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. The Road
    The film's three-pronged narrative does a fair job of laying a spooky groundwork for the revelatory emotional sadism that lies behind most acts of evil; it just takes a bit of clunky exposition to get there.
  2. I Wish
    There is a lot of hope in the air in I Wish, but the film never feels sappy. The very appealing score by the Japanese indie-rock group Quruli brings a kind of upbeat energy that matches the clean, open style of director of photography Yutaka Yamazaki, a frequent Kore-eda collaborator.
  3. Where Do We Go Now?
    The film aims to be a gentle comedy (there are even some songs approaching musical numbers) with serious undercurrents. It stumbles most when reaching for its bigger themes.
  4. Nesting
    Writer-director John Chuldenko stretches a sitcom episode premise to feature-length breaking point in Nesting.
  5. The Perfect Family
    The film's single saving grace is Turner, who channels that legendary Catholic guilt like there is no tomorrow.
  6. Dark Shadows
    This film has much more to do with what goes on inside director Tim Burton's head than with any TV show, no matter how beloved. In fact, Dark Shadows is as good an example as any of what might be called the Way of Tim, a style of making films that, like the drinking of blood, is very much an acquired taste and, unless you're a vampire, not worth the effort.
  7. A Little Bit of Heaven
    The movie perks up during Dinklage's scene as an escort, and screeches to a painful halt for a few conversations with God, who's played by a cloud-roosting Whoopi Goldberg. In a sophomore letdown from "The Woodsman," director Nicole Kassell gives the film no energy or rhythm, while the script pushes all the pre-set buttons.
  8. Citizen Gangster
    To his credit, writer-director Nathan Morlando has crafted a stylishly shot and evocatively designed period piece. But it's the dashing, quietly charismatic Speedman who proves the main draw, holding our attention even when the movie doesn't.
  9. First Position
    These performers are so young, so serious, so full of dreams and so hard on themselves that it is difficult not to be moved by their striving.
  10. Mother's Day
    When Rebecca De Mornay shows up as the criminals' fiercely doting matriarch, the ready crackle of her studiously demonic performance brings welcome distraction from this otherwise crude litany of torture and wretched death.
  11. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    It all makes for a movie whose infectious charm outweighs some of the predictability that slips in around the edges.
  12. In the Family
    Deliberate and marked by uncommon grace, In The Family manages to feel politically and culturally acute without ever resorting to melodrama, or having to wave banners for issues or causes, except perhaps in its quiet way for a renewed humanism in movies and a return to stories about everyday lives.
  13. The Avengers
    Whedon is the key reason why this $220-million behemoth of a movie is smartly thought out and executed with verve and precision. It may be overly long at two hours, 23 minutes, but so much is going on you might not even notice.
  14. The Raven
    rRegrettably falls prey to its grand and grisly ambitions - it's neither grand nor grisly enough to seriously satisfy Poe-ish cravings for murder, mystery and literary allusions.
  15. Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
    Warriors is a bruising, relentless experience, one more tiring than inspiring.
  16. Sound of My Voice
    With storytelling economy and dramatic precision often missing from today's independent films, Batmanglij augments the building blocks for a nifty paranoid thriller with sharp commentary on our faction-centered society and the pitfalls of reinvention.
  17. Restless City
    In its portrait of a Restless City the film is strangely inert and feels like the work of image-makers, not storytellers.
  18. 96 Minutes
    The film feels overstuffed and overcooked, as if the filmmaker were trying to get too much out all in one go.
  19. Mamitas
    Unbalanced storytelling aside, Ozeki wisely works to keep the film focused on his actors.
  20. Here
    It's hard to say if the two ever really mesh or if they were intended to. Here seems motivated by a tone of searching and yearning, not of finding a single way.
  21. Elles
    It's tempting to call Elles some kind of thinking-person's sex movie, but it's more about thinking and about sex (and thinking about sex) and is far more likely to encourage awkward, emphatic conversation than post-show friskiness.
  22. Bernie
    This is writer-director Richard Linklater at his wry, whimsical best, and considering he was the filmmaker behind 1993's "Dazed and Confused," that makes the movie something of a milestone.
  23. Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story
    The film, which plays like "The Help" minus the safety net of nostalgia, provides a powerful reminder that as we all carry history with us, it is still possible for each of us to change it.
  24. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
    A well-researched and iconoclastic documentary that is both thoughtful and troubling, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is indeed a cautionary tale, but what it cautions against is the lure of easy judgments derived from prejudices and ignorance of the facts.
  25. Headhunters
    Headhunters is a dark adult entertainment, a wild and bloody adrenaline rush of a movie that deals in gleeful grotesqueness and over-the-top implausibilities.
  26. Safe
    There's nothing terribly original about Safe, but it's a suitably grimy playground for action cinema's reigning pit bull.
  27. The Pirates! Band of Misfits
    A clever piece of business that is a complete pleasure to experience.
  28. The Five-Year Engagement
    In many ways, "Engagement" reflects both the best and worst of Stoller and Segel's creative collaborations.
  29. Goodbye First Love
    Nothing is rushed, everything is given its appropriate time and place. When we watch Hansen-Løve's films, we're not only experiencing a life unfolding before us, we're also realizing what a great privilege it is to be able to do that.
  30. Murder Capital of the World
    Minn, who often appears on camera, packs this grimly compelling, if slightly padded film with strong archival TV news footage, plus wrenching testimony from the relatives of several innocent bystanders gunned down around the El Paso-Juarez border.
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