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. It's billed as an environmental horror story, but The Last Winter bears all the hallmarks of an ever-popular genre that has always pitted science, technology and reason against emotion, awe and nature. It bears all the hallmarks of the gothic: ghosts, death, alienated sexuality, decay, secrets, madness and, of course, awe and trepidation in the face of the sublime power of nature.
  2. Sydney White is a carnival of ethnic and social stereotypes that are rising up against the lily-white status quo. In Hollywood, blond princesses and fairy tales die hard.
  3. A film whose reach exceeds its grasp. Hugely ambitious and not without moments of success, this indulgent 2 hour and 40 minute epic ends up as unwieldy as its elongated title. It's a movie in love with itself, and few things are more fatal than that.
  4. Swicord has a playful sense of humor and a good ear for dialogue, and the movie pleasantly accomplishes what it set out to accomplish.
  5. A refreshingly gentle treatment of familiar themes such as the inevitability of change, the dashing of youthful illusions and mutability of family. Enhanced by an exotic locale, the movie overcomes a well-trodden narrative path and unflinchingly brandishes its sentimentality as it stakes out its crowd-pleasing territory.
  6. Fluent in the laughable dialogue of a million bad fantasy flicks:
  7. Expertly realized and gunmetal slick, Eastern Promises whirs along with perfect efficiency, but doesn't stir much in the way of visceral horror despite its penchant for treating the human body like a chicken carcass on a block. (Squeamishness, yes.)
  8. The characters in this somber film have the glum look of individuals delivering a Very Important Message to the world. And though this film in fact does have something crucial to convey, this is not the way to go about it.
  9. This round-robin of marital malaise has a lot more integrity than one might anticipate from its meet-cute beginnings.
  10. The strange, funny and sad story of a bipolar jazz musician and his long-suffering teenage daughter, reunited after his two-year stay in a mental institution.
  11. A movie that commits sins of excess, except regarding Thornton. There's not nearly enough of him.
  12. Though the film aspires to the epic with pretensions of deeper philosophical meaning, it ultimately settles for being the "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" of historical romances.
  13. Trapped in a no man's land between seriousness and pulp trash, it plays like a combination of "Death Wish" and "The Hours." If that sounds like an awkward fit, it is.
  14. A surprisingly vast and involving topic.
  15. Enthusiastically received at Sundance, "Great World" is an intriguing look at our obsession with being successful and famous.
  16. There are enough reasons to avoid this oh-so-wacky comedy as it meanders from piney Georgia to Port Arthur, Texas, to Monument Valley, Utah, and they include Gourley's sense of direction.
  17. James Mangold directs it with such energy and passion that it's as if he didn't know it's all been done before.
  18. Dunne and Wittenborn, who adapted his book, work too hard at stressing just how ruthless the unspoken standards of the stinking rich can be, leading to a story-pivoting act of brutality toward Finn that careens the movie into a tonal wilderness that it never recovers from.
  19. Even after appropriately lowering expectations, it's kind to call this one a cut below.
  20. The riveting documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, is an unexpected knockout.
  21. Enthusiastically smutty and lyrical, the movie attempts to capture the way we unconsciously set the emotional moments of our lives to pop music, turning fits of passion, anger and righteous indignation into elaborate musical numbers in our heads.
  22. The presence of the two actors and the film's mordant sense of humor buoy the downtime between bloodbaths and genre fans may find enough to love here.
  23. It's only when The Bubble takes a swift turn into domino-tipping tragedy in the final act that a tender, fraught love story feels casually discarded in favor of something psychologically pat and ham-fistedly earth-shattering.
  24. Black comedy becomes funnier as the action becomes darker and more perilous, but The Hunting Party fails to locate the absurdity in the central situations and goes for midget jokes instead. In the end, you're not sure if you're supposed to be watching "The Three Amigos" or "Hotel Rwanda."
  25. It's doubtful Milarepa will be opening in Beijing any time soon; all the more reason it deserves a look.
  26. Where Verhoeven loses his way is when he allows himself to sink into a seemingly endless recounting of atrocities, getting away from the main moral and philosophical questions his film brings up so provocatively.
  27. James and Beth have fun in a grocery store pretending to be different characters meeting in the aisles. As they learn, sometimes the moment works, sometimes it doesn't. The same can be said for this unfailingly modest film.
  28. While there is the requisite amount of shorn limbs and splashing blood one might expect from the director of "Saw," Wan should be saluted for putting the coup de grâce off-screen.
  29. An uneven coming-of-age comedy.
  30. Rather than come across as fantastic or dreamlike, the stories have a vivid, hyperreal quality to them.

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