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. The animation artistry of Madagascar 3 is at its best under the big top, all cotton candy fluff and razzle dazzle. The character development of this edition is the best of the rest as well.
  2. Prometheus, unlike its predecessors, does not wear its themes lightly. It pushes too hard for significance, which is dicey in and of itself for genre material and contrasts badly with the standard nature of some of the story's plotting.
  3. Oslo is an example of strong, confident filmmaking in which nothing is miscalculated or out of place. Anchored by a devastating performance by Anders Danielsen Lie, this portrait of existential despair is beautifully made without being self-conscious about its art.
  4. A near complete exercise in mirthlessness and atonal satire, Cellmates is a sentence, all right.
  5. There's likely an audience for the cloying and dizzying hip-hop dance flick Battlefield America, but even the most forgiving viewers may feel like they've been underestimated - and underserved.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    You can't cure what you don't understand is one of the film's sobering messages.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The result is far from evenhanded, but capable of raising important questions.
  6. At first American Animal has a mysterious unreality to it, a strange diorama about easy leisure's emptiness. But when James admits he's taken a job - upending the roomies' slacker utopia - American Animal becomes a philosophically strident evening of speechifying local theater (topic: human evolution).
  7. This quiet, atmospheric drama (originally titled "A Year in Mooring") feels padded even in its brief running time; it's a slight mood piece posing as a character study.
  8. Lacking real kick, High School winds up as irksome as a bag of ditch weed and as lame as the pun of the film's title.
  9. The result is a well-meaning checklist of a film that lacks sufficient charm or off-the-field vigor to fully score its intended goal.
  10. It's not your typical animated fare, but since the filmmakers can't quite decide whether its tale should be serious or silly, "Cat" trips and stumbles unsteadily between a bit of both.
  11. The film is ultimately a stodgy, overblown and repetitive slog.
  12. It is an absolute wonder to watch and creates a warrior princess for the ages. But what this revisionist fairy tale does not give us is a passionate love - its kisses are as chaste as the snow is white.
  13. The lack of suspense and surprise in this dispiritingly rote film becomes its own form of contamination.
  14. It all makes for a family therapist's dream scenario, but an otherwise choppy and predictable memory piece.
  15. The script, by Oleg Negin and Zvyagintsev, uses spare dialogue to quietly devastating effect. Performances are superb across the board, framed in elegant widescreen compositions that simmer with violence.
  16. Good trippy fun.
  17. In this sentimental feel-good saga of an ultra-wealthy quadriplegic and the petty criminal who becomes his caretaker, the chemistry between the two lead actors goes a considerable way toward elevating the broad-strokes culture clash. That's crucial to a film that is, in essence, a love story.
  18. Here the writer-director's tendency toward the allegorical casts a magical spell with Anderson finding a near perfect balance between the humanism and the surreal that imprints all of his work.
  19. Offers mostly skin-deep snapshots of various men and their grooming habits.
  20. Common sense and basic logic are left at the door; there's a brief creature effect that is laughably, outlandishly awful.
  21. Fortunately, Pajot and Swirsky don't overdo the minutiae (this is a movie even non-gamers can enjoy), offering just enough insight into the creative process to feel enlightening.
  22. Inspired by a documentary, the film is shot with vérité immediacy and beautifully acted by an outstanding ensemble. If not every piece of the puzzle delivers its intended impact, the movie as a whole gets under your skin, and the central characters resonate long after the screen goes dark.
  23. An intriguing and intelligent first effort from indie filmmaker Robbie Pickering, digs deep into the heart of Texas for its soulful tale of small town saints and sinners and a road trip to redemption.
  24. Rather than the engaging enlightenment of the source, the film becomes bloated by confusion.
  25. With its soft jabs at hypocrisy and band-aid use of voiceover narration, Virginia is an excruciatingly slow train wreck.
  26. The Samaritan doesn't wind up feeling like a con, exactly, but it has just enough promise to leave viewers feeling ripped off when it comes up short.
  27. This may sound thrilling, but it's not. Battleship plays ordinary and pedestrian because it's always been a job for hire, never anyone's passion.
  28. Thin, neatly folded, paper-airplane of a movie threatens to nose dive into tweeville.

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