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. Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
    A meditative piece that is by turns hypnotically beautiful and painfully slow. It's the kind of film perhaps best appreciated in smaller doses, in the same way bench rest can help sustain a tiring museum visit.
  2. After the Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United
    Cinematically, though, After the Cup lacks the intimacy and narrative focus needed for a more wholly involving experience.
  3. Agora
    The subject is absorbing, but the lack of differentiation in dramatic levels makes the film feel longer than its 126 minutes.
  4. Dogtooth
    Though its elusive character is undoubtedly part of its strength, Dogtooth ends up feeling somehow like a dodge and a sidestep. As a film, it's pure and singular, but it's not quite fully formed enough to be what one could call truly visionary.
  5. Mao's Last Dancer
    Director Bruce Beresford ("Driving Miss Daisy") knows how to tug heartstrings but as he moves the inspirational material toward its tear-jerker finale, it's often hampered by awkward melodrama.
  6. Secretariat
    Secretariat shows no fear of the sentimental, and that's putting it mildly. This is an old-fashioned, super-genteel family movie that opens with an equine quote from the Book of Job and makes ample use of the Edwin Hawkins Singers' gospel song "Oh Happy Day."
  7. The Winning Season
    Often lacks momentum, especially in its early stretches. It is, however, a far more solid film than writer-director James C. Strouse's debut, the war-themed family drama "Grace Is Gone."
  8. Life as We Know It
    What you may not expect is quite how satisfying much of the film is, with Duhamel turning out to be a very good sparring partner for Heigl.
  9. Burlesque
    Should you find yourself in the mood for Big Musical Numbers by the score rather than a film, there's a lot to like about Burlesque.
  10. Resident Evil: Afterlife
    If you're interested in this movie, it's because you love either seeing zombies explode (check), the video games (major character included, check) or Jovovich kicking undead butt in every conceivable way (check and mate).
  11. The Girl
    The result is a kind of quiet Scandinavian cousin (OK, twice removed) to "Home Alone," in which patient viewers will find sporadic rewards.
  12. Freakonomics
    Overall, these brief sections, which feature both authors on camera, come off more like self-congratulatory infomercials than they should.
  13. Morning Glory
    Rachel McAdams gives the kind of performance we go to the movies for. The rest of the film isn't always up to her level, but it does provide genial entertainment until it runs out of steam.
  14. Leaving
    If Leaving is a romantic parable, it is a dark and depressing one, emphasizing not the sensuality of attraction but rather the obsessive side of romantic behavior. This is mad love for sure, and that is not usually a pretty picture.
  15. Miral
    The lack of a compelling lead figure, combined with Schnabel's tentative approach to the material, casts the film's later stretches in the balmy glow of soap opera.
  16. Rabbit Hole
    A tragedy devastating to experience can feel generic when transferred to the screen, and that, despite everyone's best intentions and an outstanding performance by Nicole Kidman, is what happens with Rabbit Hole.
  17. Biutiful
    Sometimes it seems as if Iñárritu is literally carving out his actor's heart, so tangible does Bardem make Uxbal's fears. Iñárritu has so much that he wants to say - too much, in fact, and the film's central weakness - that he has created an emotional tsunami for both the actors and the audience.
  18. The Way Back
    In its best moments is as big as a movie can be, as big as life itself.
  19. Hemingway's Garden of Eden
    Handsomely presented, with locations in Spain and Africa, the film at moments accomplishes its ambitions of being a tart piece of steamed-up Jazz Age storytelling.
  20. A Somewhat Gentle Man
    Like the Coen brothers at their least convincing, the mix of low-grade depression and amped quirkiness never shakes off the feel of self-conscious posturing.
  21. Soul Surfer
    That Soul Surfer rates as a giant leap for this team speaks well about the conviction the movie's actors bring to the material as well as the respect afforded the Hamiltons and their faith.
  22. Your Highness
    To fully appreciate the extreme lowness of Your Highness, it's best to accept that this sometimes witless and sometimes winning comedy has absolutely no socially redeeming value.
  23. The Dictator
    By turns hysterical, heretical, guilty, innocent, silly, sophisticated, teasing and tedious.
  24. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
    Johnny Depp, back again as the swashbuckling miscreant who favors guy-liner and gold, somehow manages to keep this ship of fools afloat. But just barely.
  25. Around June
    Once again, the premature loss of a loved one begets family dysfunction in the strangely uneven, yet occasionally resonant Around June.
