Mick LaSalle

The script is hopeless in both senses of the word, offering no hope and lacking in quality. But I enjoyed the two victims, at least until they started screaming, and appreciate the way director Renny Harlin creates a sense of menace by his choice of lenses and his placement of the camera.

Back to Black holds back from wallowing in Winehouse’s dysfunction. Instead, like an authorized biography, Back to Black chooses to be kind to everybody. It’s not the flashiest choice, but the world is big enough for one kind biopic. Winehouse deserved to get lucky, at least once.

IF may have the sheen and aura of an expensive, important production, with a good cast and lots of famous names in voice roles (Steve Carell, George Clooney, Richard Jenkins), but the movie is a disordered wreck that confuses impulse for inspiration and dissipates any impossibility of impact by constantly switching focus.

It’s hard to know what Maiwenn was trying to accomplish here, besides giving herself a juicy and an entirely sympathetic historically-based role. She achieves that, and she’s good in the film — Maiwenn always is — but the “what’s the point of all this” question takes “Jeanne du Barry” down just a notch.

Based on the novel by Robinne Lee and adapted by Jennifer Westfeldt and director Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick”), the film is smart, realistic and emotionally honest.

There’s no apparent human feeling on display here, just scene after scene of protracted martial arts combat that goes on and on, while providing no rooting interest.

A tennis match can be a personal battle, a clash not only of athleticism but of mind, and Guadagnino gives every game and set the gravity of gladiatorial contest.

In the end, this is not really a World War II movie. It’s just a pretty good action film that borrows the plot from about three or four “Fast and Furious” movies, while stealing riffs from Tarantino.

This is a tense film that builds in impact as it goes along, and ultimately, it’s riveting.

Jones has many good moments, and “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” is a decent remake of a decent movie.

It's a special movie that can make you laugh out loud numerous times at gross comedy and then make you think and feel something, too. There’s also something to be said for a movie that seems like the most fun these actors ever had.

Between the lines, Scoop conveys, not only what Andrew most likely did, but what led him to assume that he’d get away with it.

Wicked Little Letters is for people who like British comedy, but also for people who think British comedies are too refined for their taste. This one isn’t. It’s crude and outrageous enough to appeal to modern American audiences.

The acting, the setting and a feeling for the time period make “In the Land of Saints and Sinners” more than the usual action movie thrill ride, though it’s that too. That combination of elements makes this one of Neeson’s best movies of the past few years.

DogMan won’t appeal to everybody, but there’s something to be said for a movie that makes you wonder if the filmmaker has gone crazy.

Because Gyllenhaal is a more complicated actor than Swayze, and more comically adept, the new “Road House” has more humor and more attention to the peculiarities of the central character.

For whatever faults she had as a candidate, Chisholm earned her paragraph in the annals of our democracy, and “Shirley” does a conscientious job of fleshing out her story.

This is what Hopkins has been showing us for decade after decade: the deepest, rawest and most tortured feelings of private, dignified men. His is nothing less than a glorious cinematic legacy, and the miracle is that he keeps building on it.

As a lesbian thriller, the movie calls to mind the Wachowski’s “Bound” (1996), though “Love Lies Bleeding” is clumsier and more spontaneous, as though it were being made up on the spot. Though the spontaneity ultimately exhausts itself, it’s enjoyable most of the way.

Most of the enjoyment of “American Dreamer” comes in watching Dinklage react to indignities and awkward moments.

There’s one unalloyed good thing to be said for Damsel: It marks the end of Millie Bobby Brown’s apprenticeship. Her child actress years are over. She’s grown up and ready to star in movies that audiences can take as seriously as she does.

If there’s one thing interesting about “Spaceman,” it’s how it demonstrates how a great actress’ essence — just the essence, not even the performance — can elevate a nothing part.

Morricone’s presence in the documentary is the key element, because by watching him, we understand the sensitive qualities that made him so good at interpreting and augmenting the work of others.

