Los Angeles Times' Scores

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:
16524 movie reviews
  1. Self-conscious about its heroism with portrayals that lean toward the glib and the professionally uplifting, the film milks our sympathies too readily to be emotionally convincing.
  2. It’s a rousing and illuminating tribute to a brilliant musician who burned out quickly, but burned so brightly.
  3. Though the Meru climbing and outdoor footage is spectacular, it is the personal struggle of each of the climbers, and the candid way they talk about them on camera, that give this film its considerable impact.
  4. It’s both an overstuffed box of postmodern delights and a classically Dickensian repository of whimsy and charm.
  5. Even in a film that makes no bones about presenting its subject in a flattering, softening light, this 89-year-old stage and screen legend has refreshingly few qualms about saying exactly what she thinks.
  6. It’s a sterling piece of American realism, powered by the transfixing spectacle of a great actor at the peak of her powers.
  7. Lots of documentaries these days will tell you to be afraid, to be very afraid, but few will scare you as coolly and as convincingly as Command and Control.
  8. Tremblay’s template for on-the-run suspense is effective, primarily by avoiding the exploitative in favor of scenes that drive home the feeling of lives susceptible to being uprooted.
  9. A lot of this is quite well done, but Bromell has a tendency to have too schematic an aesthetic agenda for his story: treating film noir like kabuki is not necessarily the best way to go, no matter how beautifully you do it.
  10. No matter what you've been used to, Idaho is something completely different, a film that manages to confound all expectations, even the ones it sets up itself. [18 Oct 1991]
    • Los Angeles Times
  11. Tainted or not, Hughes' life was a remarkable one, and, flawed or not, Scorsese's film version deserves the same accolade.
  12. It’s a humane, compassionate film, simultaneously full of beauty, sadness and struggle.
  13. Till is more understatedly effective, and Deadwyler’s performance at its most powerful, when Chukwu resists and even undermines the template of the prestige biographical drama she only appears to be making.
  14. Bleak childhoods make for the best cinema, and Ratcatcher stands at the head of the class.
  15. An honest title for a film that is almost entirely conversation. Yet its rich contemplative tone proves deceptive, for its director, Portugal's preeminent filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira, at 96, still knows how to pack a wallop.
  16. Marvin's performance, much enhanced by "The Reconstruction," is a marvel.
  17. Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time: The Imax Experience is a glorious cosmic reverie, a feast for the eyes and a balm for the soul in these angry, contentious times.
  18. Looking at combat from all sides, examining the pride, the anger and the regrets, is what this fine documentary is all about.
  19. Moving in its humanity and forceful in its pragmatism, the documentary feels like essential viewing, especially for decision makers with the power to enact similar initiatives.
  20. With clinical dispassion and narrative elegance, Breillat has constructed what she calls "a thriller about denial."
  21. A low-key, near-total charmer, writer-director Charles Poekel's Christmas, Again captures something ineffably moving about the holiday grind.
  22. Pribar’s humane and heartbreaking drama is beautifully photographed and performed; a loving, warm, and even sexy film about death and dying that is teeming with life.
  23. While the situation seems at times dire, Trapped contains a distinct hopeful streak that is at once defiant and singularly human.
  24. Liu gives you plenty to listen to, but don't forget to look: Beyond the formulaic thriller plotting and the showy verbiage, it's the movie's richly textured vision of urban decay that stays with you.
  25. Gibney’s film cuts across subjects and genres with its own fluid, quicksilver intelligence.
  26. If the story is a welter of subplots, tangents and ideas — to the point of being overly taken at times with its own conceptual daring — Peele’s visual craft shows an admirable finesse and discretion.
  27. Focusing on the last 15 years in the life of mercurial actor-director Orson Welles, the bulk of which was spent trying to complete his passion project, “The Other Side of the Wind,” the impeccably assembled production employs Neville’s virtuoso touch to provocative effect.
  28. Because no one compensates for a thin concept like the people at Pixar, there is a lot to admire in the animated “Dory,” including stunning undersea visuals and an ocean full of eccentric and engaging aquatic creatures. But, as the 13-year gap between “Nemo” and “Dory” indicates, this was not a concept that cried out to be made.
  29. Aside from a riveting adventure story that Herzog tells in all of its terrifying, stripped-down simplicity, Rescue Dawn is a fascinating study of human particularity.
  30. No Way Out's greatest prize is Costner, a leading man at last: fiercely good, intelligent, appreciatively sensual in a performance balanced perfectly between action and introspection. It's a movie that lends itself to more than one sitting, and when you go back, armed with full understanding, Costner's work seems even better than the first time, richer, more complex and many layered.

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