Los Angeles Times' Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Amer
    Consistently outrageous and relentlessly surreal, the Belgian film is, intentionally or not, frequently funny; it's also compelling and distinctive.
  2. Daylight
    Replete with superior acting and visual splendor, the film is a fine instance of the overly familiar made fresh.
  3. Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
    At almost two hours, the film feels a bit long and suffers from multiple endings, but Okada is clearly a talent to watch.
  4. Mary and Max
    Mary and Max’s jauntiness fades into a sadness that culminates on a note of self-acceptance -- and a great gratitude for the sustaining, redemptive power of friendship.
  5. Rosemead
    Enough can’t be said about Liu’s astonishing, naturalistic turn. She’s a physical marvel here, making herself as small and inconspicuous — yet also as quietly resolute — as her complex character requires.
  6. Nas: Time Is Illmatic
    Since many of the themes from Illmatic have become mere clichés in contemporary rap, this film serves as a reminder of the potential and the promise that hip-hop truly holds.
  7. Match Point
    It pretty much keeps its pulse steady, its blood cold and its nerves tamped down -- which, combined with cinematographer Remi Adefarasin's architectural Hitchcockian flourishes, lends a queasy, cool air to the proceedings.
  8. Still Alice
    Elements of its plot have the standard quality of a Hallmark production, and the work of some of the film's costars is a bit too on the nose. But, with Moore and Stewart on the case, we feel the presence of something real here, something that can't be shrugged off or ignored.
  9. Late Night with the Devil
    This is a pressure-cooker film, an exercise in small-budget simplicity that leans on one set and one goal: Keep ’em watching.
  10. Sound of Noise
    Without pounding home its avant-garde cred, this fresh ode to found sound and the music of silence casts an amused gaze at careerism, classical-music reverence and notions of artistic purity and ends with a pitch-perfect change of tune.
  11. A Space Program
    A Space Program may find cheeky humor in our quest for meaningful science. But it certainly hints that there's something worshipful in the details.
  12. Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold
    It's that the closeness with Dunne, as well as his complete familiarity with the boldface-names life she and her husband led in both Los Angeles and New York, has given this film a quality of personal intimacy that makes it moving and involving.
  13. Ethel & Ernest
    While time inevitably marches on, director Roger Mainwood has a splendid constant at his disposal in the pitch-perfect voice performances of Blethyn and Broadbent, who inhabit their hand-drawn characters with a vivid, fully-dimensional authenticity.
  14. My Donkey, My Lover & I
    Calamy delivers a beautifully open performance at the center of an utterly winning comedy about the most important journey a person can take: toward finding themselves.
  15. Siddharth
    Mehta explores matters more complex and unsettling than movie-tidy, against-the-odds heroism. In Tailang's fine performance, the enormity of Mahendra's mission registers in all its devastating weight.
  16. Dear Santa
    There’s a much appreciated sweetness and innocence to what we witness, a truly diverse group of Americans selflessly helping one another, joy being their only compensation.
  17. Truly Madly Deeply
    The point of this film seems to be that wholesomeness is a sign of maturity, and it partially cancels out the performers. Juliet Stevenson breaks through anyway. She has a charged core, like Judy Davis, and she makes you root for her passage to happiness. [8 May 1991, p.6]
    • Los Angeles Times
  18. The Talent Given Us
    It's difficult, though, to see how this picture -- essentially chronicling a long car trip -- could mean much to anyone but the Wagners and their friends and relatives.
  19. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea
    As externalized visions of high school hellishness go, Shaw’s doesn’t always translate into the most cohesively entertaining of mash-ups, but his techniques are attention-grabbers.
  20. Manifesto
    Whatever Rosefeldt intended, Manifesto doesn’t quite set forth a manifesto of its own. But it’s a blast of fresh air. And like many of the gauntlet throwers it cites, it risks looking foolish and, in the process, creates something gorgeously defiant.
  21. Strictly Ballroom
    The movie musical may not have been dead after all, just resting up until this lot came around. [12 Feb 1993, p.F10]
    • Los Angeles Times
  22. Surfwise
    What Surfwise reveals is that the dark side of the surfing doctor was that he could be a terrible tyrant, someone whose controlling, self-centered rigidity limited his children in ways large and small as much as it gave them richer lives.
  23. Step Into Liquid
    Brown has expertly captured the exhilarating and terrifying experience of watching surfers attack waves so preposterously large and ridiculously beautiful they defy description.
  24. Mulan
    Mulan has its accomplishments, but unlike the best of Disney's output, it comes off as more manufactured than magical.
  25. Despicable Me
    The film throws so much ersatz cleverness and overdone emotion at the audience that we end up more worn out than entertained.
  26. The Silence
    The Silence is an exemplary German-language thriller, a complex and disturbing examination of guilt, violence and psychological torment that chills us to the core not once but two times over.
  27. Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony
    Despite the good intentions, structurally it's all over the place with an excess of montages, archival footage, interviews and information practically drowning out any chance to appreciate the richness of the German composer's beloved achievement.
  28. Donald Cried
    Touches of empathy and self-awareness invariably crystallize the unsettling emotions of revisiting one’s past life.
  29. The Incredible Jessica James
    Strouse demonstrates a contagious affection for his characters, and he invests in them in a way that makes us do the same.
  30. In the Intense Now
    The combination of archival bounty with Salles' touching analysis has a hypnotic effect, serving up the past plus reflection, garnished with a resonant melancholy about the ebb and flow of uprisings.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »