Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 16,526 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:
16526 movie reviews
  1. Green's resolution is sensitive, expected, yet visionary. And, like the rest of the film, it is shot with a magnificent play of color and light that makes the characters' corner of the world seem like the cradle of compassion.
  2. Enemies Closer suffers from wincingly bad dialogue delivered as if by jocks in a high-school play and action choreographed as if for a gymnasium stage.
  3. We're more than 45 years out from Roman Polanski's director-controlled masterpiece in gestating terror, and yet no gimmick in Devil's Due — no point-of-view shock cut or shaky-cam "realism" — is as dread-inducing as tracking the grim revelations on Mia Farrow's face.
  4. There is no shaking the feeling that Branagh and his cast are a kind of an espionage film B team, capable of mild diversion but nothing more.
  5. The laughs here are lazy, and any sense of logic is definitely on the lam.
  6. Cloying and smug when it's not being unfunny and crass, the high school reunion comedy Back in the Day hits lows with a frequency that suggests a world-class sharp shooter or free-throw king.
  7. Contrived and predictable yet fairly tense.
  8. The Nut Job features decent CG animation, especially of animals, but the writing isn't particularly clever, relying on obvious puns and slapstick humor.
  9. Until being young and gay is a nonissue for everyone everywhere, these kinds of stories will always have their place.
  10. At Troma, puke-green is the warmest color.
  11. The screenplay by Lane Shadgett and director Trevor White relies far too much on telling rather than showing.
  12. Australian writer-director Kim Mordaunt doesn't always succeed at balancing the sentimental, the political and the ethnographic, but at its strongest the story is a seamless melding of history's dark undertow and a child's indefatigable optimism.
  13. A focused, if at times melodramatic, take on the play's beating heart.
  14. Freezer is a snappy action flick that makes good use of its close confines.
  15. Chen's excessive propriety veers treacherously close to barely disguised repulsion.
  16. If you admire Kellan Lutz's chiseled body, The Legend of Hercules does offer plenty of that in 3-D glory.
  17. Writer-director Francesca Gregorini builds unbearable tension into scenes that otherwise risk tilting toward melodrama and brings the eye of a fashion photographer to the film's hallucinatory dream sequences.
  18. With verbal jabs and sight gags in equal measure, the script proves serviceably funny. As the film progresses, though, the hilarity does not escalate along with the outrageousness.
  19. The two stunning set pieces, both involving car chases, are so inspired and teeth-grittingly determined that they make the case for the possibility of individual heroism in a harrowingly venal world.
  20. Overall, writer-director Garrett Batty takes such a tempered approach, the film lacks the kind of gritty, visceral tension that life-and-death tales such as this normally demand.
  21. Raze is a sweaty, queasy, bruising experience — and a superbly crafted film.
  22. The noirishly titled Cold Comes the Night is a tense little thriller that provides juicy roles for its deft lead actors, Alice Eve and Bryan Cranston, as well as some well-played action and several neat twists.
  23. The film has several smart twists and surprises up its well-tailored sleeve.
  24. The central drama never fully engages, but the jolts that Banshee delivers are check-the-locks scary.
  25. The result, while sincere and nicely evoked, feels choppy, familiar and, despite the script's heavily stacked deck — and a few harrowing episodes — lacks sufficient momentum.
  26. Desiccated by its pretensions, it's freeze-dried melodrama.
  27. The Marked Ones is refreshingly uncynical and straightforward in its desire to simply be a movie that makes the audience jump and be scared. It's a fun fright film and wants to be nothing more.
  28. Unfocused lapses aside, though, the film is intriguing and discomforting in equal measure, using its brief running time to frame thoughtful, boundary-pushing questions.
  29. This brief film often feels like an extended gripe session instead of something more profound or game-changing.
  30. The movie's early promise fades, however, as an Apatowian crassness descends upon the comic situations, churlishness gets mistaken for rawness, and sweetness starts to feel manipulative instead of natural.

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