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. Charm City Kings clearly knows what it’s doing; unfortunately, what it’s doing is often just as obvious to us.
  2. It is hardly the fault of this breathless, incisive and thoroughly infuriating movie that it already feels a touch out of date. How could it not?
  3. This is a funny film about death, which is to say it’s a wrenching film about life.
  4. Cronenberg has a lot of high-minded ideas, but he grounds them in human behavior and has found the right humans to tell his story.
  5. It’s refreshing to come at the spy genre from a different angle and rewarding to be introduced to these extraordinary women. Just don’t expect a pulse-pounder or even a particularly atmospheric, experiential film.
  6. The sly achievement of The Forty-Year-Old Version is to turn a critical eye on the very idea of success (by whose standards?), and to ponder exactly what level of compromise is acceptable to secure it.
  7. The filmmakers are tackling a broad, evolving topic and the documentary struggles to maintain a throughline.
  8. Using every tool at her disposal, Taymor crafts an epic tapestry of a remarkable life, paying tribute to the glorious Gloria Steinem.
  9. A sensitive turn by Olin combined with the script’s nicely delineated take on her long-suffering, creatively thwarted lead character, makes the film, set mainly in Long Island’s tony East Hampton, an absorbing, at times moving look at a woman caught between her own artistic and emotional desires and her devotion to a man who doesn’t seem to deserve her.
  10. Oliver Sacks: His Own Life is a moving portrait of a man taking deep stock of his life with great satisfaction and verve. It
  11. You forgive much due to obvious budgetary constraints. But the excruciatingly slow, soapy storytelling stifles emotional energy. It’s not easy to follow, hampered by severe logical lapses. Character threads abruptly drop. How anyone feels about anyone is unclear at any given moment.
  12. Kiss the Ground is the good kind of kale. It’s dense but nutritious. The science is explained in simple terms with plenty of visually striking graphics and animation.
  13. Cohn, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, likely was aiming for subtlety, but these are not subtle times. Trying to get a spark from a damp match is a lot harder than holding a flame to dry kindling.
  14. Good intentions, deft performances and vivid dollops of period style and sensibility go a long way to patch over the bumps.
  15. The Trial of the Chicago 7, smoothly entertaining as it is, may also elude clear consensus. Democracy is a messy business, but an element of real, lived-in messiness seems beyond this movie’s purview.
  16. Bit by bit, line by line, she [July] nudges you onto her characters’ wavelength, navigating their world with matter-of-fact drollery and tethering even her weirdest flights of fancy to clear, accessible emotions.
  17. Though as leisurely as a summer’s day, this kaleidoscopic memory film has an intensity of purpose that wants to knock you on your heels — or maybe harder — in its take on gentrification.
  18. Enola provides a richly fanciful, fresh perspective on the well-worn family name.
  19. You see in Felix the deadpan anarchic streak that has made Murray a force in American comedy for decades. At the same time, the actor seems to be winking at his own reputation for off-screen mischief — the tricks, stunts and pop-up bartending gigs that have made him a kind of one-man flash mob.
  20. While the result may be scattershot at times, the achievements of these badass professionals are worth a look — especially if, like this writer, you believe an Oscar category for stunt performers is long overdue.
  21. The point of DiMaria’s absorbing and passionate documentary is there was much more to his uncle than being one of the “others” in an infamous murder spree.
  22. Antebellum ultimately trips over its gimmicky plotting en route to a conclusion that rings false.
  23. What makes Durkin’s vision so powerfully unsettling is its ease with ambiguity, its ability to make cruelty and tenderness seem like flip sides of the same human coin.
  24. It’s a delight to see the director cut loose, along with his gifted behind-the-scenes collaborators (including production designer Helen Scott and costume designer Jacqueline Durran) and his captivating stars.
  25. The film makes an ardent case to stay ever-vigilant against the ongoing threat to the electoral process.
  26. The Eight Hundred fetishizes martyrdom, but for those seeking big-screen, epic violence, it’s pretty much the only game in town.
  27. The genre elements are nicely balanced by the adult drama embodied in the lead quartet’s performances, especially Rapace’s turn that is part femme fatale, part damaged soul.
  28. Director Miranda de Pencier and writers Graham Yost and Moira Walley-Beckett haven’t dodged hard sociological truths lurking beneath the gentle humor, engaging performances and stirringly photographed tundra, lending The Grizzlies a decisive, transformative edge.
  29. You can reject the conclusions of Campos’ movie, particularly its unrelenting pileup of dead bodies, and still take pleasure in its atmospheric surface — in the persuasiveness of its small-town environs (shot on 35-millimeter film by the gifted cinematographer Lol Crawley) and the vigor of its performances. He may not persuade you all the time, but the devil is very much in those details.
  30. There is no transcendence at the end of her long, harrowing journey, but there are unexpected gifts, guardian angels and places of refuge. It would be hard to overlook the spiritual presence — a good word for it would be “grace” — that hovers over every frame of this movie and the spare, wrenching story it has to tell.

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