old friend, one who may not always make sense, who's sometimes goofy, but has been through a lot lately and treasures the opportunity to artfully unload.
  48. Orion: The Man Who Would Be King
    Finlay unearths a fascinating biography filled with reversals, comebacks and false starts.
  49. Frame by Frame
    The filmmakers' approach is inherently positive.
  50. Fireworks Wednesday (2006)
    What pulls us into Fireworks Wednesday is the universality of the emotions its characters display and the familiarity of the situations they find themselves in. Farhadi is a master navigator of these waters, and even his earlier films reward our close attention.
  51. Hell on Earth: The Fall of Syria and the Rise of ISIS
    The 100-minute film does a phenomenal job detangling the numerous scenarios that led to Syria’s civil war and current bloodbath, dispelling the notion that this conflict is too complicated for those not versed on the Middle East to understand.
  52. Prizzi's Honor
    To say the film is the treasure of the year would be to bad-mouth it in this disastrous season. Prizzi's Honor would be the vastly original centerpiece of a great year. It's a rich, dense character comedy in which Huston, working from a screenplay Richard Condon and Janet Roach adapted from Condon's novel, cocks a playful but unblinking eye at love, family loyalty and the togetherness of a happy marriage--Sicilian style.
  53. Aferim!
    Aferim! conjures a world in flux. From the ironic "Bravo!" of its title to its Chekhovian final moment after an episode of terrible brutality, Jude's film connects that world, unforgettably, to our own.
  54. War Witch
    The powerful things we expect from War Witch are as advertised, but what we don't expect is even better.
  55. Toy Story 4
    The film surprises with the amount of genuine emotion it generates with its focus on love, loyalty and what matters most in life, to humans as well as toys.
  56. Darwin's Nightmare
    Filmmaker Sauper put himself in harm's way numerous times to get so inside the situation, and the intimacy of his technique, his willingness to avoid hectoring voice-overs and simply talk quietly with his subjects, adds compelling believability.
  57. My Winnipeg
    This haunting phantasmagoria of a film -- comic, singular, surreal -- is not only something no one but the Canadian director could have made, it's also a film no one else would have even wanted to make. Which is the heart of its appeal.
  58. The White Ribbon
    We don't go to Michael Haneke films for comfort, but to gaze through a glass darkly. That vision -- tense, provocative and unnerving -- is on full display in The White Ribbon, which could be considered a culmination of this difficult director's brilliant career.
  59. In My Room
    As signaled by the hilarious visual gag that opens the story, In My Room is a mysterious and surprising movie about the frustration of the unseen and the poignancy of paths not taken.
  60. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
    A beautiful, deadly serious attempt by Paul and Leonard Schrader to illuminate the life--and death--of one of Japan's most highly visible and self-propelling enigmas.
  61. Pride and Prejudice
    As the current Emma testifies, Jane Austen continues to knock them dead but nothing beats the high gloss of impeccable studio craftsmanship that elevates this Laurence Olivier-Greer Garson vehicle. [03 Apr 2020, p.E1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  62. Chicken for Linda!
    This tale of parents and poultry more than earns the exclamation point in its title. It sweeps you into a whirlwind of ingenuity, bite after animated bite.
  63. In the Heights
    To call this movie assertive would be an understatement; to describe it as small would be a lie. At nearly two-and-a-half hours and with a terrific ensemble of actors singing, rapping, dancing and practically bursting out of the frame, In the Heights is a brash and invigorating entertainment, a movie of tender, delicate moments that nonetheless revels unabashedly in its own size and scale.
  64. Fire of Love
    The fire of Katia and Maurice Krafft’s obsession consumed them, in no small part, because it ultimately restored their kinship with humanity.
  65. Blood Simple
    Blood Simple becomes a dazzling comedie noire, a dynamic, virtuoso display by a couple of talented fledgling filmmakers who give the conventions of the genre such a thorough workout that the result is a movie that's fresh and exhilarating (in the way that Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Diva” was).
  66. Oslo, August 31st
    Oslo is an example of strong, confident filmmaking in which nothing is miscalculated or out of place. Anchored by a devastating performance by Anders Danielsen Lie, this portrait of existential despair is beautifully made without being self-conscious about its art.
  67. Hamnet
    Hamnet’s sweetest note is 12-year-old Jacobi Jupe playing the actual Hamnet. The script hangs on our immediate devotion to the boy and he stands up to the challenge.
  68. The Witch
    In a way, the movie is a tug of war between the fruits of exhaustive research into old-world madness — which plays out most prominently in the richly possessed performances (particularly Taylor-Joy and young Scrimshaw) and the evocative frontier trappings — and an entertainer's pulpier instincts.
  69. Looper
    This is a highflying, super-stylish science-fiction thriller that brings a fresh approach to mind-bending genre material. We're not always sure where this time-travel film is going, but we wouldn't dream of abandoning the ride.
