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. Same Kind of Different as Me takes its time, but the performances by Kinnear, Zellweger and especially Hounsou sneak up on you, building to an emotional, but not overstated climax.
  2. While its predecessor at least pleased his fans, writer-director-star Perry’s latest offers few laughs and embarrassing post-production work.
  3. When the long-promised global barrage of tornadoes, lightning strikes, tidal waves and extreme temperatures hits in the final half-hour, the special effects are stunning. But the razzle-dazzle arrives too late, and is strangely unmoving.
  4. Lacking the incisive bite of the keenly observed campus-based “Dear White People,” the movie too often finds itself on the unfunny side of that very fine line between risqué and bad taste.
  5. The subject matter of Deliver Us is sensational, but Di Giacomo’s approach is more in the spirit of documentarian Frederick Wiseman, where very little is explained.
  6. The self-seriousness of this loony swing-and-a-miss shares a tone with Tommy Wiseau’s outrageously amateurish cult classic “The Room” but isn’t nearly as entertaining.
  7. It’s an artful, boundary-pushing debut from Radcliff and Wolkstein, with breakthrough performances from Freedson-Jackson, and Pettyfer, perhaps signaling a new direction in his career.
  8. The battle scenes here are impressively large-scale, but too sparsely deployed. A good two-thirds of this movie consists of miserable-looking people quietly debating their terrible options, which can be exhausting.
  9. The performances don’t always reach the rawness of the subject, but the film will resonate with many people who have experienced similar crises and help others empathize.
  10. London is adequate (if not exactly magnetic) as the lead, and director Patricio Valladares gives the film a rich, shadowy look that almost compensates for the turgid pace and distractingly incessant score.
  11. It’s a well-intentioned film that wants to help people live healthier lives, but it sometimes appears closer to a feature-length infomercial than a legitimate documentary.
  12. In the mythology of personal growth, liberating yourself leads invariably to increased happiness. Yet what characterizes the seekers in the powerful One of Us is nothing that straightforward.
  13. Deftly balancing humor and grief, The Bachelors is fueled by wonderfully human performances and fully realized characters.
  14. Despite the considerable physicality of the movie, with its impressive cinematography and Radcliffe’s believable, all-in disintegration, it’s more earthbound slog than psychological deep-dive.
  15. An enigmatic, if perhaps hopeful, epilogue caps this sad, strange, at times weirdly poignant portrait.
  16. Save a bit of narrative padding (karaoke, anyone?), this is a mostly swift and lively ride as the tables turn — and turn again — in some absurdly clever ways.
  17. The movie’s central idea and bright young cast are so good that some of its shallowness is forgivable.
  18. The overall effect is of something too large to fully comprehend, yet also too intimately sad to ignore, the kind of dilemma that Ai believes speaks directly to who we are as human beings — that ingrained desire to better ourselves, the right to migrate toward safety and prosperity, and the belief we’ll find solidarity in that quest.
  19. Covering an eventful artistic season, Jean-Stéphane Bron’s The Paris Opera is a well-observed vérité portrait of a major cultural institution.
  20. Unfailingly sensitive about issues of selflessness and suffering, The Departure is in a way its own work of meditation, on the pressures of living up to the turbulent promise of life’s expected length.
  21. A tenderly intimate, affecting documentary portrait.
  22. Obsessive but accessible.
  23. While Only the Brave is consistently involving and entertaining, that desire to be accurate about a heroic reality proves to be an at times awkward fit with the conventions of this kind of earnest and old-fashioned Hollywood film.
  24. Tom of Finland entertainingly recounts an intriguing and vital chapter of 20th-century gay history with style and deference.
  25. Its wrenching honesty provides a potent counter to the simple-minded let’s-all-be-friends-and-sing-a-song inanities of “My Little Pony,” “The Emoji Movie” and other recent American animated features.
  26. Artful and atmospheric to the max, Never Here is a study in personality disintegration dressed up as a whodunit. The film marks an auspicious debut for writer-director Camille Thoman.
  27. Leatherface is well-made pulp, not a masterpiece like Hooper’s original. But given what this character means to horror history — and how badly he’s been treated — any upgrade’s a gift.
  28. No stranger to found footage, Morgen (“The Kid Stays in the Picture”) has tapped into NatGeo’s treasure trove with a bracing immediacy.
  29. As it marches its characters ever so slowly toward a suitably despairing climax, the movie feels increasingly like a self-satisfied but unsustained provocation, a rich display of craft in service of secondhand shocks and ideas.
  30. Though it takes its time, Wonderstruck — like the best tales of wonder — resolves all its mysteries as the plot's disparate strands come together in a lovely way.

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