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. Den of Thieves
    Gudegast's twisty, turny tale of heists and homies is an action-packed romp with a good sense of humor and self-awareness. It's rendered with a startling attention to detail, but one has to wonder if with that detail, he can't quite see the forest for the trees.
  2. Proud Mary
    Proud Mary isn't a retro action thriller at all, but a staid family drama, and an incredibly boring one at that.
  3. Azad
    For all of its incompetency of craft, like a strange bit of outsider art, the film showcases a fascinatingly unrefined look at the very real fear felt by immigrants in Donald Trump's America.
  4. Blur Circle
    Its story of redemption means well, but its good intentions can't compensate for characters that are often unlikable and unbelievable.
  5. What Lies Upstream
    By acknowledging what isn't known about drinking water, but what should be illuminated about the mechanism behind it, What Lies Upstream proves an exemplary piece of advocacy filmmaking. Outrage is a given, but more urgently, you're left wanting to learn more.
  6. Dim the Fluorescents
    The smart premise is muddled with far too many tangents — bumbling romances, rivalries with old classmates, troubled cats, precocious teens, angry dance sequences. When focusing on the central relationship, the film is at its best.
  7. In Between
    However pointed the drama's lessons, they're never simplistic and always involving, pulsing with compassion and urgency as Hamoud's vivid characters defy the rules.
  8. Inside
    None of this amounts to much. The original had some squirmy points to make about femininity and motherhood that this Inside lacks. But the movie works on a gut level … as in, "Sharp blades are scary when they're pointed at a pregnant belly."
  9. Saturday Church
    Sensitively written and directed by Damon Cardasis, the movie is punctuated by an affecting string of musical numbers (Cardasis co-wrote the film's song lyrics with composer Nathan Larson) that deepen and enliven this lovely, vital tale.
  10. The Insult
    At a certain point, we are no longer watching a naturally escalating conflict so much as a rigged allegory of masculine aggression, contrived not only for our entertainment but also for our edification.
  11. The Commuter
    While it doesn't pay to think too hard about the plot, after four of these films, director Collet-Serra, shooting here on a 30-ton set put together from authentic discarded railroad scrap, is an expert, so to speak, at making this kind of train run on time.
  12. Abe & Phil's Last Poker Game
    Tripping over soapy subplots and maudlin conventions, it loses its footing just as Abe regains his mojo.
  13. Acts of Violence
    It's all a tad too serious for a movie that's essentially a tawdry pulp thriller. Still, anyone who comes to Acts of Violence looking for colorfully sleazy characters and shootouts — as opposed to nuanced public policy briefs — should find enough reasons to stick around.
  14. The Polka King
    The Polka King doesn't have the dazzling ambition or energy of a great grifter classic. Instead she seems intent on nailing the details, on realizing Jan's milieu in all its tacky splendor, and trusting that our attention will follow. As in "Infinitely Polar Bear," Forbes has a gift for letting her production design tell the story.
  15. Paddington 2
    It's an exquisite reminder of the wondrous things that can happen when a storyteller of boundless imagination avails himself of some rigorous discipline.
  16. Day of the Dead: Bloodline
    "Bloodline” director Hèctor Hernández Vicens and screenwriters Mark Tonderai and Lars Jacobson, on the other hand, are less stewards of it than schlockmeisters, treating any possible resonance as stale oil in which to fry the usual junk food of gory, hyperkinetic kills. Their side orders are thin characters with dumb dialogue and even dumber behavior.
  17. Sheikh Jackson
    Salama gently, effectively examines the role religion can play in one’s life and outlook versus how a secular, more free-thinking existence may offer greater latitude but not always better or happier choices.
  18. Madtown
    The sense of place and character in this film is handled so adroitly that whenever the plot comes blundering back in it’s a distraction — but never one that totally kills the movie.
  19. Stratton
    Although the reliable Cooper (taking over the role from Henry Cavill) and the rest of the cast...valiantly do battle against the thunderous score, they’re ultimately unable to pump up a dreary mission that fails to adhere to the most basic rules of audience engagement.
  20. Surge of Power: Revenge of the Sequel
    It is a master class in how not to make a film, beginning with lessons in writing an unfunny script, leaving foundation makeup visible on actors’ faces and sound editing that overemphasizes a bland score.
  21. Insidious: The Last Key
    With the exception of one clever twist at the midway point, what transpires here is thin, vaporous and awfully derivative. But my goodness, how Shaye holds you, even through the most routine of jolts and the most ludicrous of circumstances.
  22. Goldbuster
    The standard plot may inspire feelings of déjà vu, but the gags and performances in Goldbuster will win over audiences that like slapstick and silliness.
  23. Blame
    This capably acted, if unevenly paced film often lacks focus and depth.
  24. Devil's Gate
    Granted, it’s all pretty stimulating. But when the jolts subside, there’s not much for viewers to cling to, to steady themselves.
  25. 1987: When the Day Comes
    Probably no one movie could capture the scope of citizens forcing regime change in a dictatorial country, but the South Korean feature 1987: When the Day Comes valiantly tries in its own thriller-ish way.
  26. Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
    Bening has done a remarkable job of capturing Grahame's look and her breathy way of talking, insuring that her performance is real and using it to explore still-relevant issues of aging, glamour and relationships.
  27. In the Fade
    An increasingly disturbing film, it offers no relief for its central character, or for its audiences for that matter. Akin was inspired to tell the story by real-life political events in Germany, and his skills as a filmmaker are such that escape from this unsettling film is not in the cards.
  28. Phantom Thread
    What holds you throughout isn't just the picture's astounding craftsmanship but also its unsettling, exploratory vibe — the sense it conveys that you've seen something like it before, even as you assuredly haven't.
  29. Molly's Game
    At 140 minutes, this movie qualifies as something of an endurance test.... But as endurance tests go, Molly's Game is also an incorrigible, unapologetic blast — a dazzling rise-and-fall biopic that races forward, backward and sideways, propelled by long, windy gusts of grade-A Sorkinese.
  30. All the Money in the World
    Though its theme of the corrosive influence of unimaginable wealth is not exactly news, "All the Money" benefits, in much the same way that Scott's similar (and underappreciated) "American Gangster" did, from the director's expertise at bringing pace and interest to stories he cares enough about to sink his teeth into.
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