Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 16,535 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:
16535 movie reviews
  1. Even as you recognize echoes of Woody Allen, Noah Baumbach and Todd Solondz here, Pritzker has a good ear for authenticity, and he draws terrific performances from a cast.
  2. Artfully calculated and authentically felt, the unexpectedly effective Summertime combines the conventional structure of classic movie romance with a sensual same-sex frankness that couldn't be more up-to-date.
  3. The emphasis on Blackout’s therapeutic qualities gets overly repetitive and banal — a little like listening to strangers analyze their dreams. But like Blackout itself, The Blackout Experiments is often chilling and hard to shake.
  4. "Collision Course” is simply a perfunctory, watered-down entry in the series that feels like it should have been released on home video.
  5. The whole thing has a very seedy, late-night cable feel, which is where you should catch this film — and only if you’re a die-hard UFC fan.
  6. No matter which way you come down on the nuclear power issue, watching Indian Point will clarify your thinking.
  7. Despite the tale’s potential for an overly broad and crass approach to its loaded setup, Branciforte’s sly, incisive writing and even-handed take on his authentic characters instead errs on the side of wit, candor and a kind of hip sophistication.
  8. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie is a raucously funny, often endearing, subversively feminist, bloody good time.
  9. Bello gives a tremulous wacko-mom performance from which she has eliminated every whisper of camp. She’s both sympathetic and infuriating, and her scenes with her daughter hint at a more painful, complicated emotional history than the movie has time to explore, though it’s nice that it bothers to explore it at all.
  10. Fun but in a careful way, the film lasts just two hours, but it can seem much longer than that.
  11. The unfocused Undrafted ultimately possesses all the dramatic intrigue of an intentional walk.
  12. An insightful and wildly entertaining look at the wrestlers who ply their trade south of the border.
  13. One of the most fascinating things about Under the Sun is the contradictory thoughts it inspires.
  14. It’s an inspiring portrait of a truly feminist mode of art.
  15. While Mollner elicits some strong performances — especially from Francesca Eastwood as a vengeful farmer’s daughter — Outlaws and Angels can’t overcome its distractingly showy camera moves or its tendency toward scenes that drag on interminably.
  16. For a movie about the creator of some of the most pointed, controversial comedies in television history, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You has a curious habit of sidestepping some of the thornier and more interesting aspects of its subject’s life.
  17. Men Go to Battle isn’t always effective, in that way DIY filmmaking sometimes irritates by deliberately avoiding “moments.” But as an offbeat lens through which to view an oft-mined era, it has a quiet pull.
  18. Equals walls itself off from the suspense implicit in its scenario — it’s practically an anti-thriller — and barely flickers to life as a tale of forbidden desire.
  19. Cafe Society is of course funny, but it also ends up, almost without our realizing it, trafficking in memory, regret and the fate of relationships in a world of romantic melancholy where, as someone says, "in matters of the heart, people do foolish things."
  20. It’s Cranston’s most accomplished and subtly layered film performance to date.
  21. A cheerful summer lark that briefly achieves comic liftoff but peters out well before its overblown Times Square climax, it proudly demonstrates that mediocrity — whether in the hunting of malevolent apparitions or the making of a mainstream comedy — is not, and never has been, an exclusively male pursuit.
  22. There truly is no business like show business, and Ovation perfectly captures that.
  23. At the Fork serves up an even-handed perspective on the subject of eating ethically.
  24. The story, although intelligent, is not quite unique or essential enough to merit the film’s protracted running time.
  25. The real skill in Lane’s colorful tale about self-made millionaire, “inventor” and maverick John R. Brinkley is that it revels in how fun it is to believe in the unbelievable, and how sinisterly effective the mixture of fact and fiction can be. That includes, Lane eventually reveals, documentaries themselves.
  26. Most B-pictures imitate other movies, but writer-director Mickey Keating’s Carnage Park steals so freely that it almost becomes derivative in an original way.
  27. King worked on the script for Cell, which isn’t that surprising given that many of the worst adaptations of his work have his name on them. It only proves how hard a job it is to adapt King. Even the author himself can’t ace it.
  28. Although it contains its share of diverting shootouts, car crashes and explosions, this self-serious film mostly evokes a forgettable TV police procedural.
  29. The film’s prevailing theme may be that nothing is black and white, but the execution, with its strident lobbyists, salt-of-the-earth farmers and onscreen admonition to “investigate before you donate,” proves spottier than a kennel full of caged Dalmatians.
  30. No amount of star power can save the script by Brad Desche.

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