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. Unlike the teeming world living between the lines in Munro's story, there is not nearly enough in Hateship Loveship to keep you invested.
  2. An ambitious and provocative piece of work that is intriguingly balanced between being a warning and a celebration.
  3. How Norman and his gang learn the ropes, work the game and earn their fleeting, if nerve-wracking moment in the sun proves an enjoyable, well-crafted ride in the hands of writer-director John Stockwell.
  4. Though dizzyingly informative and diffuse at times, it's a well-shot portrait that's at its best when it eschews the facts for the folks.
  5. A "Saw" knockoff without the torture porn.
  6. It's a stirring and involving character study that may not cover much new ground but still packs a quiet punch.
  7. A documentary that doesn't force-feed its message of hope but genuinely earns it.
  8. Like the film itself, Kakkar and Pastides are lively, adorable and thoroughly winning.
  9. Its core dance styles are a wonderfully frenetic fusion of tap and hip-hop and a truly novel blend of Japanese taiko drumming and K-pop girl-group choreography. Whenever actor Derek Hough and BoA stop leaping and twirling, though, Make Your Move is an underwritten mess.
  10. Whatever Proxy lacks in narrative cohesion and psychological realism, it makes up for in its compelling fever-dream quality and its probing questions about the darker side of parenting.
  11. Not unlike most of its Hollywood counterparts, though, this Hong Kong import can't resist the urge to dumb down a fascinating premise for the sake of mass consumption.
  12. Bears has warmth and fuzziness in spades, especially when the lot of them snoozes on logs. Amid its heaping serving of cuddliness, though, the film doesn't sugarcoat the harsh reality and unforgiving elements with which the bears have to contend.
  13. The exhausted mockumentary genre provides yet another reason for its demise in Authors Anonymous, a tenaciously unfunny comedy.
  14. It's the film's well-wrought themes of friendship, self-esteem and responsibility that give this little adventure its ultimate power.
  15. What the movie could use is a little more faith — in the power of its message and the art of filmmaking. Instead, Heaven is sincere to a fault, and the closer it gets to heaven, the more it wavers.
  16. [An] amateurish, terribly acted piffle, which devolves from dull conversations behind store counters into witless farce on a movie set.
  17. Writers Dan Steadman and Rajeev Sigamoney wisely keep a lid on excessive silliness as they jab at such topics as religious fervor, opportunism and artistic talent — or the lack thereof.
  18. Afternoon of a Faun offers privileged glimpses of Le Clercq's life.
  19. Ilo Ilo is writer-director Anthony Chen's first film, but breathtaking intimacy in storytelling is already second nature to him.
  20. The film owes whatever persuasiveness it has to the teen leads' sharp performances — their sisterly chemistry and their filial friction with an alcohol-addled mother, well played by Mira Sorvino.
  21. So instructional is the film, directed by Brook's son, Simon, that it feels like one of those P90X or Insanity home fitness programs: Try this at home. You too can perform on stage.
  22. So much blandly sweeping, speechifying history and so little personalized dramatic focus turn No God, No Master into a series of issue-driven snapshots instead of something genuinely illuminating.
  23. The Railway Man is an impressively crafted, skillfully acted, highly absorbing journey into a dark corner of world history.
  24. Joe
    Though Joe occasionally slips and falters, the filmmakers and actors get all the hard-luck details right.
  25. Wonderfully animated and well-voiced, Rio 2 is nevertheless too much. Too much plot, too many issues, too many characters. But not too much music.
  26. This is an earnest and way-contrived endeavor that manages, due largely to Costner's efforts, to be genially diverting in a gee-whiz kind of way.
  27. Less concerned with fake shocks and show-me violence than the grimly calibrated rotting of personalities, Oculus is one of the more intelligently nasty horror films in recent memory.
  28. The unhurried film is a beauty. Shooting digitally — a first for Jarmusch and a paradox for a movie that so ardently celebrates the artisanal — cinematographer Yorick Le Saux uses nocturnal lighting to eloquent effect. The titular lovers are beauties too, soulful and captivating. Swinton and Hiddleston make their love story one for the ages.
  29. [A] thoroughly routine, straight-to-video-reminiscent action thriller set in Louisiana.
  30. A repetitive, sluggishly paced nocturnal rumination on why we bother reuniting with old friends we purposefully left behind.

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