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. Hot Guys with Guns
    If the material isn't always smooth or funny or well-thought-out, the tone and spirit are agreeably light, with a visual sophistication for a meager budget that's admirable.
  2. Next Year Jerusalem
    It's a privilege getting to know these determined, inspiring seniors, to whatever extent Gaynes allows. But a more deeply revealing, fully candid approach would have made for a more satisfying cinematic excursion.
  3. Decoding Annie Parker
    The division between the personal and scientific stories is not a clean one. It gives the film an uneven rhythm as it at times lurches between the two women's very separate lives.
  4. If I Stay
    If I Stay takes time to find its footing amid miscalculations and awkward moments.
  5. The Girl and Death
    Sumptuous visuals, vivid emotional beats and memorable turns by Bichevin and Hoeks effectively compensate for the verbal sparseness.
  6. Llyn Foulkes One Man Band
    For a movie about art and artists, it's not a particularly visually inspired or vibrantly crafted work. Still, Foulkes... holds interest with his off-kilter narcissism, obsessive creative process and frank views on his place — or lack thereof — in the art world.
  7. Mortdecai
    Those who do find their way into this supremely silly action-mystery caper are in for a few grins if not laughs thanks largely to the deft — and daft — performance of Johnny Depp in the title role.
  8. R100
    The film's stark juxtaposition of domestic melodrama and gonzo exploitation is very much reminiscent of "Audition." Whereas the Miike film turned into a feverish anxiety dream about feminist revolt, R100 suggests that extreme and perverse films allow the everyman to seek thrills in his otherwise-monotonous life.
  9. X-Men: Apocalypse
    Disorganized but engaging, full of visual pyrotechnics and earnest emotion, it is diverting, if not necessarily convincing.
  10. Water & Power
    Water & Power remains a quintessential L.A. story that is worth seeing for what it has to say, if not necessarily for how it says it.
  11. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
    While it’s easy to view “Axel F” as a calculated cash grab, it’s clear that Murphy possesses an affection for the title character. From the get-go, Murphy’s portrayal hinged on Axel’s ability to warmly connect with everyone he meets.
  12. Broken
    The film's solid acting, relatable premise and strong emotional core carry the day.
  13. Rigor Mortis
    The film supplies a succession of hyper-stylized and potent set pieces without ever establishing any sort of internal logic.
  14. Saint Laurent
    There's good cause to shake the biopic form out of its exhaustively linear, birth-to-death rut, and Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent — starring Gaspard Ulliel as the storied French designer — valiantly tries.
  15. Chances Are
    The talk and plot twists both have a flavorless, perfunctory quality.
  16. Jimmy's Hall
    A story that might have been alive with messy complexity is instead genial and polite.
  17. In the Name of My Daughter
    None of it is quite satisfying, especially when old-age makeup takes center stage. But striking moments develop along the way, jolts of weird joy and melancholy as menace gathers under the Mediterranean sun.
  18. The Fatal Encounter
    Veteran television director Lee Jae-kyoo balances the most engrossing aspects of the South Korean telenovela with grandiloquent Hong Kong-influenced fight scenes.
  19. Before You Know It
    While often affecting and absorbing, the film proves intellectually and contextually light. This is especially true given a leisurely running time that could have easily accommodated more dimensional probing.
  20. Burt's Buzz
    In engaging but not always satisfying fashion, Jody Shapiro's film reveals the man behind the logo to be a taciturn, plain-living refugee from city life and an unlikely globe-trotting corporate spokesman.
  21. The Fluffy Movie
    Despite the Mexican American comic's engaging presence, amusing observations and deft imitations, "Fluffy" is a standard-issue comedy concert film far better suited to a 90-minute cable TV slot than the big screen.
  22. The Crow
    Lee has phenomenal presence, and his movements are so balletically powerful that his rampages seem like waking nightmares. Lee keeps you watching The Crow when you'd rather look away.
  23. Frontera
    In trying to create a balanced portrait of the conflicts and the ordinary people affected by them, director Michael Berry, who co-wrote the screenplay with Luis Moulinet III, chips away at the authenticity and intensity that an issue-driven film like this sorely needs.
