Los Angeles Times' Scores

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:
16523 movie reviews
  1. Subtly sensorial more than conventionally narrative, The Fever inhabits an ethereal plane that centers Indigenous beliefs and cultural practices not as primitive but valid modes of engagement.
  2. Superbly cast from the two at the top to the smallest speaking parts, impeccably directed by Fincher and crafted by his regular team to within an inch of its life, Gone Girl shows the remarkable things that can happen when filmmaker and material are this well matched.
  3. It projects equal parts fury and despair as it reveals how a particular group of individuals was caught in the unforgiving gears of the criminal justice system.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sequences in which Tao helps an ill friend and deals with the death of a parent are as finely staged and acted, as sorrowful and transcendent, as anything ever to grace the screen.
  4. You don't need to be a fan of Wagner, or even opera, to find this a fascinating glimpse of a dauntingly complex human endeavor.
  5. A taut and rigorous piece of storytelling in which seething tempers and unruly politics are forever on the verge of leaping out of the movie’s tightly framed, square-shaped images, the movie may concern itself with distant events, but its subjects — antisemitism, police corruption, political awakening — are very much of the present.
  6. Intelligently written and directed with a pleasing frankness by Bill Condon and well played by Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and a strong supporting cast, the film skillfully uses the forms of old Hollywood to tell a story that would have given heart failure to Harry Cohn and his fellow tycoons.
  7. Writer-director Amanda Kernell’s assured first feature has a classic sheen, but with its powerful sense of place and sensitive performances, it’s no fusty museum piece.
  8. The Fear of Being Watched is focused and thorough, but it takes the time to place its events in a larger context.
  9. If this is satire, it’s satire so generously attentive toward its targets that mockery and love become virtually indistinguishable.
  10. Special kudos go to Martin Ziaran’s innovative, at times vertiginous and even upside-down camerawork, which lends a you-are-there feel to the film’s already viscerally unnerving action. It’s a master class in cinematography.
  11. A period chamber drama drawn from a Joseph Conrad short story and of such intensity and passion that it transcends a specificity of time and place to achieve timelessness and universality.
  12. Lives up to its ambitiousness in all its aspects.
  13. Though it can overreach for emotional effect and overplay its hand at times -- Sexy Beast brings considerable virtues to telling this tale, including a great eye for faces and director Glazer's palpable excitement at working in the feature medium.
  14. Lapid's filmmaking skill helps keep us involved, as does Policeman's philosophical underpinnings.
  15. Both an irresistible human story and as fine a documentary on football as "Hoop Dreams" was on basketball.
  16. The complicated narratives don't distract from what this film does best: make you laugh about the things that make you furious.
  17. Ahed’s Knee means to shatter your complacency, and also the complacency of its chosen medium. You could see this as a childish act of revolt, or you could see it as Ladiv, much like Y himself, refusing to submit to any agreed-upon parameters. He delights in coloring out of the lines, not least because he knows it will make all the right people mad.
  18. No disrespect to Bela Lugosi, but Klaus Kinski delivers a mesmerizing performance as the original vampire in Werner Herzog's hypnotic adaptation of the horror classic. [16 Feb 2014, p.D1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  19. It's hard to fully empathize with Don's season of remorse. It's the big problem with Broken Flowers, and one I don't think the movie -- for all of its funny and occasionally poignant touches -- ever really transcends.
  20. Loving is an unpretentious film about unassuming real people, but don't let that mislead you. Just as Richard and Mildred Loving ended up overturning the status quo and making American legal history, so this feature on their lives by writer-director Jeff Nichols turns out to be a film of quiet but quite significant strengths.
  21. Out of magnanimity, I’ll liken this trifle to a Rothko. The more I think about The Christophers, the more I imagine it has interesting layers. But I won’t fault anyone who just sees a simple square.
  22. Building implacable dread and tension from scene to scene, the story is as simple as its underlying ideas are endlessly complex.
  23. This folk tale braids together the primordial and the divine in endlessly surprising ways.
  24. Performances this strong and direction this sensitive make us simply grateful to have an emotional story we can sink our teeth into and enjoy.
  25. The Crash Reel asks pointed questions about hazard, reward and consequence, forcing us to look anew at the rush attached to so many high-stakes sports.
  26. Smart, thoughtful and elegantly done, Hitchcock/Truffaut is more than an authoritative look at the careers and interpersonal dynamics of directors Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut, a pair of unlikely soul mates; it's also, as director Kent Jones intended, a love letter to film itself, to the value and lure of the cinematic experience.
  27. What sets this film apart from other docu-memoirs is the way Sahakyan articulates how being the spokesperson for an atrocity can foster dissociation.
  28. This infectious and exuberant film wins you over by focusing on the enthusiasm and enviable good spirits of the smart and engaging young people who compete in “the Olympics of science fairs.”
  29. An invaluable portrait of us-and-them America, a smart, generous, poignant, quietly disturbing movie about secrecy and hospitality, and how easy it is for a tradition of separateness to flourish when the stakes are as deceptively frivolous as an eye-popping yearly party.

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