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. The refreshing element is that the story resists normative fantasies of sex or romance — in Paris Can Wait, Coppola focuses on the relationship to the self.
  2. Riveting in its slow and steady accretion of details, its penetrating and richly textured gaze, A Woman’s Life is a bracing reminder that our experiences are often shaped less by what we achieve than by what we endure.
  3. Urban Hymn is so carefully and lovingly made by director Michael Caton-Jones and his leads that it’s hard to begrudge the British drama its familiar premise, especially as you squint at the screen through tears.
  4. Young’s vision of quiet middle-class mayhem, drawn from the three-handed struggle between young Vicki and her tormentors, is bold and unflinching.
  5. Snatched may represent a failure of sensitivity, but it’s an even greater failure of nerve.
  6. With Grace’s sure hand and the strong work of lead actors Wyatt Russell and Alex Karpovsky, Folk Hero & Funny Guy is the kind of road trip movie where it’s a pleasure to ride shotgun.
  7. [An] endlessly fascinating, bracingly up-to-the-minute Netflix documentary.
  8. Angkor Awakens won’t wow you with artfulness, but as an analytical narrative of tragedy, testimony and a way ahead, it has an undeniable power.
  9. Whether as a constructor of large-scale enchantments or a notorious conceptualist, he emerges in this portrait as sincerely searching.
  10. The kind of tension you would expect is never completely present.
  11. Somehow hectic and lumbering, diverting and dispiriting all at once, this mud-toned medieval pulp largely cleaves to the spirit of Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” series, reducing a fabled figure of British lore to two hours of tough-guy swagger and head-pounding digital thwackery.
  12. A handsomely mounted if largely melodramatic affair that gains steam as it gives way to truer emotions and bits of veiled humor.
  13. Director Paolo Virzì, who co-wrote with Francesca Archibugi, keeps the jam-packed film moving apace with a whirlwind of high-wire emotionality, memorable set pieces and vivid location work.
  14. [Pappas] and co-director and co-writer Jeremy Teicher have created a funny, sweet movie that explores the struggles of a serious athlete without alienating those whose sneakers are gathering dust in the closet.
  15. Violet never progresses. It’s just one long, slow wallow. That said, Devos and cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis devise so many striking images that the movie is always a pleasure to watch.
  16. Granted, there’s not much reason to watch this Whisky Galore! so long as the 1949 version still exists. But it’s clear that everyone involved with this production had genuine affection for the material and for the very idea of old Scotland as a genteel utopia populated by kindly tippler
  17. It’s dispiriting to watch Lowriders make every predictable move. It clutters an otherwise well-meaning snapshot of a vibrant community underserved by mainstream filmmaking.
  18. This movie ultimately lacks the characters and imagination to make it anything more than a passable entertainment.
  19. Healy is never able to find an absorbing middle ground in Mike Makowsky’s script, vacillating gratingly between shrill farce and murky thriller that flails its way toward an intended twist-ending that really shouldn’t surprise anyone.
  20. Its emotional reserves are deeper and more capacious, its sense of mystery more profound, than in just about any American movie of any scale I’ve seen in recent memory.
  21. Lady Bloodfight would be knocked out immediately if matched against classics in the genre.
  22. A fun and informative documentary.
  23. What matters most is that “Bang!” is filled with lively anecdotes about the days when hucksters and racketeers ran the music business, jostling for control — an art in and of itself.
  24. It’s a confident weirdness that Buster’s Mal Heart boasts as it dissects a damaged soul for signs of what’s eternal and what’s triggered when a man breaks in two.
  25. Flights of fancy are peppered in throughout but can’t make up for this concoction’s missing ingredient: romantic chemistry.
  26. When this well-acted picture calms down and focuses on real emotions, it proves a poignant, absorbing look at a modern family.
  27. Chuck is, in certain ways, not unlike its flawed hero: a lot of personality, just enough ambition, more interested in a good time and simple insight than a lasting impression.
  28. Rather than explore his place in the arts and balance all that adoration with insight, Corsicato opts for hero worship. The result is a visually exciting but emotionally monotonous film.
  29. The themes with which Thier wrestles, and her anthropological exploration of city life is more compelling than some of the more melodramatic plot elements. But the film’s flaws don’t detract from the ideas she presents.
  30. While a lot of gunfire ensues, Jesse Gustafson’s mechanical direction and Guy Stevenson’s cut-and-paste script shoot laughably hollow blanks.

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