Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,524 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: 8,698 out of 16524
  2. Mixed: 5,809 out of 16524
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16524
16524 movie reviews
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  1. Blood Ties
    There's a heft to the proceedings that keeps us invested even when the story's various strands start to unravel.
  2. The History of Future Folk
    The movie could have made its points — war is bad; music is the universal language — in half the time. But the harmonies are sweet, the acoustic picking impressive.
  3. Free China: The Courage to Believe
    Though his treatment of the subject is often superficial, Perlman makes a clear argument for the broader implications, especially for Western consumers.
  4. Hook
    For very much like Peter, it has clearly gotten harder for this director to break free of the lure of material things and believe in simple magic. And whatever problems his Hook has, there are none that making the film on half of its budget wouldn't have cured.
  5. Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire
    Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire is a reasoned counter to Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" and, as such, a constructive addition to the current national firearms debate.
  6. Breaking the Girls
    Breaking the Girls isn't exactly a throwaway, but more an extended act of teasing foreplay, a movie that is fine for what it is but also never really shifts into something more.
  7. Some Girl(s)
    Like us, the deft and merciless director Daisy von Scherler Mayer ("Party Girl") sides with the girls, and to stack the deck she's hired five tremendous actresses.
  8. Touchy Feely
    Shelton's affection for her characters is evident but it's not enough.
  9. The Look of Love
    Skims a host of provocative surfaces without truly dissecting the self-absorbed playboy.
  10. Homefront
    [A] contemporary B-movie Western with designs on stylistic flair.
  11. Universal Soldier
    It may be standard-issue stuff, but it looks great and it almost makes you nostalgic for the days when stuntmen reigned supreme and mayhem and computers never knew how much they had in common.
  12. Adore
    It's a challenging film, but maybe not as challenging as it should be.
  13. The Broken Circle Breakdown
    "Breakdown" gets the music right and has the benefit of strong acting, but its unapologetically melodramatic plot has a tendency to throw everything at you but the kitchen sink.
  14. Broken
    Solidly done if somewhat unremarkable, there is nothing particularly wrong with "Broken," nothing that needs fixing exactly, and yet it never fully comes together.
  15. Jug Face
    Kinkle's debut refreshingly sacrifices gore showpieces (though it is bloody at times) for a steadily increasing dread tied to a young woman's desperation.
  16. Good Ol' Freda
    White's film is a love letter not just to Kelly and the Beatles, but also to postwar working-class Liverpool.
  17. Godzilla
    Ironically this big, lumbering movie could have used more, not less. More Godzilla without question, and more emotional content for its very good cast too.
  18. When Comedy Went to School
    For a disorganized film that has trouble deciding what it's about, When Comedy Went to School can be a lot of fun.
  19. Men at Lunch
    Regrettably, Men at Lunch obsesses over disappearing ghosts instead of the records we already have and the history we should know.
  20. Dom Hemingway
    Between Law's performance and Shepard's script, which brims with explicit and expressive dialogue, the movie is remarkable for its ability to exhaust, irritate and also entertain.
  21. Belle
    Belle is greatly buoyed by Mbatha-Raw's performance. She infuses Dido with a confident and intelligent grace that keeps you engaged long after the tangled story has let both the actress and audience down.
  22. Spark: A Burning Man Story
    For such a hippie-ish wingding originally designed to discourage the buying and selling of anything, "Spark" has decidedly bought into its subject and has no qualms hawking it to moviegoers.
  23. Fire in the Blood
    Unfortunately, Dylan Mohan Gray's slow and steady exposé never quite manages the propulsive gut punch its incendiary subject demands.
  24. The United States of Autism
    Although it favors breadth over depth, the documentary The United States of Autism offers a tender look at an eclectic array of children, their parents and other individuals affected by this ever-increasing developmental disability.
  25. The Happy Sad
    Aside from a few missing transitional beats and one too many coincidental encounters, the picture's fluid, zigzagging sexuality and emotional high-diving prove largely credible and diverting.
  26. We the Parents
    Concerned mainly with the mechanics of the undertaking, the movie is less an incisive chronicle than a galvanizing tool for parents who are, understandably, frustrated with the system.
