Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,523 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 16523
  2. Mixed: 5,808 out of 16523
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16523
16523 movie reviews
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  1. Annihilation
    Its most impressive achievement may be how easily it welds the mechanics of genre and the cinema of ideas. Garland's movie has its grisly flourishes, but unlike so many thrillers that preoccupy themselves with spectacles of death, it's more interested in pondering the strange, inextricable link between creation and destruction.
  2. City of God
    A potent and unexpected mixture of authenticity and flash -- even if this is what happened on the ground, making it worth our time on screen is just beyond the contortionist abilities of even this most acrobatic of films.
  3. Pariah
    At its soulful heart, Pariah is a stinging street-smart story of an African American teen's struggle to come of age and come out - to the father who still calls her "daddy's little girl" and the mother who quotes the Bible and buys her pink frills.
  4. Red Rock West
    Cage's naturalness as a nice guy in a big jam lends the film considerable substance while Hopper's wily foil, Boyle's tough dame and Walsh's minor-league baddie provide much amusement. With Mark Reshovsky's sleek camera work, authentic locales and William Olvis' mood-setting score, Red Rock West has style to burn.
  5. Stray Dog
    Expertly playing with our preconceived notions, Granik's multidimensional portrait also serves as a telling state-of-the-union address, as seen through the caring eyes of her philosophical main subject.
  6. Lolita
    Lolita may be a flawed adaptation, but it's still a great movie. While the film fails to capture the compulsive, microscopically detailed obsession of Nabokov's antihero, Humbert Humbert, it does explore (sometimes shockingly, even now) a kind of sexual destruction in frank (and often hilarious) ways. [30 Jan 1992, p.11]
    • Los Angeles Times
  7. She's Gotta Have It
    Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It is a joyfully idiosyncratic little jazz-burst of a film, full of sensuous melody, witty chops and hot licks
  8. Pride
    Pride is an unapologetic crowd-pleaser of a movie, but it has some potent points to make, and the reality of what happened has a power of its own.
  9. Hotel Rwanda
    The story it tells is such a wrenching one it cannot help but move us, especially when the performance of a lifetime by Don Cheadle is added to the mix.
  10. Babygirl
    Babygirl’s erotic scenes are hot. But really, Reijn is doing her damnedest to get a moral rise out of us. Romy and Samuel have safe words, yet our own national conversation about sexual ethics gets tongue-tied whenever it tries to define right and wrong. Instead, we have Reijn asking uncomfortable questions.
  11. Eureka
    To watch this film, in short, can be a transforming experience.
  12. El Cid
    It's an ode to heroism, idealism and romance that still sweeps us away.
  13. Midnight Traveler
    It is the gift of Midnight Traveler to allow us to feel this family’s fate in the pit of our stomachs. If the plight of refugees has ever seemed abstract, this film makes sure you know how real it is.
  14. Whose Streets?
    Filmmakers Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis were among those on the front lines of the protests against police violence and their on-the-ground, from-the-heart documentary Whose Streets? communicates that urgency from the inside out — not as news story or social theory, but as communal experience and awakening.
  15. Cyrano de Bergerac
    Well-nigh flawless, with scarcely a moment's lull. [18 Dec 1990, p.F1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  16. Funan
    Funan is a stunning piece of animation in which the beauty of the visuals and the horror of the situation are inextricably intertwined.
  17. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
    She is by turns blue, bitter, hilarious, unbroken; a Hollywood-style portrait in infinite ambition. In that role, Rivers is unforgettable.
  18. Baran
    A superlative work, offering a rich emotional experience that at the same time calls attention to the seemingly endless suffering of the Afghan people.
  19. Chunhyangdyun
    Im Kwon Taek's exquisite Chunhyang brings to the screen one of Korea's most cherished folk tales, a timeless romance in which the lovers are challenged by differences in class.
  20. High Fidelity
    A sharp and satisfying romantic comedy.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Smile
    Long before David Lynch mined the seedy underbelly of small-town life for the film "Blue Velvet" and the TV series "Twin Peaks," Michael Ritchie directed Smile, one of the smartest, most-biting satires on the glossy veneer of middle-class America ever put on film. [18 Oct 1990, p.7]
    • Los Angeles Times
  22. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
    An organization that stubbornly resists being pigeonholed, the Black Panther Party emerges from this documentary with its significance enhanced but some of its tactics questioned.
  23. Coriolanus
    If you give yourself over to that clash of style and sensibility, something magical happens as the power, the prescience and the precision of Shakespeare's words take hold of modern problems.
  24. It Ain't Over
    Serving as a potent reminder of the stellar athletic ability that, in time, had been overshadowed by his admittedly outsized personality, the affectionate It Ain’t Over offers a winning coda to the career assessment of the late, great Yogi Berra.
  25. The Cordillera of Dreams
    Contemplative, analytical and troubling, this is a nature film refracted through a historical trauma, a compilation of visual wonders that doubles as an act of remembrance.
  26. Grand Hotel
    Boasting one of the most exciting all-star casts ever assembled, glittering with authentic glamour, this MGM hit is one of those happy instances when art and entertainment are one. [17 Jun 1991, p.F9]
    • Los Angeles Times
  27. Bad Education
    Bad Education reminds us how synonymous great acting and great lying can be. Jackman and Janney, both giving their richest performances in some time, manage to pull the wool over your eyes with one hand even as they teasingly pull back the curtain with the other.
  28. A Most Violent Year
    A vibrant crime story filled to overflowing with crackling situations, taut dialogue and a heightened, even operatic sense of reality, A Most Violent Year captures us and doesn't let go.
  29. I Am Love
    Swinton is one of the finest actresses working in contemporary cinema, but Guadagnino, who developed the project with her in mind, has created a film that literally luxuriates in her talents.
  30. Io Capitano
    You can get the facts about these migrants anywhere, but Garrone knows the tool of cinema is more effective. By presenting these adolescents in all their fragility and strength, he comes as close as is possible to getting us to feel how they felt. Io Capitano is as unflinching as it is robust with empathy.
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