Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 16,533 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:
16533 movie reviews
  1. The kind of shrewd, genial comedy it provides doesn't intend to break new ground, but its traditional satisfactions are so effectively done and so long in coming our way that to see it is to realize just how hungry we've been for this kind of old-fashioned treat.
  2. Nothing much happens by way of plot in the course of Father and Son, but it offers a fresh and often startling vision of one of the most fundamental relationships between human beings.
  3. Entertainment like this is too hard to find to second-guess for too long.
  4. As entertainment, the movie is a mixed bag. Some of the talking heads become just that after a while.
  5. Mean-spirited vulgarity and homosexual panic.
  6. There's a naturalness to the entire cast, yet there is considerable depth to the portrayals, and the interplay between the characters is exceptionally rich and nuanced.
  7. Knoxville is surprisingly good playing a man who may have been in one too many barroom brawls, moving with a hunched, hips-forward swagger that suggests someone constantly walking through very low doorways.
  8. Sails along on a slipstream of pleasant scenery, amusing incident and the boundless charms of its appealing leading men, Jackie Chan and Steve Coogan: It's an unexpectedly buoyant spectacular.
  9. A thoughtful look backward, a summing up that attempts to understand what is ephemeral and what truly lasts, what it is that matters in the final analysis.
  10. The film stands up well to the inevitable comparisons to "Spellbound," a riveting documentary about young spelling bee contestants.
  11. Severely marred by a plot device so ludicrous it turns a serious drama into something silly.
  12. Moving and invaluable.
  13. Not since John Travolta sprouted a head of dreadlocks and strapped on platform boots for "Battlefield Earth" has cinematic science fiction been such good-bad fun as in The Chronicles of Riddick.
  14. It was somebody's nitwit idea to rip out the story's guts and brains for a sour sellout of a finale -- which finds the filmmakers behaving exactly like Stepford men and turning an original into a dummy.
  15. Bill Murray completists, tots under 5 and their unfortunate chaperons are the only ones who need experience the soulless excuse for an entertainment called Garfield: The Movie.
  16. It's a simple collection of sight gags and pratfalls that mines the overly familiar turf of awkward adolescence without bringing anything truly original to the experience.
  17. Diaz has said that she hopes the film asks the right questions. But it seems, in this case, that the questions are leading - and rightly so. Marcos is given all the tape she needs to hang herself.
  18. "Weeping" is a simple tale of animal estrangement and reconciliation that in its own quiet way manages to be soothing, hypnotic, even magical.
  19. The Corporation takes great and successful pains to be as visually diverse and clever as it is intellectually provocative.
  20. 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.
  21. Does little to unravel the riddle of the title. Unless you are already a fan of Castaneda, the film is likely to leave you feeling as though you've just watched a very long, lost episode of that old TV series "In Search of ..."
  22. Accomplishes beautifully what it sets out to do, which is to reveal the man behind the crusty, hard-drinking, tough-talking persona Charles Bukowski so artfully crafted.
  23. Flashy production design can't save Soul Plane from crashing and burning in a debris field strewn with stereotypes and raunch.
  24. It's no great surprise that after a tough beginning, Saved! soon starts to sound a lot like the inspirational TV movie (with Valerie Bertinelli).
  25. Every element of The Mother, directed by Roger Michell and written by Hanif Kureishi, fits together with perfection. The film's staging -- the way its settings create a world that allows for striking images that echo the psychological interplay of its people, the way in which every performance could not be any better -- is awe-inspiring.
  26. In its spirit and execution, Baadasssss! lives up to its forebear.
  27. The story is too silly, too woefully underwritten, to stake a claim on seriousness.
  28. Far more troubling than the documentary's lack of data and analysis, its refusal to pose even basic questions -- whether, for instance, the so-called war on drugs is a total farce -- is the sense that these seven lost souls are principally on display for our viewing displeasure.
  29. Nothing is allowed to build, so there is no tension or surprise left for the film's climax, resulting in a reductively pulpy rehash of 20th century American drama.
  30. A bittersweet, wryly amusing "dramatic fiction"

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