  27. Winter's Tale
    Because it is fearlessly sincere and not totally successful, Winter's Tale is easy to mock. But it is also hard not to admire its willingness to go all out in its quest for the grandest of romantic gestures.
  28. Gung Ho
    Gung Ho goes after that ever-so-elusive Capra-esque spirit of communal triumph over adversity, but both sides too often verge on stereotypes for this to pay off as richly as it should.
  29. The Idolmaker
    Taylor Hackford's 1980 debut feature The Idolmaker, inspired by the life of Bob Marcucci, discoverer and promoter of Fabian and others, has some gritty, satirical commentary on the pop music scene of decades past but is hampered by an ending that seems self-dramatizing fantasy made real. Ray Sharkey, however, is impressive in the title role. [11 Aug 1991, p.6]
    • Los Angeles Times
  30. Things Never Said
    The earnest mash-up of spoken-word performance, domestic drama and soapy romance in Things Never Said is unwieldy, to be sure, and would have sunk a less charismatic cast.
  31. Informant
    What emerges is a vague, often chilling impression of an unpredictable opportunist and provocateur who may not even be sure himself.
  32. Begin Again
    Even if Dan and Gretta charm each other more than they charm us, the music they make is harder to resist than they are.
  33. Are You Here
    Are You Here proves a gently immersive, ingratiating, often witty character comedy with a pair of comfortably effective lead performances.
  34. Prince of Darkness
    To give the movie its due, it's been directed, at least on the visual level, with unusual elegance: filled with graceful, gliding tracking shots, and icily precise Hitchcockian setups of the bleak decor and scary effects.
  35. 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.
  36. 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.
  37. 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.
  38. 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.
  39. Capital
    There's plenty of pacing verve in Costa-Gavras' technique, and the residue from that first thrilling peek inside the hermetic world of big-time money-moving never goes away. What's lacking is most surprising from this dissident filmmaker: the emotional outrage.
  40. Symphony of the Soil
    It does have a point of view, but the intended conclusion ripens for the picking in a roundabout way.
  41. Toad Road
    The home-movie vérité style of the early scenes pays dividends when inexplicable occurrences suddenly take us by surprise.
  42. Days of Grace
    Gout undermines his own spiky, ambitious narrative with all the visual interference, as dazzling as it often is.
  43. The Human Scale
    writer-director Andreas M. Dalsgaard takes such a low-key approach to presenting the film's vital, potentially involving topic that viewers may find themselves more inspired to take a snooze than a stroll.
  44. Torn
    Though Torn contains its share of convincingly lived-in moments, there's a heavy-handed quality to both Jeremiah Birnbaum's direction and the script by Michael Richter that often undermines the movie's potential to truly grip and move.
  45. Why We Ride
    An unabashed love letter to all things motorcycle, the documentary "Why We Ride" will surely warm the souls of bike enthusiasts while prompting many nonriders to join the fold.
  46. The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers
    The film's main misstep, however, is its unconvincing use of celebrity voices to re-create various speeches and letters... Though well-intended, their inclusion proves a needless distraction in an otherwise smart and dignified presentation.
  47. Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings
    All of this is ridiculously silly, of course, with low-rent special effects to boot. But you may laugh despite yourself.
  48. Running from Crazy
    At once short on details and incredibly forthcoming, Barbara Kopple's documentary doesn't dig into specifics about Mariel's personal struggles with mental illness nor the WillingWay lifestyle that she and her boyfriend Bobby Williams espouse.
  49. Sake-Bomb
    Director Junya Sakino's debut would have been stronger if the comic barbs in Jeff Mizushima's script hadn't been dulled by Mizushima's editing, which bungles the timing of the jokes.
  50. Go for Sisters
    It's a plot that never takes hold, a mystery devoid of suspense... But the actors' unforced chemistry defies the artifice.
  51. The Christmas Candle
    The Christmas Candle" seems destined to be a Hallmark movie of the week. But in spite of the hammy histrionics requisite for the genre, it is not at all a turkey.
