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. A Twelve Year Night
    While this story is more likely to have impact for those who lived through the horrors of this period and Mujica’s eventual emergence as a political leader, A Twelve Year Night avoids the easy trappings of triumph-of-the-human-spirit narratives. Sometimes a human simply withstands what it’s subjected to, and that’s enough to rivet us.
  2. East of Eden
    Not only one of Kazan's richest films and Dean's first significant role, it is also arguably the actor's best performance. [10 June 2005, p.E12]
    • Los Angeles Times
  3. Once Bitten
    Once Bitten is that extreme rarity, a youth movie that's made the grown-up discovery of how sexy and amusing a situation can be if you leave things to the imagination.
  4. Funan
    Funan is a stunning piece of animation in which the beauty of the visuals and the horror of the situation are inextricably intertwined.
  5. Who Will Write Our History
    Though its form is complex, including archival scenes that include concentration camp-type footage, the film’s emotional through line is clear and direct.
  6. The Breaker Upperers
    The Breaker Upperers features a distinctly New Zealand style of comedy: dry, awkward and utterly hilarious. But directors, writers and stars Jackie van Beek and Madeline Sami still give this film a wild energy that’s absolutely their own, with jokes that take the audience from giggles to cackles to all-out shrieks.
  7. Maiden
    A heck of a story splendidly told, Maiden succeeds by combining the athleticism of “Free Solo” with the enriching, across-the-board emotional appeal of “RBG.”
  8. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
    The considerable achievement of “Birth of the Cool” comes from the way it understands those words and places them in the context of American history. You’ll want to listen to Miles’ music after watching the film and, when you do, you might feel it a little deeper.
  9. Midsommar
    The spell that it casts is bright, dreamy and absorbing, but it is also in no particular hurry to come into focus, which makes its aftereffects all the harder to shake.
  10. Knives Out
    This is, to be sure, a riotously funny movie — a priceless collection of puns, insults, one-liners and some of the best-timed barf gags this side of “Problem Child 2” — but it also treats the classical detective story with the seriousness and grandeur it deserves.
  11. Apollo 11
    One of the unexpected but welcome things Apollo 11 accomplishes is restoring a sense of how insanely complex the lunar mission was, and how audacious.
  12. Cocoon: The Return
    Cocoon: The Return is the best kind of sequel: It doesn't merely cash in on the success of the original but actually continues its story in new directions, eliciting fresh meaning and emotion. [23 Nov 1988, p.C1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  13. Brittany Runs A Marathon
    A singular amalgam of humor, heartache and self-help that won the U.S. dramatic audience award at Sundance, “Brittany” resolutely goes its own way, entertaining us as richly as anything that’s come out in awhile.
  14. Divine Love
    With sci-fi touches and sanctimonious eroticism, the incisive satire intently takes on the influence of evangelical Christianity on the state — namely the far-right movement that elected populist Jair Bolsonaro.
  15. The Farewell
    With exquisite poise, wry humor and delicate swells of feeling, The Farewell addresses and gently critiques the stoicism that Asians and Asian Americans are often taught to project as a matter of pride and dignity.
  16. Light From Light
    Harrill is awfully good at ambivalence, at teasing out the feelings of people who are uncertain what they want and in no hurry to talk about it — a condition that afflicts more characters than we often see in American movies, independent or otherwise.
  17. The Sound of Silence
    The Sound of Silence, anchored by a superbly modulated performance by the always intriguing Peter Sarsgaard, is fascinating, original and, yes, deeply resonant.
  18. One Child Nation
    The individual stories that make up One Child Nation, the worthy winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s grand jury prize for U.S. documentaries, illuminate an entire history of institutional corruption, medical brutality and pervasive misogyny — a history that was both masked and advanced by a national propaganda campaign of near-Orwellian absurdity.
  19. Pavarotti
    A warm, emotional and completely involving film about the celebrated tenor.
  20. A Tuba to Cuba
    Just sit back and enjoy.
  21. By the Grace of God
    In lieu of poetry, [Ozon] has composed an exemplary piece of prose: clear, direct and quietly illuminating. At the same time, you would hardly describe this movie as neutral or devoid of anger. On the contrary, its moral outrage is all the more pronounced for being so controlled.
  22. Driveways
    Driveways, a movie that’s poignant now for reasons we doubtless wish it weren’t, shows us how unlikely people can come together under imperfect circumstances and fit together perfectly. It also shows us how fleeting that perfection can be.
  23. I Was at Home, But
    This isn’t an easy movie, which is to say its meanings and motives have no interest in announcing themselves. But neither is it especially difficult, and if you let it, Schanelec’s gentle, supple stream of images and their attendant associations will bear you dreamily aloft. The meanings, if not necessarily the motives, will follow.
  24. Synonyms
    A searing, maddening, explosively brainy movie about the mutability and immutability of the self that, appropriately enough, never stops changing shape.
  25. Varda by Agnès
    Varda’s playful tour of her life’s work in the movies is nothing less than an opportunity to get to know one of cinema’s greatest treasures.
  26. Goldie
    Treading topical waters with an incisive flair, de Jong offers no didactic salvation or pessimistic prospects. Goldie’s sole assurance is to trudge one rocky step at a time, and that’s all any of us can do.
  27. Cutter's Way
    This stunning, unjustly neglected 1981 release unfolds much like a Ross MacDonald Lew Archer mystery as it becomes a singularly devastating indictment of the plight of the neglected Vietnam veteran. [13 March 1988, p.2]
    • Los Angeles Times
  28. Police Story (1985)
    A brazen mix of head-through-the-glass violence and pie-in-the-face slapstick, with a dash of Capra-esque working-class comedy for good measure, Police Story is remarkably seamless in tone and execution.
  29. Booksmart
    Booksmart leaves you feeling unaccountably hopeful for the state of humanity — and the state of American screen comedy too.
  30. Saint Frances
    Anchored by delicately moving performances from O’Sullivan and the amazing Williams, Saint Frances is a quietly riveting film that slowly but surely draws you in.
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