Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,550 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:
  1. Positive: 8,714 out of 16550
  2. Mixed: 5,819 out of 16550
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16550
16550 movie reviews
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  1. The Witch
    In a way, the movie is a tug of war between the fruits of exhaustive research into old-world madness — which plays out most prominently in the richly possessed performances (particularly Taylor-Joy and young Scrimshaw) and the evocative frontier trappings — and an entertainer's pulpier instincts.
  2. Looper
    This is a highflying, super-stylish science-fiction thriller that brings a fresh approach to mind-bending genre material. We're not always sure where this time-travel film is going, but we wouldn't dream of abandoning the ride.
  3. Graduation
    Bleak, naturalistic and flawlessly acted, Graduation distills the mood and moral decay of a place whose gray skies and nondescript housing blocks feel like permanent reminders of its dark history.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. Rose of Nevada
    This story of two strangers who take a job on a fishing boat — their lives are irrevocably altered once they return to shore — slowly pulls you inside its disquieting design. By the time you get your bearings, you’re ensnared in its net.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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
  13. A Ghost Story
    It’s a simple, wrenching story of love and loss that pries open a window onto eternity.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. The Square
    The Square bears witness to history in an articulate, thoughtful and intensely dramatic way.
  17. 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.
  18. Love After Love
    It's a viewing experience that's challenging, unflinching and deeply honest.
  19. Motherland
    An extraordinary vérité portrait of Manila’s Fabella Hospital.
  20. 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.
  21. Synonyms
    A searing, maddening, explosively brainy movie about the mutability and immutability of the self that, appropriately enough, never stops changing shape.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
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