Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 16,532 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:
16532 movie reviews
  1. The story gradually finds its way to a predictable place, but the company’s interesting along the way, and the scenery can’t be beat.
  2. Though sleekly photogenic in its depiction of cosmopolitan Europeans in permanent romantic neurosis, The Laws of Thermodynamics is better in theory than fact.
  3. A slow-building shiver of a movie, The Little Stranger tells a familiar but pleasurably engrossing story.
  4. Let the Corpses Tan — or, to use its even better French title, “Laissez Bronzer Les Cadavres” — is a feverish, obsessive act of cinematic rehabilitation, a shoot-’em-up conceived in tribute to a peculiar strain of blood-spattered B-movies from the 1960s and ’70s.
  5. My Favorite Year” meets “Nebraska” in An Actor Prepares, a comedic road movie that doesn’t take any fresh detours from its well-traveled route despite the presence of a very game Jeremy Irons.
  6. Jack Bryan’s thorough, chilling rabbit-hole inquiry into our president’s connections to Russia — Active Measures — is as good a place as any to fuel one’s fear/outrage.
  7. Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder may have worked together in the past (most notably in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”), but Destination Wedding, a painfully indulgent anti-romantic comedy about a pair of miserable misanthropes who bond over their shared contempt of the universe, forces their screen chemistry well beyond any reasonable limits of tolerance.
  8. This film — which follows the process as a litter of puppies make their way through training to become guide dogs for the blind — shows us the best in humanity, as well as the best in dogs.
  9. An idiosyncratic, metaphysical meditation on tennis, cinema, human behavior, maybe even life itself, "Perfection" at times risks being too pleased with itself for its own good, but its one-of-a-kind credentials are never in doubt.
  10. Though practically everyone involved invokes a winning-is-everything sentiment, it’s clearly not entirely true. O’Callaghan and the Sheehys obviously care deeply for the animals they train and the film’s ending will leave a lump in the throat of even the most cynical viewer.
  11. All in all, just another boring genre exercise.
  12. Thrill-seekers should be warned that this is more a surreal, nightmarish and occasionally sexually explicit trip into an adolescent’s psyche than a spook show. Yakin uses genre packaging for an intense, personal film, which many viewers may find discomfiting — if only because it’s so hard to classify.
  13. Screenwriter Robert Rhine and co-directors Devon Downs and Kenny Gage have made something polished, colorful and energetic but, ultimately, pretty disposable.
  14. The efforts of an international cast including stars Oscar Isaac, Melanie Laurent and Nick Kroll notwithstanding, Operation Finale sounds more involving than it actually plays, ending up earnest and acceptable more than compelling.
  15. It is a fine, if lightweight, little slice of throwback-’80s teen movie tropes with some high-tech flair.
  16. Israeli journalist Amos Elon once wrote that the demands for justice presented by the Israeli-Palestinian impasse exceed the human capacity to administer it. The dramatic, involving The Oslo Diaries details the closest these adversaries have come to proving Elon wrong, a story that is heartening and heartbreaking by turn.
  17. A bit slick, especially in its last half hour, Restoring Tomorrow nevertheless hits its emotional marks in reporting the renaissance of an important community institution, and Wolf’s personal connection to the subject elevates what may have simply been a well-made promotional film.
  18. Last Curtain Call may lament the emptiness of its protagonist’s hedonistic and selfish lifestyle, but the film itself offers few pleasures with its poor pacing and cliched script.
  19. Resolutely somber, and self-aware about its deliberately tight and opaque visual style, it’s presentational more than lived, a series of filmmaking choices instead of something deeply felt and conveyed.
  20. Songwriter is intimate while oddly lacking insight into the artist himself, beyond the heart he pours into his lyrics.
  21. Danny McBride is at his funniest and scariest in Arizona, a darkly comic film noir that works well as both a violent thriller and as a ruthless satire of over-extended American dreamers.
  22. Crime + Punishment is a quiet documentary but a potent one. Though its approach is low key, its passion, drama and concern for exposing wrongdoing is unmistakable.
  23. What the film mostly lacks is its own flavor.
  24. Allen and Anderson are outstanding in roles that require a lot of levels and moods, as the central relationship goes from loving to shaky to … well, something else.
  25. Writer-director Hadi Hajaig was obviously shooting for a mid-1980s indie vibe along the lines of Jonathan Demme’s “Something Wild,” but aside from an overstuffed soundtrack that goes heavy on the B-52’s, there’s nothing particularly engaging or nostalgic going on beneath all the forced irreverence.
  26. At a little over 90 minutes, Support the Girls has the brash trappings, if not the longevity, of a “Cheers”-style sitcom, and its generous humor is always in productive play with a tough, flinty realism.
  27. Writer-director Bertrand Mandico’s The Wild Boys is a heady, sexually charged take on “Lord of the Flies” — an exciting sail on the waters of gender fluidity that energetically skewers any notion of the binary.
  28. Although it’s anchored by a deeply felt performance by the wonderful Emily Mortimer, with a marvelous supporting turn by the always-welcome Bill Nighy, the film, scripted and directed by Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet (“Elegy,” “Learning to Drive”), is at times a bit too mustily mounted and told to keep us as fully immersed as we might like.
  29. A curious film in multiple ways, Cielo does not always achieve its lofty ambitions of transcendence. However, accompanied by the eerie silence of the desert and the plaintive wail of Philippe Lauzier’s mournful score, McAlpine’s visuals transport the viewer to a state of reflection while reminding us of the sublime beauty of the space above.
  30. A Whale of a Tale is an unfortunately directionless, low-gear rebuttal that hardly ever stirs up emotions as effectively as “The Cove” did.

Top Trailers