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. A story peopled by flawed archetypes, it's an achingly funny film that is also a little sad around the edges.
  2. There's a lot that remains unclear about the powers and abilities of the creatures in Skinwalkers, largely robbing the film of tension as events transpire in a slapdash, haphazard manner.
  3. The bones of something more interesting are there -- how people come to mentally and emotionally define themselves and the ways in which they often need to realign those beliefs -- but Yeung can never reconcile his impulses toward humor and human conflict, so things tend to sputter about, feeling disconnected and episodic.
  4. 2 Days in Paris is pure Julie Delpy, figuratively and otherwise. Since first becoming known to American audiences in the early '90s, she's revealed herself to be an artist of sundry and unexpected talents, with a distinctive voice and point of view.
  5. Depending on your revenge story preferences, the brutally pretentious Descent is either a payback flick with an agonizingly formless middle, or a soul-darkening head trip bracketed by a crude vengeance tale. Mostly, though, it's indie provocation trapped between shock and blah.
  6. There's precious little that is fresh or new about the movie.
  7. Floating in on an airy breeze of dreams and true love, the lively adventure-romance Stardust offers that elusive quality summer movies are supposed to possess but rarely do -- total escape.
  8. Moody, mannered and supremely irritating, Christophe Honoré's Dans Paris plays like a pastiche of French cinema clichés through the ages.
  9. It says something about Paul Greengrass' directing style that he's able to make a movie as fresh and frank as The Bourne Ultimatum from a genre as moldy and bombastic as the spy thriller.
  10. David Wain, director of "Wet Hot American Summer," brings his popular brand of surrealist yet mundane humor to the big screen with more or less dreadful results.
  11. It's neither very original nor very convincing. "Shakespeare in Love" did something similar by casting its writer protagonist as the hero of a story he himself might have written, but Becoming Jane lacks that movie's wit and playfulness.
  12. Blame It on Fidel is the thoroughly engaging, clear-eyed and charming story of a little girl grappling with the domestic fallout of tumultuous political times.
  13. It's a movie on the wrong side side of the so-bad-it's-good line.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A cheekily fun sendup of Gen X iconography.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    There's murder, deception, cruel twists and plenty of scenes at night in If I Didn't Care, but writer-directors Benjamin and Orson Cummings lack the fatalistic glue of true film noir to hold it all in place.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Director Frederik Du Chau's big-screen Underdog has all of the cartoons' crudeness and none of their charm. It's the celluloid equivalent of sugar cereal: cheap, empty and headache-inducing.
  14. Exposes director Khan's stage roots -- he has no feel for the close-up, although his use of the frame itself, and negative space, is occasionally thrilling.
  15. As Ruscio piles it on, he gets himself further and further away from any sense of genuine emotional truth.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The result, narrated in a grave monotone by Campbell Scott, is a catalog of horrors so absurd and relentless it verges on farce, or Greek tragedy.
  16. The movie feels stubbornly, resolutely disingenuous and one-dimensional. Everything in it isdesigned to make you feel better, so why does it feel artificial and palliative in that really depressing way?
  17. In some ways, it reminded me of the final "Seinfeld" episode. As much as I laughed throughout, I kept wondering what was with all the emotional lessons.
  18. The writer-director brilliantly juxtaposes the personal and the political, bookending a stirring coming-of-age drama with the provocative opening and an equally affecting end sequence.
  19. Reinforcing the adage that looks aren't everything, the live-action animal drama Arctic Tale arrives in an impressive visual package and even boasts a timely message, but its undistinguished storytelling is a big letdown.
  20. Writer-director Sean Ellis more-or-less successfully expands his Academy Award-nominated 18-minute short to full length, showcasing his talented young cast to good effect.
  21. Lavish production and wardrobe design, as well as beautiful cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe make Goya's Ghosts lovely to look at, but as a portrait of the artist, the movie is a letdown.
  22. What it offers isn't really a nostalgic look at a "more innocent time" so much as a saucy wink at a casually vicious time that is constantly being sold to us as innocent.
  23. Fails to deliver on its main promise of big laughs, which is the film's truly unforgivable sin.
  24. For though it can't maintain its momentum all the way to the end, Sunshine until it stumbles is gratifyingly far from the usual space-opera stuff.
  25. What Live-in Maid offers is a pitch-perfect observation of life on a continent where forms are adhered to, distances aren't really kept, and your best friend is the person who knows to pour the cheap domestic whiskey into the empty bottle of imported stuff before your bridge buddies show up to judge you.
  26. For a film that unfolds mostly in a single location, Interview manages not to feel like a stage piece. But the premise, which may have worked in Holland, gets a little lost in the American translation.

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