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. Psychotic, battle-weary and devoid of compassion as they may be, these merry professional killers aren’t entirely dead inside. By the same token, Gunn’s insouciant swagger isn’t entirely devoid of warmth or sentimentality, and the bonds of kinship that emerge between comrades — warm little cracks in the movie’s nihilistic facade — can’t help but sneak their way into your own affections.
  2. Jungle Cruise, despite its more-than-capable leads and its much-vaunted attention to detail and verisimilitude, never feels transporting in the way that even mediocre blockbusters were once able to muster. It’s less an expedition than a simulation, a dispatch from a wild yet oddly pristine world where seeing is never close to believing.
  3. Val
    That dance of performance and being — mindsets committed artists don’t always manage smoothly — is what makes Val an appealing, at times even touching hodgepodge of the actor’s journey.
  4. The core question Settlers asks is who “deserves” to occupy this inhospitable planet. To Rockefeller’s credit, he doesn’t offer any pat answers.
  5. Maybe this picture is just a string of wacky ideas, with no deeper meaning. But for those who take the ride, it’s an hour and 17 minutes they’re unlikely to forget.
  6. What audiences are likely to come away with most of all is a pondering over how these many sides could coexist in the same person, perhaps wondering what they think of him — and finding it difficult to arrive at an answer.
  7. Death and grief may exist in the soul of “D-Man in the Waters” but “Can You Bring It” is full of vitality and energy, a testament to the power of art in the face of tragedy.
  8. Taylor plays Dawn’s slide into this mental health crisis beautifully, and with conviction, and Owen is stunning as the high-achieving, yet fragile Melanie, who seeks oblivion and solace in a risky boyfriend (Ian Nelson).
  9. [The] story never fully comes into focus. You catch glimpses of it in between the busy, mechanical lurchings of the plot, in the swirling movement of a camera pan and the ardent commitment of the actors.
  10. Old
    Old grabs you right away, starts losing you at the half-hour mark, pulls you back in with some agreeably bonkers set-pieces, drags you through a tedious closing stretch and finally leaves you in an oddly charitable mood: Say, that wasn’t so bad, except when it was terrible.
  11. Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins ends up having enough good-time action sequences to make it worth the popcorn money.
  12. Artfulness and restraint can be admirable qualities in a filmmaker, but rage and despair, when channeled with this much force and purpose, can be undeniably effective substitutes.
  13. Even Hansen-Løve’s characteristically light, unassuming touch feels like a playful rejoinder to the weight of the Bergman mystique, a refusal to let him dictate the terms of the argument.
  14. Nobody here actually calls Julie the worst person in the world (that insult is reserved for another character entirely), but you can imagine her thinking it about herself as she considers the mistakes she’s made and the people she’s hurt. But over the course of this charming, wistful, ineffably tender movie, you also see her learn to embrace the possibility of good in herself and in every precious, unhurried moment. It’s time well spent.
  15. Nearly every scene of this richly novelistic movie — which won the festival’s screenplay prize — teems with ideas about grief and betrayal, the nature of acting, the possibility (and impossibility) of catharsis through art, and the simple bliss of watching lights and landscapes fly past your car window.
  16. If Memoria is a gorgeous reassertion of form, it is also a bold excursion into new territory.
  17. While Serebrennikov may be banned from leaving Russia, his imagination, as well as his cast and crew, have been left gratifyingly free to roam: In its form-bending construction and surreal imagery, Petrov’s Flu plays like the work of an artist thrillingly unbound.
  18. How It Ends works both as an alternative to the usual, race-against-time or humanity-sucks apocalypse dramas, and as a personal exploration of settling affairs — and it’s a comedy.
  19. How to Deter a Robber is a mildly likable dark comedy that never finds a steady groove. It’s neither dark enough nor comic enough; and it never really settles on whether it wants to be a breezy spoof of home-invasion thrillers or an earnest story about teenagers realizing they need to grow up in a hurry.
  20. Although Salomé’s lower-key approach to the material occasionally creates the sense that moments of ripe comedy have been left untapped, as well as a low-key ending that might have benefited from a final twist, there’s plenty to appreciate.
  21. This is a compelling, often profound film, one that creatively surmounts its inherent limitations and shines a vital and heartfelt light on being transgender.
  22. Seen then as radical, her views are in fact rather reasonable and still applicable. That said, the dense paragraphs in silent title cards prove strenuous. Since her inferences are immensely relevant, one can only wish that the format were more accessible.
  23. Fusing exquisitely shot color 16mm footage from 1964 of the team’s training sessions, drone-like music and splices of animation, we get a delirious sense of what these committed women endured six out of seven days a week.
  24. Pig
    Pig is a rich character study, marked by several riveting Cage monologues.
  25. Consider the sequel curse broken: Fear Street Part 3: 1666 satisfyingly wraps up Netflix’s R.L. Stine movie trilogy with deepened themes, more fully realized characters and enjoyable twists that lend dimension to the arching story.
  26. The movie is just a big, empty declaration of corporate dominance, a whirling CGI tornado that — like a much stupider Tasmanian Devil — ingests, barely processes and then promptly regurgitates everything in its path. It’s Upchuck Jones.
  27. For two hours it places Bourdain’s voice alongside the voices of those who knew him, as if they were still able to converse on the same spiritual plane. There’s beauty and solace in that illusion, even if the movie can’t — and maybe shouldn’t — begin to answer the unbearably sad question that haunts every frame.
  28. It’s more of an action gallery, not a blood-pumping story accelerated by its flights of fury.
  29. Casanova, Last Love, which looks at the famed 18th century philanderer’s infatuation with the supposed “one true love of his life,” is a dull and uninvolving portrait that, despite its sumptuous settings and costumes, never takes flight.
  30. One of the more delightful surprises of “The Souvenir Part II” is that it’s both a sadder, heavier film than its predecessor and a looser, funnier one.

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