Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,524 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: 8,698 out of 16524
  2. Mixed: 5,809 out of 16524
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16524
16524 movie reviews
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  1. Spawn
    The special effects are effective and aggressive, although one might occasionally confuse a divine vortex with a flushed toilet.
  2. One Eight Seven
    The most disheartening line in 187 is its last, written in bold type across the screen just before the credits roll: "A teacher wrote this movie." It's enough to make you weep, and not just because it's painful to think that this muddled and manipulative film was penned by someone in a position to mold impressionable minds. [30 Jul 1997, p.F1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  3. Air Force One
    At once vigorous and old-fashioned, a piece of expertly crafted entertainment that gets the job done with skill and panache. [25 July 1997]
    • Los Angeles Times
  4. Good Burger
    Good Burger, K&K's inevitable first movie, will satisfy their audience's appetite for basic, messy silliness while leaving many grown-ups mildly bemused by the fuzzy obviousness of its humor, the gawky pacing of its sight gags and the second-handedness of its slapstick--almost all of which is redeemed by the eager but never cloying charm of its two stars.
  5. Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown
    Their personality types match up splendidly with the characters they play as well as each other, and Mrs. Brown's greatest pleasure is seeing and hearing them spar. Even with the gloves on, this is a battle well worth observing.
  6. Kiss Me, Guido
    If Tony Vitale's Kiss Me, Guido isn't quite the laff riot its trailer suggests, it nonetheless abounds in good-hearted humor, adding up to a perfectly pleasant summer diversion.
  7. George of the Jungle
    Sporadically playful, it ends up wearing as thin as any film geared to a preteen sense of humor is bound to do.
  8. Contact
    Contact is superior popular filmmaking, both polished and effective. But despite its success and its serious intentions, it's finally a movie where the storytelling makes more of an impact than the story.
  9. 4 Little Girls
    Director Spike Lee has made some of the most hard-edged and unsettling American films on racism and its effects. Yet none has been as moving as this. [24 Oct 1997, Pg.F2]
    • Los Angeles Times
  10. Men in Black
    A genially twisted riff on the familiar alien invaders story, a lively summer entertainment that marries a deadpan sense of humor to the strangest creatures around.
  11. Face/Off
    In its best moments, Face/Off practically mainlines fury, leaving audiences no time to think or even breathe.
  12. My Best Friend's Wedding
    Feels repetitive at times, but its star power and willingness to undercut convention come through at the end.
  13. Batman & Robin
    Lacking most kinds of inspiration and geared to undemanding minds, this project is so overloaded with hardware and stunts, it's a relief to have it over.
  14. Underground
    It’s a sprawling, rowdy, vital film laced with both outrageous absurdist dark humor and unspeakable pain, suffering and injustice.
  15. Speed 2: Cruise Control
    Though it displays enough perils to put a dent in future cruise ship sales, the film has a makeshift, slapdash quality that is the opposite of its predecessor.
  16. Ulee's Gold
    Ulee's Gold stands out for its sureness, its quiet emotional force and writer-director Victor Nunez's ability to find and nurture the mystery and power in the events of an ordinary life.
  17. Con Air
    Numbing but not boring, it's finally more dispiriting than exhilarating, like a wild night of debauchery that leaves only a fearsome hangover for a souvenir.
  18. The Pillow Book
    Despite its arresting visual style, its wave after wave of creative and hypnotic images, The Pillow Book, as its name hints, slowly but inexorably leads to sleep.
  19. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
    It's not just that we've been there before but also that Steven Spielberg and his associates simply haven't been able to imagine as many flat-out scary moments this time around.
  20. Brassed Off
    The difficulty is that Brassed Off operates at an emotional pitch that starts at a crescendo and never relents--rendering almost everything equally inconsequential.
  21. Love! Valour! Compassion!
    That this is the first film for director Joe Mantello, who was nominated for a Tony for directing the stage version, may be compounding the problem. But frankly, if someone wanted to do a parody of a gay film like this, it's hard to imagine the sloganeering being much different.
  22. Night Falls on Manhattan
    A string of unlikely events and coincidences set off Night Falls, and Lumet makes them believable the old-fashioned way: through interaction with a screen full of strongly drawn, fully dimensioned, psychologically valid characters.
  23. La Promesse (The Promise)
    The conflicts involved are intense and absorbing, proving that compelling moral dilemmas make for the most dramatic cinema.
  24. The Fifth Element
    The cast is a delight, but it's Willis who is the film's true "fifth element," giving it life, depth and humanity.
  25. Nowhere
    Take this picture literally and you're in trouble; better to view it as an allegory on youthful despair in which Araki deftly scores serious points without taking himself too seriously.
  26. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
    The result is a comedy of errors. Errors, yes. Comedy . . . we're not so sure.
  27. Breakdown
    Mostow, with his first feature, has made such a convincing, fast-paced, edge-of-the-seat thriller that you'd swear you'd never seen anything quite like it.
  28. Children of the Revolution
    A gloss on the disillusion that came with the embracing of communist ideals that is part playful farce, part dark satire, this unclassifiable film, both comic and strange, always holds your attention even when it doesn't seem to know where it's going.
  29. Irma Vep
    Assayas displays an intimate, informal style and a sharp sense of proportion that allows him to have some fun, score some points and then wrap it all up before overstaying his welcome. Irma Vep is as effortless as a shrug and boasts a film buff’s dream cast.
  30. Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
    Though "Romy and Michelle" doing Tucson doesn't take us much further than Beavis and Butt-head doing America, the ride, and the company, are a lot more fun.
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