Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,550 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 2.2 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: 8,714 out of 16550
  2. Mixed: 5,819 out of 16550
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16550
16550 movie reviews
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  1. The Legend of Tarzan
    As written by Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer, The Legend of Tarzan alternates between a brazenly contemporary sensibility and quietly time-honored events. Unfortunately, almost all of the former are awkward while the latter still ring true.
  2. The Purge: Election Year
    At times the experience of watching Election Year is a bit like scanning a few years’ worth of alarming headlines while someone sets off firecrackers under your desk. Black Lives Matter, drone warfare, local protests, home-grown militias, predatory capitalism, the Florida electorate, pop pop, bang bang.
  3. Independence Day: Resurgence
    Both impossible to take seriously or seriously dislike.
  4. Sunrise
    Less compelling as a thriller than as a trip through a mind tormented by loss, the film depends on a minimum of dialogue, with extended sequences of wordless action.
  5. The Debt
    Despite its best efforts to be thought-provoking, the film is dramatically inert, slow and its revelations aren’t all that politically illuminating, relying on coincidence and worn tropes to obfuscate its lack of ingenuity.
  6. Unlocking the Cage
    Unlocking the Cage, despite its cameras being on hand for a historic animal rights push, shouldn’t be confused for some hot-button doc ready to slap you into sensibility about its fight. Hegedus/Pennebaker are too smart to get ahead of themselves about something they clearly believe in, when simply hewing to a can-do guy provides enough momentum.
  7. Department Q: The Keeper of Lost Causes
    Department Q: The Keeper of Lost Causes is a darkly compelling, skillfully crafted cold case thriller.
  8. Department Q: The Absent One
    The success of “The Absent One,” like its Department Q predecessor, ultimately rides on the shoulders of Kaas’ intriguing Morck.
  9. Department Q: A Conspiracy of Faith
    Conspiracy of Faith marks the darkest and most gripping screen adaptation of the Jussi Adler-Olsen novels to date.
  10. Intruder
    This flavorless home-invasion thriller hasn’t ripened with age.
  11. Misconception
    Misconception proves a smart, vital and absorbing portrait.
  12. Older Than Ireland
    The film could have used more social, cultural and geographical context. Still, this is such a moving, evocative and rare assemblage of souls, we’re grateful for its existence.
  13. Vigilante Diaries
    Although this film never really makes sense, Sesma’s years of experience means that it’s at least competently shot, with locations around the world. Plus, it’s admirably gonzo. And when it comes to cheap genre fare, bizarre always beats boring.
  14. The Duel
    The story is an intriguing twist on the western genre, but in piling on other subgenres and story elements, including a dangerous and charismatic cult, it dilutes the essential nature of what could have been a potent revenge tale.
  15. My Love, Don't Cross That River
    In following this couple, Jin’s film celebrates the wonder and magic of every single life; finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.
  16. Seoul Searching
    Despite the overwrought stylization, the heart of Seoul Searching does ultimately emerge: a tender story that’s more about the high stakes of youthful connection than culture, proving that this universal tale transcends borders.
  17. Septembers of Shiraz
    The trouble is, director Wayne Blair’s perfunctorily handled adaptation of Dalia Sofer’s 2008 novel is long on cardboard characterizations and short on genuine tension.
  18. Three
    Even during the gunfight, this always remains a character piece: a thoughtful, imaginative movie about stubbornly authoritarian professionals, protecting their territories.
  19. Swiss Army Man
    Even with all the design-rich invention and admirably committed weirdness on display in “Swiss Army Man,” we’re still in the land of immature males, poor-me feelings and superpowers. While the movie focuses on one end of the body, you might be left sighing from the other.
  20. The Fundamentals of Caring
    The Fundamentals of Caring is a strained, overly familiar tale of catharsis and redemption. Stars Paul Rudd and Craig Roberts work hard but are torpedoed by writer-director Rob Burnett’s wanting script (adapted from the novel by Jonathan Evison), thudding stabs at buoyancy and sluggish pacing.
  21. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
    Every once in a while, a small, unheralded film comes along, so smart and funny, such a pleasure to experience, you can't believe your luck. Hunt for the Wilderpeople is such a film.
  22. The Phenom
    The Phenom may be choppy, but it’s saying something sincere about how the pressure to be thought of as a winner can be an athlete’s most formidable opponent.
  23. Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words
    If this labor-of-love portrait is any indication, forgetting Frank Zappa is not going to happen any time soon.
  24. Wiener-Dog
    The juxtaposition of formal beauty and surpassing human ugliness is hardly the least of “Wiener-Dog’s” numerous internal contradictions, some of which are more resolvable than others.
  25. Right Now, Wrong Then
    No filmmaker better understands the revelatory properties of small talk and soju, and few could make the art of repetition seem so rife with possibilities.
  26. The Neon Demon
    Languorously paced and literally dressed to kill, the movie is a corrosive attack on beauty — or at least our soulless, corporatized definition of the term — but it is also, above all else, a hypnotically beautiful object.
  27. The Shallows
    On its own unpretentious, unapologetically pleasure-seeking terms, “The Shallows” has enough to recommend it — not least the fact that you could watch it twice in roughly the same amount of time it would take to watch “The Revenant,” and with little appreciable loss in adrenaline or poetry.
  28. Les Cowboys
    Its strength lies in the way it continually collapses the distance between people and cultures, forcing its characters to reckon with what they perceive as strange and unfamiliar.
  29. The Witness
    The strength of The Witness lies in its recognition that the truth is often not just elusive but unattainable.
  30. Art Bastard
    Though Art Bastard is a zesty, engaging documentary about a veteran outsider, when it comes to his complexities, it’s not terribly cohesive.
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