Los Angeles Times' Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 8,703 out of 16533
  2. Mixed: 5,813 out of 16533
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16533
16533 movie reviews
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  1. The Transporter
    The plot doesn't rate as high as the quality of the bodies in fast, furious motion. What counts in The Transporter isn't the wafer-thin story about smugglers -- it's the way Martin kicks open a door, fends off a couple of axes and uses a perfectly ordinary sport shirt as a weapon.
  2. Ash Wednesday
    Suspenseful and ultimately unpredictable, with a sterling ensemble cast.
  3. Punch-Drunk Love
    Charming and outlandish by turns, this misfit love story of disconnected people trying to find one another in an antagonistic world is a comedy of discomfort and rage that turns unexpectedly sweet and pure.
  4. Safe Conduct
    Superb -- Crammed with incident, and bristles with passion and energy. Tavernier treats his actors, every last one of them impressive, as an ensemble.
  5. Tuck Everlasting
    A sweeping romantic fable about love and mortality, targets an audience of girls in their early teens, but has been made with such skill and sensitivity that its appeal spans generations.
  6. White Oleander
    This is a film without a center, a film whose young protagonist should have more texture, more of a compelling voice than she does. Through no real fault of the acting, young Astrid does not compel our attention the way she must if White Oleander is to succeed completely on the screen.
  7. Bowling for Columbine
    Moore's concern about issues is genuine, and his showboating technique is often entertaining. But he is not the most organized person in the world, and there is a scattershot randomness about this film that is both its essence and a source of frustration.
  8. Swept Away
    Madonna may be better in this film than she's been in some of her recent endeavors, especially when she stops screeching her lines, but she's done herself no favors with her choice of material.
  9. How to Draw a Bunny
    A seamless model of form and content. (My only quibble is the poor quality of the digital video, which doesn't do justice to Johnson's work.)
  10. Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
    This animated retelling of the familiar Old Testament story is playful, high-spirited and unmistakably amusing. It's nice to see that a sense of humor and a sense of values don't inevitably have to cancel each other out.
  11. Heaven
    Doesn't have the courage of its conceit, only an abundance of bad ideas and worse taste.
  12. Pipe Dream
    Smart, sweet and playful romantic comedy.
  13. Welcome to Collinwood
    There isn't much else to the film beyond slapstick antics and professional gloss, but the results are diverting enough, in great measure because it's essentially a scene-by-scene remake Mario Monicelli's 1958 satire, "Big Deal on Madonna Street."
  14. Bloody Sunday
    Once positions hardened, tragedy was all but inevitable, and Bloody Sunday" does the spirit of that awful day full and unforgettable justice.
  15. Red Dragon
    There's no freshness here, no sense of newness or discovery. In its place, there's an earnest desire not to drop the ball, a determination to risk as little as possible in keeping this golden egg from cracking wide open.
  16. Just a Kiss
    Though the cast ends up looking good, the film's unwillingness or inability to have things add up hurts everyone's efforts.
  17. The Tuxedo
    Chan is still able to project the boyishness and insecurity of the new kid on the block. But even those aren't enough to make Tuxedo a black-tie affair.
  18. Skins
    A wrenching, uncompromisingly bleak film, but its stars, who include talented newcomer Noah Watts as Mogie's son and Lois Red Elk as the brothers' staunch aunt, fill the screen with warmth, humor and spiritual yearning in the face of hardship and tragedy.
  19. The Lonely Affair of the Heart
    A handsome, intelligent film of rigorous austerity; unfortunately, for all its seriousness of purpose and fine performances, it's also a boring film about boring people.
  20. Crazy as Hell
    Starts encouragingly and finishes strongly with a twist, but the middle is weighed down by too much discourse when it should be visually evoking its ideas and developing its mood of unease.
  21. Shanghai Ghetto
    A serious and thoughtful documentary.
  22. Biggie and Tupac
    One of the better documentaries I'd seen in years -- it plays like a suspense thriller because that's exactly what it is.
  23. The Man from Elysian Fields
    A shimmering fable of innocence and experience set in contemporary Los Angeles and Pasadena (its title is a nod to Virgil's "Aeneid"). Phillip Jayson Lasker's tartly knowing script, with the kind of witty dialogue that's all but vanished from American movies, recalls Hickenlooper's "The Low Life."
  24. Captain Pantoja and the Special Services
    While Pantaleón does have its scorching erotic moments and skewers establishment hypocrisy toward prostitution, it lacks the originality and complexity of "Y Tu Mamá."
  25. Wasabi
    Wasabi dawdles and drags when it should pop; it doesn't even have the virtue of enough mindless violence to break up the tedium of all its generational bonding.
  26. Sweet Home Alabama
    The South takes another beating in Sweet Home Alabama, but that's nothing compared with the one conferred on the sweetheart personality of its pint-sized Gen. Sherman.
  27. Moonlight Mile
    What's on screen is too honest and from the heart to totally dismiss but too slick and contrived to completely embrace. This is a film that cares about genuine emotion but also wants to tame it, to tidy it up and keep it confined to quarters.
  28. The Trials of Henry Kissinger
    Bluntly effective.
  29. Invincible
    The period is evoked with care and imagination, and the film glows with Peter Zeitlinger's cinematography. It has some bravura images and surreal moments typical of Herzog, and composers Hans Zimmer and Klaus Badelt have contributed a lovely score.
  30. Joshua
    It's a persuasive spiritual journey, sentimental at times but never hopelessly cloying.
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