Los Angeles Times' Scores

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:
16550 movie reviews
  1. As insistent as it is skillful -- and it is very skillful -- it does all it can to pound you into enjoying yourself. The result is rather like being force-fed a meal of your favorite foods by the Terminator.
  2. At once an old-fashioned freakout and an environmental cautionary tale (mess with Mother Nature and she'll mess with you right back), the film combines two genre standbys -- lethal contagion and the undead -- and gives them a wicked, contemporary spin.
  3. For histrionic wretched excess this movie would be hard to surpass.
  4. Not the place to go look for nuanced, deeply emotional performances. The acting is inevitably on the formal side, suitable for the pageant this film is. But don't let that dissuade you. They won't be making another film like this any time soon, and the chance to see all those elephants is not one you get every day.
  5. A painfully contrived and artificial exercise in futility.
  6. However nifty, Lee's Cubist gambit fails to capture the graphic tension that makes great comic-book art jump off the page and great pop movies jump off the screen with pow, zap and wow!
    • 14 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Relentlessly inoffensive, innocuous and vacuous, From Justin to Kelly is nowhere near as bad as its pre-release publicity would suggest.
  7. As a dramatist Eason has a classicist's sense of structure and movement to complement his sense of the cinematic. Manito, which has a special grand jury prize from Sundance among its 10 awards, is a small film with a big impact.
  8. Interests us in ways we don't expect. It has a mordant sense of humor and a gift for character and incident that has attracted two of Australia's best actors -- Guy Pearce and Rachel Griffiths -- as well as an excellent supporting cast.
  9. Minor whimsy of a film.
  10. Perhaps The Heart of Me's greatest success is the way it avoids turning any of its characters into villains. They all act badly at times, but we feel for them just the same; they never lose our sympathy. Weepy or not, that's an accomplishment any kind of film can feel proud of.
  11. More a 99-minute public service announcement about the plight of illegal immigrants than a fully formed drama, the film finds itself in a no-win situation not unlike that of its protagonist.
  12. No one comes out of Hollywood Homicide looking good, but the film fades fast.
  13. The number of characters makes Rugrats Go Wild somewhat bulkier than its less complicated predecessors, but fans are not likely to mind.
  14. In the end Tycoon above all evokes a melancholy awareness of the seemingly eternal exploitation and impoverishment of the Russian people.
  15. A bombshell in its home country, Herod's Law is made with the kind of flair that ensures a following everywhere politicians are venal and voters hope against hope for deliverance.
  16. Falls wildly short of its inspirations.
  17. It's too little Grier too late, but it's also fairly satisfying to watch.
  18. Their (filmmakers Oxide and Danny Pang) sense of pacing is nicely arrhythmic, which makes the "boo" moments all the more heart-thudding, but what's even more pleasurable are the pockets of quiet, those lacuna of low-frequency dread when nothing much happens.
  19. My hand trembles slightly as I type these words, but the truth is that while watching 2 Fast 2 Furious, the follow-up to the pleasurably cheap-thrills sleeper "The Fast and the Furious," I realized just how much I miss Vin Diesel.
  20. A substantial film of unexpected emotional force. And when at a certain point it seems to slip the bonds of this world and take a leap of faith into an almost mythological dimension, it breathlessly takes us along for that memorable ride.
  21. Garmento has nothing going for it. First-time writer-director Michele Maher spent three years working in Manhattan's fashion industry...her attempts at satire are feeble and trite, and her stereotypical characters are without interest.
  22. A compelling piece of work that turns out to have unexpected relevance to the current world situation.
  23. Controlled Chaos unfortunately also reveals that Zendel's talents do not equal her ambitions.
  24. A swift and amusing martial-action, adventure-horror picture with a bold, larger-than-life comic-book sensibility and richly atmospheric production design.
  25. The result is a sure-fire crowd-pleaser that will strike Chen's admirers as a heartfelt but decidedly minor effort.
  26. A fast and furious action-adventure. The film's comedy counts for as much as the clever and risky ways in which Wahlberg and company go after the nasty Norton, who has holed up in a Bel-Air mansion with a world-class security system.
  27. Director Rob Schmidt, working from a screenplay by Alan McElroy, manages to keep the suspense up through the final hour of the film. Cast members acquit themselves agreeably, carrying off horror archetypes without much fanfare.
  28. Overmatched by the strange and compelling true story that is its subject, this unfortunate film ends up both more disingenuous than it wants to admit and more awkward than it can easily acknowledge.
  29. The best break of all is that Pixar's traditionally untethered imagination can't be kept under wraps forever, and "Nemo" erupts with sea creatures that showcase Stanton and company's gift for character and peerless eye for skewering contemporary culture.

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