Los Angeles Times' Scores

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:
16520 movie reviews
  1. Brian Buckley’s The Pirates of Somalia, based on a memoir by Jay Bahadur, finds itself navigating some choppy tonal waters prior to emerging as an engagingly performed take on recent world events.
  2. Easily its most exciting iteration in decades — the first flat-out terrific “Star Wars” movie since 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back.” It seizes upon Lucas’ original dream of finding a pop vessel for his obsessions — Akira Kurosawa epics, John Ford westerns, science-fiction serials — and fulfills it with a verve and imagination all its own.
  3. Even a cast with this many award wins and nominations can't salvage a script that will have viewers audibly sighing, rather than laughing.
  4. This documentary won’t provide an exhaustive view of his filmography or life offscreen, but it paints an impressionistic picture that feels almost experimental at times. Simultaneously arty and artful, it refuses to take the standard approach and it will reward cinephiles who want something different than most film biographies can offer.
  5. Above all, it’s the warm, searching conversations between father and daughter, whether they’re seated side by side or she’s questioning him from behind the camera, that give the documentary its poignant immediacy.
  6. This movie is more like a gallery exhibition of moving portraits — each more astonishing than the last.
  7. Seeing Sonia confidently gripping the leopard print-covered steering wheel of her late model Oldsmobile and getting on with her day serves as a potent and especially timely lesson about living a compassionate, vibrant life that doesn’t have any room for hatred and bitterness.
  8. Harding’s story, in this overly broad retelling, is not especially strong on narrative density — or, for that matter, ambiguity.
  9. The Shape of Water is a wonder to behold. Magical, thrilling and romantic to the core, a sensual and fantastical fairy tale with moral overtones, it’s a film that plays by all the rules and none of them, going its own way with fierce abandon.
  10. What makes "Bombshell" intriguing is not just Lamarr's gift for invention, it's also what a fiery individualist she was, someone who had no regrets about her eventful life ("You learn from everything"), not even its racy, tabloid elements.
  11. More than the story of an individual, the film is a stirring tribute to endangered folk traditions.
  12. Truths this scalding and plain-spoken need no such embellishment to be heard.
  13. There are limits to how much of an edge a movie gets from incompetence — as writer/director/producer Susannah O’Brien’s The Doll proves definitively.
  14. The Dancer is such a bold and assured film, wildly creative and sensual, that it feels far more sophisticated than a debut, and signals Di Giusto as one to watch.
  15. As a perilous dog-and-mouse game ensues, Solet packs his script with tension, dimension and several vivid flashbacks recalling the characters’ seminal encounters with dogs. Cool camerawork too.
  16. Shadowman is at its unsettling, want-to-look-away best when tiptoeing around the question of what makes for success regarding artists like Hambleton: the hoopla that keeps the work in circulation, or the mysterious inner pilot light that keeps a self-destructive talent going?
  17. Kaleidoscope is brilliantly crafted and performed, but it’s a bit too taken with its own muddling of facts and form to truly hook into.
  18. The directors get some melancholic atmosphere out of their visuals but don’t have the scene sense to build their actors’ committed performances into compelling through-lines of seaside personality disintegration.
  19. Like “Winter’s Bone,” the film is at its best when it follows its heroine closely, letting the audience understand more about her life with each step closer to danger.
  20. At most, Naples ’44 makes a solid case for turning to Lewis’ prose and getting the full effect of his year there that way.
  21. Although the movie...could use some second-half tightening and a bit more objectivity (Georgia-Pacific and Koch Industries did not comment in the film), it remains a vital, eye-opening portrait.
  22. An intricate, dazzling cinematic dance, Foxtrot goes both deeper in and further out than standard-issue cinema. It's profound and moving and wild and crazy at the same time, simultaneously telling a specific story and offering an emotional snapshot of a country whose very soul seems to be at risk.
  23. Forget the cheapo title, Badsville is a powerful, deeply felt crime drama about letting go of the past and getting out of Dodge — before it’s too late.
  24. Looking for bathroom humor, beer jokes, heavy metal, unapologetic smut and a dude in a furry monster suit? These movies are a one-stop shop for just that kind of good-natured vulgarity.
  25. This debut effort from Hickman lacks the dramatic tension and connective tissue to truly compel, but his gritty, high-energy aesthetic can no doubt be applied to better results with a stronger script.
  26. The blades of the brotherhood may be sharp, but the execution is exceedingly dull.
  27. The stirring, masterfully constructed documentary “Apache Warrior” makes intriguing use of three recovered flight tapes from a squadron of U.S. Apache fighter helicopters that launched a deep attack in Iraq at the start of the war in March 2003.
  28. Despite Denison’s intentions, a very fine, uncomfortable line exists between being up-to-the-minute and opportunistic.
  29. The clunky organization and very basic production values give way to something inspiring.
  30. Ultimately, it feels irresponsible to remain unwilling to take a stand on this extreme abstract rhetoric in support of an all too real and immediate threat.

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