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 is sweet but not saccharine, an intimate film that doesn't stint on the desperation and anxiety that go along with the search for love.
  2. The Irish-pretty Cyrus exudes a goofball vitality and sunny work ethic that ultimately wins you over, despite the slickness of her vehicle. The 3-D camera throws drumsticks and confetti in our faces, but the technical effects seem superfluous to the star's bona-fide energy.
  3. For what is essentially a screwball comedy, Over Her Dead Body is surprisingly uninspired, a frothy concept that offers little satisfaction in the way of execution.
  4. Despite the presence of funny guys such as Zahn, Garlin, Justin Long and Jonah Hill, along with veteran character actors Ernest Borgnine, Joe Don Baker and Robert Patrick, the movie fails to be even passably funny.
  5. The tone of The Witnesses is one of randomness. This makes for an ambling narrative, but an atmospheric one that feels authentic despite its unlikely character pairings.
  6. Moved to take charge by something like chivalry, Rambo hits his stride in the film's second half, meting out justice in an unjust world and ultimately the movie works best when warbling its out-of-tune greatest hits.
  7. If Dick Wolf is interested in doing a "Law & Order: Cyber Crimes," he could do worse than to follow the lead of Untraceable, a diverting police procedural about an FBI unit tasked with sleuthing the Internet for mouse-wielding bad guys.
  8. A stew of cheap irony, ponderous but meaningless allegory, violence and pretension, the movie is all borrowed style and calculated pandering. It does, however, get more ludicrous by the minute. So in that sense, it's good for an occasional laugh.
  9. What Teixeira has set out to do, and accomplished brilliantly, is to find drama and pathos in the mundane details, thoughtless betrayals and casual cruelties. What lingers after watching Alice's House are not the moments of conflict but the inexorable rhythms of daily life.
  10. This is a film with a commitment to reality unlike any we're used to seeing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For this longtime U2 fan, the U2 3D experience wasn't quite sensual enough, but to quote another Bono lyric, others may find it "even better than the real thing."
  11. For director Lou Ye, who also co-wrote the script and was a student in Beijing during that crucial year, Summer Palace is the story of his particular lost generation, a story he felt so deeply about he risked his career to tell it. Search out this vivid film in a theater. Don't let the sacrifices he made be in vain.
  12. Campy, shameless and sophisticated, Lichtenstein's debut is gutsy and original, and it makes "Juno" look positively tame by comparison.
  13. An uninspired if perfectly watchable drama.
  14. Adept at wringing maximum suspense and might have reached the heights of the Korean monster film "The Host" but for the limitations of the camcorder ploy. While it injects the film with a run-and-gun urgency, the device grows tiresome and ultimately leaves the film shortchanged.
  15. Keaton and Ted Danson, who plays her husband, Don, are the comedic bright spot in the movie, not least because they are ridiculous.
  16. 27 Dresses dutifully privileges its formulaic plot over its stick-figure characters, slapping a happy ending on a setup that, say, "Happiness" director Todd Solondz could have gone to town on.
  17. As viewers of his Enron film will testify, Gibney is a scrupulous director, and Taxi to the Dark Side is filled with detailed factual information.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Its convictionless competence is merely dull, denying the pleasures of an outright howler without providing much else.
  18. Pirates relies more on classical and pop culture-driven references to deliver its worthwhile message.
  19. This unflinchingly shot picture is not for the squeamish. Epstein and Lake's own commitment to you-are-there realism is remarkable as well, each bringing new meaning to the phrase "naked truth."
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    "Killing" never moves past a superficial understanding of its subject, whose transcribed ramblings may not be the best key to unlocking his fractured mind. The movie gets inside Chapman's head but never under his skin.
  20. Music may be Honeydripper's most indelible element and Sayles and longtime collaborator, composer Mason Daring, seamlessly incorporate several original songs alongside the soundtrack's period tunes.
  21. An unexpectedly poignant ghost story.
  22. It's important to remember that Sinclair was as much a committed socialist as a novelist, someone who probably wrote for political purpose more than for dramatic effect. So while Day-Lewis' gorgeous acting largely disguises it, the people in "Blood" tend to be schematic and the film as a whole has a weakness for the didactic.
  23. Aliens vs. Predator -- Requiem simply exists, nodding to the continuity of the larger series and opening the door for, yes, another entry in the franchise. In Hollywood as in outer space, spawn begets spawn.
  24. A familiar story set in an unfamiliar context, it's a paean to the universality of human experience, a testament to the endurance of individuality during great political and fanatical upheaval, and a reminder that even the most complex situations, identities and stories are heartbreakingly simple.
  25. Freeman and Nicholson make the most of Justin Zackham's script, but there just isn't enough substance behind their characters to prop up the carpe diem platitudes. The result is a semi-comedic, geriatric "Brokeback Mountain" minus the sex and with a Himalayan summit.
  26. Because it is so old-school Hollywood, with a weakness for standard moments and pat situations, The Great Debaters initially comes off as easily dismissible. Largely saving it from that fate is the presence and ability of Denzel Washington, who costars with Forest Whitaker and directs from Robert Eisele's script.
  27. An enchanting tale of friendship and evolvingrelationships, The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep" engagingly grafts coming-of-age movie chestnuts onto Scottish folklore.

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