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. X2: X-Men United
    Brisk and involving with a streamlined forward propulsion, it's the kind of superhero movie we want if we have to have superhero movies at all.
  2. The Dancer Upstairs
    If the screenwriter and director had followed their cinematic instincts fully, they would have collaborated on one of the more satisfying political thrillers in years; instead, they've managed to create three-quarters of one.
  3. Owning Mahowny
    Kwietniowski might have tried for some edginess that would express a measure of the excitement Mahowny is experiencing. Despite the driven intensity of the banker, the film threatens to slip into the lifelessness of the drab world it depicts.
  4. Blue Car
    Even with its drawbacks, Blue Car remains an intimate, thoughtful drama, with a performance no one is likely to forget.
  5. The Lizzie McGuire Movie
    The movie, with all its brashness and crassness, can still claim noble motives in encouraging insecure young people to seek the pop diva buried deep within.
  6. New Suit
    In not taking itself too seriously New Suit scores more points than some pictures that take a scathing approach.
  7. Spellbound
    At a time when so many in this country are at odds about what represents America at its best, it's refreshing and then some to see a film that everyone can agree is an example of exactly that.
  8. Marooned in Iraq
    Even though the film's tone grows ever more elegiac, it stubbornly remains a celebration of the Kurdish capacity to endure.
  9. Returning Mickey Stern
    A bland romantic comedy that comes up short on both laughs and love.
  10. The Real Cancun
    The result is surprisingly genial, even innocent -- a movie without a screenplay that echoes countless coming-of-age-at-the-beach movies, except maybe "Weekend at Bernie's."
  11. House of Fools
    A superbly shot film of emotional extravagance, sentimentality and even humor, House of Fools is a film that is ultimately quite moving but which probably could only have been pulled off by a director steeped in that famous Russian soul.
  12. City of Ghosts
    For his atmospheric debut as a feature director, the actor Matt Dillon has cast himself as a guy in need of saving. It's a nice fit.
  13. A Decade Under the Influence
    It is often remarked that the years between "Easy Rider" (1969) and "Star Wars" (1977) marked a second golden age in American filmmaking, and this documentary, as comprehensive as it is incisive, is a reminder of just how many terrific pictures came out during those years.
  14. Manic
    If the cast is distractingly pretty, the performances are also quite fine and, in the case of Gordon-Levitt, exceptional.
  15. Confidence
    Does have a large and capable cast and, in James Foley, a director with a taste for visual flourishes. They all so fell in love with the script by Doug Jung they didn't notice how much a derivative retread it is of superior material like "The Grifters" and even "The Sting."
  16. Identity
    Fine escapist fare with a saving sense of humor and an underlying premise that, when revealed, proves to be arguably plausible even if a reach.
  17. It Runs in the Family
    Schepisi not only inspired the cast to give well-shaded, reflective portrayals but also made the film a work of honest, heartfelt sentiment.
  18. People I Know
    It's not often that you see talented, well-meaning people joined together like cultists in the snare of a group delusion, but that's what makes this film fascinating, the proverbial accident you can't take your eyes off.
  19. Onmyoji: The Yin Yang Master
    Emerges as an epic tale of love, sacrifice and redemption that attains a Shakespearean aura of grandeur and nobility of spirit.
  20. Winged Migration
    At its best, Winged Migration is a marvel, and if that seems like a gee-whiz word, that's because this film has a lot to be gee-whiz about.
  21. Holes
    It's got an involving, adventurous story to tell and the wherewithal to tell it correctly. And while young adults may think this is intended only for them, in truth it's their elders who are especially starved for this kind of entertainment.
  22. Lilya 4-Ever
    I can't think of another good movie this year that's as tough to watch as Moodysson's, but, then, I can't think of very many movies that are as good.
  23. Malibu's Most Wanted
    After an hour, or two-thirds of the film, they run out of gas. This is the kind of material that's easier to set up than it is to bring together in a satisfying fashion.
  24. Venus and Mars
    Not exactly terrible, merely stale and pointless.
  25. A Mighty Wind
    The jokes would be funny even if they weren't perfectly timed, but what makes them come across as so poignant is the seriousness with which the director and his co-conspirators deliver their jabs and japes.
  26. Bulletproof Monk
    Began life as a comic book, and screenwriters Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris, ever respectful of that lineage, have not allowed the film's dialogue or plot points to rise above their cartoonish origins.
  27. Chasing Papi
    A giddy, slight Latina-lib comedy.
  28. The Young Unknowns
    Jelski is a skilled filmmaker, and her sense of reality is so uncompromising that, even when tempered by a touch of dark humor, her film is a grim, hard-to-take business.
  29. XX/XY
    It's an overly familiar setup played out by overly familiar types but, curiously, what invests XX/XY with its tension is that there's no sense that Austin Chick, the film's capable young director and writer, knows what he feels about any of this.
  30. Better Luck Tomorrow
    It has the virtue of Lin's tangy wit but it also suffers from the vice of a director who, torn between personal vision and wide public reach, tends to smother his ideas under a veneer of cool.
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