  26. I Know a Woman's Heart
    With two gorgeous, compulsively watchable stars doing their best to rise above middling material that often proves more a hindrance than support, Chen has perhaps inadvertently created a faithful Hollywood remake after all.
  27. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
    The dialogue remains spotty and sappy, the effects still haven't caught up to modern-day standards, but "Twilight's" popularity is such that even when it falls short, it doesn't seem to matter.
  28. Friends with Benefits
    Even with all their huffing and puffing, this very salty, often funny affair is never quite as satisfying as it should be.
  29. Super 8
    This melding of two cinematic sensibilities, though effective at moments, is finally not as exciting or involving as it we'd like it to be.
  30. Green Lantern
    More science-fiction space opera than superhero epic, it works in fits and starts as its disparate parts go in and out of effectiveness, but the professionalism of the production make it watchable in a comic book kind of way.
  31. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
    A few shades brighter than its predecessor, and the action bits certainly closer to the full-throttle "Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels" mode director Guy Ritchie didn't quite capture the first time.
  32. The Amazing Spider-Man
    The result is that "Spider-Man" goes in and out of focus. This is a film that is memorable in pieces but not as a whole.
  33. Mr. Popper's Penguins
    The-impossible-to-upstage stars are the penguins, a combination of real Gentoos specially trained for the film and some computer-generated counterparts. The special effects gurus blend the two seamlessly, making it easy to believe there was no digital wizardry involved, which is perhaps the niftiest trick of all.
  34. Conan the Barbarian
    Brutal, bloody beyond belief, and has no socially redeeming value. So it is with a certain amount of guilt that I say it's kind of a wicked blast to watch, especially if you're in the mood for some righteous revenge.
  35. Warrior
    It shows promise but finally hits things so hard, both literally and metaphorically, that it's hard not to feel pummeled yourself by the time it's over.
  36. Drive
    Drive is a Los Angeles neo-noir, a neon-lit crime story made with lots of visual style. It's a film in love with both traditional noir mythology and ultra-modern violence, a combination that is not ideal.
  37. The Rum Diary
    In every move, Depp makes you believe this was a passion project for the actor, one he dedicates to Thompson.
  38. War Horse
    Has the sweep of a classic John Ford movie, the sentiment of Frank Capra and a spirited steed named Joey who will steal your heart. The film itself is more difficult to love.
  39. We Bought a Zoo
    An intelligent family film, a rarity, and while not quite Crowe at his absolute best, it carries his humanistic imprint and benefits from a strong acting ensemble that keep emotions in check.
  40. Footloose
    Stays remarkably close to its predecessor in all the ways that count.
  41. The Possession
    A better-than-most fright-time tale.
  42. Real Steel
    As it happens, this recycled reclamation of underdogs saga is neither as bad as it sounds nor quite as good as it could be.
  43. The Raven
    rRegrettably falls prey to its grand and grisly ambitions - it's neither grand nor grisly enough to seriously satisfy Poe-ish cravings for murder, mystery and literary allusions.
  44. Tower Heist
    Tower Heist might not be a classic (it's not), but at least for a little while it will make you laugh instead of cry about the current state of affairs, which is more than you can say about a lot of things.
  45. Wanderlust
    If anything, the manic energy and aggressive sarcasm of Wain's "Role Models" (2008), which also starred Rudd, has become much more refined in Wanderlust, (well, as refined as something this raw can be).
  46. Amigo
    The history lesson is often framed in stagy exchanges of dialogue, diluting the strong sense of place.
  47. Ceremony
    If the scenario is unconvincing, debuting writer-director Max Winkler has a feel for the dynamics of this kind of ritualized yet informal social gathering, and his affection for his characters is clear.
  48. Desert Flower
    A lovely performance by Ethiopian supermodel-actress Liya Kebede as supermodel-activist Waris Dirie works wonders to elevate this uneven, occasionally awkward but often absorbing film.
  49. Winter in Wartime
    Straightforward and solid but only mildly involving.
  50. Johnny English Reborn
    All that matters with efforts like this is whether the cookie-cutter plotting serves up enough situations for Atkinson to contort himself into and out of jams. After all, are the narratives what you remember from the "Pink Panther" movies? Or the silly things, like that Clouseau could so easily get his finger caught in a spinning globe?
  51. Underworld: Awakening
    A brisk creature-feature that ditches the series' dreary mythology in favor of a more direct, action-oriented approach.
