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. One Swallow Brought Spring
    Wise, understated, warm and witty, it presents stars Michel Serrault and Mathilde Seigner in roles that fit them so perfectly they could have been tailor-made.
  2. Dreamcatcher
    Simultaneously jokey and scary, sentimental and ruthless, tediously everyday and grotesquely out of the ordinary.
  3. Japan
    Some filmmakers give us dreams and false worlds in which we can find refuge. For others, though, like the young Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas, the movies aren't an escape from the world but a way more deeply into it.
  4. Willard
    The new Willard, which has taken the original's humanity and the psychological validity, leavened with a dollop of dark humor, and replaced them with a technically impressive but essentially heartless spoof.
  5. Under the City's Skin
    This splendid film is no mere polemic, for Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, often called the first lady of Iranian cinema, is above all an accomplished storyteller and dramatist who understands the evocative power of sound and image.
  6. The Hunted
    What keeps you watching isn't the story or the actors, none of whom are at the top of their form, but the relentlessness of Friedkin's vision. The film has great forward thrust -- Friedkin's a full-throttle guy -- and the director knows where to put the camera.
  7. Agent Cody Banks
    A clever and lively action-adventure with a warm sense of humor and smart dialogue that allows for an affectionate and fleet-footed satire of the classic elements of the Bond franchise.
  8. Spun
    Maybe it's the sight of Leguizamo running around dressed only in boots and a well-placed sock that does her in, or maybe it's just that she's seen this movie too many times before. She isn't the only one.
  9. Bend It Like Beckham
    Smart, lively and altogether warmhearted dramatic comedy.
  10. Laurel Canyon
    In its milieu and parallel story lines, the film suggests a bantam "Short Cuts," but for better and for worse, this is Altman without the razored edge. Cholodenko elicits appealing performances from her ensemble, but she never pushes their characters anywhere there isn't an easy out.
  11. Nowhere in Africa
    This is an intelligent epic told without special pleading, a film able to cut deep enough to reveal a keen specificity of experience.
  12. Bringing Down the House
    A movie that desperately wants her (Latifah's) hip, her edge and mostly her blackness but doesn't know what to do with the human being who comes with the package.
  13. The Safety of Objects
    For all of Troche's skill and talent, The Safety of Objects (a splendid title) nevertheless tries to cover too much territory. In movies, as elsewhere, a little less sometimes can add up to a lot more.
  14. Irreversible
    Noé;, with his Nietzsche-for-knuckleheads nihilism and extreme-cinema ambitions, clearly fancies himself a visionary, but mounting a camera on a roller coaster or putting a story into rewind doesn't make a film formally adventurous or interesting. Conceiving of a gay club as an antechamber to the inferno and sexualizing a woman's rape, however, do make it titillating.
  15. Tears of the Sun
    May make you weep, but not in the way anyone intended. Handsomely made, well-meaning but finally frustrating and unsatisfying, this perplexing film is an example of a previously unseen hybrid, the socially conscious, humanitarian action movie. It doesn't appear to be a genre with much of a future.
  16. Ten
    One of the best films to open so far this year, but greeting each new work from a favored director as if it were equally brilliant can't be good for anyone, the director included.
  17. Cradle 2 the Grave
    With so little trust and even less dialogue to back him up, it's no wonder Li rarely takes his left hand out of his pants pocket. His fists aren't furious; they're on strike.
  18. Horns and Halos
    Although the term cinéma vérité is overused as a descriptor for documentaries, it applies here. The makers of Horns and Halos eschew the Michael Moore "poke 'em with a stick, let's watch 'em squirm" approach and wisely let the cameras roll, interspersing news footage with their own interviews.
  19. Poolhall Junkies
    It isn't that nothing happens in Poolhall Junkies, it's that nothing interesting does.
  20. Mad Song
    Instead of a genre movie-industry calling card, Roy has made a venturesome and effective film.
  21. Dischord
    This premise is ripe with possibilities, but in an apparent -- and definitely misguided -- attempt to make his movie more commercial, Wilkinson has made the younger brother a murderer on the run.
  22. Bolivia
    There are no big surprises in Caetano's film, which plays out exactly as ordained, only a sense of life at its most precarious and real.
  23. Open Hearts
    The gritty, low-budget realism approach of the Dogme manifesto gives immediacy and edge to the raw emotions Bier and her cast uncover. Best of all, Bier never forgets that a little humor can relieve an awful lot of pain.
  24. Till Human Voices Wake Us
    Kept in check by his character's neuroses, Pearce holds our attention throughout, but it isn't until near the end that he manages to break free of his character's and his director's inhibitions.
  25. Dark Blue
    Sensitively directed by Ron Shelton and helped by what just might be the best performance of Kurt Russell's career, Dark Blue is as interesting and successful as it can be within its limits, but those limits make this a more generic film than its makers intended.
  26. Lawless Heart
    Charming, disarming and in some ways humbling film.
  27. Gods and Generals
    Maxwell has populated his film with paragons rather than people. Worse, they talk and talk and talk; this film is in danger of talking itself to death before the Union and the Confederacy are able to decimate each other.
  28. Old School
    The disconnect between what men say and what they do makes Old School funnier than most of its gags and it also invests the movie with curious pathos.
  29. The Life of David Gale
    Frankly, the film's real surprise is that it doesn't collapse under the weight of its sanctimonious posturing and howling pretension. The film is crammed with high-cultural references and people playing "smart," but none of it adds up.
  30. Missing Young Woman
    Chillingly, Portillo reveals that 50 women were killed in the 18 months it took her to make her film.
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