Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,522 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 16522
  2. Mixed: 5,808 out of 16522
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16522
16522 movie reviews
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  1. The Edge of Seventeen
    Written and directed by the gifted first-timer Kelly Fremon Craig, and graced by a superb star turn from Hailee Steinfeld, The Edge of Seventeen is the rare coming-of-age picture that feels less like a retread than a renewal. It’s a disarmingly smart, funny and thoughtful piece of work, from end to beginning to end.
  2. Nocturnal Animals
    The writer-director invests a tricky narrative juggling act with an intensity of human feeling that is the opposite of skin-deep. He tears through the veil of slick, self-admiring style that has both unlocked and at times obscured his very real merits as an artist.
  3. Manchester by the Sea
    Powerful, emotional filmmaking that leaves a scar, Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester By the Sea is heartbreaking yet somehow heartening, a film that just wallops you with its honesty, its authenticity and its access to despair.
  4. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
    It both benefits and suffers from the relentless commercial logic that has, for the moment, placed a bit of a stranglehold on its own considerable magic.
  5. Love Is All You Need?
    This capably-acted and shot film...tries too hard to hammer home its points. So much so that its messaging becomes diffused, if not lost, amid the overlong picture’s mounting frenzy.
  6. Elle
    Elle is a gripping whodunit, a tour de force of psychological suspense and a wickedly droll comedy of manners.
  7. Hunter Gatherer
    Hunter Gatherer is a warmly eccentric little indie that’s amusing, authentic and works against expectation. B
  8. Shut In
    Despite a strong effort from Naomi Watts, Shut In is more effective as a 90-minute commercial for the L.L. Bean aesthetic than as a pseudo-psychological thriller.
  9. Ice Guardians
    Harvey delivers an in-depth cultural and sociological view of the sport, while making a compelling case for the necessity of fighting.
  10. The Trans List
    Like others in this series (“The Black List,” “The Out List”), it’s a mix of to-the-camera testimonials and archival photos, elegantly packaged, less a movie than a companionable hour spent with a diverse collection of people wonderfully articulate about the road they’ve traveled.
  11. Beauty Bites Beast
    Beauty Bites Beast does lessen its usage of narration and animation as the film gets going, but the damage is already done. It blunts its own effectiveness by over-embellishing stories and facts that could have stood on their own.
  12. Anne Frank: Then and Now
    Anne Frank: Then and Now may be an oddly structured little docudrama but it makes the most of its eerily cogent message.
  13. The Drama Club
    Like “The Big Chill” and “Peter’s Friends” but without a single character you’d want to spend five minutes with, let alone a weekend, The Drama Club makes for a crassly unpleasant ensemble piece.
  14. Hara Kiri
    This isn’t meant to be a polished, restrained indie drama, but its flaws don’t solely reside in writer-director Alberto’s avant-garde approach. Instead, its biggest misstep is the two central characters who are so unlikable as to be unwatchable.
  15. Iron Moon
    The brutally serene documentary Iron Moon from Qin Xiaoyu and Wu Feiyue spotlights a handful of bottom-rung workers who write achingly clear-eyed poetry that spotlights the contours of their lives.
  16. Don't Call Me Son
    Don’t Call Me Son, although built on conflicts that have fractured many a family, thankfully never veers into melodrama.
  17. Come and Find Me
    Even with several contrivances in the movie’s final third, this remains a taut, haunting ride thanks to solid writing and directing by Zack Whedon (Joss and Jed’s younger brother) and a strong, sympathetic performance by Paul. Find this one.
  18. No Pay, Nudity
    Summarizing the plight of the average working actor’s lot in three all-too-familiar words, No Pay, Nudity, is a tenderly observed, bittersweet comedy featuring a beautifully rooted Gabriel Byrne.
  19. Rainbow Time
    It’s not exactly side-splittingly funny, and it doesn’t amount to much. The ideas are strong, but the storytelling’s practically nonexistent.
  20. USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage
    Director Mario Van Peebles brings real tension and excitement to the scenes where these men are surrounded by predators, but the tone of the film is awkwardly split between the grit of modern cinema and the boisterous adventure of old Hollywood.
  21. Don't Look Down
    Greater technical and financial detail, additional period context, a deeper look at what makes daredevils such as Branson and Lindstrand tick, and snappier overall chronicling would’ve made this fun ride truly soar.
  22. The Monster
    Not least of the surprises here is that even when The Monster is trying to scare you witless, its every scene insistently reaffirms its characters’ humanity.
  23. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
    The sharp satirical edge that earned Fountain’s novel comparisons to “Catch-22” feels duller and more sluggish on the screen as Lee strains to weave his story’s dissonant tones and subplots...into a movie that works as both a compelling psychological portrait and an astute political argument.
  24. Ivory. A Crime Story
    The situation seems dire in many ways, though Yastrzhembskiy offers some hope at the end of the film, along with solutions to controlling demand in the ivory market. It’s a powerful call to action and a reminder of the bloody global implications contained in a single trinket.
  25. Dreamland
    A terrific cast...helps create a vivid world, on the fringes of showbiz. But Schwartzman’s observations about music and money mostly stay locked in his head. Dreamland isn’t hard to understand by any means, but it does seem fairly negligible from moment to moment. Neither the situation nor the stakes are exactly life or death.
  26. Lazy Eye
    A couple of flashbacks color in their history but feel unnecessary, as the script and actors ably express the complicated history between the two men. The weekend in the desert is all that is needed to bring to life this romantic drama about revisiting the roads not taken.
  27. The Love Witch
    Although the beguiling spell begins to wear off before reaching its full two-hour length, the film’s got style for days thanks to Biller’s affection for classic — as well as not-so-classic — cinema.
  28. Arrival
    Arrival is really Adams' film, a showcase for her ability to quietly and effectively meld intelligence, empathy and reserve.
  29. Dog Eat Dog
    Although it’s an often repellant, uneven film that, in the end, doesn’t amount to a whole lot, there’s something thrilling and a bit liberating about the anarchic vibe that permeates this stylized walk on the wild side.
  30. The Shelter
    Overall, The Shelter is a bit too clever for its own good. The hero’s personal hell is too literal, and the movie as a whole is too slight.
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