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. It's fascinating to see the exceptionally charismatic Fassbender squeeze himself into the role of the aristocratic, restrained Jung, and it's just as enjoyable to see Mortensen bring an unexpected virility to his sybaritic, cigar-chomping Freud.
  2. For all its sharpness, the movie has a very sweet streak.
  3. For all of its punishing pathos, the movie does not have the clean lines and elegance of another cut at crime in this city, "L.A. Confidential" (based on an Ellroy novel). As the day of reckoning approaches, the film spins out of control, careening between convoluted subplots, with the emotional pitch of the piece swinging too wildly.
  4. If this low-budget indie is any indication, the younger Levinson's creative sensibilities appear to be darker than his dad's, the voice clearly his own.
  5. Dazzling panoramas, no matter how impressive, are no substitute for the involving story Happy Feet Two has had to do without.
  6. It's handsome, large-scale escapist fare - and has as its costar the formidable, versatile Kristin Scott Thomas.
  7. Whatever personal risks first-time director Hossein Keshavarz took to make the film, there's little sense of danger in the finished product, which offers snapshots of middle-class Iran but falls flat on the dramatic front.
  8. The rest is an adrenaline ride, but one more wearying than eye-opening.
  9. It is the kind of film that leaves you limp, exhausted and feeling battered by the end. But its wrenching performances make the beating worth weathering.
  10. The film doesn't have nearly the bite - ferocious or delicious - that any self-respecting vampire movie really should. It's as if all the life has drained away.
  11. These profiles are frank, absorbing and heartbreaking, if also a bit inconclusive.
  12. Dzi Croquettes is both a tribute and a terrific entertainment.
  13. Harrowing and unflinching, a savage nightmare so consuming and claustrophobic you will want to leave but fear to go, City of Life and Death is a cinematic experience unlike any you've had before. It's a film strong enough to change your life, if you can bear to watch it at all.
  14. 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.
  15. If all you know about Peter Gatien going in to Limelight is that he is a nightclub owner with legal issues, that's about all you'll know coming out.
  16. Killing Bono whips up a frenzied mix of musical jealousy, wishful stardom and farcical lucklessness into a movie too slippery to hold onto.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A youth culture backdropped by the crumbling edge of California is rendered with punk rock energy and grace.
  17. That the plot is the problem comes as something of a surprise given Monahan's pedigree. The well-regarded screenwriter ("Body of Lies," "Kingdom of Heaven") won an Oscar for the deliciously conflicted cops and crime twister of 2006's "The Departed."
  18. If only 11-11-11 had arrived a little closer to Thanksgiving - the turkey connection would have been entirely appropriate.
  19. A smart, involving and strikingly adult drama about Sarkozy's rise to power.
  20. After a grating start, the movie, directed by Peter Odiorne from a script by Gail Gilchriest ("My Dog Skip"), finds its way into warmer, more likable territory. That is, until it flies off the rails in a third act so devoid of logic it could have been concocted on the moon.
  21. In the wake of "Bridesmaids," Sandler's lipsticked tomfoolery - and inability to share the screen with genuinely funny women - feels particularly regressive and stale. Both movies have diarrhea gags, but only one feels defined by such humor.
  22. I realize that making Immortals immortal was way too much to ask, but frankly, just a shade more plausible, not to mention pleasurable, would have been nice.
  23. Firmly rooted in the filmmaker's esoteric, frustrating, provoking, demanding narrative style, the movie is also amazingly romantic - lush, ripe, rich, delicious.
  24. What is missing is something new - clarity, insight, outrage. Instead, its understatement is ultimately its undoing.
  25. J. Edgar is a somber, enigmatic, darkly fascinating tale, and how could it be otherwise?
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For how well this finely crafted work captures the pressures of inner-city poverty, single-parent families and abusive relationships, one of its strengths lies in its ability to also gracefully locate the drama in filling out a college application.
  26. Janie Jones is ultimately its own uneven tune, a mixture of discordant notes and way-too-familiar chords.
  27. Winds up feeling scattershot and unfocused. Rather than capturing punk brattiness maturing into wary adulthood, director Andrea Blaugrund Nevins might have been better off simply making a film solely about Lindberg.
  28. Instead of underplaying the story's escalating tempestuousness it pushes it over the top; time and again the film begins to catch fire only to be doused in silliness.

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