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. Scream
    It's sensational in both senses of the word: a bravura, provocative sendup of horror pictures that's also scary and gruesome yet too swift-moving to lapse into morbidity.
  2. Summer School
    It's no thigh-slapper like the Rodney Dangerfield's "Back to School," but it's exceptionally good-natured and perceptive, and Harmon, in his first starring screen role, is a real charmer. [22 July 1987]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
    It's a nearly pitch-perfect melding of genres, influences and modes of expression--it's the first Mafia movie for the hip-hop age.
  4. Alien
    Twenty-four years later -- digitally spruced up, with some scenes shaved and others padded with previously cut material -- Scott's film still shreds nerves.
  5. Blood Simple
    Blood Simple becomes a dazzling comedie noire, a dynamic, virtuoso display by a couple of talented fledgling filmmakers who give the conventions of the genre such a thorough workout that the result is a movie that's fresh and exhilarating (in the way that Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Diva” was).
  6. Bloody Sunday
    Once positions hardened, tragedy was all but inevitable, and Bloody Sunday" does the spirit of that awful day full and unforgettable justice.
  7. Small Time Crooks
    Handsome as all Allen films are, and it proceeds with the brisk, sophisticated air of throwaway confidence and lack of pretense that we expect from the contemporary master of grown-up comedy.
    • Los Angeles Times
  8. Chicken Run
    Never loses its priceless stamp of individuality. Reduced to its essence, this is a joke told by a person, not a corporation--and that makes all the difference.
  9. Harry Is Here to Help
    Moll, in only his second feature, evokes a sense of foreboding, playing the routine against the unnerving, the humorous against the sinister, with a wit and deftness that might have impressed Hitchcock.
  10. The Agronomist
    Director Demme has done other potent and meaningful films, but The Agronomist defers to none of them in its effectiveness and its power.
  11. Cuban Rafters
    The creators of the magnificent Balseros stayed involved with its subject, a group of Cuban boat people who made it to the United States, for a full seven years. If you put in that kind of time, you witness life happening in front of you in all its compelling, confounding drama. What could be better than that?
  12. Lantana
    A remarkably thoughtful drama, Lantana makes it clear not only how hard to come by any emotional comfort is in this life, but more important, why we can't give up on the struggle.
  13. The War of the Roses
    Biting and vicious, a styptic pencil on the battered face of "civilized divorce." It's also thoughtful, laceratingly funny, and bravely true to its own black-and-blue comic vision. [8 Dec 1989]
    • Los Angeles Times
  14. Monty Python's Life of Brian
    The more things change, the more we have to laugh if we are to have a prayer of remaining sane, and the Pythons are the best possible step in that direction.
  15. The Italian Job
    A fast and furious action-adventure. The film's comedy counts for as much as the clever and risky ways in which Wahlberg and company go after the nasty Norton, who has holed up in a Bel-Air mansion with a world-class security system.
  16. Zoolander
    Exuberant and insidiously funny satire.
  17. Bang Rajan
    The vigorous Bang Rajan moves with a sure sense of direction and authority to its major culminating battle, a singularly savage and wrenching encounter that for all its bloodshed is never exploitative and concludes the film on a resounding note of tragic grandeur.
  18. The Insider
    A dead-on tale of corporate power, courage, cowardice and how we live.
  19. 24 Hour Party People
    Amazing, rich in authentic period atmosphere and detail, an ever-changing cyclorama of a movie.
  20. Raising Victor Vargas
    His film may be something of a beautiful lie, but what's true about Sollett's characters is that their dreams, their grace and their struggles are as real as it gets.
  21. The Vertical Ray of the Sun
    A wholly enveloping experience. Gentle, ravishingly beautiful and awash in everyday sensuality, it so intoxicates you with the elegance and refinement of its filmmaking that even noticing, let alone caring, whether it has a plot starts to seem beside the point.
  22. Spellbound
    At a time when so many in this country are at odds about what represents America at its best, it's refreshing and then some to see a film that everyone can agree is an example of exactly that.
  23. Time Out
    Not just an especially subtle and thoughtful psychological drama, it's a provocative, even an unnerving one as well.
  24. Tom Dowd & the Language of Music
    If there is one moment in The Language of Music that will thrill old rock fans, it's watching Dowd, his fluid hands moving with a surgeon's grace, remix for the film's benefit the 24-track sub-master of "Layla."
  25. Trainspotting
    Exuberant and pitiless, profane yet eloquent, flush with the ability to create laughter out of unspeakable situations, Trainspotting is a drop-dead look at a dead-end lifestyle that has all the strength of its considerable contradictions.
  26. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
    It's sexy, brainy and slightly nuts.
  27. Bus 174
    What results is a thoughtful, analytical yet still emotional film, meticulously investigated and absolutely compelling.
  28. Joy Ride
    Terrific escapist fare, stylish, outrageous and compelling.
  29. The Princess Bride
    It's Patinkin who scores a special triumph. In his role there's a poignant strain of weariness beneath the leaping bravado, a pain under the braggadocio. [25 Sept 1987]
    • Los Angeles Times
  30. Iron Monkey
    If Asian martial arts movies interest you even a little bit, you're going to want to see Iron Monkey. Not only that, you're going to want to see it more than once.
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