  24. A League of Their Own
    Though amusing enough to avoid absolutely drowning in schmaltz, it's sad to see a film with potential lose its way in the late innings.
  25. Beneath
    The well-crafted Beneath proves a taut, atmospheric if not especially deep thriller.
  26. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
    What saves the film is that it is also packed to the gills with the classic slapstick sweetness that makes SpongeBob — in or out of water, on big screen or small — hard not to laugh at and love at least a little. Giggle, giggle.
  27. Straight Outta Compton
    Alternately riveting and wearying, up-to-the-minute relevant as well as self-mythologizingly self-indulgent — as much of a heroic origins story as anything out of the Marvel factory — Straight Outta Compton ends up juggling more story lines and moods than it can handle.
  28. Aftermath
    Even if this largely contained movie remains more low key than frantic, it features enough well-executed bursts of tension and strong emotional beats to hold interest.
  29. Road to Paloma
    Momoa creates an involving if relaxed pace, one whose moody rhythms are infused with a kind of soulful spirituality.
  30. A Five Star Life
    Director Maria Sole Tognazzi gently explores what it means to be unmarried, middle-aged and female. She illuminates a seldom-seen line of work, bathes her flawed characters in affection, and makes points both obvious and astute, soft-pedaling her insights with celebratory travelogue touches.
  31. Come Back to Me
    Writer-director Paul Leyden does a decent job holding our interest as well as providing a few intriguing twists and reveals. But make no mistake, this is exceedingly far-fetched stuff.
  32. Pump
    As far as documentaries go, the film is exhaustively researched, interviewed and documented.
  33. 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."
  34. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her
    "Him" and "Her" are hardly groundbreaking cinema, but they are more rewarding than "Them."
  35. Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods
    "Battle of Gods" delivers not only the familiar look but also the slapstick comedy, character interaction and over-the-top martial arts fights that "Dragon Ball" fans want and expect.
  36. Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart
    [A] well-crafted but frankly nonessential documentary.
  37. Weaving the Past: Journey of Discovery
    A painstakingly crafted, lovingly wrought piece.
  38. The Age of Adaline
    Not "An Affair to Remember," mind you, but a welcome change from the Nicholas Sparks brand of mush that has overtaken the hearts-and-flowers corner of movieland.
  39. The Olivia Experiment
    This is an enjoyably acted trifle that, despite some slowing in its second half, holds interest as it amusingly considers how an act so simple for some can be so tricky for others.
  40. 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.
  41. Kundo: Age of the Rampant
    Kundo: Age of the Rampant is an often entertaining if overlong look at the last days of Korea's Joseon Dynasty.
  42. Canopy
    Chittenden and Tzu-yi are expressive actors, but, like the film itself, are hamstrung by the project's self-imposed confines.
  43. Plastic
    As mindless entertainment goes, it's a pretty watchable time-passer.
  44. The Nice Guys
    Though the plot here may be a confusing, multi-threaded mess (which may in fact be the script’s truest homage to Chandler), it’s occasionally offset by the exuberance with which Black blends splatter and slapstick, and the leeway he grants his two very game leads.
  45. I Am Eleven
    Given the number and range of kids in view, there's a limit to how much specificity can be jammed into one movie.
  46. Altina
    The product is more pop vanity project — and one that's a bit late to the party — than onion-peeling dissection.
  47. A Little Chaos
    The story comes to life only fitfully, even with — or perhaps because of — its court intrigue and supporting characters.... But there are striking glimpses of grit, muck and voluptuous beauty (the great Ellen Kuras handled the cinematography) and, above all, there's Winslet.
  48. Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire in the 60s
    Fascinating anecdotes unfold, illuminating the spontaneity and daring that went into producing the groundbreaking periodical.
  49. The Frontier
    Despite a few contrivances like the impending romance between Nina and Tennessee, The Frontier remains for the most part refreshing and astute.
