Los Angeles Times' Scores

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:
16550 movie reviews
  1. Melody Makers never becomes more than a set of disconnected sound bites and archival photos, loosely assembled. At times the film feels like outtakes from another, more cohesive documentary about Melody Maker’s legacy.
  2. The film poses half-formed thoughts about femininity through the lens of nationality, immigration, work, creativity and money, but ultimately the only profound thing it manages to say is on the nature of exploitation between subject and author. A fascinating albeit frustrating sketch on the topic.
  3. Ly’s considerable skill aside, what makes Les Misérables such an immersive experience is the crackling sense of authenticity that is the film’s birthright.
  4. Among the virtues of The Two Popes, a sparkling confection with a serious side, is that, given its prosaic title, its crowd-pleasing attributes come as pretty much of a surprise.
  5. Don’t let its florid, mouthful of a title mislead you: The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open is a film that’s as urgent and unpretentious as it is remarkable. It’s safe to say you haven’t seen too many movies quite like it.
  6. More than anything, this is a film in love with its characters’ passions, a rich and effortlessly vibrant examination of the four March “little women” (so called by their father) and the ways, at least initially, they’re practically bursting with the innocent it’s-happening-right-now joy of being young and alive.
  7. There are times when the nonstop visual momentum lends 1917 the feel of a virtual-reality installation, and others when the simulation of raw immediacy slips to reveal the calculated construct underneath.
  8. 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.
  9. As the heroine of the chase thriller The Courier, Olga Kurylenko brings a lot of personal magnetism and awesome athleticism — and she needs to, because her director, Zackary Adler, has stuck her in an action movie that rarely moves.
  10. The combination of Ruffalo’s quietly intense performance and Haynes’ direction illuminates both what drives him and what the cost can be.
  11. Saint Cloud Hill is often dramatic, capturing tense standoffs between cops and vagrants. But this documentary is also filled with hope, and admiration for all those visionaries who see how neglected people and places can be put to good use.
  12. Citizen K uses Khodorkovsky’s story as a way to guide us through the thickets of modern Russian history, a tangled, through-the-looking-glass world that the film surveys from the days of Boris Yeltsin in 1991 to today’s increasingly autocratic reign of Vladimir Putin
  13. Delgado Aparicio’s reflective direction with a patient eye for lived-in behavior and kinetic symbolism bears artistically ripe fruit in an affectingly measured, near-perfect tour de force that demands serious attention.
  14. Longinotto’s film is a rollicking depiction of the wonderfully self-possessed Battaglia.
  15. That Kasbe, who also shot and co-edited, so firmly embedded himself in this distant, hardscrabble world results in a wealth of candid, you-are-there moments that highlight the complex intersection between the fraught state of wildlife preservation and the desperate scramble for human survival.
  16. As with “The Better Angels,” Edwards’ new movie is magnificently impressionistic, with Colin Stetson’s rhythmic score and Jeff Bierman’s sun-dappled cinematography making Richie’s life seem as wondrous as it is hard.
  17. It’s all a very believable, close-quarters theater of exhaustion and pain, with moments of lightness and warmth that only add to the difficulty of Mickey’s predicament, and all of it captured in alluring fixed images of depth and color by cinematographer Conor Murphy.
  18. Although its storytelling is at times naggingly staid, its central characterizations teem with complexity and sensitivity, and for that, it’s a modest coming-of-age gem.
  19. Lee coaxes moving performances from a young cast, and he beautifully captures the cultural nuances of the Bronx neighborhoods where his story is set. But he has a tough time finding much new to say with this tale of star-crossed lovers.
  20. Mann, an emerging Latino filmmaker, exhibits signs of vocation for the craft that could lead to a more fruitful product some day. For now, what he serves is a tortuous trick with a confusingly dark punch line for an ending.
  21. The Tower is an angry, ambitious and often moving film from an underrepresented group, but its story might have been told more effectively in live action.
  22. Acceleration is like a quest story with all the cool complications and nifty narrow escapes removed.
  23. More often than not, it feels like Dutoit uses shock and surrealism as a way to cover up for the movie’s plodding pace, crude blocking and nonsensical story. It’s admirable that she’s trying to defy convention here, but the result is something ultimately too befuddling to disturb.
  24. Anyone interested in the complexities and controversies surrounding Australia and New Zealand’s involvement in Vietnam may find Danger Close disappointing. But the movie actually works OK as one long fight scene.
  25. Fichtner’s love for upstate New York — and his interest in exploring the dynamic of longtime married couples — makes this movie easy to root for. But he doesn’t have much of a story, or much of a directorial eye. His passion project is admirable but minor.
  26. In the end, there’s a point about black struggle alongside white dominance in The Cotton Club Encore that Coppola can’t get quite right because, ultimately, atmosphere won out over emotion.
  27. What might have been a pertinent, evenhanded examination of the notion of free speech on today’s college campuses wastes little time in exposing an overwhelmingly right-leaning bias in the disappointingly sensationalistic agitprop that is No Safe Spaces.
  28. Writer-director Frank Sabatella falls back on a few too many high school and monster movie clichés; but a good young cast and a strong sense of purpose compensate for most of the shortcomings.
  29. Given how visually inventive and unusual the film’s first five minutes are, it’s disappointing that, by its last half hour, it essentially turns into one undistinguished chase scene after another. A heroine as strong as Reese deserves a more consistently exciting plot.
  30. Souza and his cast explore a familiar milieu, and though they fall short of saying anything startlingly insightful about it, they do a fine job of making it feel real, and even vital.

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