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. More than characters, dialogue and lighting, here Petersen is interested exclusively in suspense of the will-he-or-won't-he-be-crushed-by-that-falling-flaming-elevator variety.
  2. Stay as far away from Just My Luck as you can.
  3. With the former mayor currently enjoying one of the rare second acts in American political life, Giuliani Time does a strong job of reminding us what the first one was like.
  4. Both acidly funny and very moving.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pollack does give a substantial chunk of screen time to Milton Wexler, Gehry's longtime analyst, who proves to be a winning, charismatic presence.
  5. Charming and antic, Russian Dolls doesn't quite cohere in the way of "L'Auberge Espagnole" into a clever snapshot of contemporary Europe.
  6. Hoffman is so proficient in this role that he just about overmatches Cruise and makes the wait until he speaks again in the second half of the film hard to endure with any patience.
  7. If a more elegant and succinct explanation of what compels some people to go to art school has ever been filmed, I haven't seen it.
  8. At times, the narrative thread slips the movie's grasp and there are flat spots in which characters just scream and thrash. Given what its ending aims for (don't ask), such interludes feel flabby and gratuitous even with Sutherland and Spacek providing gravitas to the ghoulishness.
  9. Any charm and character ascribed to Carl Hiaasen's bestselling book have been homogenized in Wil Shriner's flat screenplay and direction.
  10. For a film that has allegedly undergone extensive tinkering following its premiere at last year's Cannes Film Festival, Down in the Valley abounds in nagging loose ends and suffers overall from logy pacing.
  11. Too dark to be very funny, too mushy to be pitch black.
  12. It’s a mark of Greengrass’ unequaled gift for believably re-creating reality that, once seen, it’s impossible to get United 93 out of your mind, no matter how much you may want to.
  13. The film strives for some type of a girl-empowerment message that equates trading one type of conformity for another with self-determination but muffs the dismount and stumbles on the landing. In other words, it fails to Stick It.
  14. A genuinely sweet and determinedly inspirational family film that features a charming young actress in the title role. It's a successful feel-good movie, but it would make you feel even better if it didn't push quite so hard for its desired effects.
  15. RV
    The bedraggled movie limps along to its phony hogwash of an ending, adding the ignominy of sentimentality to its previous sin of being so derivative.
  16. A wry, robust comedy of broad, sometimes crass humor set in the ultra-macho world of a small-town German soccer team.
  17. In an era when so many films are cynical, cash-grabbing mechanisms of global corporate culture, no more and no less, it is frustrating to come across a work such as this, in which the grasp-exceeding reach and reckless vision of its creators become the biggest drawbacks rather than the film's greatest assets.
  18. As beautiful as it is harrowing.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The misfortune, of Michael Stürminger's low-boil melodrama is that it's entirely too familiar. Underneath the movie's cool surface beats the heart of a 1940s tear-jerker. It's a subzero "Stella Dallas."
  19. A hopelessly muddled example of inspirational indie cinema.
  20. As someone who was part of the Resistance, Melville knew enough to neither melodramatically glorify nor cynically devalue the heroism he presents. This is people doing what needed to be done, Army of Shadows says, this is the way it was.
  21. Though it is undeniably bleak and pessimistic and marked by a texture of observation worthy of British director Mike Leigh, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is not as forbidding as it sounds.
  22. Finds Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien at his most intimate and romantic. The deceptive simplicity of these vignettes, written by Chu Tien-wen, throws into relief Hou's formidable storytelling strengths and visual acuity - his way with actors, his subtlety and expressiveness.
  23. Grant's second coming as a rake and an egotist is the best thing to happen to his career since "Four Weddings and a Funeral." He is twice as enjoyable as the preening bad guy as he was as the bumbling good guy, and Weitz makes perfect use of the new persona.
  24. An unassuming thriller, a nifty piece of genre filmmaking without frills or self-importance. It's a throwback, if you will, to the days of B pictures, when formula movies were made with a maximum of skill and a minimum of pretense.
  25. Works up a decent amount of solid, creep-show atmosphere in its first act before making some absurd decisions of its own in its second.
  26. Dreamy and creepy, tender and terrifying, Somersault is a frank and visceral film that at the same time exudes an unexpected innocence.
  27. The movie is flatly acted and extremely ill-paced, lacking any sense of urgency, momentum or fun. "Romancing the Stone" it is not.
  28. Shot in just 24 days, the film staggers under the weight of stale gags and a meandering plot.

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