Mick LaSalle

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San Francisco Chronicle
For 3,800 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Mick LaSalle's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 Sound and Fury
Lowest review score: 0 Nightbreed
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,063 out of 3800
  2. Mixed: 1,037 out of 3800
  3. Negative: 700 out of 3800
3800 movie reviews
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    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Wackness
    When it's good, it's good, and when it fails, it's still clear what Levine was trying to do.
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 93 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    There Will Be Blood
    Anderson almost brings off a picture worthy of his grandiose ambition.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
    It's an endurance test. Though never boring, the movie is a fairly long slog through the snow.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Her
    The story is too slender for its two-hour running time, and the pace is lugubrious, as though everyone in front and behind the camera were depressed. But the biggest obstacle is the protagonist (Joaquin Phoenix), who is almost without definition.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Little Women
    So the most noticeable thing about the first minutes of Greta Gerwig’s new screen adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott classic is that the women in Little Women seem just a little bit snooty here, more like privileged actresses from 2019 than like a Northern family living in genteel poverty during the Civil War.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    First Cow
    With Reichardt, you really do feel like you’re actually there. The only problem is that, a lot of the time, you’re really not happy to be there.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Mad Max: Fury Road
    Yet all this wit and effort and occasional beauty is in the service of a movie that is little more than a two-hour chase scene, one that seems founded on the assumption that if you show one set of people chasing another, that’s enough to get an audience excited: Oh, no, let’s hope they don’t get caught!
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Married to the Mob
    Married to the Mob picks up pace throughout and builds to an exciting finish. [19 Aug 1988]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 89 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Two Days, One Night
    It’s sincere and intelligent — but it’s weak as a social statement and even weaker as drama.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Zama
    All this makes Zama interesting and unique and something to be respected. But none of this translates into anything resembling a satisfying narrative or even entertainment as we know it. Still, as bleak experiments go, Zama is the real thing.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Tree
    I lost patience with a widow who is grieving one month and then making out with a guy in a bar the next. This is an emotional recovery even Hamlet's mother might have found unseemly.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Joshua
    So what's wrong with Joshua? Two things: The audience is ahead of the movie, and the movie never catches up.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    If Beale Street Could Talk
    Perhaps because Jenkins can’t translate to the screen the incisiveness and music of Baldwin’s prose, he brings on real music from other sources. Over and over, and increasingly as the movie wears on, Jenkins drowns his film in mirthless jazz and pop interludes to the point that the action feels stuck in cement.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Lord of War
    The film is always at least mildly interesting, because international arms dealing is a fairly compelling issue, but it's never as informative as a good documentary nor as engrossing as a good narrative. It's a hybrid that's frustrating in two distinct ways.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Banshees of Inisherin
    The best thing about The Banshees of Inisherin is Kerry Condon as Pádraic’s sister, an intelligent woman with an even temperament and a good sense of humor who finds herself marooned in the wrong part of Ireland and in the wrong half of the 20th century.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Room
    In the end, the film shakes down as a kind of eat-your-spinach exercise, a movie that’s worthy and perhaps good for you, but is labored and only enjoyable intermittently.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Lost Daughter
    Still, no matter how flat “The Lost Daughter” can sometimes seem, there’s always something to hold our attention. The movie is never great, but it’s never exactly dull. There’s always a reason to stick around for the next scene.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Master
    If it were just a middling effort, The Master would be a lot less frustrating. But the latest from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has greatness in it - two extraordinary performances, intuitive and revealing photography and scene setting, and a distinct directorial sensibility that hovers between sobriety and satire. Yet all those virtues are undermined by a narrative that goes all but dead for the last hour.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Hollywood Dreams
    Does a number of sly things.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Waking Life
    Leaves an impression, while its specifics fade almost immediately.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Take Shelter
    Take Shelter has a problem, the simplest of all problems but no less serious for its being simple. It's a film without suspense and with a slow-moving story that unfolds without surprise or embellishment.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins
    Snake Eyes collapses in a crosscurrent of conflicting character motives, joyless plot twists and who-cares violence.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Fabulous Baker Boys
    All over this movie there are cliches that are just plain embarrassing, and unsettling moments in which it's obvious Kloves is writing about stuff he doesn't know a thing about. [13 Oct 1989, p.E1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Taste of Things
    If you have to watch someone cooking or eating, Juliette Binoche is as good a choice as any, but even she can’t make scintillating entertainment out of chewing, stirring a pot and putting on oven mitts.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Unforgiven
