Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 16,523 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:
16523 movie reviews
  1. A seamless model of form and content. (My only quibble is the poor quality of the digital video, which doesn't do justice to Johnson's work.)
  2. This animated retelling of the familiar Old Testament story is playful, high-spirited and unmistakably amusing. It's nice to see that a sense of humor and a sense of values don't inevitably have to cancel each other out.
  3. Doesn't have the courage of its conceit, only an abundance of bad ideas and worse taste.
  4. Smart, sweet and playful romantic comedy.
  5. There isn't much else to the film beyond slapstick antics and professional gloss, but the results are diverting enough, in great measure because it's essentially a scene-by-scene remake Mario Monicelli's 1958 satire, "Big Deal on Madonna Street."
  6. Once positions hardened, tragedy was all but inevitable, and Bloody Sunday" does the spirit of that awful day full and unforgettable justice.
  7. There's no freshness here, no sense of newness or discovery. In its place, there's an earnest desire not to drop the ball, a determination to risk as little as possible in keeping this golden egg from cracking wide open.
  8. Though the cast ends up looking good, the film's unwillingness or inability to have things add up hurts everyone's efforts.
  9. Chan is still able to project the boyishness and insecurity of the new kid on the block. But even those aren't enough to make Tuxedo a black-tie affair.
  10. A wrenching, uncompromisingly bleak film, but its stars, who include talented newcomer Noah Watts as Mogie's son and Lois Red Elk as the brothers' staunch aunt, fill the screen with warmth, humor and spiritual yearning in the face of hardship and tragedy.
  11. A handsome, intelligent film of rigorous austerity; unfortunately, for all its seriousness of purpose and fine performances, it's also a boring film about boring people.
  12. Starts encouragingly and finishes strongly with a twist, but the middle is weighed down by too much discourse when it should be visually evoking its ideas and developing its mood of unease.
  13. A serious and thoughtful documentary.
  14. One of the better documentaries I'd seen in years -- it plays like a suspense thriller because that's exactly what it is.
  15. A shimmering fable of innocence and experience set in contemporary Los Angeles and Pasadena (its title is a nod to Virgil's "Aeneid"). Phillip Jayson Lasker's tartly knowing script, with the kind of witty dialogue that's all but vanished from American movies, recalls Hickenlooper's "The Low Life."
  16. While Pantaleón does have its scorching erotic moments and skewers establishment hypocrisy toward prostitution, it lacks the originality and complexity of "Y Tu Mamá."
  17. Wasabi dawdles and drags when it should pop; it doesn't even have the virtue of enough mindless violence to break up the tedium of all its generational bonding.
  18. The South takes another beating in Sweet Home Alabama, but that's nothing compared with the one conferred on the sweetheart personality of its pint-sized Gen. Sherman.
  19. What's on screen is too honest and from the heart to totally dismiss but too slick and contrived to completely embrace. This is a film that cares about genuine emotion but also wants to tame it, to tidy it up and keep it confined to quarters.
  20. Bluntly effective.
  21. The period is evoked with care and imagination, and the film glows with Peter Zeitlinger's cinematography. It has some bravura images and surreal moments typical of Herzog, and composers Hans Zimmer and Klaus Badelt have contributed a lovely score.
  22. It's a persuasive spiritual journey, sentimental at times but never hopelessly cloying.
  23. There's no defense for movies like these, but neither do they warrant apology; they're irresistibly watchable, like car wrecks.
  24. All these intriguing good intentions, however, have largely gone for naught because of a variety of missteps, starting with an increasing implausible plot as well as the fact that Ledger's Harry looks about as likely to pass for an Arab as the Mahdi is to pass for Queen Victoria.
  25. A practiced piece of Hollywood hokum, way too calculated and contrived, especially for a film that nominally celebrates the chaos and creativity of the 1960s.
  26. Not the kind of unwatchable mess you might assume a film withheld from reviewers' scrutiny would be. It is, however, something equally unfortunate: a mess you'd rather not be watching.
  27. This graceful and wise film moves to its denouement with subtlety and, at its end, strikes a note that seems just right for all that has gone before.
  28. Although it starts off vaguely amusing, 8 Women grows progressively sour, curdled by the filmmakers' bad faith and lack of compassion. It isn't just the tone that's off; it's the point.
  29. For all the dolorous trim, Secretary is a genial romance that maintains a surprisingly buoyant tone throughout, notwithstanding some of the writers' sporadic dips into pop Freudianism.
  30. Prepare to be astonished by Spirited Away.

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