Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,522 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:
  1. Positive: 8,697 out of 16522
  2. Mixed: 5,808 out of 16522
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16522
16522 movie reviews
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  1. Frances Ha
    Effortless and effervescent, Frances Ha is a small miracle of a movie, honest and funny with an aim that's true.
  2. Socrates
    The writing by the director and co-scribe Thayná Mantesso is deft and pithy, and there’s a rawness of spirit in both the stellar central performance and the film’s social realist aesthetic.
  3. C'mon C'mon
    If its rueful, midlife nostalgia doesn’t carry quite the same current of vibrant, urgent empathy as “20th Century Women” or “Beginners,” the small, polished pebbles of wisdom it unearths are still a pleasure to observe as they’re sent skimming across the surface of a delicate, compassionate film.
  4. Hunger
    The first-time director's unflinching camera, deliberate pacing and maddeningly long takes just amplify the story's innate harshness and test audience endurance levels.
  5. Howl's Moving Castle
    Parse it any way you like, Miyazaki's gifts as an animator place him in a category of his own. To see his latest film is to be somehow reminded of Italians who could hear Verdi's operas as soon as they were sung or English readers who could experience the novels of Dickens episode by episode.
  6. Cold Comfort Farm
    It's been brought to the screen by director John Schlesinger and writer Malcolm Bradbury with such deftness, giving it a life of its own, that it's not necessary for audiences to be familiar with the literature it satirizes.
  7. In the Family
    Deliberate and marked by uncommon grace, In The Family manages to feel politically and culturally acute without ever resorting to melodrama, or having to wave banners for issues or causes, except perhaps in its quiet way for a renewed humanism in movies and a return to stories about everyday lives.
  8. Burn
    Vividly captures a year in the life of eastside Detroit's Engine Company 50.
  9. A Hijacking
    A Hijacking is as lean, focused and to the point as its title.
  10. Black Box Diaries
    The result is a tough, harrowing work of self-portraiture in which it’s Ito’s own journalistic tenacity, as much as her personal determination and outrage, that leads her to go public with her story, despite enormous pressure to do the opposite.
  11. Crimson Gold
    Through everyday actions and gestures -- in Hussein's awkward exchanges with other people, in his tender fumbling of his fiancée's purse -- Panahi shows a man for whom life has become increasingly arduous, alien. The filmmaker captures, in other words, what Bresson called "the force in the air before the storm."
  12. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
    An undeniably shattering story, if forgivably shaky in its impassioned, therapeutic unfolding.
  13. Anvil! The Story of Anvil
    You may never have expected to see the words heavy metal, endearing and warmhearted in the same sentence, but you just did.
  14. The Trip
    Coogan and Brydon are either quite brilliant at this or just serving up slight variations of their very witty selves. Either way, their travels and squabbles are great fun to watch, the countryside is bucolic, the food mouthwatering. You just wouldn't want to go on a real road trip with them.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Marty
    Marty is a must-see picture. [11 Jan 1956, p.6]
    • Los Angeles Times
  16. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
    Azkaban breaks free of all these shackles in its final hour. Working with the persuasive Thewlis and Oldman, able to focus his gifts on what's distinctive, dramatic and surprising about the story, Cuarón creates on screen the heartfelt magic that has enthralled so many on the page.
  17. La Promesse (The Promise)
    The conflicts involved are intense and absorbing, proving that compelling moral dilemmas make for the most dramatic cinema.
  18. Michael Clayton
    A smart and suspenseful legal thriller that comes completely alive on-screen.
  19. Levitated Mass
    Well-directed with exceptional access by veteran documentarian Doug Pray, whose previous films include "Hype!," "Scratch" and "Art & Copy," Levitated Mass in essence intercuts three stories, each of which is more unexpected than one might imagine.
  20. Downfall
    The reality it confronts is so gripping, we cannot turn away. This may not be the most sophisticated retelling of what happened while Berlin burned, but what a story it is.
  21. Knives Out
    This is, to be sure, a riotously funny movie — a priceless collection of puns, insults, one-liners and some of the best-timed barf gags this side of “Problem Child 2” — but it also treats the classical detective story with the seriousness and grandeur it deserves.
  22. The Spectacular Now
    Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, as high school seniors Sutter and Aimee, bring such an authentic face of confidence and questioning, indifference and need, pain and denial, friendship and first love, that it will take you back to that time if you're no longer there, and light a path if you are.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Man Godfrey
    Anyone who loves a classic 1930s-style screwball comedy should check out My Man Godfrey. [25 Feb 1999, p.F16]
    • Los Angeles Times
  24. Face/Off
    In its best moments, Face/Off practically mainlines fury, leaving audiences no time to think or even breathe.
  25. Angels Are Made of Light
    What is life like on the ground for ordinary people in another culture, another world? That’s been the bread and butter of observational documentaries for forever, but almost never is it done with the kind of beauty and grace filmmaker James Longley brings to his Afghanistan-set Angels Are Made of Light.
  26. Let the Right One In
    In this sinister but gorgeous and compelling film by director Tomas Alfredson, being human and acting human don't always go together.
  27. Rams
    Rams is so much its own film that figuring out where its unusual, unpredictable plot will end up is difficult if not impossible.
  28. Big Words
    Drumming is able to swing from lighter comedic moments to dramatic insights while making it seem effortless.
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