Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,522 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: 8,697 out of 16522
  2. Mixed: 5,808 out of 16522
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16522
16522 movie reviews
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  1. Kubo and the Two Strings
    It recognizes that our most cherished legends are an endless source of consolation in times of suffering and loss, as well as a vital repository of cultural and generational memory. If that message sounds trite or familiar, it has rarely been driven home with this much conviction and intensity of feeling.
  2. Aliens
    But of all the film's choices, the best was Weaver. She's its white-hot core, given fine, irascible dialogue to come blazing out of that patrician mouth, and the chance to look, for a moment, like a space-dusted Sleeping Beauty in her hyper-sleep casket.
  3. The Other Side of Hope
    While the conclusion to The Other Side of Hope is open-ended, Kaurismaki unashamedly believes in brotherhood, and among other things his film celebrates people who do the right thing without making a big deal about it.
  4. The Vast of Night
    Its achievement is predicated not on novelty, but on modesty — the way it manages, using little more than a terrific cast and a few shadowy, sparsely furnished rooms, to populate your mind’s eye with ominous visions.
  5. Old Joy
    Miniaturist in its level of detail and evocatively abstract, Old Joy captures the weary mood of a generation that's crested its peak along with an era, quietly making a case for how well suited film can be to capturing the finer points of human interaction while preserving their mystery.
  6. Momma's Man
    Mastery of tone is everything here, and Azazel's control, combined with his wit, perception, discretion and easy command of the visual and of his cast makes Momma's Man a gem.
  7. You Were Never Really Here
    There is more to admire here than a simple economy of form and content, and the spareness of Ramsay's approach is no mere approximation of Ames' hard-boiled prose. The texture is as gritty as the filmmaking is exquisite.
  8. In the Name of the Father
    Strongly tied to a powerful underlying reality (though it inevitably tends to simplify), this film has the additional advantage of being concerned with the emotional truth of its key relationships, adding an unusual father and son story to its incendiary mix. [29 Dec 1993 Pg. F1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  9. A Ghost Story
    It’s a simple, wrenching story of love and loss that pries open a window onto eternity.
  10. Ballast
    A quintessentially American story that unmistakably echoes European art house cinema, combining the aesthetic purity of France's Robert Bresson with the social consciousness of Belgium's Dardenne brothers. It also is a powerful, character-driven melodrama that easily holds our attention from first to last.
  11. Volver
    Volver is just as funny as "What Have I Done," but it's also more sanguine and complex. Its humor is brighter and loopier, more a function of the characters' indomitable spirit than of their terminal despair.
  12. The Square
    The Square bears witness to history in an articulate, thoughtful and intensely dramatic way.
  13. Widows
    In Widows, diversity isn’t an opportunity for showy tokenism or liberal pieties. It’s a matter-of-fact reflection of a city’s seething internal dynamics, an opportunity to probe inequities of race, class and gender that few American movies, let alone American genre movies, ever attempt to address.
  14. Love After Love
    It's a viewing experience that's challenging, unflinching and deeply honest.
  15. Motherland
    An extraordinary vérité portrait of Manila’s Fabella Hospital.
  16. Mapantsula
    Like its black anti-hero, the mapantsula (Zulu for small-time crook ) of the title, the movie makers do their job with swiftness, guile and gall. It’s a moral drama in disguise.
  17. Synonyms
    A searing, maddening, explosively brainy movie about the mutability and immutability of the self that, appropriately enough, never stops changing shape.
  18. Boys State
    It’s a comedy, a heartbreaker and, above all, a twisty and suspenseful piece of political theater. Its rough-and-tumble snapshot of American youth in action is somehow both troubling and exhilarating.
  19. Homicide
    Even though it ends up falling off the tracks--maybe even because it falls off the tracks-- Homicide absolutely holds your interest with the passion that powerfully felt but ultimately screwy efforts often have.
  20. Museum Hours
    It's a film whose pleasures are much more visual than dramatic, but that doesn't mean there aren't serious things on its mind.
  21. On Her Shoulders
    On Her Shoulders is an intimate, empathetic documentary, made with discretion and power.
  22. Sense and Sensibility
    Part of the problem is that Taiwan-born Lee, though he does a more-than-credible job of directing, isn't sharp on the nuances of British behavior.
  23. The Descendants
    It makes The Descendants a tragedy infused with comedy and calls for a balancing act from filmmaker and star alike, a tightrope they navigate with nary a wobble.
  24. First Man
    Chazelle seems to be trying to both uphold and transcend the narrative template established by astronaut dramas like “The Right Stuff” and “Apollo 13,” with their scenes of hard-working men barking orders from ground control (Kyle Chandler does the honors nicely here), and of astronauts’ wives worrying that they may soon be widows. Even his missteps...underscore his desire to tell a story of collective accomplishment through one man’s extraordinary perspective.
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