Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 16,536 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:
16536 movie reviews
  1. Although the results could never be accused of being uneventful, the characters cry out for deeper, more complex dimensions than simply the wide-eyed dreamer and the rhetoric-spewing agitator on display here.
  2. It tells a story irresistible to our age of rampant voyeurism and reality TV, yet it also has a potent emotional core that cannot be denied.
  3. No matter what is going on, Hansen-Love's talent for bringing us inside a specific world makes Eden an experience we all can connect to.
  4. This engaging, funny and frank new film also proves something of a cop-out, especially given the bullet train of a narrative concocted by writer-director Patrick Brice.
  5. Inside Out manages to be honest and unafraid but never cheaply sentimental where emotion is concerned, evoking a largeness of spirit whose ability to be moving sneaks up and takes us by surprise.
  6. Dubious ending aside, Constanzo's approach to structuring, shooting and pacing the tricky material proves masterful and memorable.
  7. Cailley never truly builds a narrative head of steam, resulting in periods of logy pacing and diffused focus. Still, the strong leads, several amusing moments and a clutch of intriguing character bits sketch what might have been.
  8. The movie contains enough warmth, humor and nostalgia to prove an affable if unremarkable snapshot.
  9. Unfortunately for English speakers, nothing here is lost in translation. Everything is exactly as lame as it sounds.
  10. The film is an exploration of art as a way through immense and complex emotions. It is unexpectedly a breathtaking reminder of life's joys — in nature, in friendship and, in a particularly buoyant scene, in the bark of a deceased friend's poodle.
  11. As a first film, it is incredibly accomplished, its influences (French New Wave, Wong Kar-Wai) apparent but integrated.
  12. [Barthes'] measured, distanced style brings a certain stiffness to the proceedings and makes us miss even more than usual the Emma Bovary interior monologue that makes the book so memorable.
  13. Seeking existential, noirish heft, Amoedo coyly avoids articulating what Martin is. (He calls himself "sick.") But it only comes across like an amateur play at gravitas, one unsupported by dully weighted scenes and clunky dialogue, delivered mostly by English-speaking actors straining to hide Latin accents.
  14. The film couldn't be more timely and germane for the American audience. If it weren't a documentary, it would seem like a post-apocalyptic allegory of our own vaccination debate.
  15. Writer-director Anders Morgenthaler's conclusion comes far too hastily and haphazardly, with a disregard for plot details or plausible storytelling.
  16. It's not every day you get to see a satanic-revenge home-invasion martial-arts thriller, but should another come along that's as laughably cornball as The Cain Complex, you'd best hide until it blows over.
  17. Despite the best efforts of director Colin Trevorrow, Jurassic World's story of Indominus rex on the loose, while certainly acceptable, doesn't have the same impact as the initial film.
  18. This introduction to the Buddha's Eightfold Path is often clever and occasionally exasperating.
  19. The faith-based impetus behind this redemptive, family-friendly, American Revolution-era yarn is placed front and center amid all the digitally assisted derring-do and skulduggery.
  20. The Farewell Party succeeds as well as it does because the core dilemma always feels real and the filmmakers take great care to see that the inevitable emotions put into play are never overdone.
  21. The film is undermined by choppy editing and a penchant for hoary aphorisms and forced gravitas.
  22. The engaging plot gets a bit absurd toward the end.
  23. Beyond her tenacious and intimate reporting, director and cinematographer Polak has made a work of powerful images — heart-rending, elegiac, charged with hope.
  24. As it stands, "Terms" proves too uncertain.
  25. The rom-com isn't such a lost cause, after all. It was just waiting for someone like indie filmmaker Andrew Bujalski to resuscitate it.
  26. United Passions, with its clashing, production partner-mandated Europudding of accents, fails to find a unifying voice.
  27. The best moments showcase Duvall and Franco, formidable stars representing different cultural eras, testing the waters of a father-son relationship bruised by outmoded views of love and sin.
  28. We get too little character development to be invested in the story and barely a glimpse at the horrific plight of enslaved people.
  29. Once We Are Still Here unsticks itself from hommage mode, it finds something cathartically funny inside the fearsome.
  30. Ascher is too content to let repetition of experience take over his film.

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