Los Angeles Times' Scores

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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
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  1. Paradise
    Though it's built around a kernel of tender feeling, the comedy never transcends its basic contrivance.
  2. 12 Years a Slave
    This is impressive filmmaking, but it is not easy to take in.
  3. All Is Lost
    All Is Lost, which is only Chandor's second film, reveals itself as remarkably skillful, surprisingly insightful and deeply moving. It's a confident work by an artist who knows himself and trusts his audience.
  4. Escape Plan
    Escape Plan is mostly a gray, thudding metal machine of throwback exploitation, but the goateed, goofy Ah-nold is so happy to be in the thick of an old-school bruiser again that he makes it feel like the dumb-fun flashback party it is.
  5. The Fifth Estate
    Whenever The Fifth Estate leaves the involving one-on-one drama between Assange and Domscheit-Berg, you wish it wouldn't.
  6. Carrie
    Peirce has done a remaking rather than a reimagining.
  7. Kill Your Darlings
    Far too conventional underneath all the trappings, you wish it would howl.
  8. Captain Phillips
    The piercingly realistic Captain Phillips will exceed your expectations.
  9. I Used to Be Darker
    It's a story of contained chaos, quietly observed — one that catches fire more in retrospect than in the viewing.
  10. Cassadaga
    Cassadaga tries to scoop up enough tropes to satisfy a wide range of potential fright fans but lacks the cohesion to ever truly be effective.
  11. A.K.A. Doc Pomus
    Expertly put together by editor Amy Linton, AKA Doc Pomus uses its wealth of material to create the sense of a man with a genius for putting undistilled emotion into his songs.
  12. Ghost Team One
    It's frustrating that the filmmakers could only think to enrich the characters of one race by demeaning those of another.
  13. The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete
    It is an imperfect film about this imperfect world. But if "Mister & Pete" doesn't make you rethink the social safety net that fails these kids, and so many others like them, book some time with a cardiologist.
  14. Romeo & Juliet
    This is Shakespeare lite, which ultimately makes for Shakespeare slightly trite.
  15. Muscle Shoals
    Director Greg "Freddy" Camalier skillfully, unhurriedly unfurls a wealth of classic music-biz tales as told by a who's who of R&B, soul and rock 'n' roll royalty and various other players and purveyors.
  16. A Touch of Sin
    A Touch of Sin, the powerful if uneven new film by highly regarded Chinese director Jia Zhangke, is a corrosive depiction of the New China.
  17. I Will Follow You Into the Dark
    Muddled by a setup with a religious bent that's never fully explored and an instance of euthanasia that's only tenuously related to the central plot.
  18. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
    All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is not a missing masterpiece; rather it is a small, tightly coiled spellbinder.
  19. Machete Kills
    Machete Kills winds up a slightly camp, tinny parody of bad action movies, playing out with the same sense of tedium as a genuine bad action movie.
  20. DSKNECTD
    It is a series of free-associating non sequiturs underscored by nonillustrative graphics and an intrusive soundtrack.
  21. Walter: Lessons from the World's Oldest People
    There's certainly a profound and valuable documentary to be made about our eldest living senior citizens. Sadly, Walter: Lessons From the World's Oldest People isn't it.
  22. Dislecksia: The Movie
    Has a necessary charge to it, but also a distractingly goofy side.
  23. McConkey
    Witnessing him defy long odds, gravity and death is a thrill; even the uninitiated should find his unresolved father complex of interest.
  24. The Institute
    Because The Institute is largely framed as if the viewer were a co-player in Jejune's game, the film is an experience that's fun and frustrating in equal measure.
  25. Sweetwater
    As violent act begets silly exchange begets another violent act, Sweetwater squanders its noteworthy resources — a cast enjoying themselves (especially Isaacs and Harris), and some effectively brooding outdoor cinematography.
  26. Silent City
    That Rosa never encounters another character with English fluency — nor grasps her Eurocentric limitations — makes director Threes Anna's film less the intended portrait of cultural isolation than an illustration of how a lack of imagination can lead to despair.
  27. Forgetting the Girl
    Written with a poet's ear and directed with an artist's eye, Forgetting the Girl plumbs the psyche of an unassuming studio photographer.
  28. A River Changes Course
    Mam's camera work is exquisite in its immediacy and agility. One of the most striking aspects of her film is the intimacy it achieves without feeling intrusive or turning her subjects into fodder for a message.
  29. Escape from Tomorrow
    For the first hour, the plot is stultifyingly aimless, while the satire of Disney's oppressive optimism is as stale as any theme-park snack. But like a roller coaster, a queasily rollicking and dizzyingly loopy climax... ultimately makes the long wait worthwhile.
  30. Grace Unplugged
    Grace Unplugged proves a far more involving, accessible and enjoyable movie than its peek-a-boo marketing strategy suggested.
  31. The Network
    The film's overall presentation...feels a bit too cloistered and the subject perhaps too limited for feature-length attention.
  32. All Is Bright
    In its own strange way, All Is Bright pulls you in even as it frustrates. This is far from a picture-perfect Christmas story, mind you, but there is a spirit in its celebration of disappointment that is quite special.
