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. The Father
    The moment-to-moment pleasures of trying to decipher the plot give way to crushing futility; you’re left sifting through the pieces of a puzzle that’s almost too painful to solve.
  2. Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art
    Accentuating the unrepentant Freedman (who has a distinctly monochromatic fashion sense) and her fellow interview subjects with fittingly artistic camera compositions, gallery-ready lighting and a refined strings-forward score, Made You Look makes for an exposé that’s suitable for framing.
  3. Crisis
    Whatever its goals, the filmmaking is uninspired. It’s heavily reliant on clichés, especially in its use of score, the lone-wolf cop and familiar devices to build tension.
  4. 17 Blocks
    It’s valuable when any vérité documentary with such a vantage point is able to show us how many societal ills — from addiction to gun violence to poverty to gentrification to incarceration — can touch one family, keeping them in a near-constantly reeling state.
  5. I Care a Lot
    A comic thriller with a delectably hard shell and a soft, hollow center.
  6. Blithe Spirit
    Any trenchant observations to be found in this Blithe Spirit only pop and fizz into thin air like Champagne bubbles. Though effervescent, it’s a bit too ethereal for its own good.
  7. Body Brokers
    The plot here is too plain, but the details are vivid and the outrage palpable. If nothing else, this movie is one hell of an education.
  8. Silk Road
    A film littered with tired tropes.
  9. Sin
    Neither agonizing nor ecstatic, but solidly cinematic, Andrei Konchalovsky’s Michelangelo biopic Sin sees the veteran Russian filmmaker tackling the mystery of genius with what might be described as sumptuous grit.
  10. The Violent Heart
    There’s a lot to like in The Violent Heart, with Adepo at the top of the list. But Sanga errs by giving his movie the deterministic structure of a potboiler and the muted tone of a slice-of-life indie drama.
  11. Supernova
    Both actors know how to hit Macqueen’s more emphatic dialogue with a soft, glancing touch; they also know how to settle into the script’s familiar narrative grooves, its intimations of mortality and grief, in ways that will yield fresh, distinctive notes of humor, emotion and even surprise.
  12. Twilight's Kiss
    Some may also wish this low-key film spent more time with Pak and Hoi together than it does with them apart. Yet this approach lends the story a kind of mosaic quality, effectively fleshing out our protagonists vis-a-vis their friends, family members and home lives.
  13. Days of the Bagnold Summer
    Not much happens in the understated British comedy Days of the Bagnold Summer, and that’s rather the point. It’s a truthful and sometimes moving slice of life (and cake) elevated by vivid lead performances.
  14. Jumbo
    It will surprise none of Merlant’s fans that she gives herself over to the role. Whatever you think of Jeanne’s attachment, Merlant lets you in on Jeanne’s feelings. You believe this really matters to her.
  15. Test Pattern
    A trenchant conversation piece from a promising new director, Test Pattern provides ample room for one’s biases and privilege to shape our interpretation of what’s on screen.
  16. Accidental Luxuriance of the Translucent Watery Rebus
    Chaotically arranged, like a feverish dance between mind-altering nightmares and pieces of reality, this ambitious mixed-media thesis operates under idiosyncratic rules to provoke a feeling of subconscious entrapment.
  17. Show Me What You Got
    The film’s higher aims never take hold. The breeziness feels at odds with implied gravitas.
  18. Breaking News in Yuba County
    Breaking News in Yuba County lacks both the form and substance to cash in on its acting assets.
  19. Fear of Rain
    Landon struggles to generate much tension from her plot, which frequently feels contrived. The story jerks its protagonist (and its audience) through several dark and heartbreaking moments, before inevitably landing on a final confrontation with an outcome that’s not too hard to predict … and thus not all that nerve-wracking.
  20. Willy's Wonderland
    The film has a nutty premise and a game star, but it too quickly runs out of fresh ideas.
  21. The World to Come
    Though admirably sensitive to the inner lives of opened souls, The World to Come is more a journal with faded photographs than a past made vividly present.
  22. Lapsis
    A refreshing instance of world building where the emphasis is on satirical wit, activist smarts and character, it feels like one of those movies we’ll be looking at decades from now and, however tech has transformed our lives, saying “Yeah, ‘Lapsis’ had that.”
  23. The Mauritanian
    The Mauritanian is a moral muddle as well as a narrative one, and it leaves you wondering why our empathy for Slahi has to be so mediated, negotiated and rationalized in the first place.
  24. French Exit
    The misadventures of the eccentrically wealthy may not exactly fit the mood right now, but the new French Exit is so genuine in its mix of arch and earnest, idiosyncrasy and earthiness that it creates a space all for itself.
  25. To All the Boys: Always and Forever
    Returning director Michael Fimognari and screenwriter Katie Lovejoy have made a love letter to all of these characters — not just Lara Jean and Peter — and audiences will find it hard not to be smitten too.
  26. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
    This friendship comedy in which best friends Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig), do, indeed, go to Vista Del Mar, is so outrageously infectious the only choice is to submit to its kooky charms.
  27. Earwig and the Witch
    If pitted against other entertainment aimed at young viewers with much less panache, “Earwig and the Witch” wins, at least in conceptual adventurousness. Even if far from being top-tier Ghibli, it’s not without its fantastical pleasures.
  28. Life in a Day 2020
    Even as the concept of crowdsourcing isn’t as novel as it was at the time of the film’s predecessor and the 90-minute running time can feel unnecessarily expansive given the repetition of those pandemic-related sequences, “Life in a Day 2020” nevertheless serves as a telling time capsule. The world has never felt so compact.
  29. Dear Comrades!
    Konchalovsky has said that he meant to recapture the look of films from the ’60s, but these crisp, high-contrast images speak to another impulse as well: to look into a past shrouded in the fog of delusion and doublespeak, and to see through it with a clarity that burns and even heals
  30. Cowboys
    Despite the film’s compact length, it contains a wealth of tense action, complex emotion, deft observations, vital messaging and gorgeous vistas.
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