Los Angeles Times' Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 8,699 out of 16526
  2. Mixed: 5,810 out of 16526
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16526
16526 movie reviews
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  1. Reaching for the Moon
    Everything ultimately gives way to the stately, simplistic, inevitable pace of by-the-numbers biopics, from some woefully tinny, hit-and-run screenwriting to the usual difficulties surrounding the dramatization of an author's craft.
  2. Homefront
    [A] contemporary B-movie Western with designs on stylistic flair.
  3. Black Nativity
    Many of the transitions between narrative and music are rough. The temptations of the street, all too real in the real world, feel forced. Confrontations become clichés. The substance of human motivation is missing. And thus the heart never beats as it should.
  4. Oldboy
    Oldboy suggests a filmmaker doing almost as much soul-searching as the main character. There is a brashness in the risks taken, the very imperfections revealing an artist finding new inspiration. For Lee, this weird, brutal film seems to have freed him.
  5. Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird
    Jaffe deftly captures his subject's creative process, helpfully illuminating the method to Wilson's comic madness.
  6. Delivery Man
    Delivery Man, a heart-tugging new comedy about fatherhood and family, is warm as well as wry.
  7. Frozen
    Frozen is fabulous.
  8. The Great Beauty
    As its name promises, The Great Beauty is drop-dead gorgeous, a film that is luxuriously, seductively, stunningly cinematic. But more than intoxicating imagery is on director Paolo Sorrentino's mind, a lot more.
  9. Rio 2096: A Story of Love and Fury
    The mix of computer-generated imagery, hand-drawn simplicity in the humans and depth-conscious, textured backgrounds makes for a potent visual intelligence.
  10. Philomena
    Dench is not the only reason to see this unapologetic crowd-pleaser, but she is the best one.
  11. Sugar
    As a whole, the film's characters touchingly illustrate the tolls of living with unresolved trauma and chronic uncertainty, as well as the solidarity and relative freedom this community of outcasts enjoys.
  12. Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?
    I don't know whether the tall man is happy, but I do know that Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? is intellectually and visually groundbreaking, and most certainly a film.
  13. The Christmas Candle
    The Christmas Candle" seems destined to be a Hallmark movie of the week. But in spite of the hammy histrionics requisite for the genre, it is not at all a turkey.
  14. Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony
    Despite the good intentions, structurally it's all over the place with an excess of montages, archival footage, interviews and information practically drowning out any chance to appreciate the richness of the German composer's beloved achievement.
  15. Geography Club
    Sweet, slight and frequently familiar, Geography Club, based on Brent Hartinger's novel about sexual identity among suburban teens, often feels as if it's circling its expiration date.
  16. Home
    The great achievement in writer-director Jono Oliver's poignant, superb debut, Home, lies in the balance between the film's empathy for those like Jack who seek independence and its compassion for others who may need care indefinitely.
  17. All God's Children
    Between the heavy-handed lines, director Adrian Popovici provides telling glimpses of a provincial, aggressively retrograde attitude toward women and the seedy nightclubs where they're preyed on. He elicits uneven performances from a cast working in several languages.
  18. Contracted
    Although this horror flick is somewhat absurd and seemingly forgettable when viewed in a vacuum, its coincidentally contemporaneous release with "Blue Is the Warmest Color" urges immediate reconsideration.
  19. Approved for Adoption
    A vibrant example of hybrid nonfiction filmmaking, using hand-drawn animation, live action, home movies and newsreels in a rich synthesis of personal and historical memory.
  20. Faust
    Alexander Sokurov's Faust is a grueling side show of a film, a morbid, mightily uninvolving piece.
  21. JFK: A President Betrayed
    The information comes fast from talking heads who, let's face it, can get a bit dry. Lose focus, and you risk missing the significance of what's being conveyed.
  22. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
    An effective piece of melodramatic popular entertainment that savvily builds on the foundation established by the first Hunger Games movie.
  23. Nebraska
    Nebraska offers something deeper and more mature, the ability to make us care about its characters and their story on a different level than Payne has given us before.
  24. At Berkeley
    An involving portrait of what's called "one of the world's most powerful knowledge-producing institutions" and an examination on how that institution is coping with a significant financial crisis.
  25. The Best Man Holiday
    A joyous, raucous, righteous film but also a frustrating and disappointing one.
  26. Aftermath
    Aftermath is a bombshell disguised as a thriller.
  27. The Ghosts in Our Machine
    The Ghosts in Our Machine, a heartfelt meditation on animal rights, comes at you as a whisper. It depends on the persuasive powers of creatures great and small — in their natural habitat or in cages — to argue that we stop using them for food, clothing, research and entertainment.
  28. Sunlight Jr.
    Though this is an emotionally driven movie, it never drifts into melodrama. Collyer is as pragmatic in her approach as her characters. But it is Dillon and Watts' nuanced portrayals that make "Sunlight's" darkness so appealing.
  29. Brave Miss World
    Peck celebrates Abargil as an impassioned and inspiring advocate while making clear the emotional complexities of her single-mindedness.
  30. 12-12-12
    Busy, but not exactly invigorating.
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