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. Stella's Last Weekend
    Among all the loquacious chaos, Nat steals the film with the quieter performance as the pained, soulful and deeply feeling Jack.
  2. Wobble Palace
    This isn’t an idealized version of romance or L.A. millennials; Kotlyarenko and Nekrasova shine a glaring iPhone flashlight on their characters’ — and their generation’s — flaws.
  3. Look Away
    Bernstein stages a few good, tense moments in the film’s second half — in particular a skate-chase scene on an iced-over stream — but Look Away mostly fails as a “killer teen” movie. The pace is too slow, and the mood too somber.
  4. Gosnell: The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer
    The film adopts a sanctimonious tone that’s anything but subtle.
  5. Better Start Running
    An accomplished cast does what it can to bring the material to life, but it’s tough to add fine emotional shading to characters so thick and cartoonish.
  6. Studio 54
    Ultimately, Studio 54 proves a nostalgic, sometimes wistful, other times unsettling look back at a singular period of time.
  7. All Square
    A good supporting cast — including Isiah Whitlock Jr., Harris Yulin, Tom Everett Scott and Josh Lucas as a hindrance to John’s plans — gives Kelly much to play off, but the story is too rote to get worked up about any of the conflicts.
  8. The Kindergarten Teacher
    The Kindergarten Teacher may offer a less audacious, more stylistically muted version of its predecessor, but by the time its quietly perfect final shot arrives, the movie has reached the same provocative conclusion. It’s not poetry, exactly, but it’s pretty shattering prose.
  9. I Still See You
    Once all the pieces are in place, the film becomes a more conventional and less interesting thriller, with a single violent villain the heroes have to overcome.
  10. The Sentence
    What unnecessary imprisonment does to families is often written about in abstract terms, but to see what it did to one specific family runs an emotional gamut that the patience of this heroically committed filmmaker does full justice to.
  11. Sadie
    While the pace of “Sadie” meanders and is often a bit pokey, the excellent cast, including Danielle Brooks as Carla, the local bartender and Rae’s best friend, brings your attention fully to the dramatic goings-on in this tiny community.
  12. 306 Hollywood
    The need to make an ordinary life extraordinary is so prevalent it smothers any genuine emotion from family members losing a loved one.
  13. MFKZ
    MFKZ is obviously modeled on Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s “Akira” and Taiyô Matsumoto’s “Tekkonkinkreet,” but it lacks the gritty brilliance of the former and the underdog poignancy of the latter.
  14. Bad Times at the El Royale
    Truth be told, I don’t much mind the version of Bad Times at the El Royale we have before us. Even if, with its multi-chapter narrative and time-skipping plotlines, its mix of verbal longwindedness and abrupt violence, the movie initially seems to warn of a terminal case of Tarantino-itis: an El Royale with cheese.
  15. The Happy Prince
    It’s a film of decided care and forethought.
  16. 22 July
    Working closely with master editor William Goldenberg, Greengrass has given 22 July a relentless, remorseless quality, insisting on a matter-of-fact style that allows no escape from reality even while refusing to push anything too hard.
  17. At First Light
    Stone doesn’t explicitly ask the straightforward, big-picture questions you’ll find in a film like “Arrival.” But his attention to detail and character, and his ability to render those people in recognizable settings, is engrossing.
  18. Morning, Noon & Night
    A meandering, pointless and boring rumination on substances and those who love to abuse them.
  19. The Samuel Project
    Despite its flaws, The Samuel Project is likely to make an impact on open-hearted audiences, with extra credit due Linden for an authentic performance in line with the actor’s body of work.
    • Los Angeles Times
      • Posted Oct 4, 2018
  20. The Church
    If nothing else, The Church proves something: Better an amusingly terrible, eye-catching horror movie than a slick, nondescript, boring one.
  21. Above and Beyond: NASA's Journey To Tomorrow
    “Above and Beyond” is a slick, engrossing sizzle reel of the agency’s triumphs at turning curiosity about the universe into data about our place in it.
  22. Shine
    Though many of the character shifts and story beats are facile, Shine achieves its goal of presenting music and dance as love, connection, family and important forces for maintaining culture throughout the inevitability of urban gentrification.
  23. Scaffolding
    Reminiscent of the naturalistic social dramas made by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Scaffolding combines the nervous tension of a thriller about a bomb waiting to go off — Lax’s volatility is as nail-biting as his bursts of compassion are relief-inducing — and the mournful clarity of a fly-on-the-wall documentary about troubled students.
  24. Trouble
    It’s a film that begins as a raucous rural comedy and deftly evolves into a poignant and reflective, yet still wryly amusing, story of what becomes of a family.
  25. Heavy Trip
    Playing like a Nordic “This is Spinal Tap,” the Finnish import Heavy Trip, a satire about an aspiring heavy metal band’s efforts to land its first legitimate gig, proves as affably goofy as its characters.
  26. Living in the Future's Past
    While the outlook often seems bleak, the message is to take the future into our own hands — to change our behavior and change the world.
  27. The Hate U Give
    More disturbing than you expect, its story of innocence lost and perspective gained holds us and will not let go.
  28. Bayou Caviar
    This picture tries to encompass many ideas: about loyalty, the lust for fame and the slippery slope of immoral behavior. All of that is in the film. It just hasn’t been put in any particular order.
  29. Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable
    Both a fine introduction for those who don’t know the work and a thoughtful examination of the issues surrounding him for those who do.
  30. Loving Pablo
    Tolerating Pablo might have better suited this unremarkable picture in which the wealthiest criminal of all time’s reported charisma takes a back seat to his badness.
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