Los Angeles Times' Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 8,699 out of 16526
  2. Mixed: 5,810 out of 16526
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16526
16526 movie reviews
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  1. Step Up To The Plate
    As for the so-called "food compositions" seen here, like the film itself, they're more impressionistic and artistic than enticing. For a far more satisfying cinematic meal, check out the similarly themed "Jiro Dreams of Sushi."
  2. Fat Kid Rules the World
    Endearingly uneven.
  3. Now, Forager
    Despite an awkwardly jokey title, Now, Forager has charm, intelligence and a cool passion for its principled characters - an appealing off-menu slice for hungry indie admirers.
  4. Wuthering Heights
    It's just that there isn't enough story - the book shouldn't be required reading for the film to make sense.
  5. Excuse Me for Living
    Vaguely misogynistic and defiantly paternalistic, the movie fails at nearly everything.
  6. War of the Buttons
    Though it's handled with little subtlety, the way the atmosphere of suspicion in Vichy France filters down to the kids is a smart slant on the material.
  7. The Thieves
    While the movie's second half feels more consequential - and more impressively action-packed - than its first part, it also loses some of its initial charm and quirk via a protracted, often dizzying descent into a kind of booty-centric game of hot potato.
  8. Sinister
    Rather than another drearily workaday horror picture, Sinister uses the supernatural to underline its examination of the all-too-human foibles of insecurity and myopic self-centeredness. As the best horror stories so often do, Sinister makes clear that we are our own boogeymen, the worst monsters of all.
  9. Here Comes the Boom
    The film works hard at its inoffensiveness. Throughout, jokes are left on the table, setups never pay off in any significant way.
  10. Seven Psychopaths
    Unlike "In Bruges," the outlandish parts of Seven Psychopaths, though often bleakly entertaining in their own right, remain a collection of weird riffs that not even engaging acting by Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken and Tom Waits can bring together.
  11. Middle of Nowhere
    So though it echoes the films of Charles Burnett, the plays of August Wilson and "A Raisin in the Sun," at its heart Middle of Nowhere is old-school, character-driven narrative at its most quietly effective.
  12. Argo
    Affleck easily orchestrates this complex film with 120 speaking parts as it moves from inside-the-Beltway espionage thriller to inside Hollywood dark comedy to gripping international hostage drama, all without missing a step.
  13. Just 45 Minutes from Broadway
    An investment in theatrical self-indulgence with diminishing returns.
  14. Mulberry Child
    In the film based on her memoir Mulberry Child, Jian Ping speaks of her family's ordeal during the Cultural Revolution with searing detail and not an ounce of sentimentality. The same can't be said of director Susan Morgan Cooper's heavy-handed approach to the material.
  15. Detropia
    It is a striking and moving study of "what was" versus "what it has become" as the filmmakers try to get at the whys.
  16. Decoding Deepak
    Decoding Deepak does not feel, as it might, like an indictment of those messages but rather a straightforward portrait of someone working hard to present the product he is selling.
  17. V/H/S
    Had V/H/S been a nasty jolt of three, it might have been memorable, but at nearly two hours, the gimmick punctures a hole in itself, causing ambience bleed-out. Recommended cure: a tripod
  18. Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare
    Cogent, convincing, determinedly non-ideological, Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare tells us that everything we think we know about that incendiary topic might be wrong. And it offers us a way out of the morass.
  19. Butter
    The would-be satire is nothing more than a bunch of sketch characters and jokes welded to a sentimental subplot.
  20. The Paperboy
    There is such unflinching passion in the piece that The Paperboy deserves to be seen even though it can feel almost as flawed as its characters.
  21. Taken 2
    At a beefy 6-foot-4, Neeson certainly looks physically imposing, but it was the notion of casting someone who can actually act in an action hero role that was the counter-intuitive concept that made both films - Taken 2 is more a remake than a sequel - so successful.
  22. Frankenweenie
    He (Burton) has used that tonality deftly here, it keeps Frankenweenie visually stunning and the sensibility light. It's too bad the tale, like Sparky's wagging appendage, keeps falling off.
  23. 186 Dollars to Freedom
    The trouble is that it's hard to care about poor Wayne when he seems so empty-headed and naïve - civic unrest in Peru on the eve of its first democratic elections in 1980 is the setting - and when the movie itself seems so unfocused.
  24. Masquerade
    As predictable as these stories invariably are, Lee's wonderful turn reignites the potent fantasy of peasant wisdom - if given the power - melting politically cynical hearts and legislating through decency rather than fear.
  25. The Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best
    Although the sentiment threatens to flatten out an intriguingly nervy vibe, Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best has plenty of rhythmic charm about its responsibility-challenged strivers.
  26. Electoral Dysfunction
    Both well-timed and oddly late-on-arrival, the good-natured documentary Electoral Dysfunction attempts to lay bare the irregularities behind the American voting system but, for some, it may feel too lightweight and coy for genuine effect.
  27. Vulgaria
    Even amid the naughty flourishes, with Vulgaria, Pang again shows himself to be a wise, playful chronicler of modern life.
  28. Hellbound?
    Given the subjectively interpretive nature of scripture and ancient religious history, which informs most of the Christian-centric debate here, the result is an often dense, contradictory discourse.
  29. Harvest of Empire
    Though its snapshot approach is uneven, Harvest is itself a valuable resource: a good starting point for a fuller perspective on this nation of immigrants.
  30. The Waiting Room
    Wherever you stand on healthcare and the fact that uninsured people nationwide use emergency rooms for basic services, the documentary The Waiting Room is a revealing portrait of the often tough transactions between patients and hospital staff at the urgency level.
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