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. A Quiet Passion
    The stately rhythms of the dialogue — drawn out by the particulars of Davies’ blocking, framing and editing — become a kind of music. The effect is bewildering at first, then absorbing, then transfixing. Its purpose, in line with the loftiest ideals of poetry itself, is to clear the mind and stir the soul.
  2. My Darling Vivian
    The whole point of this illuminating and often moving film is that all of these people have a tale to tell — and one that’s not as simple as Hollywood would have it.
  3. Pusher II: With Blood On My Hands
    The introduction of a baby that Tonny supposedly fathered feels worrisome initially...but in Refn's skilled street-realist hands, the child becomes a potent, wailing metaphor for Tonny's own dilemma of rudderless need.
  4. Abortion: Stories Women Tell
    If there is a through line that unites all the women in Abortion: Stories Women Tell, it’s that they take the potential responsibilities of parenthood very seriously. And no matter how tough and self-reliant they are, this decision is always an impossible one, and one that the outside world's unbending attitudes do not make any easier.
  5. Tickling Giants
    Tickling Giants surprises us on several levels. It reveals Egypt’s familiar Arab Spring experience through a lens, that of satiric comedy, which is very different from the way we usually see it. And it has the personal element of Youssef’s involving story, showing what can happen when your dreams come true to a completely unexpected extent.
  6. Kung Fu Hustle
    Brilliantly choreographed and shot, Kung Fu Hustle is often grisly, visually spectacular and unabashedly silly, sometimes all at once.
  7. Apollo 13
    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.
  8. Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan
    It’s a rousing and illuminating tribute to a brilliant musician who burned out quickly, but burned so brightly.
  9. Meru
    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.
  10. The Personal History of David Copperfield
    It’s both an overstuffed box of postmodern delights and a classically Dickensian repository of whimsy and charm.
  11. Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It
    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.
  12. Clemency
    It’s a sterling piece of American realism, powered by the transfixing spectacle of a great actor at the peak of her powers.
  13. Command and Control
    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.
  14. Fancy Dance
    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.
  15. Panic
    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.
  16. My Own Private Idaho
    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
  17. The Aviator
    Tainted or not, Hughes' life was a remarkable one, and, flawed or not, Scorsese's film version deserves the same accolade.
  18. Island of the Hungry Ghosts
    It’s a humane, compassionate film, simultaneously full of beauty, sadness and struggle.
  19. Till
    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.
  20. Ratcatcher
    Bleak childhoods make for the best cinema, and Ratcatcher stands at the head of the class.
  21. A Talking Picture
    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.
  22. The Big Red One
    Marvin's performance, much enhanced by "The Reconstruction," is a marvel.
  23. Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience
    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.
  24. Legion of Brothers
    Looking at combat from all sides, examining the pride, the anger and the regrets, is what this fine documentary is all about.
  25. Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops
    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.
  26. Abuse of Weakness
    With clinical dispassion and narrative elegance, Breillat has constructed what she calls "a thriller about denial."
  27. Christmas, Again
    A low-key, near-total charmer, writer-director Charles Poekel's Christmas, Again captures something ineffably moving about the holiday grind.
  28. Asia
    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.
  29. Trapped
    While the situation seems at times dire, Trapped contains a distinct hopeful streak that is at once defiant and singularly human.
  30. Have a Nice Day
    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.
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