    Though the movie is riddled with memorable scenes of violence, its pace is slow -- too slow. It has an epic sprawl, but it's not an epic. It's more like a bloated fairy tale. [7 Aug 1992]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Rachel Getting Married
    A fine ensemble piece, but a maddening and unjustified length.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Slumdog Millionaire
    Doesn't hit its stride until the last 30 minutes, and by then, it's just a little too late.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Husbands and Wives
    Husbands and Wives ultimately reveals itself as an extremely bitter film, with the kind of sour conviction that tries to pass itself off as wisdom. Allen knows how people talk and how they evade really talking. But his jaundiced vision -- as though he just found out that a marriage can't always be like the first month of dating when you're 17, and now he can't believe how crummy it all is -- just makes him seem naive. In the end his perception yields no insight. Old men like young women. Really? [18 Sept 1992, p.C1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Men in Black
    Summer fluff that admits to being summer fluff, but it's no better off for admitting it...Intended as lightweight comedy, but if you think about it too much, it's not so funny.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    You Were Never Really Here
    The result is like any other Lynne Ramsay movie, whether it’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” or “Ratcatcher” — slow, soporific and, here and there, wonderful.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Widows
    Most of Widows isn’t felt. It’s a cold exercise, and occasionally a ridiculous one, as when McQueen tries to get fancy, with camera angles that make no sense.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Arthur
    The movie lacks joy. It has poignancy and intelligence, and it holds interest, but it never opens up into happiness and fantasy. Maybe it's the recession.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    His Three Daughters
    It’s a pretty good movie that automatically goes up one full notch because of a single great scene, which is one more than most movies have.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
    The movie drags.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Amen.
    Unfortunately, structural flaws and a built-in lack of suspense keep it from being nearly as moving as it was intended to be.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Moonstruck
    A corny, overblown romance, and while it eventually wins you over with its atmosphere and good nature, it's far from the masterpiece you've been hearing about. [15 Jan 1988]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Hugo
    The result is a movie that's kinetic yet slow, whose joys are architectural more than spiritual.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Wild Reeds
    Wild Reeds is a sober, heartfelt piece of work, sensitively directed and lovingly photographed -- though slightly dull, if we're going to be perfectly honest.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Phantom
    Without peril, The Phantom can only get by on dazzle, and there's not quite enough of that to hold interest -- unless you're 8 years old and seeing dazzle for the first time.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Under the Skin
    Under the Skin can be confused for a movie that hides its meanings, when it's really a movie that hides its meaninglessness.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Fireworks
    It's a film with impressive elements, though taken as a whole it's pop entertainment that doesn't fully deliver on the entertainment end.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Being 17
    The result is a beautiful void, a structureless emptiness buoyed by some good scenes and performances.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    James White
    As for the movie’s ultimate resolution, nothing specific can be said here, except that it borders on inexcusable.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Lost King
    The real story of the King Richard dig is fascinating, but the movie, directed by Stephen Frears (“Cheri,” “The Queen”), is just OK.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Marry Me
    Marry Me is entirely Lopez’s movie, and she’s terrific, right there emotionally in some difficult scenes. But it’s too much Lopez’s movie — too many (lousy) songs, too many dance numbers. A half hour in, there’s no mistaking it: Lopez was one of the producers.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    127 Hours
    127 Hours, about an unimaginably unbearable experience, is pretty much an unbearable experience of its own. And yet, it must be said, it's exceptionally well made.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    In the Family
    It is probably unlike any movie you've ever seen, and in ways both bad and good. It is, by turns, inept and brilliant, shockingly amateurish and inspired. To see it is to sit there for long stretches amazed at how clumsy, fake and misguided it is. But then, five minutes later you might easily be riveted and moved by its awkward brilliance.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Small Things Like These
    You’d have to be passionately interested in the details of an Irish small town not to find “Small Things Like These” something of a slog.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Marley
    There is no diverting from strict chronology, no point the documentary wants to make that requires moving forward and back through time. It just inches ahead, one year to another, sometimes one day to another. By the middle, each time a year changes, it's a relief.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Days of Glory
    The story here isn't much, and the truth it reveals, to them and us, isn't earthshaking, just quiet and somber.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Certain Women
    We end up with a movie in which it becomes very possible to respect the intent and yet be frustrated by the result.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Pain Hustlers
    Emily Blunt is so emotionally present that she almost redeems the movie. She doesn’t, but she at least makes the first half of Pain Hustlers watchable.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Frozen River
    If we're going to be honest, we need to look inside and ask ourselves: Do we really want to see a listless movie about a woman whose dream is to move into a double-wide trailer?