  52. The Motel Life
    The feature spikes its lonesome mood with shots of dry humor, animated sequences and flashbacks — at times overplaying its hand, even as Emile Hirsch and Stephen Dorff wordlessly convey all that needs to be said.
  53. Contracted
    Although this horror flick is somewhat absurd and seemingly forgettable when viewed in a vacuum, its coincidentally contemporaneous release with "Blue Is the Warmest Color" urges immediate reconsideration.
  54. Geography Club
    Sweet, slight and frequently familiar, Geography Club, based on Brent Hartinger's novel about sexual identity among suburban teens, often feels as if it's circling its expiration date.
  55. The Banshee Chapter
    The central drama never fully engages, but the jolts that Banshee delivers are check-the-locks scary.
  56. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
    Though a definite improvement on the last three abortive Star Wars prequels directed by series creator George Lucas, The Force Awakens is only at its best in fits and starts, its success dependent on who of its mix of franchise veterans and first-timers is on the screen.
  57. Lion Ark
    The lions are majestic yet adorable; too bad the humans are such a sorry sight.
  58. Commitment
    Boilerplate shootouts and conflagrations get the better of the movie's second half, but for the most part, first-time director Park Hong-soo strikes the right balance between take-no-prisoners espionage and teenage angst.
  59. Rio 2096: A Story of Love and Fury
    The mix of computer-generated imagery, hand-drawn simplicity in the humans and depth-conscious, textured backgrounds makes for a potent visual intelligence.
  60. JFK: A President Betrayed
    The information comes fast from talking heads who, let's face it, can get a bit dry. Lose focus, and you risk missing the significance of what's being conveyed.
  61. Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part III: Rebellion
    The more generalized confessionals on friendship and love are a lot simpler to grasp. But the real star is the riot collage of twisty, breakneck visuals underscoring these conversations and battles.
  62. The Unbelievers
    Unbelievers' is a high-minded love fest between two deeply committed atheistic intellectuals and their rock star-like fan base.
  63. Sugar
    As a whole, the film's characters touchingly illustrate the tolls of living with unresolved trauma and chronic uncertainty, as well as the solidarity and relative freedom this community of outcasts enjoys.
  64. Draft Day
    This is an earnest and way-contrived endeavor that manages, due largely to Costner's efforts, to be genially diverting in a gee-whiz kind of way.
  65. 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.
  66. Sweet Talk
    Zea gives a natural performance amid a neighborhood of painful stereotypes (including a nosy Asian shopkeeper), but she doesn't adjust her cadence, let alone accent, for the historical flashbacks, bringing a modern sensibility that limits the effectiveness of these scenes.
  67. Knights of Badassdom
    Knights of Badassdom actually delivers everything the 2011 Danny McBride-James Franco comedy "Your Highness" purported to be but fell short on. The film is "This Is the End" festooned with Middle Ages accouterments.
  68. Child 44
    Problematic but involving, Child 44 offers a picture of what individuals did to survive in a world turned upside down. The film's singular premise allows it to survive its various shortcomings, but it is a near-thing.
  69. Exodus: Gods and Kings
    As with the DeMille ventures, enjoyment here involves managing expectations and not taking things too seriously.
  70. Everest
    Though there is heroism as well as love here, because it involves the deaths of people we have come to care about, Everest is finally a sad story, though not always a dramatically involving one.
  71. Big Eyes
    This portrait of a woman on the verge — of success, of suppression, of submission, of rebellion — is never fully realized.
  72. Bethlehem
    The movie has the taut efficiency of a well-constructed crime thriller, while its real-world underpinnings play out with a less convincing sense of urgency.
  73. For No Good Reason
    The inventively shot and constructed documentary For No Good Reason is an absorbing look at the unique, surreal work of British cartoonist Ralph Steadman.
  74. The Right Kind of Wrong
    When the movie isn't forcing its cuteness or R-rated humor, there's a frisson of genuine screwball to The Right Kind of Wrong.
  75. G.B.F.
    Until being young and gay is a nonissue for everyone everywhere, these kinds of stories will always have their place.
  76. Return to Nuke 'Em High Volume 1
    At Troma, puke-green is the warmest color.