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.

Ordinary Angels has some of the feeling of an after-school special because it’s a heartwarming movie in which everybody is nice. But it’s more well-made than most. It hooks the audience from the first scene and then builds in tension over the course of its almost two-hour running time.

Though directed by someone who has been making movies for four years, “Drive-Away Dolls” feels like a young person’s movie, which is a good thing. It also seems like a movie directed by someone who grew up watching Tarantino movies, not Coen Brothers movies, which is unexpected but welcome, too.

The great strength and slight weakness of “How to Have Sex” is that it’s just like being there — except you might not want to be there.

Still, for much of “Madame Web,” even when it turns bad, it’s a pleasure to see Johnson in this kind of movie.

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.

It’s a sweet movie that accidentally expresses ideas that are complicated and perverse. This isn’t enough to make “Upgraded” transcend its formula, but it does make it slightly better than it had to be.

Suncoast is a personal and mostly quiet movie, but it has the force of a real expression, of something that somebody just needed to say.

The only thing to take from the wreckage of “Lisa Frankenstein” is the performance of Soberano, in her Hollywood debut. She finds comedy in a weak script and radiates goodness without being boring. Let’s hope she has better movies in her future.

What has gone wrong in director Matthew Vaughn’s process that he can offer up an awful mess like “Argylle” and just hope that nobody will notice? He must notice.

Sometimes I Think About Dying is a good calling card for Ridley, who proves that she’s not limited to playing spunky adventuresses from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Rather, she has a compressed intensity that could be put to good use in a variety of roles.

American Star is a nice surprise. To hear it described, its premise sounds almost ridiculously predictable: Ian McShane as an old hit man on his last assignment. But the movie turns out to be a serious work that goes to unexpected places.

Essentially, “I.S.S.” is a fine movie for what it is, and the only reservation is what it is. It’s a cramped-space movie in which the stakes feel higher to the characters than they do for us.

Whatever it is, it’s the rare case of an intelligent disaster movie.

The movie starts to fray once we realize that DuVernay is not going to make a case for Wilkerson’s ideas. Rather, she plans to serve them up as undeniable truths.

The Beekeeper is the purest stupid fun I’ve had in a movie theater since “F9: The Fast Saga” in 2021.

Germain and Brown open up the stage play with flashbacks, which are not nearly as effective as the two guys talking. But as long as they’re talking, and they talk enough, “Freud’s Last Session” is very much worth seeing.

Maybe Glazer’s movie will be of use to people naïve enough to believe that nobody without horns and a pitchfork can be the devil. Everybody else will learn nothing from this film.

The tone is low-key, and Franco never presses the audience. Instead, he lets scenes happen, avoiding close-ups and all other means of exaggeration or emphasis.

Though “Society of the Snow” has its moments, it’s difficult to see what was gained by telling the story as a dramatic feature. Yes, in a documentary we’d lose the amazing crash scene, but the story would otherwise be better served by a straight laying out of the facts.

With any other actor, All of Us Strangers was bound to be an emotional film, but Scott has a way of going down to the nerve endings. He makes the movie into something raw and deep.

American Fiction is not a perfect film. The book trails off at the finish, and though the movie comes up with something better, the end still doesn’t feel ideal. But none of that matters as much as it might, because Wright gives the perfect performance.

As Enzo Ferrari, Driver looks stylish and commanding, but the movie doesn’t figure out how to make him into an interesting man.

The verdict is sad but unavoidable. Poor Things is a 141-minute mistake.

Clearly, the goal was to make a visually opulent Christmas movie, but these visuals end up sucking up much of the film’s life and spirit. It de-emphasizes the human element, and it makes the movie too long.

The only surprise is that there are no surprises.

Eileen builds and builds and builds, and it definitely goes somewhere, but in a way more gimmicky than true — and that leaves us feeling like we were wrong for taking it seriously.