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    A Hero
    The best aspect of “A Hero,” and probably the aspect which Farhadi would most like us to contemplate, is the internal journey of Rahim, who, over the course of his difficulties, slowly and belatedly seems to come into his manhood.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Snitch
    Not the usual action movie. It's too odd for that. Based on a true story, it has the weirdness of real life, which is good. But also like real life, it has that funny way of not making much sense or being all that enjoyable.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
    Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is boring, but not in the usual way of boring movies. It is colossally, memorably and audaciously boring.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Stranger by the Lake
    Stranger by the Lake has no rating, but if it had, it would earn an NC-17 ten times over.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    At Berkeley
    It's dull in the precise way that life can be dull. To watch it is like sitting in on a staff meeting, listening to people talk on and on and on. Professors are used to talking nonstop, and in a few cases in At Berkeley it's rather astonishing to hear them repeating the same ideas over and over, instead of just coming to a point and stopping.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Sum of All Fears
    Yet there's no getting around one awkward fact. The picture, which turns on a cataclysmic act of terrorism within U.S. borders, was made for a different audience from the one that's about to see it.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Hot Flashes
    The problem is the script, which, in scene after scene, contains no surprises.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Pacific Rim: Uprising
    Unfortunately, as Pacific Rim Uprising wears on, the monsters and the machines take over — not the world, but the movie.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
    For all the movie's coarse grandeur -- for all the blood in its battle scenes and the grim historical accuracy of its depiction of antediluvian medical procedures -- the story of Master and Commander feels like something intended not for adults but for children.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Admission
    Everybody in Admission is funny - Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn - but they're not funny in Admission.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Foxcatcher
    The experience of watching Foxcatcher is of constantly waiting for something to happen — and of giving up, long before something actually does.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Fish Tank
    Even as it stands, Fish Tank is a valuable movie, though it aspires to a social insight it doesn't attain and a psychological penetration it won't maintain.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    A Man Called Otto
    A Man Called Otto is a formula movie, and no matter the nuances, this formula is not that satisfying.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    My Architect
    A fascinating look at a bizarre man and a brilliant talent. But a good deal of the movie is described by its subtitle -- "A Son's Journey'' -- and to the extent it is, the movie sags.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    On the Line
    The movie has some clumsy dialogue and awkward turns, but the picture is brisk and likable.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Melancholia
    If only Lars von Trier took into account that audiences might actually want to enjoy Melancholia, rather than endure it, or sift through it, or submit to the director's will, he might have made something extraordinary.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Silver Linings Playbook
    As a movie about mental illness, Silver Linings Playbook is more lightweight than lighthearted. But thanks to Lawrence, it does one good thing most movies don't do. It actually gets better as it goes along.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
    All this is interesting, or interesting enough, depending on how you feel about Elaine Stritch. If you're a particular fan, this documentary is a must-see. But for everyone else, a little of Elaine's personality goes a long way.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Midway
    From the beginning, Midway has awkward dialogue and an atmosphere that seems a bit too 2019, but for a time, the movie’s high stakes make up for that.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Martian
    The new Ridley Scott movie is fascinating and charming and crammed and overstuffed, and it’s a curious case, too. It gets all the seemingly hard things wonderfully right, but then caves in at points that should have been easy.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    After the Wedding
    There’s a Danish film called “After the Wedding” which was released here in 2007 and nominated for the foreign film Oscar. It didn’t win — it had the bad luck to be nominated against “The Lives of Others,” which was even better. But it’s a great film. The new After the Wedding is the American remake, and it’s fascinating. That is, it’s fascinating in that it’s not even close to great, despite using the same scenario. Indeed, it would be a real lesson in filmmaking to watch both movies back to back, just to see how to do things and how not to do things. And, just to clarify, the new After the Wedding would be in the “how not to do things” category.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Internship
    This vaguely funny film is also the saddest and most depressing movie of 2013.
