Los Angeles Times' Scores

For 16,520 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:
16520 movie reviews
  1. In its examination of what is fleeting and what remains, "After Life" is not only perceptive, it leavens everything it touches with a surprisingly sly sense of humor. Few films about death, or about life for that matter, leave you feeling so affirmative about existence.
  2. Drags its uninspiring action out too long for anyone's good.
  3. The film practically vibrates with youthful aggression, sly humor and gathering tension, hurling itself forward like a junkie toward the next fix.
  4. What Idle Hands lacks in originality, it makes up for in energy and insolence. It takes guts for a movie to indulge as much as this one does in proto-hippie humor and you find yourself tickled, in spite of yourself, by the movie's nerve, if not its jokes.
  5. Genteel moviemaking with modern overtones, The Winslow Boy is especially good at the visual re-creation of its time.
  6. While the film glistens a bit now and again, a closer look reveals you've been diverted not by a diamond but by a genuine synthetic zircon.
  7. It's an intriguing film, one of the year's most interesting, but involving as much of it is, it leaves an unsatisfied taste when it's over.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    All of this points to the two major differences between "Mary" and "Lost": Ben Stiller's character in "Mary" was likable (if pathetic), and "Mary" was sporadically funny.
  8. The Cronenberg trademarks are here in full force, including an outrageous sexual suggestiveness in his bizarre special effects.
  9. This is a nearly flawless little film, a cheerful nightmare that knows just where it wants to go and uses precisely calibrated comic effects to get there.
  10. Gracefully bittersweet and balanced. [16 April 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  11. Mindless escape. [12 April 1999, Calendar, p.F-4]
    • Los Angeles Times
  12. Go
    Offers breathtaking comic-action fantasy….Exhilarating and sharp, it never stops for a second. [9 April 1999, Calendar, p.F-6]
    • Los Angeles Times
  13. An easygoing and amusing romantic confection.
  14. A satisfying story of love and marriage told with humor and insight.
  15. Cookie's Fortune, which knows how to treat serious matters with humor, is to be treasured as an utterly distinctive work by one of America's finest filmmakers. [2 April 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  16. You may want to take a chance on this new Out-of-Towners because of its stars, but keep in mind that while its characters take chances, the picture itself plays it awfully safe. [2 April 1999, Calendar, p.F-12]
    • Los Angeles Times
  17. As a psychological mystery it plays persuasively if not profoundly. Nolan relishes the sheer nastiness he keeps stirred up, unabated for 70 minutes. You can, too, provided you don't ask more of it.
  18. Lutz's dialogue is consistently sharp and snappy, and the large cast forms a sparkling ensemble under Junger's adept direction.
  19. A wildly cinematic futuristic thriller that is determined to overpower the imagination, The Matrix combines traditional science-fiction premises with spanking new visual technology in a way that almost defies description.
  20. Like the television medium it genially satirizes, EDtv is a grab bag that's both amusing and frustrating.
  21. A great-looking picture that zips along with grace, light on its feet but possessed of just enough gravity to allow us to take its people rather than its old TV series premise seriously.
  22. A film of exceptional emotional honesty.
  23. Turns out to be an extremely likable vehicle with a genuine sense of fun.
  24. Has all the ingredients for a cult film success but most definitely is not for everyone. It's stylish, sophisticated, venturesome--to say the least.
  25. A dismal pastiche of threadbare plot devices and not-so-comic interludes.
  26. It's a gritty story made in the director's more elegiacal mode, a confusion of style and content that is not in the film's best interests.
  27. You won't feel anything. Period. Oh, maybe bored or disoriented by the inside jargon and alien references that will be comprehensible only if you happen to have played the computer game on which Wing Commander is based. [12 March 1999, Calendar, p.F-10]
    • Los Angeles Times
  28. Ends up insisting on pat and overly tidy resolutions that are at variance with the emotional chaos it's nominally attempting to convey. [12 March 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  29. A laid-back excursion through the "Star Trek" phenomenon that boldly goes where millions and millions of fans have gone--in and out of costume.

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