  50. Art and Craft
    Landis has acknowledged mental issues in interviews, and it registers so much more on film. The constant scrutiny of a camera seems exploitative and cruel, even if you are at all suspicious when he rationalizes his behavior as childlike mischief.
  51. Deadpool
    You're initially jazzed by his effrontery, but Deadpool, with his relentlessly glib, nothing-sacred attitude, is not an individual who wears particularly well.
  52. Henry & Me
    An increasingly rare example of traditional 2D American animation, Henry & Me is so well-intentioned, you wish the film were better.
  53. Kong: Skull Island
    Story and soul are never going to be kings on Skull Island, but they could have fared better than this.
  54. We Are Kings
    The film's heart is unmistakably in the right place — even when the camera isn't.
  55. Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart
    Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart stubbornly remains less than the sum of its parts. But its rich visual imagery suggests the talented artists involved could create something exciting and truly original if they had a better script.
  56. 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.
  57. 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.
  58. 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.
  59. The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin
    Filmmaker Nicholas Mross takes a straight-ahead, even-handed approach to the controversial payment system.
  60. 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.
  61. 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.
  62. Independence Day: Resurgence
    Both impossible to take seriously or seriously dislike.
  63. Pelican Dreams
    It's when the film detours into Irving's personal attachment to the birds, including photos of her as a child on the beach, that Pelican Dreams gets seriously off track. Fortunately, pelicans are interesting creatures and the time spent with the lens focused on them is payoff enough.
  64. The Hadza: Last of the First
    The film proves most valuable when Hadza subjects candidly discuss their clashes with modernity.
  65. Revenge of the Mekons
    Like many music documentaries, this film suffers from the tendency to reiterate its point too often.
  66. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
    As a result of trying too hard to maintain the original's insouciant attitude, what was fresh now seems institutionalized, what was off the wall now feels carved in stone and the film's trademark irreverence has become dogma.
  67. Shazam!
    Shazam! commits none of the Seven Deadly Sins of franchise filmmaking, only the venial offenses of excessive multitasking and being a bit over-eager to please.
  68. Thor: Ragnarok
    An excess of levity can quickly become its own kind of leadenness, and for long stretches between its genuinely amusing gags and set pieces, Thor: Ragnarok, credited to the screenwriting trio of Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, is a bit too taken with its own breezy irreverence to realize when it’s time to rein it in.
  69. Comet
    There is just enough in Comet to keep it from fizzling out entirely – largely in the performances of Long and Rossum – but its conceits also get in the way of its characters, making it feel fussy and convoluted when it aims for something more simple and elegant.
  70. On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter
    "Next Chapter" may not exhibit the scrappy charm that characterized the first film's glimpse into a marginalized but colorful world, but for devotees, Dana Brown has assembled a love letter to a now-global culture.
  71. Occupy the Farm
    Darling's documentary is garden-variety filmmaking, but it does an effective job in illustrating how years of fiscal crises have forced academia and industry to forge alliances that once would have been considered unlikely.
  72. The Playback Singer
    Droll, unforced humor and low-magnitude emotional tremors register persuasively thanks to the natural performances of the three leads.
  73. Criminal
    Half science-fiction tale, half espionage thriller, it's a pleasantly far-fetched endeavor that moves along so briskly that it leaves no time to consider its implausibilities, which are many.
  74. Free the Nipple
    Director and star Lina Esco keeps this compact film moving with enjoyable buoyancy until it bids adieu with a showy climax that needs a serious postscript.
  75. Two-Bit Waltz
    Two-Bit Waltz is watchably imitative, arch nonsense. It has committed performances — including a deadpan turn on the edges by William H. Macy as the dad who's only seen reading books — and the occasional, provocatively funny line of dialogue.
  76. The Immortalists
    The age-old search for the fountain of youth is engagingly appraised in The Immortalists, a lively documentary focusing on a pair of very different biomedical scientists who are equally obsessed with eradicating the ravages of time.
  77. Kurmanjan Datka Queen of the Mountains
    You're left wanting to have seen much more of the story from the Queen of the Mountains' singular vantage point.
