Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 16,526 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:
16526 movie reviews
  1. The fifth film in the series still executes creative kills; if only the same attention were paid to the rest of the movie.
  2. A generic coming-of-age comedy that feels inextricably stuck in the ’90s, Hickey serves as the feature debut of TV commercial director Alex Grossman and plays like a never aired UPN series pilot.
  3. In its loose, hallucinatory narrative, we gain a sense of the nightmares caused by a loss of spirituality and physical connection. It may leave you questioning if the Mayans were right all along.
  4. Director/co-writer Glenn Douglas Packard tries to bring a little style and color to the film by relying on off-kilter camera angles and cartoonish supporting characters. But he mostly stays within the narrow parameters of the “knocking off generically attractive youngsters one-by-one” movie, never getting campy enough, bizarre enough or satirical enough.
  5. A fine Watkins brings quiet depth and pathos to the buttoned-up, tightly wound Jonathan, while Graye proves an appealingly game and sexy counterpart.
  6. Two Lovers and a Bear is above all thrillingly cinematic, even when its elements of lived-in intensity and jokey fantasy refuse to coalesce.
  7. A sporadically fun, heartfelt ride whose script by director Joseph Itaya and Erik Cardona is filled with too many broad strokes, faux close calls, plot conveniences and questionable story points to feel fully baked.
  8. The loose style of the film is held together by the strong performances from the leads and supporting actors alike.
  9. The Autopsy of Jane Doe is sometimes too low-key, favoring spooky atmosphere and slow-drip storytelling over visceral kicks. But as an acting showcase, the film’s a winner, getting plenty of juice from the performances of two reliable pros.
  10. Despite attracting some top-drawer talent, “Arsenal” is a brutally unpleasant, bottom-of-the-barrel crime drama that unsuccessfully attempts to drown the terrible dialogue and pedestrian direction with buckets of gushing blood.
  11. Instead of a grand lark of fast fists and derring-do, we get a lumbering, choppy voyage of minimal excitement.
  12. What’s magical about Paterson — and what may frustrate those seeking a tidier, prosier experience — is its refusal to settle for clear answers.
  13. The beauty of Bening’s performance lies in those marvelously suggestive layers — all the delicate, tendril-like emotional possibilities that she manages to tuck into the margins of any given moment.
  14. The biggest problem with Why Him? though, isn’t him, it’s her. Stephanie is so underwritten that even though these men are competing ruthlessly over her, she drops out of the story completely. She’s the center of attention, but she’s a void. That’s not the fault of the winsome Deutch.
  15. "Monster" is almost too ambitious to be completely realized. But when it works, which is most of the time, its story has a power which lingers in the mind.
  16. The film may not be restrained but stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe are powerfully effective and its little-known true story is so flabbergasting that resistance is all but futile.
  17. The movie is handsomely mounted with upscale production values, but it feels sluggish and disjointed.
  18. Building implacable dread and tension from scene to scene, the story is as simple as its underlying ideas are endlessly complex.
  19. When I, Daniel Blake regrettably piles it on at the end, it’s Loach growing weary of humanizing details and desperate to shake you up with consequences, didacticism and speechifying. It’s the finger-pointer in him, but as this movie frequently shows in its best moments, he’s still a practiced veteran at open-arms affection for the dignity of the downtrodden.
  20. Ade has an unusual gift for planting more than one idea in each frame; I don’t think there’s a single one of the movie’s 162 minutes that can be reduced to a single emotional beat or narrative function. That hefty running time isn’t a sign of indulgence, but integrity.
  21. The movie may not have the audacity and emotional grandeur of a new Almodóvar masterpiece, but in every particular — its seamless manipulation of time, its sly infusions of comedy, its expert direction of actors and, yes, its fabulous wallpaper — it confirms his mastery nonetheless.
  22. It's a cute movie with genuinely funny moments (keep an eye out for the koala car wash), and some great tunes to boot.
  23. Assassin's Creed will be polarizing, but it's fascinating as an entry in Kurzel's oeuvre. It is singularly his film — both in style and the obsession with hubris, power and violence.
  24. Part outer-space romantic comedy, part science-fiction thriller, Passengers leave us feeling we’ve been taken for a ride.
  25. An effective, efficient and quite dramatic examination of the events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured 264, Patriots Day is a tribute to people who earned it: the investigators and first responders who ensured that a horrible situation did not become even worse.
  26. It may be by-the-book, but American Wrestler is a story well worth telling.
  27. Martin and Coffa may bear a strong physical resemblance to their real-life counterparts, but their contemporary-sounding line delivery has all the dramatic heft of a Foster’s beer commercial.
  28. Input from historians, political scientists and other observers, as well as archival footage and photos, and impressionistic reenactment bits, round out this resonant, not untimely portrait of a dark and frightening chapter in Brazil’s past.
  29. Despite an atmosphere of simmering violence and criminal wrongdoing, Boatman is more art film than action film; deliberately paced, skillfully shot, emotionally challenging.
  30. While City of Dead Men has an appealingly polished look and uses its unusual locations thoughtfully, it teeters on the edge of pretension.

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