  33. Runner Runner
    The struggles in the movie are with the moments when life and liberty are on the line. The ones that should put you on the edge of your seat are more likely to have you glancing at your watch.
  34. Pulling Strings
    Serving mostly as a strong calling card for star Jaime Camil, the film has an appealingly loose, slightly ramshackle charm.
  35. Nothing Left to Fear
    For cheap thrills, Nothing Left to Fear is true to its title. Director Anthony Leonardi III and writer Jonathan Mills have let not one scary moment on screen.
  36. Parkland
    The writer-director digs deeply and with a marked sensitivity, capturing the desperate, heartbroken humanity of the time and the place. But it is also a movie of frustrating stumbles — blunders that diminish what might have been a brilliant film.
  37. A.C.O.D.
    Solid performances aside, closing-credits comments from the movie's crew members on marriage and divorce offer fresher insights than any of the story's run-of-the-mill shenanigans.
  38. The Missing Picture
    The Missing Picture is personal and unexpected, a documentary that mixes media in an unusual way to very potent effect.
  39. CBGB
    In its stylistically flailing stab at authenticity, CBGB ends up merely a mess of caricatures.
  40. The Dirties
    A masterful blend of black humor and queasy dread.
  41. Vikingdom
    Once you look past the carnage, special effects and colossal locales, all you're left with is the supper show at Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament.
  42. Concussion
    It is Weigert's performance that gives the film its mystery and charge. Playing seriously with identity, she draws the viewer ever closer. The way she never reveals everything is electrifying.
  43. Bad Milo!
    Its lo-fi charms — the cutesy-scary monster design, earnest family values and Danny Elfman-esque soundtrack — make the film feel like an '80s throwback in a way that justifies the nostalgia.
  44. The Summit
    The Summit tells a multifaceted story that deals with more than the expected peril and exhilaration of adventure tales. Here you'll find love, fear and forgiveness, personality conflicts and cultural differences, even mysteries that have stubbornly resisted solving.
  45. Argento's Dracula 3D
    The effects may be cheap and unconvincing, the sets spare, the costumes from some unwanted back rack, but Argento still brings enough moments of kinky madness to his not-great "Dracula" to indicate there may yet be greatness lurking within him.
  46. Gravity
    Gravity is out of this world. Words can do little to convey the visual astonishment this space opera creates. It is a film whose impact must be experienced in 3-D on a theatrical screen to be fully understood.
  47. Valentine Road
    A moving and infuriating look at the 2008 murder of openly gay teenager Lawrence "Larry" King.
  48. Linsanity
    [An] enjoyable documentary.
  49. Men at Lunch
    Regrettably, Men at Lunch obsesses over disappearing ghosts instead of the records we already have and the history we should know.
  50. After Tiller
    Filmmakers Martha Shane and Lana Wilson, whose profiles in courage are sympathetic but not adulatory, have crafted an absorbing, thoughtful report.
  51. Herb & Dorothy 50X50
    Megumi Sasaki's follow-up to her first documentary, 2008's Herb & Dorothy, is as engaging and unpretentious as its subjects.
  52. Don Jon
    Who would have thought one of the most amusing and oddly insightful romantic comedies would be built around the power and the potent pull of porn?
  53. Wolf Children
    Wolf Children is rather an odd story, told in a one-of-a-kind style that feels equal parts sentimental, somber and strange.
  54. Inequality for All
    Reich and documentary director Jacob Kornbluth turn out to be the ideal collaborators to tell the story of what that gap is, why it happened and why it's important, all in a totally engaging way.
  55. We Are What We Are
    Like the family, the film occasionally comes apart at the seams. But Childers and Garner are absolutely mesmerizing as Iris and Rose.
  56. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
    It is the inventive design of the many creatures that feels so fresh. The detail is so rich, and so dense, that you wish some of the frames would freeze so you had more time for savoring.
  57. The Trials of Muhammad Ali
    The Trials of Muhammad Ali is a complex and involving documentary.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Metallica: Through the Never
    The problem is that Antal and Metallica took two different movies — a fine live-band document and a supernatural end-of-days romp — and smashed them together to make both of them more boring.
  59. Cleaver's Destiny
    Cleaver's Destiny" is an earnest but ultimately amateur production on all fronts that misses an opportunity to deal seriously with topics writer-director-star Karl Lentini obviously cares about.
  60. We Came Home
    We Came Home has its amateurish side, but it's effortlessly affecting when showing how music acts as an extended hand across generations and cultures.
  61. Winter Nomads
    An exhilarating vérité work by first-timer Manuel von Stürler, the documentary follows this seasonal migration, or transhumance, with a sense of quiet awe and intimacy, capturing the feel of cold rain, deep snow and the comforting heat of a campfire.
  62. The Secret Lives of Dorks
    Johnny Severin and Nicholas David Brandt's otherwise clever and original script takes an unexpected turn at nearly every intersection, resulting in a funny and big-hearted coming-of-age romance.
