Los Angeles Times' Scores

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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:
  1. Positive: 8,697 out of 16520
  2. Mixed: 5,806 out of 16520
  3. Negative: 2,017 out of 16520
16520 movie reviews
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  1. Primary Colors
    Such a smart and savvy piece of work it encourages us to feel we're eavesdropping on history.
  2. Taste of Cherry
    There's a strong elliptical quality to Kiarostami's style, which underlines the filmmaker's ability to maintain focus with considerable emotional force and depth and with great precision. [27 March 1998, p.14F]
    • Los Angeles Times
  3. Wide Awake
    Wide Awake is a wonderful family film that deals sensitively, and even with humor, with a fairly unusual situation for the screen: a 9-year-old's struggles with his faith in God. [20 Mar 1998, p.F10]
    • Los Angeles Times
  4. Fireworks
    Fireworks is bracing and original, an indefinable film made from familiar elements. "Hana-Bi," its title in Japanese, is a combination of the words for "flower" and "fire," and filmmaker Takeshi Kitano has, in the same way, adroitly fused genres, creating a film in which almost every moment pops out in unexpected ways. [20 Mar 1998, p.F4]
    • Los Angeles Times
  5. The Man in the Iron Mask
    Heavy on swordplay and spectacle, it's so intent on reviving the costume epics of the past it doesn't realize it's trying to be too many things to too many people until it collapses under its own weight.
  6. U.S. Marshals
    Go see it. But you'll feel cheap in the morning.
  7. Love and Death on Long Island
    Love and Death on Long Island is sharp, sophisticated and completely delicious, a purposeful comedy that focuses on the power of screen images to uproot lives and the poignancy of amour fou, totally mad love.
  8. The Big Lebowski
    This film feels completely haphazard, thrown together without much concern for organizing intelligence.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Hush
    Hush is a would-be suspense film without a single major plot twist that isn't ham-handed. [9 Mar 1998, pg.F4]
    • Los Angeles Times
  10. The Real Blonde
    By interweaving a very contemporary love story into these themes, DiCillo has at least given it all a fresh spin.
  11. Senseless
    It's a laff riot that also contains a torrent of scathing social satire that couldn't be more timely in light of the dismantling of affirmative action.
  12. Palmetto
    Revelations of betrayals, faked identities and double-crosses come in waves in the last half-hour of Palmetto, but by then, the film has raised the one question it can't answer: Who cares?
  13. Dark City
    Proyas is trying simultaneously to create a pure thriller and sci-fi nightmare along with his tongue-in-cheek critique of artifice. And this doesn't work out quite so well.
  14. Dangerous Beauty
    Oddly, it’s the bawdy silliness of “Dangerous Beauty,” and its jaw-dropping presumptions of Veronica’s liberated lifestyle, that makes the film occasionally entertaining. But it’s a movie without a consistent tone or creative vision.
  15. The Wedding Singer
    A sparkling romantic comedy, the kind of picture that glides by so gracefully and unpretentiously that it's only upon reflection that you realize how much skill, caring and good judgment had to have gone into its making.
  16. Sphere
    The script is muddled and unsatisfying, as ponderous on its feet as its protagonists are in their heavy diving suits.
  17. The Night Flier
    A provocative though murky thriller from the horrormeister that's heavy on gore and laced with more irony than perhaps intended. It's far from first-rate King, but his fans probably will feel it delivers the gory goods. Best of all, it affords a big star role for Miguel Ferrer, a fine and distinctive actor.
  18. Nil by Mouth
    Oldman, working with ace cameraman Ron Fortunato, has a real feel for the cinematic, and Nil by Mouth has a driving, jagged style that is complemented by Eric Clapton's often melancholy score. Oldman's key achievement is to make you feel for people you wouldn't want to know in real life. [06 Feb 1998, p.F12]
    • Los Angeles Times
  19. Blues Brothers 2000
    There are funny sight gags strewn throughout, but because so many scenes and confrontations are repeated from the original, there’s a staleness and sense of melancholy to the whole affair.
  20. Great Expectations
    Suffers from being neither here nor there. In its rush to modernize its story and attract a young audience with stars like Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow, the film ends up problematic both in relation to the original and on its own terms.
  21. Fallen Angels
    An exhilarating rush of a movie, with all manner of go-for-broke visual bravura that expresses perfectly the free spirits of his bold young people. [22 May 1998, Pg.F9]
    • Los Angeles Times
  22. Phantoms
    Well-crafted in most aspects, Phantoms is finally more ambitious than satisfying. It also could have used more humor. But it can't be accused of insulting the intelligence of its audiences.
  23. Hard Rain
    This documentary-like realism, alas, only underlines the preposterousness of its plot with its torrent of contrived, credibility-defying cliffhangers.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Half Baked
    A limp, predictable less-than-sitcom of a movie. It's a bomb, man, not the bomb.
  25. Live Flesh
    Live Flesh is an effortlessly articulated tragicomedy by Pedro Almodovar, a world-renowned filmmaker at the height of his powers. [30 Jan 1998]
    • Los Angeles Times
  26. Fallen
    For those who go along with it, it's a crafty piece of work nonetheless, ending with a pair of marvelous twists. [16 Jan 1998, p.F1]
    • Los Angeles Times
  27. Oscar and Lucinda
    Flawless contributions by Armstrong's crew make Oscar and Lucinda a vibrant period piece, buoyant yet incisive, and easily sustaining interest, if not generating deep involvement, throughout a just-under two-hour running time. [31Dec1997 Pg.8]
    • Los Angeles Times
  28. The Postman
    Goofy and gee-whiz when it isn't being post-apocalyptic glum, it is such an earnest hodgepodge that only by imagining "Mad Max" directed by Frank Capra can you get even an inkling of what it's like.
  29. Wag the Dog
    A gloriously cynical black comedy that functions as a wicked smart satire on the interlocking worlds of politics and show business, Wag the Dog confirms every awful thought you've ever had about media manipulation and the gullibility of the American public. And it has a great deal of fun doing it.
  30. Kundun
    A stunningly beautiful object offered in tribute to a holy man, a gorgeous film that is nevertheless burdened by the defects of its virtues. Careful and respectful, it is everything a movie about the Dalai Lama should be except dramatically involving.
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