  52. Redland
    There's undeniable beauty too in much of the imagery in this ambitious first film, but if its gutsy, handmade aesthetic makes it unfashionable among American indies, the undernourished narrative puts it on common ground with many of its digital cousins.
  53. Contraband
    So super complicated (implausible?) that in the wrong hands it would be laughable. Instead, this very gritty bit of greased action does a decent job of shaking the sluggish out of January.
  54. Rise of the Guardians
    There is a lot to savor in Rise of the Guardians, but sometimes too much of a good thing can be exhausting.
  55. Mirror Mirror
    The finery and regalia of their contributions are integral to Singh's vision, giving this mostly conventional princess story its fair share of romantic froth and more than a little moxie.
  56. The Understudy
    It's all sharp, well-performed stuff until things go from darkly comic to just plain dark, derailing -- and dragging out -- the otherwise absorbing story. Still, this one's a cut above.
  57. A Little Help
    What writer-director Michael J. Weithorn, a sitcom vet, gets right is the Long Island vibe, the New York smarts crossed with small-town insularity. If the film takes too long to reach its rather soft denouement, Fischer makes Laura's awakening convincing.
  58. Daydream Nation
    A fitfully engaging effort that is most successful as a performance piece for actors Kat Dennings and Reece Thompson.
  59. True Legend
    A hodgepodge of styles, True Legend works best as a freewheeling showcase for Yuen's dazzling fight sequences above any sort of cogent storytelling.
  60. Seven Days in Utopia
    Though the drama has its heartfelt moments, it unrolls as flat as the Texas terrain, cast in an idyllic summer glow.
  61. Poltergeist
    The new Poltergeist is a pleasant enough diversion, better as a low-simmer suspense story than a full-blown effects extravaganza.
  62. The Campaign
    Rude, rowdy and raunchy, The Campaign gleefully skewers the current sad state of American politics. With a target that tempting, it's not surprising that this cynical and funny film hits more often than it misses.
  63. Elysium
    Although the pulp energy that Blomkamp brings to this material makes it consistently watchable, the film doesn't feel as singular as we would have hoped.
  64. Oz the Great and Powerful
    Sometimes sweet, sometimes scary, sometimes sour, Oz the Great and Powerful is a film that doesn't know its own mind. A partially effective jumble whose elements clash rather than cohere, this solid but not spectacular effort stubbornly refuses to catch fire until it's almost too late.
  65. Double Dhamaal
    The film is amiably silly, gaudy and even pleasantly diverting for the non-Hindi-speaking viewer who realizes that the verbal gags that elicited laughter in the original language tend to elude translation via English subtitles. The comedy, however, is also heavy on slapstick, pratfalls and crazy disguises.
  66. The Iron Lady
    The film catches her long after she's left the public eye, and rather than an examination, or an assessment, of her politics, it instead offers up an affecting if not always satisfying portrait of the strong-willed leader humbled by age.
  67. The Tree
    With her Modigliani mystery, Charlotte Gainsbourg brings aching melancholy to the role of Dawn. As compelling as she is to watch, though, the character's passivity saps the film of energy, especially in its first half, which is all but devoid of tension.
  68. Machine Gun Preacher
    If anything, watching the film is like attending an old-style Southern tent revival - you want to believe in the fight against all that fire and brimstone. Heck, you want to join the righteous brigade. But when the lights go up and the fever dies down, it feels more like you've witnessed a show than a real showdown with the devil.
  69. Love in Space
    Though it doesn't exactly have pretensions toward the rhythms of real life, the film does nail the breezy movie feeling of a buffed-and-polished romantic comedy.
  70. 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy
    For all its sophomoric humor and prim prurience, in the end 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy finds it is love, not sex, that rules the human heart, a sweet and conventional idea regardless of the technology of the film's projection.
  71. Another Happy Day
    If this low-budget indie is any indication, the younger Levinson's creative sensibilities appear to be darker than his dad's, the voice clearly his own.
  72. Mr. Peabody & Sherman
    The animation style mirrors the original, which is simple in an appealing way. It is particularly effective in the action sequences, which make the most of animation's ability to create a playful reality. But the multi-layered historical references designed to be adroitly wry are a trickier gambit.
  73. House of Boys
    The performances have heart, and a sorrowful tenderness courses through the self-described "fairy tale," even at its kitschiest.
  74. Gun Hill Road
    The quietly commanding turn by newcomer Santana - whose outward embrace of an already well-internalized transformation leaps off the screen with equal parts joy, melancholia and bravery - is a standout.