  70. Graduation
    Bleak, naturalistic and flawlessly acted, Graduation distills the mood and moral decay of a place whose gray skies and nondescript housing blocks feel like permanent reminders of its dark history.
  71. Kubo and the Two Strings
    It recognizes that our most cherished legends are an endless source of consolation in times of suffering and loss, as well as a vital repository of cultural and generational memory. If that message sounds trite or familiar, it has rarely been driven home with this much conviction and intensity of feeling.
  72. Aliens
    But of all the film's choices, the best was Weaver. She's its white-hot core, given fine, irascible dialogue to come blazing out of that patrician mouth, and the chance to look, for a moment, like a space-dusted Sleeping Beauty in her hyper-sleep casket.
  73. The Other Side of Hope
    While the conclusion to The Other Side of Hope is open-ended, Kaurismaki unashamedly believes in brotherhood, and among other things his film celebrates people who do the right thing without making a big deal about it.
  74. The Vast of Night
    Its achievement is predicated not on novelty, but on modesty — the way it manages, using little more than a terrific cast and a few shadowy, sparsely furnished rooms, to populate your mind’s eye with ominous visions.
  75. Old Joy
    Miniaturist in its level of detail and evocatively abstract, Old Joy captures the weary mood of a generation that's crested its peak along with an era, quietly making a case for how well suited film can be to capturing the finer points of human interaction while preserving their mystery.
  76. Momma's Man
    Mastery of tone is everything here, and Azazel's control, combined with his wit, perception, discretion and easy command of the visual and of his cast makes Momma's Man a gem.
  77. You Were Never Really Here
    There is more to admire here than a simple economy of form and content, and the spareness of Ramsay's approach is no mere approximation of Ames' hard-boiled prose. The texture is as gritty as the filmmaking is exquisite.
  78. In the Name of the Father
    Strongly tied to a powerful underlying reality (though it inevitably tends to simplify), this film has the additional advantage of being concerned with the emotional truth of its key relationships, adding an unusual father and son story to its incendiary mix. [29 Dec 1993 Pg. F1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  79. A Ghost Story
    It’s a simple, wrenching story of love and loss that pries open a window onto eternity.
  80. Ballast
    A quintessentially American story that unmistakably echoes European art house cinema, combining the aesthetic purity of France's Robert Bresson with the social consciousness of Belgium's Dardenne brothers. It also is a powerful, character-driven melodrama that easily holds our attention from first to last.
  81. Volver
    Volver is just as funny as "What Have I Done," but it's also more sanguine and complex. Its humor is brighter and loopier, more a function of the characters' indomitable spirit than of their terminal despair.
  82. The Square
    The Square bears witness to history in an articulate, thoughtful and intensely dramatic way.
  83. Widows
    In Widows, diversity isn’t an opportunity for showy tokenism or liberal pieties. It’s a matter-of-fact reflection of a city’s seething internal dynamics, an opportunity to probe inequities of race, class and gender that few American movies, let alone American genre movies, ever attempt to address.
  84. Love After Love
    It's a viewing experience that's challenging, unflinching and deeply honest.
  85. Motherland
    An extraordinary vérité portrait of Manila’s Fabella Hospital.
  86. Mapantsula
    Like its black anti-hero, the mapantsula (Zulu for small-time crook ) of the title, the movie makers do their job with swiftness, guile and gall. It’s a moral drama in disguise.
  87. Synonyms
    A searing, maddening, explosively brainy movie about the mutability and immutability of the self that, appropriately enough, never stops changing shape.
  88. Boys State
    It’s a comedy, a heartbreaker and, above all, a twisty and suspenseful piece of political theater. Its rough-and-tumble snapshot of American youth in action is somehow both troubling and exhilarating.
  89. Homicide
    Even though it ends up falling off the tracks--maybe even because it falls off the tracks-- Homicide absolutely holds your interest with the passion that powerfully felt but ultimately screwy efforts often have.
  90. Museum Hours
    It's a film whose pleasures are much more visual than dramatic, but that doesn't mean there aren't serious things on its mind.
  91. On Her Shoulders
    On Her Shoulders is an intimate, empathetic documentary, made with discretion and power.
  92. Sense and Sensibility
    Part of the problem is that Taiwan-born Lee, though he does a more-than-credible job of directing, isn't sharp on the nuances of British behavior.
  93. The Descendants
    It makes The Descendants a tragedy infused with comedy and calls for a balancing act from filmmaker and star alike, a tightrope they navigate with nary a wobble.
  94. First Man
    Chazelle seems to be trying to both uphold and transcend the narrative template established by astronaut dramas like “The Right Stuff” and “Apollo 13,” with their scenes of hard-working men barking orders from ground control (Kyle Chandler does the honors nicely here), and of astronauts’ wives worrying that they may soon be widows. Even his missteps...underscore his desire to tell a story of collective accomplishment through one man’s extraordinary perspective.
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