Because “Leave the World Behind” is weak and unconvincing when it comes to character interaction, the film drags in the moment-by-moment, despite its stellar cast.

Maestro exposes a truth about marriage that I always knew but could never quite articulate: To be truly known and understood can actually be scary.

Saltburn is a remarkable combination of smart and stupid. Its problem is that it’s superficially smart and deeply stupid. It’s clever and amusing in 20 different ways, but when it really matters, it descends into ridiculousness.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes has an overwrought title, but it’s the best movie of the film franchise.

May December is light and amusing, but also profound and serious. See it once — and then think about it for a long time.

The film starts off akin to a tongue-in-cheek “Twilight Zone” episode, then becomes a meditation on fame before transforming into a scathing satire of several things at once: Gen Z, cancel culture, and even the people who complain about cancel culture. Written and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli, it’s bleak and funny and provides Cage with his most satisfying role since 1997’s “Face/Off.”

Thankfully, the movie clocks in at a mere 105 minutes. The Marvels doesn’t have much to say, but at least it says it quickly.

This is a rare film and a rare use of cinema. Other documentaries are like filmed news stories. This one is like a poem. If you see this, you will never again think of hearing in quite the same way, and you will hear sounds that are so haunting that they will be with you for the rest of your life.

Stallone, often tortured in his movies, is cinema’s most tortured optimist.

It takes about half the movie, but gradually we realize that we’ve stumbled into something wonderful, that there’s magic happening here, both onscreen and within the lives of the characters.

Domingo, who began his career as a stage actor in San Francisco, brings velocity to all the scenes involving the march. He seems unbound, possessed by an understanding that he’s doing something bigger than himself.

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.

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.

For le Carré fans, The Pigeon Tunnel is a must-see, but the film will also be useful to people wanting an introduction to his work.

The Persian Version tries to pivot and fashion itself as a celebration of women’s strength across the generations, but it’s transparently something else — a daughter’s attempt to come to terms with a problematic mother. And it’s an effort in which there can be no suspense because Keshavarz’s strenuous effort to whitewash mom tells us that the movie, and the relationship, can only resolve in one way.

Here and there, there are moments when the energy dips, but what carries the film from scene to scene are the truthful performances and the genuineness of the storytelling.

The movie explores the real essence of determination, and it’s not what people imagine as they recite affirmations to themselves. Nyad shows us determination almost at a level of pathology, as a single-mindedness that could be considered sick, except that Nyad wasn’t delusional about her capacities.

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is a bladder-buster of a movie with no obvious bathroom break, no section where the story starts to sag. This makes it, almost by definition, a good and admirable piece of work. But Killers of the Flower Moon is also a lumbering mess, an ungainly and tonally odd film that, for all the strength of its parts, has little cumulative impact.

In The Burial, every character gets a chance to shine, but not like in a “Star Trek” movie, where Sulu gets his moment and then Chekov. Rather, it all feels natural and organic. There’s something almost philosophical in a directorial point of view that understands that supporting and featured players are just as human as the main characters.

The bottom line on Joan Baez I Am a Noise is that if you absolutely love Baez and her work, you will find nothing here to challenge your preconceptions and will probably learn some things you didn’t know. But if you’re merely Baez-curious, this documentary will not satisfy and might even make you less curious.

It would be easy to dismiss Foe as a lugubrious downer, except that the reality of its world feels palpable and that marriage seems real. I believed Ronan and Pescal as two people bound up in love, shared history and torment.

For all the movie’s modest but palpable virtues, The Exorcist: Believer has one problem it cannot solve: No one has come up with a new way to do an exorcism.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is tasteful and restrained, and though it was made by someone known as a wild man, there’s no grandstanding here. The performances are modulated, not pushed. If anything, the viewing experience is like being a fly on the wall of a real court-martial. The difference is that every minute of it is interesting.

If The Creator were any more slanted, any more in the tank for the coming AI onslaught, you would think it was produced, written and directed by AI.

