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. Price keeps the humor believably shallow and the movie from getting too far from the aim of chronicling an exclusivity junkie's fall.
  2. Del Toro is almost alone in his ability to re-create on screen the wide-eyed exhilaration and disturbing grotesqueness that is the legacy of reading comics on the page.
  3. Ultimately, Journey to the Center of the Earth's minor-league visual pleasures will be most enjoyed by those with the smallest number of celluloid reference points, preferably those who have started going to the movies after "Jurassic Park" or, better yet, the Harry Potter films.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pays lip service to the joys of exploring new worlds, but it never steps off the tour bus.
  4. Though the film could've used more technical insight into Pearl's artistic process, it's hard not to be stirred by this hopeful portrait.
  5. Any film that uses the Stooges' drone-y song "We Will Fall" to underscore a drug-love scene can't be all bad, but they, as apparently does Uschi, deserve better than this.
  6. Although competently acted and directed, lacks a fresh point of view and its people lack individuality.
  7. Far more diverting and well crafted than its promotion-free release campaign might suggest. Then again, for a film largely based on the notion that "nothing is what it seems," such lowered expectations may actually work in its favor.
  8. An intelligent adult drama that's especially relevant in these harsh economic times.
  9. Burstyn gets to use her full bag of tricks to bring this crabby, hard-knocks survivor to life. Though she's aged 15 unflattering years, forced into awful old lady clothes and her character teeters on unsympathetic, the actress manages a rich, vanity-free performance, perhaps her best since "Requiem for a Dream."
  10. Where "Superbad" found something raucously winning in hanging with adolescence's loser elite, Harold is a disingenuous, one-note underdog portrait.
  11. Instead of pushing for tough answers to difficult questions, this film is content to mythologize Thompson's bad-boy behavior, celebrating things like his willingness to drink a bottle of bourbon a day and go hunting with a submachine gun.
  12. Director Rosser Goodman makes the crucial decisions facing Trevor suspenseful and involving -- and tinged with humor as well as pathos.
  13. A dark piece of whimsy that enchants and befuddles in equal measure.
  14. All of the actors convey the ebullience of old friends convening for an on-the-cheap reunion. The shared good spirits result in a diminutive comedy with a bounty of charm and shrewd humor.
  15. Emulating its hero's recklessly independent spirit, The Wackness aspires to be something more than your average psychiatrist-bashing, dysfunctional-parents coming-of-age dramedy à la "Running With Scissors." It snows us with more visual flash than it knows what to do with.
    • Los Angeles Times
  16. Author Coben, who says he is a fan of "stories that move you, that grab hold of your heart and do not let it go," has gotten a film that does exactly that.
  17. It's a strange feeling to see the summer's most promising premise self-destruct into something bizarre and unsatisfying, but that is the Hancock experience.
  18. The problem comes largely in the conception of the hooker-niece character, Amanda, played by Brittany Snow. Tolan never quite figures out whether she is supposed to be a variation on the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold or a genuinely troubled teen.
  19. Daring and traditional, groundbreaking and familiar, apocalyptic and sentimental, Wall-E gains strength from embracing contradictions that would destroy other films.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wanted's hyperkinetic antics are sometimes weighed down by a surfeit of adolescent misanthropy. But the adrenaline-overdose strategy works for viewers as well as hit men. As long as Bekmambetov keeps the pedal to the metal, you don't notice the rotten scenery outside.
  20. It's sure to satisfy the film's target youth audience's appetite for zippy visuals and swift pacing.
  21. An unconventional film about an unconventional man. Part documentary, part expertly staged readings, it focuses on the unquiet life and unforgettable words of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, someone who, as his son puts it, never had to go looking for trouble because it always came to him.
  22. The film may be fearlessly sentimental, but it is sturdy enough to provide rewarding major roles for two veterans, who are of an age when such starring parts are rare.
  23. The Catherine Breillat-directed period piece is an extreme cinematic pleasure, a well-told yarn of merciless desire.
  24. This is the kind of movie in which characters revere poetry, yet hardly anything about the writing (it's based on a stage play by Joseph O'Connor) or directing (by Tamar Simon Hoffs) qualifies as poetic.
  25. Get Smart neglects the laughs and amps up the action, resulting in a not very funny comedy joined at the hip to a not very exciting spy movie. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.
  26. The film's sunniest moments occur whenever song preempts all the fighting and smirking. Myers leads the cast in sitar-accompanied covers of such Bollywood favorites as "9 to 5" and Steve Miller's "The Joker," revealing a glimmer of the cross-cultural romp that could have been.
  27. Brick Lane has been whittled down from Monica Ali's expansive 2003 novel into a glossy but overly efficient drama that, like Nazneen's husband, is ultimately too ineffectual to make much of a dent.
  28. This can be strong stuff for kids, but the film's humanistic approach preaches tolerance and hope.

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