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. This well-paced film's realistic style and authentic locales are a perfect fit for the characters and their story.
  2. It emphasizes its stars' capacity to endure as individuals and entertainers and does not dwell on the harder times and personal travails they survived. However, it acknowledges the well-known exploitation black artists have traditionally experienced in the pop music industry.
  3. Swain balances the personal and the political, allowing his film to be intimate while keeping a larger perspective. It is refreshing to see people on screen who are living in a real world.
  4. As a filmmaker, he (Leconte) doesn't have anything profound to say but does say his something with craft, visual flair and professionalism. Depending on your mood, that can be either too little or just enough.
  5. I laughed a couple of times, but mostly I was bored out of my mind and not a little depressed.
  6. Unfortunately, this film is not as convincing as LaBute's first feature ("In the Company of Men"), for it betrays its origins in the theatricality of its dialogue, resulting in an aura of artificiality.
  7. Director Peyton Reed gets the film's look and, in moments, its disingenuous innocence, but you have to wonder what he and the screenwriters, Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake, thought they were parodying. The actors clearly haven't a clue.
  8. Would that all love stories were as sophisticated and amusing as the satisfying Charlotte Sometimes.
  9. Brisk and involving with a streamlined forward propulsion, it's the kind of superhero movie we want if we have to have superhero movies at all.
  10. If the screenwriter and director had followed their cinematic instincts fully, they would have collaborated on one of the more satisfying political thrillers in years; instead, they've managed to create three-quarters of one.
  11. Kwietniowski might have tried for some edginess that would express a measure of the excitement Mahowny is experiencing. Despite the driven intensity of the banker, the film threatens to slip into the lifelessness of the drab world it depicts.
  12. Even with its drawbacks, Blue Car remains an intimate, thoughtful drama, with a performance no one is likely to forget.
  13. The movie, with all its brashness and crassness, can still claim noble motives in encouraging insecure young people to seek the pop diva buried deep within.
  14. In not taking itself too seriously New Suit scores more points than some pictures that take a scathing approach.
  15. At a time when so many in this country are at odds about what represents America at its best, it's refreshing and then some to see a film that everyone can agree is an example of exactly that.
  16. Even though the film's tone grows ever more elegiac, it stubbornly remains a celebration of the Kurdish capacity to endure.
  17. A bland romantic comedy that comes up short on both laughs and love.
  18. The result is surprisingly genial, even innocent -- a movie without a screenplay that echoes countless coming-of-age-at-the-beach movies, except maybe "Weekend at Bernie's."
  19. A superbly shot film of emotional extravagance, sentimentality and even humor, House of Fools is a film that is ultimately quite moving but which probably could only have been pulled off by a director steeped in that famous Russian soul.
  20. For his atmospheric debut as a feature director, the actor Matt Dillon has cast himself as a guy in need of saving. It's a nice fit.
  21. It is often remarked that the years between "Easy Rider" (1969) and "Star Wars" (1977) marked a second golden age in American filmmaking, and this documentary, as comprehensive as it is incisive, is a reminder of just how many terrific pictures came out during those years.
  22. If the cast is distractingly pretty, the performances are also quite fine and, in the case of Gordon-Levitt, exceptional.
  23. Does have a large and capable cast and, in James Foley, a director with a taste for visual flourishes. They all so fell in love with the script by Doug Jung they didn't notice how much a derivative retread it is of superior material like "The Grifters" and even "The Sting."
  24. Fine escapist fare with a saving sense of humor and an underlying premise that, when revealed, proves to be arguably plausible even if a reach.
  25. Schepisi not only inspired the cast to give well-shaded, reflective portrayals but also made the film a work of honest, heartfelt sentiment.
  26. It's not often that you see talented, well-meaning people joined together like cultists in the snare of a group delusion, but that's what makes this film fascinating, the proverbial accident you can't take your eyes off.
  27. Emerges as an epic tale of love, sacrifice and redemption that attains a Shakespearean aura of grandeur and nobility of spirit.
  28. At its best, Winged Migration is a marvel, and if that seems like a gee-whiz word, that's because this film has a lot to be gee-whiz about.
  29. It's got an involving, adventurous story to tell and the wherewithal to tell it correctly. And while young adults may think this is intended only for them, in truth it's their elders who are especially starved for this kind of entertainment.
  30. I can't think of another good movie this year that's as tough to watch as Moodysson's, but, then, I can't think of very many movies that are as good.

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