Los Angeles Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 16,550 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 2.2 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: 8,714 out of 16550
  2. Mixed: 5,819 out of 16550
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16550
16550 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Camp
    Has a good deal of the appeal, and the drawbacks, of a high school play. It can be pokey and overly earnest and its dramatics are not always polished, but, on the other hand, would you want them to be?
  2. Masked and Anonymous
    The look of the film is great, the soundtrack glorious, but more often than not the dialogue is atrocious, featuring a lot of long-winded gobbledygook.
  3. Cuban Rafters
    The creators of the magnificent Balseros stayed involved with its subject, a group of Cuban boat people who made it to the United States, for a full seven years. If you put in that kind of time, you witness life happening in front of you in all its compelling, confounding drama. What could be better than that?
  4. This Thing of Ours
    A decently crafted, standard Mafia blood bath with a few new wrinkles and an aura of authenticity.
  5. Sakura Wars
    Duller-than-dirt.
  6. Johnny English
    A comic actor of genius who raises silliness to an art form, the wonderfully expressive Atkinson makes excellent use of those devastating looks in the spy spoof Johnny English, where he turns up as a James Bond type more likely to kill adversaries by accident than on purpose.
  7. The Embalmer
    From start to finish Garrone charges The Embalmer, a richly visual film, with an effective ambiguity and sense of foreboding.
  8. How to Deal
    Works up some genuine emotion offset by occasional humor and creates individuals of a certain degree of complexity, but the film is glazed over with an aura of artificiality.
  9. The Sea Is Watching
    An exquisite period film from a script Akira Kurosawa did not live to direct. It has a softer edge than the master probably would have delivered, but it is deeply affecting.
  10. Dirty Pretty Things
    This is a film that insinuates itself deeply into our awareness. It's that rare pulp story with something on its mind, an unnerving, socially conscious thriller with a killer sense of narrative drive.
  11. The Anarchist Cookbook
    An admirably ambitious political satire but is stronger on soundtrack narration than on-camera dramatization.
  12. Bad Boys II
    With a body built for action and a smile made for comedy, Smith eases through his scenes -- cool but never scary, a touch hip-hop and thoroughly audience-friendly. And unlike Lawrence, he can act. Smith's ability to put over a scene, combined with his matinee charm, goes a long way to making the film's violence palatable.
  13. September 11
    It's no surprise that Imamura has directed the best film in September 11, which is doubtless why the producer saved it for last.
  14. Garage Days
    Like real indie films, garage bands are by definition rough around the edges, but what separates the true believers from the poseurs is their passion, their commitment -- and not just how cool they look on screen or on stage. A mainstream endeavor tricked out as an indie, Garage Days gives us plenty to look at but no reason to care.
  15. A Housekeeper
    A summer treat for sophisticated moviegoers -- graceful and serious, yet not overly so. This easy-to-take movie gets everything just right and is a pleasure to watch.
  16. Km. 0 - Kilometer Zero
    Made from a sophisticated European perspective, this is a light summer entertainment with an able, highly attractive cast.
  17. Northfork
    A thoroughly original accomplishment of a high artistic order, Northfork features flawless, spare production design by Ichelle Spitzig and the Polish brothers' father, Del, and cinematographer M. David Mullen's striking images slide effortlessly into Dalí-like Surrealism.
  18. The Cuckoo
    A rare bird indeed -- a disarming, appealingly modest discovery, beautifully shot, nicely performed. Perched on the knife's edge of absurdity, the story at once embraces the large questions (who is the enemy and why) and shrugs them off with a laugh.
  19. I Capture the Castle
    It's a rich, emotional story, a wonderfully appealing film made with humor and intelligence, but there is also something almost magical about how it takes the stuff of innumerable previous films -- love, romance and adolescent coming of age -- and turns them into something that feels one of a kind.
  20. The Holy Land
    It has the awkwardness that characterizes many first features and, as befits a culture that does not always prize refinement, some of its performances and situations are not as subtle as they should be.
  21. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
    These guys have dumbed down a comic book.
  22. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    This noisy retread, a secondhand facsimile of a movie, is, except for the headache its boisterous sound level leaves you with, as forgettable as a bad day in the Disneyland parking lot.
  23. Tattoo
    The film is an engrossing and original police procedural of bleak, steel-gray images and high style. But be warned: as part of its complex, ever-unfolding plot, it is punctuated with some grisly images.
  24. Confusion of Genders
    Certainly sexy, entertaining and provocative -- in several senses of the word -- but it's also tiresome as only a French film can be when everyone in it has only sex and amour on his or her mind and is deadly serious about both.
  25. Gasoline
    Finally too derivative and sensational for its own sake to work.
  26. Swimming Pool
    Ozon misses some chances with Sarah, but Rampling doesn't skip a beat. Freed from the burden of likability, the actress pushes the character from near-farce to near-tragedy, without once appealing to sentimentalism.
  27. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    An expertly paced and efficient sci-fi thrill machine, "T3" effectively marries impressive action sequences with persuasive storytelling and its star's uniquely appealing style of "No" drama -- as in no reaction, no expression, no emotion of any kind.
  28. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
    A pleasure to look at. It's filled with fine, imaginative moves and an overarching sense of visual freedom, a feeling of play that entices us into enjoyment. But, when it comes to dialogue and story, this Sinbad apparently used up all its initiative changing its hero's ethnicity to generic Greco-Roman.
  29. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    Elle dresses in shades of sorbet and dolls up her Chihuahua like a bantamweight drag queen, but by fighting the good fight she's also giving alpha girls and women their due, rescuing them from the magazine horror stories and the taint of Hillary.
  30. On_Line
    A fine example of digital filmmaking, and Weintrob and his co-writer, Andrew Osborne, manage to raise some serious issues regarding the Internet without taking themselves too seriously.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »