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. Close
    As good as his actors are — especially the wonderful Dequenne, whose Sophie quietly seeks to repair the boys’ broken bond — they cannot conceal the calculation inherent in this story’s design. Nor can they quite overcome the disconnect between the glossy, self-admiring visual beauty of Close and the stormier, uglier emotional depths it purports to uncover.
  2. State Funeral
    Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s clinical and fascinating 135-minute assembly of this priceless archive is a categorically weird, thrillingly immersive distillation of four days of official, cultish pomp and mourning for one of the 20th century’s biggest monsters.
  3. Truman
    It sounds paradoxical but, if done right, films about a life ending can be the most life-affirming films you'll see. Truman, a great success in its native Spain, is definitely done right.
  4. Chocolat
    Chocolat is a film of some subtlety. It has good, even memorable moments to it, and it’s beautiful looking. It is very, very, very French, which may or may not be your cup of chocolat. It is also a suffocatingly precious film, enough to try the patience of an oyster, and one that primly refuses to detonate the mounting numbers of erotic situations it sets up.
  5. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
    Few actors can be as convincing as leaders of men, and to see Crowe as Capt. Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is to see a consummate performer doing what he does best.
  6. The Secret of Kells
    Teaches important lessons in the most casual, joyful way. How it manages to do that is probably the biggest secret of all.
  7. Top Five
    Top Five is fully loaded. The laughs are earned, the intelligence never disappears, all the performers shine. But Rock is the diamond — raw, rough and rare.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Simple Plan
    The role of Jacob is greatly expanded from the book, and the unsatisfying way that Smith and Raimi resolve the brothers' relationship in the movie is the only major change--major compromise--made in transporting the novel to the screen.
  9. Closet Monster
    Dunn juggles the story’s vital, at times fantastical narrative, eclectic imagery, and wellspring of human fears, flaws and desires with vision and confidence. But Jessup’s powerfully empathetic performance really seals the deal.
  10. Godland
    The problem with this priest — one of them, anyway — may not be an excess of spiritual fervor but rather a dearth of it, a lack of reverence for the beauty that Pálmason’s camera exalts in every magisterial frame. Lucas may be a blind wretch, but the creation through which he stumbles is a source of never-ending awe.
  11. Coming Home
    Zhang and his sterling actors have made something fairly unforgettable about the tragedy of forgetting.
  12. The Trouble with the Truth
    Thanks to the residual love and attraction between the pair, this cocktail-fueled reunion never descends into a "Virginia Woolf"-like grudge match but, rather, remains an equitable, tender, sometimes surprising game of hard truth-telling.
  13. Living in Oblivion
    Though Living in Oblivion may sound like a one-joke movie, the pleasure of the endeavor is that it has no trouble holding your interest without feeling repetitive. Mark it down to the excellence of the acting, including the smallest roles, and the amusing and accurate way the ambience of bargain-basement filmmaking is captured.
  14. Coco
    Try as you might to lose yourself in Coco, or pause to ponder its metaphysics, too often you find yourself hindered by the movie's breathless velocity.
  15. Little Richard: I Am Everything
    A long-overdue creation corrective that gives an outwardly revolutionary cultural icon his trailblazing due at the same time it grapples with the conflicted soul that rarely knew a lasting inner peace.
  16. Bridge of Spies
    Bridge of Spies is a consummate professional's tribute to a gifted amateur, a smooth entertainment with a strong but subtle political subtext that's both potent and unexpected.
  17. Driving Miss Daisy
    When something heartfelt occurs in this movie, you accept it without too much squirming. The disciplined yet intuitive way in which these actors connect is a model of ensemble performance.
  18. Shaun the Sheep Movie
    Playful, absurd and endearingly inventive, this unstoppably amusing feature reminds us why Britain's Aardman Animations is a mainstay of the current cartooning golden age.
  19. Bombshell
    I have a weakness for inside Hollywood films, and this smart and fearless item starring Jean Harlow as an amalgam of herself and Clara Bow is not as well-known as it should be. [03 Apr 2020, p.E1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  20. Theater of Blood
    A triumph of stylish, witty Grand Guignol, it allows Price to range richly between humor and pathos as a crazed Shakespearean actor. It's not too much to say that if horror pictures were taken seriously Price would have been a 1973 Oscar contender. [24 Mar 2005, p.E15]
    • Los Angeles Times
  21. Invisible Life
    It’s a drama of resilient women, thoughtless men and crushingly unrealized dreams, told with supple grace, deep feeling and an empathy that extends in every direction.
  22. I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians
    The difficulty of turning mass spectacle into moral edification, of getting the public to think and care about history in ways that go beyond simple-minded patriotism, is a problem that this brilliantly multifaceted picture both critiques and embodies.
  23. White Material
    Simultaneously poetic, dramatic and realistic, White Material is an altogether stunning work.
  24. Master of Light
    The lingering trauma of Morton’s upbringing is an ongoing challenge for him, even with all of his success; and this quietly moving movie examines how the right opportunities or the wrong expectations can make all the difference in who a person becomes.
  25. The Station Agent
    Its charming story of the delicate intersection of three highly individual lives is the kind of completely personal yet universal film that the festival and the entire independent movement came into being to celebrate. And it does it all in 88 deft and funny minutes.
  26. Foxcatcher
    A despairing, intentionally disturbing film that draws us into a maelstrom of desperate emotions, it holds up a dark mirror to the American dream and does not like what it sees.
  27. Bamako
    Bamako is an attack on globalization that is endlessly cogent, confrontational -- and, best of all, as captivating as it is illuminating.
  28. Autumn Tale
    Droll and delicious.
  29. Beginners
    A buoyant and disarming drama about sons and fathers, death and dying, living and loving and all the ways we find ourselves starting over, hoping to finally get it right.
  30. Twinsters
    Twinsters is a lively — and quite lovely — take on contemporary notions of family and identity.
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