Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 16,518 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:
16518 movie reviews
  1. There are many ways to portray authoritarianism, but Two Prosecutors is penetrating in its depiction of a society being slowly poisoned. The film might be too much to bear if it wasn’t so brilliantly conceived and executed.
  2. Somewhat miraculously, we’re carried out of this consequential collision of hearts and minds on the lightest of notes, with the sense that our capacity to rediscover harmony will always be beautifully mysterious.
  3. Despite this sequel’s thin and rote stretches, it once again closes strong with a few images that will stick in your head for at least a week or two. No spoilers, but it’s no coincidence that “Here I Come” finally gets more interesting once it tires of hide and seek. Finding a fresh plot twist is the only way it ekes out a draw.
  4. Project Hail Mary is wholesome science fiction that satisfies like a jumbo serving of apple pie and milk.
  5. We’re left with a nightmare of identity that feels slighter than it should, unsure of where to point its knife.
  6. The notion of Naples as a place in perpetual contact with its ghostly, grand history, whether you’re a citizen living on top of it or a visitor passing through, is what gives Gianfranco Rosi’s patient, eccentric documentary Pompei: Below the Clouds its strangely beautiful atmosphere of reflection and restlessness.
  7. Once you realize what the heck it is you’re watching, you might just settle in for a more diverting — or less terrible — time than first expected. But the lower your entertainment bar, the better.
  8. Reminders of Him could use a little more swooning, a little less of the endless middle stretch of driving and talking, interrupted by wet sprints through thunderstorms.
  9. The film is so committed to its rigors — the two-person cast, the glacial camera pivots, the moody lighting — that it teeters on the line of becoming monotonous.
  10. There are many heavy hitters still to come, but Hoppers feels like the first great animated movie of the year. At a time when our right to protest is under siege, this sci-fi yarn exalts the way an individual’s conviction can plant seeds of change, leading to a stronger sense of community.
  11. Under Komasa’s direction, the mix of fractured fable and terroristic morality play in Bartek Bartosik’s screenplay is absurd but potent, giving Heel enough psychologically twisted juju to nearly always feel like more than the sum of its parts.
  12. Whatever Gyllenhaal wants to do, she does, which becomes its own act of captivation and reckless empowerment. It helps that Buckley and Bale are terrific, as is the ensemble at large. The full force of Lawrence Sher’s cinematography, Karen Murphy’s production design and Hildur Guðnadóttir’s orchestral score is fabulous, combining to make something seedy, moody and extravagant.
  13. The intended message is that B.J. must stop chasing the spotlight to let his son be the star. But his character can’t do it and neither can he. In fairness, the title is a clue that technically the focus was never Korean music. The story was always about Pops learning to be a dad.
  14. From abandoned panic rooms to flubbed Ghostface executions, the characters make so many dumb choices that eventually we’re convinced that Williamson is frustrating us by design. Maybe in the boldest meta twist of all, the inventor of "Scream” wants to kill it off himself.
  15. Without gimmicks or pomp (save a picturesque setting) and through the supreme talents of Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds, it offers up an affecting two-hander about a couple on the brink who’ve never really acknowledged said precipice. As directed with low-key confidence by Polly Findlay, the movie is both good and, in a certain way, good enough.
  16. Kokuho is a hearty melodrama with a little bit of everything — sex scandals, betrayals, unlikely comebacks, health scares — but the film’s gaudy plot twists (which shouldn’t be spoiled) belie the filmmaker’s unsentimental attitude regarding stardom’s perils.
  17. The first hour of EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert convinces you that the King is the greatest entertainer who ever lived. By the end of it, he’s a god.
  18. While the promise of that gangbusters opening sequence goes a tad unfulfilled, “Killing” has two strong twists and plenty of reasons to enjoy the romp.
  19. Johnson is nothing if not a punchy ringmaster of deadpan humor and his grab-bag mindset generates enough goodwill to appreciate the DIY brashness of it all. I’m one of those who had no clue of this act’s history and I’m fairly certain I’d look forward to Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie the Sequel.
  20. Touzani, an unfussy, patient director with a fondness for the simplicity of human interaction, implicitly trusts her star to carry the film’s effervescence and complexity, although you may wish the filmmaking was a little less straightforward.
  21. A mixed bag of eye-catching imagery and formulaic writing, Goat disappoints because it follows every expected path toward a triumphant conclusion.
  22. The screenplay gets so intricate and angry — and so shamelessly ambitious — you can’t believe someone in today’s Hollywood was willing to put up the money to get it made. Even helmed by proven hitmaker Verbinski of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, it’s a feat akin to convincing someone to fund a skyscraper-sized cuckoo clock that has a bird that pops out and heckles the crowd.
  23. Though Wuthering Heights is a phony tease, I’m grateful that Fennell wants to titillate audiences.
  24. Despite any narrative quibbles, the movie deserves praise for its genuine call for compassion. Scarlet’s final encounter with Claudius radiates with the complicated poignancy expected of real, difficult catharsis.
  25. Lighton’s biker BDSM rom-com might sound niche, but free yourself to see it and you’ll discover it’s a universal romance.
  26. Filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s snaky, surprising fable starts with a sneeze and explodes into a saga about bureaucracy, modernization and moral corruption. It’s electrifying.
  27. I’m hesitant to call Melania propaganda because I can’t imagine anyone watching this movie and thinking that Melania Trump comes off well. If this vapid, airless, mindless time-waster had subversive designs of being a satire about the first lady of the United States, there’s not much it would have changed.
  28. Even if you don’t know her music, the film still works an acidic sketch of fame.
  29. A Poet rides its wave of misfit compassion so beautifully because its contradictions live inside Rios’s howling, pitiable shambles of a character, who at times looks like someone sketched by a cynical animator but finished by a sympathetic colorist.
  30. At its best, when theme and visuals are in sync, Arco has the easy charm of something half-remembered from one’s cartoon-packed youth: beguilingly earnest and awkward in equal measure.

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