Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,520 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:
  1. Positive: 8,697 out of 16520
  2. Mixed: 5,806 out of 16520
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16520
16520 movie reviews
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  1. Smaller and Smaller Circles
    Despite Smaller and Smaller Circles being visually proficient, stagy performances fueled by formulaic dialogue do little to steer the film’s narrative.
  2. We Die Young
    Director Lior Geller brings an aggressive energy and jittery style to this action movie, but his sketch of a script feels like an all-caps reactive tweet to some news story about MS-13, a real problem in the D.C. area.
  3. Something
    As bland as its title, Something is a horror film with few scares and a mystery without answers.
  4. Pretty Broken
    There are grief dramas, and there are wacky family comedies, and there are films about charming screw-ups, but the degree of difficulty for one film to pull off all three at once is incredibly high. The disjointed “Pretty Broken,” written by Jill Remesnyder and directed by Brett Eichenberger, doesn’t clear the bar.
  5. The Iron Orchard
    Garrison’s McNeely damns the overlong film; he’s neither a good man nor a good character, someone that we can’t care about or care to watch.
  6. Beers of Joy
    Ultimately coming across more like a bloated, corporate infomercial, Beers of Joy will undoubtedly leave only those who know their ABV (Alcohol by Volume) from their IBU (International Bittering Units) thirsty for more.
  7. Level 16
    As it sputters toward its curtain-exposing conclusion, “Level 16” stays disappointingly thin, both as a dark-future cautionary saga and a genre exercise.
  8. Stray
    Stray falters in the narrative department but looks good and holds interest.
  9. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
    This feels like two movies for the price of one, but the audience isn’t getting a deal.
  10. Cliffs of Freedom
    The dialogue is often stiff, the action and plotting unlikely, making the romance hard to swallow. The appealing Uddin and Raymonde do generate enough chemistry in their fleeting time together to keep the proposition afloat.
  11. This Magnificent Cake!
    At 44 minutes, This Magnificent Cake may be a long short or a short feature. Either way, it’s an intriguing, disturbing film, utterly unlike American studio animation.
  12. Apollo 11
    One of the unexpected but welcome things Apollo 11 accomplishes is restoring a sense of how insanely complex the lunar mission was, and how audacious.
  13. Mapplethorpe
    Director Ondi Timoner, who co-wrote with Mikko Alanne (based on a screenplay by Bruce Goodrich), has crafted a stylish, evocative, absorbing snapshot of creative expression, artistic ambition, sexuality and eroticism.
  14. Sharkwater Extinction
    While Stewart didn’t live to see the enactment of a new California law last fall that will see the phasing out of the practice already banned elsewhere in the world, his passionate documentary, boasting stirring underwater photography and an equally poignant Jonathan Goldsmith score, speaks urgently on his behalf.
  15. Wrestle
    Just as sports mirror society, so do the best sports films not only take us inside games and those who play them but also provide insight into our world and how it works. “Wrestle,” a superb sports documentary, does exactly that.
  16. Saint Judy
    The early glimmers of something soulful and sobering — rooted in investigative details and detention center realities — ultimately give way to the tired mechanics of give-it-all uplift.
  17. The Competition
    If the process of passing judgment at all fascinates you (and perhaps it goes without saying that it would fascinate a critic), it’s hard to resist The Competition’s extensive breakdown of how one weighs the merits of artistic goals and visions that tend to elude the usual scoring mechanisms.
  18. The Last Resort
    In 70 short minutes, directors Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch skillfully pack their Miami Beach-centric documentary, The Last Resort, with a wealth of visual, emotional, social, cultural and historical significance.
  19. Climax
    What makes the extended trip-tastic finale ultimately disappointing is that it remains a resolutely exterior experience, a set of wild but recycled gestures that reminds you just how tedious watching someone else’s LSD high can be.
  20. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
    The tale of a kid whose rebellion is in feeding his knowledge is rousing enough, but it’s to Ejiofor’s credit that he takes care to meaningfully dramatize how the systems around William — social, economic and political — create a perfect storm of obstacles for anyone in a struggling community trying to seed a future.
  21. Prosecuting Evil
    Self-aware, funny and articulate, blessed with a first-class temperament, Ferencz is front and center telling his own tale, which includes being the key player in what’s been called the biggest murder trial in history.
  22. Woman at War
    With a masterful melding of the serious, the comic, the ridiculous and the musical, Woman at War is joyful to experience though difficult to sum up.
  23. Touch Me Not
    Pintilie has a way of nudging the strangeness of her fiction/documentary hybridization so that your engagement isn’t predicated on narrative catharsis, but simply a desire for the continued frankness of it all.
  24. Virginia Minnesota
    Winning lead performances and some uniquely quirky touches keep this dramedy watchable from start to finish, but an over-reliance on indie film clichés — from the plucky folk-pop soundtrack to the generic “dredging up the past” plot — add up to squandered potential.
  25. 2050
    2050 has a meaningful subject, but is so dialogue-heavy and incident-light that almost the entire film feels like a pitch for the movie Holt didn’t make.
  26. Devil's Path
    Over-written dialogue and some stiff acting weigh Devil’s Path down, especially in the early going. But the action sequences are quite good, deriving nervous energy from the inherent risk of any illicit sexual encounter: that being in the wrong place with the wrong person could prove fatal.
  27. Tuftland
    Writer-director Roope Olenius (adapting a Neea Viitamäki play) struggles at times to maintain a consistent tone with a film which veers sharply between absurdist comedy and near-horror.
  28. The Cannibal Club
    Dryly funny and unsparingly acerbic, The Cannibal Club has one simple point to make about the hypocrisy of the aristocracy … and Parente makes it sharply.
  29. The Hole in the Ground
    It’s always welcome to see a chiller that builds suspense from ideas and characters — and where the beasts from beyond are almost beside the point.
  30. The Wedding Guest
    Twists and turns abound, but they're all smoke and mirrors that ultimately don't add up to anything.
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