Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 16,532 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:
16532 movie reviews
  1. Begins as a captivating romantic comedy and then, at the very moment it's most involving, takes a wholly gratuitous and disastrous swerve and just keeps on going from bad to worse.
  2. Does for industrialists, politicians, pro-football owners and lawyers what Christopher Guest's "Best in Show' did for dog owners -- but without the skewer.
  3. The pleasure of a film like this is not in wondering where it's going to go, but in knowing its exact trajectory. Getting us to pull for a foregone conclusion as if the outcome was in serious doubt is no small sleight of hand.
  4. The Piano Teacher will surely be too strong for some audiences and is best left to those who like films that take big risks and get away with them.
  5. Not just an especially subtle and thoughtful psychological drama, it's a provocative, even an unnerving one as well.
  6. Starts out as such a deliciously savage satire of TV kiddie shows that it's a shame it swerves out of control and over the top, sliding into tedium before pulling together for a clever, if protracted, finish.
  7. What's surprising about this traditional thriller, moderately successful but not completely satisfying, is exactly how genteel and unsurprising the execution turns out to be.
  8. Not everyone, for sure, is going to be able or willing to go the distance in this ambitious but exceedingly offbeat epic, which is great-looking and has a sweeping romantic score by Hartley himself.
  9. Exceptionally user-friendly for the technologically challenged among us and rides over its less inspired patches on a wave of cheeky humor.
  10. Chaiken manages to make the film conversational without seeming talky, the curse of many New York filmmakers, and she has as sure an instinct for the succinct image and brisk pacing as she does for dialogue.
  11. The result is crass but reasonably harmless, although to hear one of the guys hold forth on how much he's learned about family and loyalty in just one week living with the DOGs is enough to make a person gag.
  12. Familiar but winningly funny and good-hearted.
  13. A warm and affectionate Argentine film of wide appeal that is an Academy Award nominee in the foreign-language category.
  14. Like the original, Blade II has superior production values and visual and special effects. Snipes and Kristofferson build on the resonance of their original portrayals.
  15. This beguiling Belgian fable, very much its own droll and delicate little film, has some touching things to say about what is important in life and why.
  16. Leaves us with a heightened appreciation of the bold and personal films made by a number of filmmakers of the former Yugoslavia.
  17. From frame one Showtime displays an ingenuity, cleverness and briskness that never flags.
  18. Echoes the unmistakable freshness and excitement of the Nouvelle Vague, the sense of joy in being alive and making movies, that made those works distinctive and unforgettable.
  19. Promises takes a simple idea and just about breaks your heart with it.
  20. A ditsy and dizzying spook-house thriller in high-tech, high-hemline gear.
  21. The problem rather is the wholesale embracing of what has become de rigueur in animation, the practice of treating major characters as if they were stand-up comics working a room in Las Vegas.
  22. Its dark-edged crime-caper plot is so formulaic it seems almost ritualized. Yet Ice Cube and Mike Epps enact their standard odd-couple tango with such ease and brio, you'd think they'd never seen such movies before.
  23. A giddy comic fantasy, full of romance, chicanery and beguiling, sophisticated players.
    • Los Angeles Times
  24. If Welles was unhappy at the prospect of the human race splitting in two, he probably wouldn't be too crazy with his great-grandson's movie splitting up in pretty much the same way.
  25. Begins as a shadowy film that progresses from dark to increasing light. It has been stunningly photographed by Eric Gautier and has a wonderfully expressive score composed by Howard Shore.
  26. How feeble a movie is Stolen Summer? So feeble they've just about buried the title on the film's own poster.
  27. Beautifully crafted, movingly acted, still involving and entertaining, this is just the kind of film people are talking about when they say they don't make them like this anymore.
  28. But if the film flirts with being sentimental, it never completely gives in: The inherent strength of the material as well as the integrity of the filmmakers gives this coming-of-age story restraint as well as warmth.
  29. Manages to evoke a complex series of reactions. It both frustrates with its unrelenting sentimentality and impresses with the overwhelming physicality of its combat sequences. These in turn are so powerful they take on a life of their own, sending a message that is probably quite opposite to the one the filmmakers intended.
  30. Can be taken as a mildly risque frothy date movie, but there's serious subtext for those who choose to look beneath surface sheen.

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