  77. Stalingrad
    Though plenty of road-tested war truths about sacrifice, honor, grit and intimacy get trotted out, "Stalingrad" is deep down a spectacle campaign forged in operatic violence and a siege of the senses, and on those terms it has its moments.
  78. Rosewater
    Stewart acquits himself solidly, though not thrillingly, as a beginning director, doing especially well in the film's involving central section dealing with Bahari's time in prison, where the filmmaking is as compelling as the feature's intentions are admirable.
  79. 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.
  80. Unbroken
    With what we see on screen weighted too much toward pain and too little toward redemption, this is a film we respect more than love, and that is something of a wasted opportunity.
  81. Finding Fela!
    [Gibney's] chronicle informs rather than inspires, but it's a solid introduction to a fascinating figure.
  82. Infinitely Polar Bear
    Forbes pushes the positivity a bit insistently, yet one of the most appealing aspects of her film is its depiction of kids thriving in an unorthodox household.
  83. The Art of the Steal
    The actors give it punch, but in the grand scheme of caper comedies, The Art of the Steal is more breathlessly imitative than authentic.
  84. Teenage
    It can feel repetitive and oversimplified. Aesthetically, though, it has an aching, dreamlike pull, constructing a panoramic view of history through the prism of collective and personal memory.
  85. Island of Lemurs: Madagascar
    Even at a meager 40 minutes, the film feels padded... But so long as the jubilance brought about by lemurs can compel more protection for the near-extinct species, the film will have served its purpose.
  86. 12 O'Clock Boys
    The young filmmaker rarely digs beneath the harsh environment's many fraught surfaces. He simply lets his cameras be his guide.
  87. Hank: 5 Years from the Brink
    For all of the substantive issues underpinning the documentary, it still feels a slight film for Berlinger, and very unlike the documentary veteran's best work, found in his dogged following of the West Memphis Three case.
  88. Crimson Peak
    Crimson Peak's astonishing visuals don't enhance its story (co-written by the director and Matthew Robbins); they overwhelm it, encouraging us to stand back and admire the look when we should be involved in the emotional mechanics of this lurid tale.
  89. Let's Ruin It with Babies
    There's so much that's authentic and likable about the loopy road trip comedy Let's Ruin It With Babies that it's a shame when it loses its mojo along the way.
  90. 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.
  91. Earth to Echo
    It's no "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial." (What is?) But on its own modest terms, the alien adventure Earth to Echo is a lively and likable knockoff that should divert, if not exactly enthrall, tweens and young teens.
  92. Beijing Love Story
    Some stories drag while others have zing in this anthology; binding them is a compelling sense of cultural identity — the tension between tradition and free-market modernity.
  93. The Final Member
    Smartly, the filmmakers minimize their topic's punchline potential. But even though the running time is short, the movie feels stretched out.
  94. Awful Nice
    Even when bits go thud, there's a brittle, unsentimental wit about kin's inexplicable tug that's hard to ignore, and the leads — game for some surprisingly sublime bits of physical comedy — eventually wear one's anti-charm defenses down.
  95. The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
    Above all, its gratuitous graphic gore and exploitative nudity are unmistakably giallo. What "The Strange Color" lacks is the heart that separates a good film from a great one.
  96. Junk
    Although Kaveh and Raul never transcend their archetypes as heartbroken single guy and too-comfortable married man, and Hamedani and Isao aren't naturals in front of the camera, their rapport ultimately makes Junk a worthwhile lark.
  97. Hotel Transylvania 2
    Genndy Tartakovsky is a talented director who knows how to telegraph what an animated character is thinking and doing and how to move a character in ways that suggest personality.
  98. The Peanuts Movie
    The movie is pleasant and charming, but when making a big-screen adaptation of a beloved classic and genuine touchstone for generations, adequate doesn't feel like quite enough.
  99. Words and Pictures
    For the most part, the florid flourishes are so lightly played by Owen and Binoche, screenwriter Gerald Di Pego's melodrama can almost be forgiven.
  100. Into the Storm
    Its story line and performances are no more than serviceable, but those terrible twisters are state of the art.
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