Los Angeles Times' Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 8,706 out of 16536
  2. Mixed: 5,813 out of 16536
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16536
16536 movie reviews
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  1. Rails & Ties
    As lovely as some of the footage looks and as committed as are the three lead performances, they serve only to make Rails & Ties play like an exceptionally well-acted and well-made Lifetime movie.
  2. Slipstream
    Taking a cue from David Lynch, Hopkins fractures the narrative from the first frame, but unlike Lynch he doesn't go far enough in establishing a context from which to deviate. If the story fragments we're watching spring from the same mind, in other words, it's not obvious.
  3. Mr. Untouchable
    A slick package all around. Adroitly edited, filled with fine music like Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman" and more people flashing needles than at a garment worker's convention, this film is less a dispassionate examination than a celebratory infomercial on its central character.
  4. 30 Days of Night
    The movie thus moves from truly creepy to truly inane, which is, unfortunately, all too common in films of this ilk.
  5. The Comebacks
    You'll be goaded throughout The Comebacks to think of "Bend It Like Beckham," "Remember the Titans," "Rudy," "Hoosiers," "Field of Dreams" and their ilk. What you also think about is how much this stuff worked better in "Airplane!" or "Blazing Saddles."
  6. Gone Baby Gone
    By and large a notable piece of work, a strong directing debut by actor Ben Affleck that highlights attention-getting performances...But, as adapted from the novel by Dennis Lehane, this brooding, somber film is also ragged around the edges and not without problematic aspects.
  7. Rendition
    Rendition offers few surprises, and it tips its hand too soon and too predictably to do much more than goose your weary outrage.
  8. Reservation Road
    Neither involving as a study in grief nor compelling as a thriller about conscience, the cat-and-mouse tragedy Reservation Road is a misery windup so schematic and obvious it reduces its crisis-stricken characters to little more than emotional bumper cars.
  9. Things We Lost in the Fire
    Things are sporadically troublesome about the film. The story goes in and out of being self-consciously earnest and ponderous, a situation that numerous tight close-ups of people's eyes does nothing to help.
  10. Wristcutters: A Love Story
    It's borderline parody of a kind of fey filmmaking popular at crunchy-granola festivals, but the counterfeit aesthetic is ultimately outshone by the life-affirming message.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Meeting Resistance
    Meeting Resistance in theory should have been a revealing documentary. In truth, however, the measures taken to protect the informants' identities dilute the potency of their statements and diminish the film's efficacy as a historical document.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Canvas
    A sincere, slow-paced drama about a Florida family dealing with schizophrenia, Canvas is never terribly convincing, despite being inspired by writer-director Joseph Greco's life growing up with a mentally ill mother.
  13. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
    Gives new meaning to "costume drama" in that it is a drama primarily about costumes. But the drama is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the temple.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Final Season
    In a movie where the timing of a squeeze bunt is presented as the thing of beauty that it is, and the eradication of small-town culture in a changing world is a genuine concern, the simplifying countrified morality of The Final Season is the real crying shame.
  15. Lars and the Real Girl
    The creators of this film were fiercely determined not to go so much as a millimeter over the line into sentiment, tawdriness or mockery. It's the rare film that is the best possible version of itself, but "Lars" fits that bill.
  16. Sleuth
    Language this lethal has all but disappeared from the movies, and it's an unmitigated pleasure to observe Caine and Law attack it with such ferocity. Sleuth is nasty fun.
  17. Terror's Advocate
    It is the gift of Terror's Advocate, Barbet Schroeder's riveting new documentary, to simply present Vergès as is, to say "here is the man" and let things speak for themselves. Do they ever.
  18. We Own the Night
    It's a bare-knuckled crime drama set in 1988 that stylistically could have been made that year and emphasizes Gray's strengths as a director while drawing attention to his limitations as a writer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    King Corn
    King Corn is entertaining enough, but it's also a moral, crucially skeptical road trip down the food chain.
  20. Control
    Control keeps you riveted in ways that "24 Hour Party People" doesn't, primarily because of the investment of craft and conviction by all concerned.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Golda's Balcony
    Harper and Golda's Balcony generate tremendous influence and timeless meaning.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee
    Only intermittently funny at best, but mostly full of dead air, the film is a let-down on both fronts.
  23. The Good Night
    The Good Night has flashes of bookish wit but never quite recovers from the metronomic monotony of its first half, which ticktocks between scenes of Paltrow braying and Cruz voguing.
  24. The Heartbreak Kid
    A grim, shrill, deluded and incredibly depressing movie, so bewilderingly mean-spirited that the trademark Farrelly Brothers gross-out scenes feel like the sweetest.
  25. Michael Clayton
    A smart and suspenseful legal thriller that comes completely alive on-screen.
  26. My Kid Could Paint That
    The longer it goes, the more frustrating it becomes, as Bar Lev declines to come down on one side or the other.
  27. The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising
    Dreary, spectacle-driven adaptation.
  28. Strange Culture
    As sad as it is to realize that youth activism in this country is dead, it's sadder still to find yourself agreeing that they have a point. Just look at what happened to Kurtz.
  29. Kurt Cobain About a Son
    There's nothing particularly revelatory about the interviews recorded over a two-month span, but there's an intimate quality that gives the impression you're listening to a private conversation, which, in a sense, you are.
  30. The Darjeeling Limited
    The India of the movie is more an idea than a reality...Exotic, spiritual and, according to Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), "spicy"-smelling, it's a magical mystery place where wayward foreigners can go to get their souls back on track.
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