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. Clover
    From the occasional flashy camera angles to a soundtrack peppered with deep-cut R&B songs, this movie slots right into some well-worn grooves. And yet it mostly works, thanks to an ace cast and a story that springs a few surprises.
  2. Justine
    Justine recalls the golden era of the conscientious, well-acted movie of the week: a slice of life built around hardships, but without exploiting them.
  3. The Other Lamb
    As a study in atmospheric seclusion, The Other Lamb is beautifully crafted enough to hold your attention, but you can’t shake the feeling that Selah’s next chapter — and Cassidy’s — might well be the more interesting movie.
  4. Streetlight Harmonies
    Like a fan excitedly showing off their record collection, the documentary Streetlight Harmonies flips through its history of doo-wop telling a tale both tuneful and essential in the development of rhythm & blues, rock and roll and civil rights.
  5. Elephant
    The movie, which begins streaming Friday on Disney+, emerges a generally charming, sometimes cloying exercise in wildlife anthropomorphism.
  6. There's Something in the Water
    What results is an emotional appeal that highlights a grave problem but doesn’t give the viewer the scientific, factual foundation to be completely convinced. The film also doesn’t offer solutions.
  7. Vitalina Varela
    This is cinema that pushes beyond the medium’s usual representational modes, beyond the observational qualities of neorealism or the interior states of psychological drama. Complex histories and unspoken emotions are distilled into a series of carefully composed tableaus, each one proceeding with slow, ceremonial deliberation.
  8. Uncorked
    Writer-director Penny . . . has crafted a thoroughly workable and well-informed vehicle, providing a nurturing atmosphere for the unhurried dramatic developments and uniformly gracious performances.
  9. Tape
    Tape might be based on a true story but it still feels disingenuous, both in its bleakest moments and in those meant to inspire solidarity. There’s clumsiness present in the filmmaking, with issues that deserve so much better.
  10. Banana Split
    Regardless of how far audience members are from their own post-high school, pre-college summer like these teens, there’s still truth and plenty of laughter here that feels specific to their experience yet universal to anyone who’s had a BFF.
  11. Inside the Rain
    One suspects Inside the Rain is a labor of love. One wishes its makers would have let us in enough to love it as well.
  12. Vivarium
    Finnegan offers a vision of domesticity as a soul-sucking grind, done for the benefit of malevolent overlords. His film chills the mind more than the spine.
  13. Resistance
    A tense and gripping thriller inspired by yet another true-life, World War II-era tale of courage and resolve against one of history’s most unthinkable evils.
  14. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution
    More than most real-life stories about marginalized individuals overcoming daunting odds and deep-seated prejudices, “Crip Camp” manages to be at once sweetly affirming and breezily irreverent.
  15. The Platform
    Formidable from a technical standpoint, The Platform thrives on effectively grotesque production design and ghastly special effects that shock and disgust with purpose.
  16. The Dog Doc
    Its chill, holistic view of the clinic and its canine patients will likely appeal to pet lovers and wellness devotees alike, although the allergic and the skeptics might find their minds wandering toward its end.
  17. Phoenix, Oregon
    Although the production establishes the requisite lived-in, small town feel, it has also chosen to take its dramatic cue from the seemingly sedated gaze of its lugubrious, aliens-obsessed protagonist, whom Le Gros portrays with a remarkable economy of expended energy.
  18. Dosed
    Dosed works best as a purely anecdotal, personal chronicle of a friend’s struggle with addiction therapies. It is not recommended as a substitute for scientific conclusions.
  19. Hooking Up
    While not everything connects in the movie, Hooking Up is saved by the efforts of Snow and Richardson. They make a charming couple, even if the film itself has less allure.
  20. Human Nature
    Bolt’s ethically engaging, easy-to-grasp and artfully conceived film covers a wide range of areas that stir us to think about benefits and costs.
  21. Human Capital
    A magnificent cast only partially compensates for the fizzling narrative.
  22. Blow the Man Down
    A briny Northeastern noir powered by women with secrets, Blow the Man Down is a pleasantly spiky slinging of small-town sin that should prove to be eminently companionable viewing for these sequestered, streamable times.
  23. The Roads Not Taken
    Despite the noble ambitions of writer-director Sally Potter (“Orlando, “The Party”), The Roads Not Taken proves a morose and baffling drama; a painful, snail’s-paced 85 minutes with little payoff.
  24. Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations
    Though “Virus” could have lived without the presence of director Goldberg as an on-camera through-line, it is at its best in presenting strong and vivid examples of anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions.
  25. Balloon
    Filmmaker Herbig and his team prove to be especially adept at contriving situations where anything anyone does causes fear, anxiety, stress and worry, leaving everyone, very much including the audience, existing on the knife’s edge of unremitting tension.
  26. I Still Believe
    Those looking for inspiration will find it without looking too hard, but those who don’t attend church regularly will be as bored as they would be by a sermon.
  27. Lost Girls
    Though the film eventually gets to where it needs to go, it feels scattered, stumbling over true crime tropes on the way.
  28. The Postcard Killings
    Despite Tanović’s efforts to depict these crimes and their aftermath as aestheticized abstractions, there’s something depressingly mundane about the way the murders and the investigation play out.
  29. Heimat is a Space in Time
    In its extreme length and precise technique, it’s decidedly not for everybody. But although it is at times distractingly opaque, occasionally Heise’s family’s words, juxtaposed with his sounds and images, crystallize into something singularly wise about the nexus of place, history and trauma.
  30. Big Time Adolescence
    It is funny and fast paced, with an outstanding cast, and Orley modulates the tone well, conveying both the fun and the danger of being young, impulsive and poorly supervised.
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