  75. The Watch
    Some of the phallic jokes work, others are really lame. Fortunately there are many other funny bits that have nothing to do with body parts that keep the laughs coming.
  76. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    The Occasionally Amazing Spider-Man 2 might be a better way to think of the not-always-spectacular but sometimes satisfying Spider-Man sequel.
  77. Parker
    If you're going to saturate a film with so much violence, at least it's nice to see an action hero - or antihero - actually feeling the pain.
  78. The Lucky One
    The Sparks-styled romance has almost become its own movie genre - predictable, pure of heart, sentimental and never straying from the boy-meets-girl basics, or the surface, for that matter - and in that The Lucky One delivers.
  79. Wuthering Heights
    It's just that there isn't enough story - the book shouldn't be required reading for the film to make sense.
  80. Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
    The rest is an adrenaline ride, but one more wearying than eye-opening.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Dead
    The Dead, evocatively filmed in grainy 35mm, might carry the cinematic vibe of an old-school, flesh-eating adventure, but as it should be with stories like this, it's not a pretty picture.
  82. All's Faire in Love
    While there's regrettably nothing terribly witty or surprising about any of this as either love story or laugh machine, director Scott Marshall does manage a breezy, good-natured tone toward this oft-mocked cultural phenomenon that allows for eye-rolling and smiling in equal measure.
  83. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
    Skippable 3-D aside, it's a serviceable, limber follow-up to 2010's "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief."
  84. Into the Abyss
    What is missing is something new - clarity, insight, outrage. Instead, its understatement is ultimately its undoing.
  85. Rampart
    For all of its punishing pathos, the movie does not have the clean lines and elegance of another cut at crime in this city, "L.A. Confidential" (based on an Ellroy novel). As the day of reckoning approaches, the film spins out of control, careening between convoluted subplots, with the emotional pitch of the piece swinging too wildly.
  86. Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl
    One's diminishing interest in the nuts and bolts of cheating a cheat can be forgiven when the sheer star wattage of the peppy cast is in close-up overdrive.
  87. Addiction Incorporated
    The film's bigger problem is that after a certain point the way in which Evans allows DeNoble to narrate his own story comes to feel self-congratulatory and makes Addiction Incorporated seem a bit more like an advertisement or an endorsement than an investigation or exploration.
  88. A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps
    (A) stirring, if inconclusive documentary.
  89. Paranormal Activity 4
    This film's strong suit is that it finally feels contemporary.
  90. 4:44 Last Day on Earth
    Dafoe, who also starred in Ferrara's woefully underseen "Go Go Tales," brings a quiet grace to his role, while Leigh has a rough-hewn emotional directness.
  91. Thin Ice
    If you can get past the rough patches - a slightly sluggish start and a coda that feels like one punch line too many - there is some sinister fun to be had in watching Kinnear skating toward disaster on ice that is very thin indeed.
  92. Girl in Progress
    Mendes is charismatic and likable as Grace - perhaps too likable. Conveying Grace's parental blind spots, she doesn't turn her character's single motherhood into an argument for sainthood. Yet she avoids any darker glimpses that would lend a more satisfying complexity to the mother-daughter tension and to the movie's too-neat ending.
  93. Escape from Planet Earth
    Feel-good but not cloying, zippy but not frenetic, and refreshingly free of snark, the default setting for a lot of kids' fare these days, the feature takes a pleasingly retro-futuristic stance on matters of décor and attitude.
  94. Bombay Beach
    More lyrical tone poem than straightforward documentary.
  95. The Wolverine
    The Wolverine is an erratic affair, more lumbering than compelling, an ambitious film with its share of effective moments that stubbornly refuses to catch fire.
  96. 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.
  97. Killing Them Softly
    The writer-director becomes so intent on hammering home the parallels between economic decay, political disappointments and petty criminals, there is nothing soft, or subtle, about it. He should trust his audience more.
  98. Identity Thief
    The heart of this film is on the road with Bateman and McCarthy. If not for their brilliance, Identity Thief would be running on empty.
  99. Elles
    It's tempting to call Elles some kind of thinking-person's sex movie, but it's more about thinking and about sex (and thinking about sex) and is far more likely to encourage awkward, emphatic conversation than post-show friskiness.
  100. Hit So Hard
    Often the film pushes Schemel to the edge of what is intended to be her story, so in Hit So Hard she feels forced into the role of self-sacrificing side-player once again.
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