Los Angeles Times' Scores

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:
16526 movie reviews
  1. Wuershan's heavy hand, never letting up for a moment to allow any air or life to enter the film, cuts off the film's energy even as it rattles relentlessly on.
  2. After the sharp bite and harsh light of most American-style guy-based funny films today, Paul comes as such sweet relief.
  3. Pure pleasure to experience. Written and directed by Tom McCarthy with an impeccable feel for off-center human comedy at its funniest and most heartfelt, its low-key qualities are so relaxed and unforced every moment feels like a gift.
  4. Smart isn't all it's cracked up to be and soon the movie is unraveling faster than all of Eddie's grand schemes.
  5. A sort of middle-aged "Before Sunrise" unfolds, meandering and talky. But from the get-go these characters' colloquy is a mutual provocation, not a romantic seduction.
  6. What lifts the film above its dubious boilerplate assemblage of talking heads and archival images is Shadyac himself. With his gentle, self-mocking humor, he comes across as an exceptionally mellow, earnest and likable guy.
  7. The structure, sliding between memories evoked by objects in the house and the common difficulties of moving day, should play with more elegance than it does. Instead, it feels awkward and frequently - as does the film on the whole - too on the nose, too obvious.
  8. Elektra Luxx has a playful, breezy sexiness that gives the world of the film, porn biz and all, a refreshing innocence.
  9. With Fassbender's charisma igniting his costar as well as himself, these sparring interchanges, both captivating and entertaining, are where this Jane Eyre finally catches fire.
  10. This fresh, highly original film, inspired by Oliveira's substantially different, never-filmed 1952 script, has been made with the greatest of ease and simplicity and with drollery and wit, yet its underlying impact is profoundly spiritual.
  11. There's undeniable beauty too in much of the imagery in this ambitious first film, but if its gutsy, handmade aesthetic makes it unfashionable among American indies, the undernourished narrative puts it on common ground with many of its digital cousins.
  12. More than anything, this is an intelligent audience picture, a solid and engrossing piece of old-school filmmaking, both humane and character driven, in which the various protagonists learn something - not too much and not too easily - about the nature of their lives.
  13. Instead of breathing life into cartoonist Berkeley Breathed's cheeky kids morality tale, the movie - with all its 3-D motion capture animation flash - flatlines.
  14. Gorgeously shot, smartly conceived, cleverly cast, badly executed - the lush medieval beauty here is at best only skin deep.
  15. The city's skyline is blown to bits. Burning, broken, blackened bits. So if that's what you're in the mood for, that is what the film delivers, endlessly, but in that cheesy-campy way that can make a bad movie good fun.
  16. There are risky plot choices all along the way, but the risks are what keeps the pot boiling as the complexities of the relationship triangle heat up and cool down.
  17. Beautiful and melodic as well as pointedly political.
  18. There is all the violent mayhem, for certain, but the thing that sets I Saw the Devil apart is its undercurrent of real emotion and how unrelentingly sad it can be.
  19. What is clear is that this is a director with a great sense of the magical and the mystical residing in the everyday.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Treating their problems like they're the most important crises in the world is what people in their 20s do, but that doesn't mean we have to go along for the ride.
  20. Verbinski's greatest triumph is that he allowed the animation to free rather that confine him. There is indeed a new sheriff in town, with Rango destined to become a classic.
  21. Overall Take Me Home Tonight represents a lateral move at best for its 24-hour party people, a step back at worst, and not worth your time either way.
  22. What results, against some odds, is an intriguing entertainment. Adjustment Bureau's central concept is certainly ingenious, but the details are a little wonky and don't stand up to too much scrutiny.
  23. The movie achieves its own nervy sensitivity about youthful urban despair.
  24. The idea of transformation, that people can change and learn from their mistakes, growing to be better, makes Beastly not just sweetly romantic but also quietly hopeful.
  25. Fun for fans and a healthy primer for those previously unaware, the film's overall air of fawning worship makes it feel softer than befits such a gruff, roguish figure.
  26. It all hangs together, more or less, which seems like enough.
  27. An unexpectedly rich exploration of family bonds, blood rituals and the oftentimes zombie-like desire to assume the roles proscribed to each of us, played out with a sharp undertow of political allegory and darkly comic sensibility.
  28. Brotherhood isn't badly acted or without some skillfully tense moments, but it doesn't have much in the way of entertainment value either.
  29. The Grace Card becomes increasingly involving and assured, yet when the inevitable moment of truth arrives for the coming-apart Mac, the film lapses into melodrama, contrivance and improbability.

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