Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,550 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:
  1. Positive: 8,714 out of 16550
  2. Mixed: 5,819 out of 16550
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16550
16550 movie reviews
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  1. Hermia & Helena
    Buenos Aires and New York are forests of romantic entanglement, identity-searching and adventure in Argentine filmmaker Matías Piñeiro’s artfully frothy Hermia & Helena.
  2. Rogers Park
    Rogers Park is populated by real people with real problems, though the dialogue in Carlos Treviño's script doesn't always serve them well. The lines sometimes feel manufactured, but there's real warmth — or frustration or anger, depending on the scene — present in these authentic performances.
  3. Another Round
    Another Round itself often moves and swings like a piece of music: Staccato in its rhythms and symphonic in structure, it’s awash in Scarlatti and Schubert, bar tunes and patriotic songs, and climaxes with a jubilant blast of Danish pop/R&B. It sings, and it sparkles.
  4. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
    The film is a rigorously thorough biography and an impassioned accolade. Temple spends as much time on Strummer's life before and after the Clash as he does charting the band's powerful musical and political influence.
  5. Bitterbrush
    Don’t go into the immersive, observational documentary “Bitterbrush” looking for profound insights or roiling conflict but rather a captivating and meditative look at two intrepid young women surviving — and seasonally thriving — in a traditionally male-dominated field: cattle herding.
  6. Shiva Baby
    Unfortunately, writer-director Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby, despite its thematic acuity, loopy vitality and committed acting, doesn’t add up to enough in its too-brief 72 minutes (plus end credits) to warrant all the cross-wired mayhem that gets us over the movie’s dubious finish line.
  7. Searching for Sugar Man
    The truth-is-stranger-than-fiction saga has been a hit on the festival circuit, winning top documentary prizes at Sundance for Sweden's Bendjelloul. What sets Searching for Sugar Man apart, though, is the way in which the filmmaker preserves a sense of mystery in the telling.
  8. Sing Street
    It's a sweetly funny, charming and poignant depiction of this very specific time in life — at once universal and specific — when anything seems possible. And with killer pop tunes to boot.
  9. Keane
    A wholly unexpected and ultimately gratifying experience.
  10. Brawl in Cell Block 99
    Vaughn’s performance is riveting in its containment, and he honors his character’s ethos by making sure that every word, glance, gesture and silence counts.
  11. Va Savoir (Who Knows?)
    This masterful celebration starts off slowly, even uncertainly, giving no hint of the rich and elegant exploration of love, jealousy and animal attraction it will in all good time become.
  12. The Law in These Parts
    Directed by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz and winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, this is the second superb Israeli documentary (after "The Gatekeepers") to come to town in less than a month and deal fearlessly with an aspect of that country's legal and political system.
  13. Official Competition
    Official Competition is a coy satire that makes welcome use of biting meta-commentary and self-reflexive critique.
  14. Zodiac
    Zodiac is primarily a complex character study, despite the film's grim and gruesome subject matter. It's a role reversal of sorts for a director who normally emphasizes the brutal tension in his movies.
  15. The Thin Blue Line
    Morris pulls off a genuine shocker to cap his film, but his method exacts its price. It takes fully a third of the film's 109 minutes to become involved in it, thanks to Morris' deadpan tone and the initially jarring effect of his intercutting between straightforward talking heads and his B-movie reenactment of the crime. [2 Sept 1988]
    • Los Angeles Times
  16. Sand Dollars
    Sand Dollars has an assured, light touch.
  17. Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore
    The 59-year-old actor’s legacy may indeed be one of perseverance, but “Not Alone Anymore” touchingly details just how much more challenging her battles with addiction and sexual abuse have been than those of other famous people.
  18. Priscilla
    With piercing matter-of-factness, Coppola ends this movie, her strongest in more than a decade, at just the right moment.
  19. The Innocents
    The film maintains a quiet dynamic even throughout the most horrific moments, and while you might expect, or even want, the film to climax more operatically, the understated tone is a radical choice.
  20. Run Lola Run
    As essential in its own way as Anton Karas' celebrated zither work was to "The Third Man," Lola's music is perfectly suited to the film's aims and just about addictive in its throbbing, insinuating rhythms.
  21. Contemporary Color
    The Ross brothers augment the teams’ richly choreographed, competition-tested routines with slow motion, superimpositions, and separately shot material with individual color guard members. But these artful divergences feel naturally expressive, the filmmakers’ way of honoring the expressiveness, and wanting in on the inspiration.
  22. All In: The Fight for Democracy
    The film makes an ardent case to stay ever-vigilant against the ongoing threat to the electoral process.
  23. The One and Only Dick Gregory
    What Gaines does not miss is Gregory’s spirit, and its effect — amusing, bemusing, inspiring — on the world around him.
  24. One to One: John & Yoko
    “One to One” isn’t a salute to the Beatles’ brilliance or Lennon’s genius. Despite the large screens this film will play on, the movie renders its subjects as touchingly life-sized.
  25. Black Swan
    Not just any kind of trash, it's high-art trash, a kind of "When Tutu Goes Psycho" that so prizes hysteria over sanity that it's worth your life to tell when its characters are hallucinating and when they're not.
  26. The Painter and the Thief
    The result is a movie that feels both truthful and evasive, deeply moving and a little perplexing.
  27. Our Children
    This is a taut psychological study, based on a true story, of the complexities of personal power relationships that begins with the kind of shattering revelation that would be the conclusion of most films.
  28. 16 Shots
    The resulting film is a gripping story about a search for justice amid systemic corruption.
  29. Midnight
    Misunderstandings and hilarity ensue, as does a largeness of spirit that typifies Leisen's approach. [15 Nov 2012, p.D3]
    • Los Angeles Times
  30. Hilary and Jackie
    It takes two to be sisters, two to have a rivalry, and two exceptional actresses to turn Hilary and Jackie into a compelling look at the most intimate and troubling of family dynamics.
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