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. Unleashed, written and directed by Finn Taylor, works because of the collective commitment to the magical realism on-screen.
  2. Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman is an involving film that tells a more complicated story than its unexciting title would indicate.
  3. A truly inspirational, emotional and profoundly moving film.
  4. Visually, Ghost House makes good use of its setting, offering Instagram-ready images of its location shot by Pierluigi Malavasi. Unfortunately, Thai people are used in ways that rely on cultural stereotypes, a blemish on an otherwise effective and unsettling film.
  5. Inevitably cursory, it’s nonetheless a fascinating introduction to the ways that core components of Americana wouldn’t be eradicated. Or silenced.
  6. Realistically depicting full-scale domestic terrorism is one thing, but directors Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott seem unaware of how their long-take gimmick — the cuts are easily determined — destroys logic, emboldens the use of stereotypes, and kills suspense.
  7. It may have been a long road to glory, but seeing Perkins (then 97) and Smith (75) enthusiastically accept a 2011 Grammy for their album “Joined at the Hip,” it’s readily apparent that it was worth the trip.
  8. It won’t replace your favorite girl-meets-boy classics, but it yo-yos between the heart and the loins with admirable verve, and it boasts a few richly comic turns.
  9. Acted with gravity, emotion and a sense of the serious issues involved by stars Lakeith Stanfield, Nnamdi Asomugha and Natalie Paul, Crown Heights deals with the intensely human factors tragic events bring into play — perseverance and despair, love and longing.
  10. While I’m generally inclined to applaud an action movie that seeks to be more than just an exercise in carnage, The Villainess turns wearyingly stop-and-go whenever it tries to fill in the void of its protagonist’s emotional and psychological history.
  11. Harris Dickinson, the spellbinding British newcomer who plays Frankie, rewards the director’s scrutiny with piercing emotional depth and a startling lack of self-consciousness.
  12. What Wingard has delivered is a fitfully entertaining, clearly compromised hybrid of action, horror and science-fiction.
  13. Mostly, it’s a tightly constructed, unapologetically nasty little thriller, given depth and weight by Wallace’s interpretation of a sweet woman suffering for her past.
  14. While there are some cool creature effects and committed, physical performances by the actors playing the monsters, the movie’s worst sin isn’t the found-footage rules it ignores. Instead it breaks the cardinal rule of the larger horror genre, running 95 minutes without a single scare or moment of dread.
  15. The low-budget movie, shot in artful black-and-white by Ante Cheng, pulses with yearning and sorrow and love for its characters. Its brightening touches of underplayed humor strengthen and comment on the main action.
  16. Women Who Kill is delightfully specific in its approach to its characters and their community. It takes a familiar theme of romantic comedies — the fear of commitment — and gives it new life by adding a morbid element to the mix.
  17. Director Klaus Härö, working from a script by Anna Heinämaa, deftly captures the grayish gloom and day-to-day paranoia of postwar Soviet life, while infusing this absorbing tale with affecting emotion.
  18. Although Planetarium may not wholly satisfy as the kind of statement film it so ambitiously aims to be, this intriguing drama, confidently directed by Rebecca Zlotowski (who co-wrote with Robin Campillo) proves a singular, at times haunting experience.
  19. Had the comedy been sharper, this movie-loving movie might have convincingly meshed its Technicolor caricatures and antifascist heroics.
  20. Fans of outsized genre fare should appreciate how much fun Rapace appears to be having, showing off different skills in different wigs. Her enthusiasm doesn’t make this a good movie, but it does makes it likable.
  21. In Lemon, Bravo and Gelman find a transcendent absurdity in the mundane that’s awkwardly enchanting. It’s more tart than sweet, but deliciously weird nonetheless.
  22. While its DIY spirit is admirable, this tedious shocker feels like it was cobbled together from a kit.
  23. Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey lacks a sense of what is essential to its story. It dwells on insignificant moments and inserts transition shots without logic, but skips over scenes or dialogue that could support Liza and Brett’s characters, their relationship and the choices they make.
  24. While writer-director Megan Freels Johnston makes some unusual choices that set her film apart from run-of-the-mill low-budget horror, too much of her movie feels warmed-over.
  25. While the dramatic underpinnings could have used more work, the labyrinth that’s the focus of Dave Made a Maze is truly an amazingly inventive sight to behold.
  26. "Whitney's" story makes for strong and compelling viewing even though it has something of a cobbled together feel to it.
  27. It always feels like an exercise instead of an examination, a flow chart of bad decisions and explosive violence that may not glorify the poisonous nature of hard time but rarely skims below the surface of what it means to break bad.
  28. 6 Days can’t help but feel like a missed opportunity.
  29. Uncertain whether to be a cheerfully weightless killing spree, an earnest odd-couple comedy or, most hilariously, a straight-faced Eastern European political thriller, Tom O’Connor’s screenplay falls back on shopworn snark and half-baked bromantic attitudes.
  30. Beautiful untruths and half-truths abound in Michael Almereyda’s quietly shimmering new movie.

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