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. Killer Joe
    By far the film's deadliest weapon is McConaughey. The way the actor leans into threats, dropping his voice, wrapping eloquence in sinister tones, is skin-crawling. The muscles in his neck literally seem to tense one by one. And if the eyes are the window to the soul, you really don't want to peer for long into his. It is not an easy performance to watch, but it is unforgettable.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
    Ends the series' winning streak, or at least slows it down to a panting, dog-day crawl.
  3. Total Recall (2012)
    Like a drug that starts with a rush and ends with a headache, Total Recall is too much of a good thing.
  4. Wagner's Dream
    You don't need to be a fan of Wagner, or even opera, to find this a fascinating glimpse of a dauntingly complex human endeavor.
  5. Klown
    Crossing many lines, director Mikkel Norgaard's loony feature doesn't always rise above its high jinks. But at its best, it's a sly dismantling of a familiar comedy template built on male cluelessness and female responsibility.
  6. Sacrifice
    Sacrifice is mostly a melodrama concerned with deception, betrayal and just what makes a family. It is handsomely done and well-acted, but it lacks real energy or purpose.
  7. Searching for Sugar Man
    The truth-is-stranger-than-fiction saga has been a hit on the festival circuit, winning top documentary prizes at Sundance for Sweden's Bendjelloul. What sets Searching for Sugar Man apart, though, is the way in which the filmmaker preserves a sense of mystery in the telling.
  8. The Well Digger's Daughter
    Best of all "Daughter" marks a return to old-school French moviemaking, the kind of classically well-made endeavor that unrolls before us like a beloved tapestry. This is the kind of film they don't make anymore, only here it is.
  9. Step Up Revolution
    One perhaps does not expect a fully formed and cogent political platform from a "Step Up" film, but when a movie puts "Revolution" in the title and engages community action and social justice directly there should be more at the end than simply selling out to the first bidder.
  10. The Watch
    Some of the phallic jokes work, others are really lame. Fortunately there are many other funny bits that have nothing to do with body parts that keep the laughs coming.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dark Horse
    Dark Horse is a comedy of bad manners that's imbued with uncertainty about the world and one man's place in it. Modest and mildly entertaining, it's a miniature portrait of a potentially jumbo-sized failure.
  12. Ruby Sparks
    There is a great deal of playfulness between the couple that will touch the romantic in most.
  13. Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai
    Hara-Kiri builds and builds as well, but its revelations are more character-derived that action-oriented, so the film never reaches the cattle-on-fire craziness of its predecessor.
  14. 30 Beats
    The only payoff to Lloyd's structure is that the young actress Condola Rashad, a recent Tony nominee, is allowed to appear in both the film's first scene and its final segment to bring the story full-circle, though her enigmatic, beguiling presence underlines just the sort of energy missing from the rest of the film.
  15. China Heavyweight
    With observant fluidity and that grounding point of Qi's desire to fight once again, Chang roots the film in personal, individual stories, keeping larger metaphors for the nation at the edges.
  16. Kite
    Bhargava's naturalistic approach to capturing the sights and sounds of a city in full revelry on rooftops and in the streets is colorfully vivid - reminiscent of Wong Kar-Wai's silky urban baths - but it threatens to keep the human drama at arm's length.
  17. The Queen of Versailles
    In Greenfield's canny and compassionate view, their post-collapse reality check is an emblem of consumerism as affliction, and surprisingly relatable.
  18. The Dark Knight Rises
    Potent, persuasive and hypnotic, The Dark Knight Rises has us at its mercy. A disturbing experience we live through as much as a film we watch, this dazzling conclusion to director Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is more than an exceptional superhero movie, it is masterful filmmaking by any standard.
  19. Farewell, My Queen
    Matching the strength of these actresses and their personal drama is the film's masterful sense of time and place - the way it makes us feel that this was how it was during four pivotal days in July 1789 as the wheels came off the French monarchy.
  20. Easy Money
    This jazzy crime melodrama is engrossing and exhilarating because of Espinosa's impressive command of a wide range of filmmaking skills.
  21. Ice Age: Continental Drift
    In Continental Drift, the filmmakers have gone a little crazy too, but in a good way. Smack dab in the middle of things there's a big Broadway-style number involving pirates.
  22. Crazy Eyes
    Director/co-writer Adam Sherman's Bukowski-lite character study is one of those exercises in masculine self-pity and glib misogyny that frustrates because of its shortsightedness.
  23. Take This Waltz
    Somehow it is the waiting - for the fall that you expect is coming, for the marriage you figure will fall apart - that makes Take This Waltz one to make room for on your dance card.
  24. The Magic of Belle Isle
    It has some heartfelt performances and a nice, nondescript vibe, but it's largely unmemorable.
  25. Savages
    Stone is also a director who has often felt that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, and his weakness for bloody excesses of all sorts undermines much of his good work. You might not think that a motion picture called Savages could be too violent, too savage, but you would be wrong.
  26. Katy Perry: Part of Me
    The secret, which "Part of Me" captures quite nicely, was to just let her be.
  27. The Amazing Spider-Man
    The result is that "Spider-Man" goes in and out of focus. This is a film that is memorable in pieces but not as a whole.
  28. Madea's Witness Protection
    A spectacularly slapdash and wearingly half-hearted effort from the prolific writer-director-actor, lacking energy, structure or common sense.
  29. Neil Young Journeys
    Young's almost mystical musicianship is what saves it.
  30. Turn Me On, Dammit!
    The movie treats a girl's burgeoning sexuality as neither epic nor problematic, or mutually exclusive of feelings of love, but rather simply, refreshingly, as one part of maturing.
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