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. One Of Them Days
    Lamont trusts his movie is personality-powered. He’s calibrated each performance to fit together like a 12-piece band, and he knows that some jokes are even funnier when whispered. But I’m in the mood to speak up: I’ve missed this type of satisfying junk food. Waiter, bring me another.
  2. The Adults
    Though the film is largely driven by Cera’s knowing, unsparing performance, both Gross and Lillis are also given plenty of room to develop nuance.
  3. The New World
    A work of breathtaking imagination, less a movie than a mode of transport, and in every sense a masterpiece.
  4. Fire Will Come
    Fire Will Come is a pithy and devastating masterstroke from an auteur astute in his calibration of subdued emotional impact. Its discourse on forgiveness simmers in one’s mind inextinguishably.
  5. The 40 Year Old Virgin
    Takes a premise that, in less competent, less empathetic hands, would have had the depth of a pancake, gives it a soul and turns it into a surprisingly sweet and funny ode to male friendship and middle-aged love.
  6. In This Corner of the World
    In its visualization of a life that feels exceptional as well as ordinary, In This Corner of the World draws us in with the beauty of its animation and the specificity of its detail.
  7. A Royal Affair
    This highly polished costume drama is exceptionally well-made and a model of intelligent restraint, but it is also unapologetically earnest and a bit on the bloodless side.
  8. Bull Durham
    It's just that when a movie is this close, with so much of the sports flavor (co-producer Thom Mount is co-owner of the real Durham Bulls), you like to see it perfect. [15 June 1988]
    • Los Angeles Times
  9. Bruce Springsteen's Letter to You
    Throughout the film, Springsteen lavishes his bandmates with praise (“they can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee”) in voiceover segments that feel a bit more shopworn than when he unleashes them from the stage. But when Zimny lets the images speak for themselves, “Letter to You” achieves a moving power.
  10. Thunder Road
    Long considered one of the ultimate drive-in movies, the granddaddy of both "The Last American Hero" and "Smokey and the Bandit," this black-and-white drama is still entertaining if you take it in the raffish, off-slant, what-the-hell spirit with which star-producer Robert Mitchum obviously intended it. [09 Dec 1988, p.24]
    • Los Angeles Times
  11. Dark Waters
    The combination of Ruffalo’s quietly intense performance and Haynes’ direction illuminates both what drives him and what the cost can be.
  12. The Puffy Chair
    A pointed and nicely observed screenplay that guides us on an often funny journey through familiar terrain made fresh by their off-center sensibility and three fine performances.
  13. Attenberg
    From the gangly awkwardness of its opening scene - a pleasure-free lesson in kissing - it's clear that Attenberg aims to provoke. Its bored young characters and flat-affect performances recall another innovative Greek drama, "Dogtooth."
  14. For the Birds
    For the Birds is kind to its subject, while recognizing the harm she’s inadvertently doing. Animal hoarding is far more complex than most would imagine, but this film handles it with care.
  15. The Original Kings of Comedy
    A dynamite concert film.
  16. Metal: A Headbanger's Journey
    Dunn says he's been defending his choice in music since he was 12, and the film is a carefully organized and thoughtful argument for the merits of metal.
  17. Innocence
    The film never quite shakes its self-consciousness about just how special it is and that is a hindrance.
  18. Shattered Glass
    What is a most pleasant surprise is how emotionally involving a story writer-director Billy Ray has fashioned, how he's turned Shattered Glass into a film for anyone who cares about strong drama.
  19. Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
    Unlikely to be ranked as one of Zhang's greatest accomplishments but is clearly the work of a major filmmaker. It is best seen as a heartfelt tribute to Takakura, as heroic and enduring a star as John Wayne.
  20. War of the Worlds
    Working in the spirit of his predecessors but with the kind of uncanny special effects they could barely dream of, Spielberg has come up with an impressive production that is disturbing in the way only provocative science fiction can be.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway
    The film is a love letter to theater and the people who make it.
  22. I Believe in Unicorns
    In spite of its fanciful tendencies, the film nails the growing pains that result from love and loss.
  23. Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang
    A documentary that begs to be seen in a theater, Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang offers an inviting glimpse into the life of a truly international artist, one whose colorful fireworks displays literally paint the air.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Love & Basketball
    In her first feature, writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood tells a familiar tale with first-rate acting and an underlying sense of authenticity.
    • Los Angeles Times
  25. Coded Bias
    The movie as a whole tends to circle the same points, becoming less bracing the longer it runs. Still, for the most part, Coded Bias takes something huge and scary and breaks it down into small, easily understood morality tales, featuring everyday heroes fighting to save our future.
  26. Thirst
    Are you hungering for that rare vampire movie with serious intellectual heft, ravishing undead, biting passion and a healthy splash of irony as well as iron in all that spilled red blood? Wait no longer, Korean auteur Park Chan-wook's Thirst should satisfy.
  27. Notes on a Scandal
    In bringing Heller's book to the screen, director Richard Eyre ("Iris," "Stage Beauty") and screenwriter Patrick Marber ("Closer") have tossed the book's subtlety out the window, along with its psychological complexity, its running theme of self-deception and its dark, extra-wry sense of humor.
  28. Softie
    For Mwangi, Softie serves as testament of the domesticity he’s been absent from to satisfy the demands of his thankless vocation. But for the rest of us, it stands as a portrait of the kind of selfless, unifying and much-needed patriotism, from both Mwangi and Njeri, that could enact improvement if more subscribed to it wholeheartedly.
  29. The Dig
    Sometimes you just don’t want a movie to end. The characters are so vivid and multidimensional, the milieu so inviting, the circumstances so compelling, you don’t want to let go. The Dig, starring Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes, is such a movie.
  30. Athena
    As a sustained piece of action choreography, then, Athena is frequently staggering. As a drama about police violence, the woes of a long-ignored underclass and the complexities of modern French identity, the movie feels thin and overdetermined.
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