Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 16,524 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: 8,698 out of 16524
  2. Mixed: 5,809 out of 16524
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16524
16524 movie reviews
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  1. Naked in Ashes
    The beautifully crafted Naked in Ashes is the third of four documentaries made by Fouce, who for three decades has studied and embraced the religious teachings found in Nepal, India and Tibet. Her family name is familiar to longtime Angelenos; her grandfather Frank Fouce Sr. was a Hollywood film pioneer and a major exhibitor in downtown Los Angeles and elsewhere for decades.
  2. Ushpizin
    A gently humorous fable about the power of faith and the possibility of change, Ushpizin not only takes place in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, it was filmed with that media-shy group's cooperation and followed religious law at all times.
  3. Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family
    With Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family, documentarian Susan Kaplan has achieved the enviable effect of eavesdropping on her subjects for a meaningful exploration of the possibilities and the limits within any relationship.
  4. Domino
    So over-plotted that it's borderline incomprehensible.
  5. Elizabethtown
    A mess of a movie -- but a warm, friendly mess that's hard not to like, even when it tests your patience.
  6. Where the Truth Lies
    The real reason to see it is its style, which sets an otherwise fairly unremarkable whodunit in a seedy, lite-Lynchian wonderland that's enjoyable to hang out in for a while.
  7. North Country
    To see this overly schematic movie, is to be made to feel -- inaccurately as it turns out -- that the whole thing is a hopelessly exaggerated fabrication. The taint of the melodramatic techniques used in key segments infects the entire movie and makes us question the truth of a significant historical reality.
  8. Innocent Voices
    Mandoki, who with this film returns to the Spanish-speaking cinema after a string of Hollywood films, has brought a sure sense of the visual and taut construction to Innocent Voices, based on a true story. It is filled with wrenching images.
  9. Loggerheads
    For a film in a naturalistic mode, Loggerheads gets a shade too elliptical at its finish but still leaves a deep impression as to how irrevocable life's choices can be.
  10. Nine Lives
    That rare episode film that actually accrues a cumulative power and doesn't merely proceed from one segment to the next.
  11. Summer Storm
    Kreuzpaintner displays a natural gift with actors and a clarity in storytelling that result in a fresh take on what otherwise might have been a familiar coming-of-age story.
  12. The President's Last Bang
    An outrageous, savagely comical account of the disastrous circumstances surrounding the assassination of dictatorial South Korean President Park Chung Hee in 1979.
  13. Land of Plenty
    Hampered by an ending that overreaches needlessly, the film is nevertheless worthy and unmistakably the effort of an enduringly distinctive and important filmmaker.
  14. Good Night, and Good Luck.
    Couldn't be more unlikely, more unfashionable -- or more compelling.
  15. The Gospel
    Rousing, affirmative entertainment.
  16. In Her Shoes
    Ultimately, it's too self-conscious of its role in the marketplace and too hamstrung by its source material to risk being honest at the expense of being liked.
  17. Two for the Money
    Pure, unself-conscious macho camp, but it's not like Pacino and McConaughey don't know it. They're pitching tents and romping around in the grass like Jerry Maguire on steroids.
  18. Waiting...
    The filmmaker captures a certain exaggerated verisimilitude, but the comedy is surprisingly flat. The cast sells the occasional one-liner, but a Reynolds smirk can take you only so far.
  19. Before the Fall
    Commands attention from its very first frame and never lets up right through the fade-out. It is a splendid example of classic screen storytelling with no false steps, and Gansel's understated approach pays off with resounding emotional effect and meaning.
  20. Never Been Thawed
    Wickedly funny and subversive.
  21. The Squid and the Whale
    Acutely observed, faultlessly acted, graced with piercing emotion and unsparing honesty, it will make you laugh because you can't bear to cry.
  22. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
    Most of all, Wallace & Gromit retains the clever, one-of-a-kind sensibility that made its shorter predecessors so delightful. With every studio comedy looking for a formula for success, it's refreshing to find a heroically whimsical film that succeeds by following no formula known to dog or man.
  23. Capote
    Miller and Futterman avoid the pitfalls of the genre by refusing to mythologize the artist, plunging instead into the soul of the man.
  24. The Greatest Game Ever Played
    Paxton and Frost lay the schmaltz on thickly, but the deal-breaker is the overuse of special effects, which make the game in question look more like pinball than golf.
  25. Into the Blue
    This logic-challenged dive-bum thriller directed by John Stockwell, who did the equally silly surf movie "Blue Crush."
  26. Serenity
    A highly entertaining piece of genre-blending fun.
  27. Going Shopping
    It completes an informal trilogy that treats women's anxieties over food, motherhood and now clothes with humor and affection.
  28. Little Manhattan
    An endearing, affectionately humorous and even lyrical depiction of the dawning of adolescence amid the privileged, yet Jennifer Flackett's script, for all its sheen, is problematic.
  29. MirrorMask
    The teenager's journey through a nightmarish reverie presents hallucinogenic imagery that simultaneously dulls the senses and hot-wires the imagination, but it never fully engages emotionally.
  30. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    But it's one thing to write a loving ode to your mother; another to direct an ode to an ode.
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