In his feature director debut, Grant Singer (previously a music video director who’s worked with artists from Sam Smith to Skrillex) adopts a measured pace that lends the movie a somber, mysterious aura. But he breaks that up with smart, psychologically insightful cutting.

It took the franchise four tries, but with Expend4bles, they’ve finally made a solid and consistently effective action movie.

Dumb Money is a tale of 2020, and the movie captures that 2020 feeling — gray, depressed, anxious and almost comically miserable.

Neeson’s last few action flicks may have been just for fans, but Retribution is for everybody.

The brilliant comic observation behind Strays is that dogs never quite get the complete picture. They misunderstand much of what they see — they believe rival dogs are in the mirror and that the mailman is the devil — and thus by staying entirely inside the dogs’ point of view, the movie taps a major source of humor.

In this film, whenever Harper gets to do nothing but direct, as in the action scenes, Heart of Stone works. It’s in the convolutions of its flat script that the movie falls apart.

Gran Turismo is just the same cars, going around and around and around.

Kemper is good throughout. Her radiant likability gives her the power to sell weak material, which means she will often be offered weak material. But there’s enough in Happiness for Beginners to make me glad that she did it.

Sympathy for the Devil does the two things that every good Nicolas Cage movie must do: It gives him license to be manic, but it also gives him a realistic context in which his mania can delight and surprise.

Haunted Mansion shouldn’t have been rebooted, but if made, it should have clocked in at a modest 90 minutes.

In Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan takes an eggheady topic and, without insulting anyone’s intelligence, turns it into a gut-level experience. He shows that the kind of hyper, jacked-up, ultra-modern filmmaking associated with the action and superhero genres can be harnessed in the service of a smart, serious movie.

Barbie is an impressive and original work of the imagination. Its story holds up most of the time and for most of the way, with the unifying through line being Barbie’s existential crisis.

The Miracle Club won’t rock your world, but it’s a nice movie. There’s always a place for nice movies.

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One may not be a great movie, but it’s a special movie deserving of its own kind of event and worth appreciating. Only Tom Cruise makes movies like this, and you either understand why this is pretty wonderful or you should give yourself the chance to find out why.

This film never had any business being stretched into a feature, much less one running 106 minutes. At that length, Biosphere is soporific and repetitive and puts viewers in the position of always being two steps ahead of it.

Joy Ride feels like it easily could have been better, but it’s certainly good enough, and it might be remembered as an early milestone in some significant careers.

Leaf applies a documentarian’s dispassion to the telling of this fictional story, and to a large extent that works. One of the virtues of documentaries is also a virtue of this narrative feature — it depicts a kind of person who usually doesn’t get movies made about her and tells the world her story with respect and empathy.

Wham! tells a sweet story, but also a goofy and entertaining one, because these guys were more ’80s than anybody, more even than “Miami Vice” and Duran Duran.

Prisoner’s Daughter is, in a way, a simple movie. It’s also a cleverly (perhaps unconsciously) disguised version of John Wayne’s swan song, “The Shootist.” It’s one of those movies that you’ll enjoy as it goes along, only to realize, a day or two later, that it was even better than you thought.

So, Dial of Destiny isn’t great, but it’s still a lot of fun — even compared to some previous “Indiana Jones” movies.

It’s as if no aspect of Perfect Find were thought through because everyone expected that, whatever happened, Gabrielle Union could be counted on to carry the movie. She almost does, but doesn’t.

Basically, No Hard Feelings is everything you like about Jennifer Lawrence, brought together in one movie and then magnified: her down-to-earth irreverence, her comic timing, her idiosyncratic naturalness and her unexpected sensitivity.

Often the most exalted of filmmakers — like Terrence Malick, Ingmar Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock — have the ability to communicate their consciousness, so that you get the feeling that you’re inside their head, or they’re inside yours. Anderson has come close to doing that before, but this time he really does it.

You have never seen anything like this.