  78. Southpaw
    Southpaw is so logic-defying it takes on a Frankenstein life of its own, especially with as energetic and focused an action maestro as Fuqua ("Training Day," "The Equalizer") in charge.
  79. Aftermath
    That the movie works as well as it does is a testament to writer-director Thomas Farone's persistence and clear connection to his cagey material.
  80. Hillsong - Let Hope Rise
    The film is at its most effective when band members and lead pastor Brian Houston testify to the strength their faith provides during times of crisis.
  81. Unfriended
    As a harangue about cyberbullying, it's purely exploitative, but when Unfriended zeros in on the whiplash mixture of freedom and torment we get from multitasking our online lives? It's srsly fun, imo.
  82. 100 Days
    Director Henry Chan, working off a script by Megi Hsu (based on a story by producer Weiko Lin), lets things get overly broad at times but otherwise wrings genial humor and gentle emotion from the familiar setup.
  83. The Taking of Tiger Mountain
    Tsui will try anything once in 3-D. Splatters of blood travel in bullet-time, and the requisite ridiculousness — like action scenes with skis and zip-lines — characterize Tsui's work. But bookending the story with the 2015-set prologue and epilogue turns out to be his most inspired touch.
  84. Tracers
    As long as it shuts up and keeps moving, Tracers makes for a sufficiently diverting, not to mention zero-emission, vehicle.
  85. Loitering with Intent
    At a mere 75 minutes, this often amusing, uniformly well-acted movie had the leeway to more fully explore both the script's showbiz gambit and its romantic roundelay.
  86. Druid Peak
    Writer-director Marni Zelnick makes an assured debut, coaxing considerable production value out of her limited budget while weaving in an understated, enlightening conservation message that feels organic to the story.
  87. Diving Normal
    The film takes a few rough turns that lead to Dana's inevitable bottoming out. Otherwise, this well-acted piece is a gentle, humanistic look at the unexpected ways in which relationships form, flourish and flounder and how we define who — and what — is "normal."
  88. All the Wilderness
    All the Wilderness seems tailor-made to play to the actor's strengths — Johnson's script is as lean as Smit-McPhee, both proving adept at doing more with less.
  89. Amira & Sam
    Nothing feels truly at stake, no matter how weighty the risks the characters face, but there are charming moments along the way.
  90. The Devil's Violinist
    First-time actor Garrett is better at conveying Paganini's artistic sensitivity and self-indulgence than his innovative fire. When he picks up the fiddle, though, he speaks with eloquent authority.
  91. Queen and Country
    Queen & Country — though often charming — has a tendency to wander and strain.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Backstreet Boys: Show 'Em What You're Made Of
    Even if Show 'Em What You're Made Of doesn't answer McLean's essential question of what men do after life as a boy band, the carefully crafted film is an engaging look at how they got to here.
  93. The D Train
    Where the story falters, though, the performers admirably hold one's attention.
  94. Cop Car
    There's no denying Watts' skill at a certain kind of desolate cat and mouse, but it's in the service of what is ultimately a somewhat heartless exercise.
  95. I Smile Back
    Without pandering to audience sympathy, Silverman's dark shadings lend something unexpected and real to the role.
  96. Last Days in the Desert
    At times a beautiful wandering, at other times an admirable character study, but rarely a powerful whole.
  97. The Summer of Sangaile
    Distractingly lovely to look at, the film can't make Sangaile's struggles or triumphs matter. Its soaring conclusion feels anticlimactic, the story drifting off into air.
  98. Ten Thousand Saints
    As always, Berman and Pulcini suffuse their movie with a let's-try-anything spirit — and liberate most of their actors. What keeps Ten Thousand Saints from being another "American Splendor" (2003) or "Cinema Verite" (2011) is that this time, their tapestry has a hole in the center, where their pale antihero cannot pull the colorful threads together.
  99. Unexpected
    A modestly scaled feature whose plainspoken sincerity is a hindrance as well as a strength.
  100. Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast
    Although it was made on a smaller budget, "Neverbeast" is a more coherent and entertaining film than the bizarre jukebox musical "Strange Magic."
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