  63. The Spy: Undercover Operation
    Regrettably, the subtitles fail to capture Sul and Moon's witty wordplay — but their snappy, prickly chemistry is obvious to all.
  64. Out in the Dark
    It's unique, powerful stuff.
  65. On the Job
    The film is as heartbreaking as it is heart-stopping.
  66. Wedding Palace
    The genre elements of the romantic comedy Wedding Palace attempt a transpacific transit, but get lost in translation.
  67. Baggage Claim
    Baggage Claim promotes painfully outdated social mores.
  68. Zaytoun
    It's just all too breezy to have any real effect.
  69. First Cousin Once Removed
    Heartbreaking, haunting and unexpectedly heartening, First Cousin Once Removed is an uncommonly moving documentary portrait of a mind in disarray.
  70. Mother of George
    It is the kind of distinctive, culture-driven drama from emerging filmmakers that I wish we saw more of.
  71. Rush
    Though one enjoys and appreciates Rush for what it is, it does not thrill the blood the way we have the right to expect a film like this to do.
  72. Battle of the Year
    This 3-D spectacle is less the dance movie that's going to make b-boying cool again than a shill for sponsors' gear.
  73. I Spit on Your Grave 2
    There are glimmers of thoughtfulness here in the initial characterization of Katie and in her long, slow recovery before she can exact her revenge, but they're ultimately snuffed out by this mound of toxic trash.
  74. Ip Man: The Final Fight
    The overall sense is of a rushed, simplistic installment in a well-worn biography franchise.
  75. Jewtopia
    To call this winkfest toward an astoundingly retrograde sliver of Judaism offensive would be, well, offensive to the word offensive.
  76. My Lucky Star
    While the film does not lack production values and panache, Gordon's direction often seems thoughtless.
  77. +1
    In trying to say everything, Plus One reveals it doesn't have much to say at all.
  78. C.O.G.
    For Sedaris fans, C.O.G. is a regrettably patronizing washout.
  79. Thanks for Sharing
    Thanks for Sharing is a bit like the recovery scene it digs into — filled with intoxicating highs and dispiriting lows.
  80. Blue Caprice
    Proves a highly auspicious feature debut for Moors and Porto as well as a much-deserved return to the limelight for Washington. Don't miss it.
  81. Mademoiselle C
    Unfortunately, the film doesn't show its subject's creative process as much as that of her collaborators.
  82. The Colony
    The film strands its archetypal characters in a featureless danger zone and gives them overly familiar dialogue borrowed from a dozen other B-movies.
  83. Prisoners
    Exciting, terrifying, worrisome stuff saturates every second of Prisoners, holding you captive, keeping you guessing until the bitter end.
  84. Kid-Thing
    Kid-Thing proves as disturbing for what it is as for what it's not.
  85. Newlyweeds
    The sights, sounds and sociological quirks of Lyle's and Nina's particular circle of existence are what give Newlyweeds its indie resonance, less a city symphony than an urban alt-fugue.
  86. Generation Iron
    [A] compelling and energetic documentary.
  87. GMO OMG
    If forewarned is forearmed, Seifert's movie might one day prove quite prescient.
  88. The Short Game
    Greenbaum shoots the game play especially well, employing dynamic camera work and kinetic editing to convey the drama of what non-fans might consider a static sport.
  89. A Single Shot
    The film charts no new territory but is terrifically cast and, like its source novel, long on atmosphere.
  90. Haute Cuisine
    Its restraint is its strength. The focus on a woman's passionate hard work without need of marital-status back story is refreshing.
  91. Enough Said
    One of the pleasures of Enough Said is watching Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini, two well-known performers only Holofcener would think of putting together, come alive both as individuals and the two halves of a relationship.
  92. A Strange Brand of Happy
    Any one-man crusade is likely to fail, but a rom-com character's war against sincerity is doomed from the start.
  93. Unacceptable Levels
    Brown's argument is hampered, however, by the chaotic rush of information and speculation, overuse of winking archival footage of commercials and old industrial films, and Brown's charmlessness as a "what's going on?" guide.
  94. Una Noche
    Moving performances from Una Noche's charismatic non-pro cast, Mulloy's keen eye for visual detail and stunning cinematography by Trevor Forrest and Shlomo Godder of Cuba's turquoise water exploding against the sea wall offer a compelling portrait.
  95. Hawking
    What Hawking does do well is open a window onto how his mind works and the passions that ignite his soul.
  96. Touchy Feely
    Shelton's affection for her characters is evident but it's not enough.
  97. Jayne Mansfield's Car
    With actors this good, however, there's rarely a pinched expression, heartfelt speech or laugh line that isn't at least partly sold, even if the stunted-male psychologizing at the expense of the under-written women grows tiresome.
  98. Informant
    What emerges is a vague, often chilling impression of an unpredictable opportunist and provocateur who may not even be sure himself.
  99. Red Obsession
    Documentaries by their nature are prisoners of their moment in time. If they are fortunate, as the makers of Red Obsession are, that moment, even if it's brief, will be able to hold our interest.
  100. The Family
    A messy brew that is a bit too slack to get all the way to actually being good.
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