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. Communion
    Communion is a heartbreaking example of a classic documentary genre — the immersive, observational film that takes a bold leap and embeds itself with a small group of people.
  2. Mojin: The Worm Valley
    While “Worm Valley” is generally diverting, the plotting is remedial — and devoid of whatever personality Zhang brought to his books. There’s just enough story here to support the next big special effects sequence.
  3. Escape Room
    It’s a mostly fun, logic-be-damned ride if you just stay in the moment and don’t think too deeply as the going gets tough — which is soon enough.
  4. Being Rose
    Despite some honest and poignant emotions and a compelling lead turn by Cybill Shepherd, Being Rose unfolds in an awkwardly constructed, herky-jerky manner that shortchanges its many characters and themes. Let’s just say the spirit is willing but the filmmaking is weak.
  5. The Vanishing
    Mullan brings edginess and gravitas to the kind of role he’s played dozens of times. Butler, though, is a pleasant surprise, departing from his usual one-dimensional action heroes to play a dramatic part — and so well that one wonders why he doesn’t do it more often.
  6. State Like Sleep
    The mix of genres and the overload of characters are too much of a drag on the film. Waterston, though, is a wonder throughout, capturing the deep confusion as a woman whose life has been so upended that she wonders if she’ll ever see straight again.
  7. A Twelve Year Night
    While this story is more likely to have impact for those who lived through the horrors of this period and Mujica’s eventual emergence as a political leader, A Twelve Year Night avoids the easy trappings of triumph-of-the-human-spirit narratives. Sometimes a human simply withstands what it’s subjected to, and that’s enough to rivet us.
  8. Stan & Ollie
    Propelled by lovely, engaging writing and wonderful performances, Stan & Ollie, the story of the bittersweet final bow of legendary duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, should move and delight fans of the beloved performers while enjoyably exposing the less initiated to these comedy giants.
  9. Girl
    Dhont’s film is a strong debut from a technical angle, but it lacks the humanity necessary for a story of this nature.
  10. Holmes & Watson
    Because of the talent involved, every now and then Holmes & Watson hits on something bizarrely inspired.
  11. Destroyer
    Destroyer is simultaneously impressive and stand-offish. Persuasively directed by Kusama and convincingly acted by Kidman and expert costars like Toby Kebbell and Sebastian Stan though it is, its determination to live exclusively at the darkest end of the street pays disagreeable dividends.
  12. On the Basis of Sex
    It would be silly to expect this movie to achieve the cinematic equivalent of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s brilliance, but you can’t help wishing it had more to offer than righteous speeches and stirring glances, that it put a few more ideas in your head to go with that lump in your throat.
  13. Vice
    Brainy, audacious, opinionated and fun, Vice is a tonic for troubled times. As smart as it is partisan, and it is plenty partisan, this savage satire is scared of only one thing, and that is being dull.
  14. Delaware Shore
    This astonishingly bad film, adapted by writer-director Raghav Peri from a novel by Michaelangelo Rodriguez, mishmashes such big topics as genocide, homosexuality, teen pregnancy, child abuse, alcoholism and mental illness into a painful, inadvertently laughable stew.
  15. Second Act
    The movie is all over the place and there is no attempt to weave it into a coherent whole — which is regrettable as scene for scene it often works.
  16. Cold War
    Passionate, tempestuous, haunting and assured, this latest from writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski explores, as did his Oscar-winning “Ida,” Poland’s recent past, resulting in a potent emotional story with political overtones that plays impeccably today.
  17. Welcome To Marwen
    It’s a muddled, tortured miasma of a movie and also, inevitably, a fascinating one.
  18. Swing Kids
    Like any good hoofer, the South Korean musical Swing Kids is eager to please, relying on both subtly graceful moves and aggressive razzle-dazzle. Though a bit longer than necessary, the movie tells an engaging, enjoyable story, peppered with impressive dance numbers.
  19. American Renegades
    Quale and his crew clearly want this to be a good old-fashioned two-fisted caper, but the pacing is leaden and the plot lacks imagination. Worst of all, nobody really bothered to give the picture an angle. It’s all straight, flat and dull.
  20. Between Worlds
    The actor’s fierce commitment turns Between Worlds into another solidly strange entry in the ever-expanding “Nicolas Cage movie” sub-genre.
  21. All Is True
    A fitfully engaging, well-intentioned but disappointing original biographical drama.
  22. They Shall Not Grow Old
    They Shall Not Grow Old is a tribute paid by the present to the past, and what a gorgeous gift it turns out to be.
  23. Drug$
    Side effects from watching the anti-Pharma documentary Drug$ start with rage, and pretty much stay there through the call-your-congressperson coda.
  24. Kill the Monsters
    Zippy editing, cool black-and-white photography, an excitingly used classic score and whirling, kooky performances add to this deceptively brainy film’s look-at-me fun.
  25. Woven
    Though its script lacks moments that bring cohesion to its characters and timeline, Elenie remains a woman whom audiences can empathize with.
  26. Unknown Distance
    Not every stylistic choice works, with some moments distracting from the film’s message and occasional shots that don’t feel organic. But Brown’s journey remains compelling and absolutely necessary for the audience to see, as do the stories of his fellow veterans.
  27. The Second Time Around
    Unfortunately the film, directed by Leon Marr (script by Marr and Sherry Soules) needs more pep in its step, could use some judicious trimming and, save for the chatty, wheelchair-using Charlie (Louis Del Grande), features an unmemorable, under-drawn group of resident seniors, a missed opportunity to help flesh out — and lighten up — this slender, tender tale.
  28. Avicii: True Stories
    There’s a sense of dread as the film wraps up, knowing where the real-life story ended, and it’s increasingly out of step with the rosy picture painted by Tsikurishvili. Is he compelled to update the film or leave us with an image of Bergling in his freest moment? Ultimately, it feels like only part of the story, and therefore not entirely true.
  29. Bird Box
    Bier plunges herself into mainstream horror filmmaking with a gusto that doesn’t always offset her lack of precision. For visceral intensity, she never tops the early scenes of mayhem and mass panic; slow-building, artfully modulated tension in close quarters seems beyond the movie’s interest or purview.
  30. The House That Jack Built
    Von Trier has managed to cobble together just enough of interest — odd moments, pieces of performance, stray ideas and the simple audacity of putting this mess out into the world, that it feels like there may be something there worth considering, a maddening possibility. And that may be his cruelest prank of all.
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