    • San Francisco Chronicle
      • Posted Jun 5, 2013
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Little Vampire
    The results are predictable and only mildly entertaining.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Patriot
    The film is long, empty and bogus.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Incredibles 2
    Incredibles 2 was 14 years in the making, and it feels almost that long watching it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Boss of It All
    It's a modest and mildly funny effort, with good scenes and touches of incisive satire, but it's not quite funny enough, and it's undermined by its camera technique.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Whale Rider
    By the end, a sense settles in that Whale Rider could have accomplished as much -- and been considerably more powerful -- as a 25- minute short.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Two Brothers
    The result is schizophrenic, an uplifting film that's truly depressing, a movie about cruelty that tries to be fluffy.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Other Side of the Wind
    To be clear, there are dazzling sequences in The Other Side of the Wind, and virtually every minute has something interesting in it. It’s absolutely worth seeing as a curiosity. But as a work of narrative art it doesn’t sustain itself for its full two-hour running time. After an hour, you might even have to struggle to stay awake.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Rocky Balboa
    Anyone who appreciates Sylvester Stallone or enjoys the "Rocky" movies will find moments to enjoy in Rocky Balboa and will leave the theater reasonably satisfied. It's just good to see the guy, and it's good to revisit the character. And that's everything good to be said for the experience.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Dancer Upstairs
    An ambitious political thriller, a multilingual film of mood and texture and the occasional haunting image.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Eddie the Eagle
    Maybe it’s unfair, but I came away feeling cheated by Eddie the Eagle. It’s a jolly real-life tale about an underdog who made a splash at the 1988 Winter Olympics, and it does make you feel good, but it turns out that the film’s story is 90 percent fiction.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    I Am Love
    I Am Love casts no spell and creates no narrative urgency. It's as compelling as mildly interesting gossip about people you don't know.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Flags of Our Fathers
    As painstaking as a documentary but without the satisfaction of a documentary or the impact of a drama.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Dune: Part Two
    It’s true that “Dune 2” is as depressing as watching the news, but that doesn’t make it relevant, because it isn’t the news. It’s more like unnecessary self-torture, like watching a depressing newscast from another planet.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    Within the realm of a mildly good time.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    If you see the movie, notice how the ending is no ending, and the fact that it even feels like one is entirely a function of Michael Giacchino's musical score.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Life of Pi
    It's a slow-moving fable, with enough story and substance to make for one amazing Imax short. Instead the material is stretched beyond its limits into a long, repetitive and often stagnant 127-minute feature film.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Kimi
    The most glaring problem here, and the one hardest to explain, is Soderbergh’s failure to elicit any warmth or charm from Zoë Kravitz, who has been consistently appealing in her every other screen performance, from blockbusters like the “Divergent” series to little independents like “The Road Within.”
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Puzzle
    In any case, Puzzle ends strangely, in a way that’s not clear what the filmmakers intended or how we’re supposed to feel about it. It’s entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Zodiac
    Never takes off, but it never collapses. At times, it becomes frustrating -- for example, about 30 minutes are spent pursuing a lead that goes nowhere.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Priscilla
    Priscilla could be described as the story of how the virginal wife finally got a clue, but it takes her too long. We’re left with a movie that mostly consists of a confused woman-child stumbling around a mansion in high heels.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Enough Said
    Neither does it help that, despite the wit and literacy of Enough Sad, its form is straight out of a teen romance: A cool kid starts dating someone less cool, and then engages in some elaborate deception that, if found out, will threaten the progress of young love. The funny thing is, if Enough Said were converted wholesale into a high school romance, the characters' behavior might ring more true.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Kajillionaire
    At its best, Kajillionaire provides a chance for Rodriguez to play a breezy extrovert and for Wood to play a damaged introvert, and for their characters to alter and deepen through contact with each other. They’re both excellent, but they can’t make the movie any less slow, and July’s relentless whimsicality occasionally sounds some false notes.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Starting Out in the Evening
    Wallows in bleakness and settles for sentimental gestures.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Fifty Shades Darker
    A strange good movie, bad in every way but its effect. And it’s an effective woman’s story, not exactly believable, but with another kind of truth, a truth of the heart. If that’s not enough, it’s close.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The War Room
    Still, the film's limitations are serious. Pennebaker and Hegedus did not begin their film until Clinton was already nominated, missing out on the big stories of the primary season: Gennifer Flowers, the draft flap and Clinton's knock- down, drag-out with Jerry Brown in the New York primary...With mixed results Pennebaker and Hegedus attempt to sketch in what's missing via unused news footage and out-takes from ''Feed,'' the Kevin Rafferty-James Ridgeway film about the New Hampshire primary. In one example that I picked up on, Pennebaker and Hegedus juggle the time sequence, giving the impression that a scene of Clinton hanging out in a hotel with his handlers in New York occurred in New Hampshire. [30 Dec 1993, p.E1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
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