Mick LaSalle

Not a heist film, a thriller, a twisted romance, a film noir or a character study, but a unique concoction that bends all these genres to its vision.

It is an exhilaration from beginning to end. It's the movie equivalent of that rare sort of novel where you find yourself checking to see how many pages are left and hoping there are more, not fewer.

Two hours of nonstop, nail-biting tension and anxiety.

At its best, Fury examines the psychological experience of warfare.

Cagney, the film's best asset, is irrepressible. [07 May 2006, p.34]

Jewell is not just a man, but a type, and his story is a warning, not just about the excesses of power, but about our own reflexive assumptions. Paul Walter Hauser gives us the soul of a man that deserved respect even before he did something heroic, but one that people might never have noticed.

An intriguing document, and the first significant film ever made about a former U.S. president.

Unique and courageous. It may be counted as one of the year's few steps forward in cinema.

A seriously good movie, a challenge to viewers, a rebuke of the way many Americans live their lives.

Dumont makes movies that almost nobody wants to see. That doesn't make him a great filmmaker, but he's a great filmmaker all the same.

It’s a sophisticated piece of work, slightly haunted, with an underlying sorrow that can’t be resolved or remedied.

Forestier's performance is a tour de force of comic acting, maintaining astonishing alertness and energy from shot to shot and scene to scene.

I'm as reluctant to stop writing about this movie as I was to stop watching it: At 166 minutes, it flies by, and you don't want to leave that world. But one thing is certain: This isn't the last word. People will be writing about this film for years - and looking at it to discover the lost history of our time.

You should have the opportunity to experience the movie the way I did, in complete ignorance, enjoying its every weird turn.

Brando's performance is so idiosyncratic -- the nasal delivery, the muffled diction and, of course, the screaming, ''Stel- lahh!'' -- that it's easy to forget its technical brilliance. But from Brando's first scene he exudes menace, even while talking calmly. His eyes always on the lookout for some slight, Stanley is ready to lash out every second he is on screen. He's impossible not to watch -- he's too odd, too dangerous. [Director's Cut; 11 Feb 1994, p.C3]

There's nothing like a good story, and The Galapagos Affair: Satan Comes to Eden has a great one that grabs viewers from the first minute and holds on for two solid hours.

Mischievous, singular and profound.

If there were any justice in the world — there often isn’t — Alice Guy-Blaché would be remembered alongside D.W. Griffith as one of the great pioneers of the early screen. The good news is that she is becoming better known, but as the new documentary, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché makes clear, not nearly as much as she deserves, nor for the right reasons.

Won the Golden Spire Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival a few years back, and now, finally, the documentary is being released into theaters. It's a film with distinct virtues: It tells a fascinating story.

It's a very funny movie, perfectly paced. [15 Apr 1994, p.C1]

As Marguerite, Frot is a completely open vessel, ready to receive the muse that cannot come. She has a childlike quality here, but she also seems (and this is both funny and sad) very much the mature artist.

Let It Rain touches on class issues, feminism, immigration and the particular challenges facing a single, driven career woman in her 40s. But it's graceful in presenting its ideas, and what emerges is not a polemic but a kind of snapshot of modern-day concerns.

This film, directed by William Friedkin and based on Mart Crowley's breakthrough play, is often dismissed (sometimes by people who haven't seen it) as sappy and dated. But on second look, it's one of the important films of the 1970s.

It's a good movie not because it says the right things but because it says those things well. [18 Sept 1992, p.C3]

This is one of the greatest films of the 1950s, a prophetic film about the dangerous power of modern media.

Respect has everything you could hope for in a musical biopic. It has a good story and great songs and, best of all, it has someone in the lead role who can put those songs over.

In 1925, Charlie Chaplin released "The Gold Rush," his best film to date and one of the best he would ever make - or anyone would ever make.

The Last Duel, directed by Ridley Scott, gives us the texture of life in 14th century France, so much so that we feel that we are there, in this place that’s desperate and foreign and yet human and familiar.

It’s a beautiful and hopeful film, coming at a time when there isn’t much beauty or hope in our movies, and it’s the type of picture — a sprawling, exuberant musical drama — that hasn’t been seen in decades.

Feels positively Greek in its magnitude, a lament about fate, age, time and life.

There's no pretending this is a perfect movie. Yet I doubt I could have enjoyed it more if it were. [25 Nov 1992, p.E1]

Rachel Weisz - in what has to be the performance of her career, and there have been lots of good ones - plays an intelligent woman in the grip of a lust that's too big to handle or suppress. She can either ride the tiger or be devoured.

It doesn’t make cows into human beings. If anything, for some 90 minutes, it turns us into a cow. In doing so, it shows us — in a way that we actually feel it — how amazing it is to exist.

Art is either alive or dead, and this movie is emphatically and exuberantly living, energized by what can only truly be described as love. The movie’s love is for the place, for the characters and for all their dreams. In movies, as in life, love is rare. It makes everything better, and it must be respected.

Morgan finds the right elements of action and character through which to make history leap off the page.

Everyone has a story from childhood that remains vivid in memory, and that feels important enough to immortalize in art. But few people have the ability to get their story out from their minds and onto the page, the stage or the screen. Yet when that does happen, and when it’s done right, you can get something original and heartfelt, such as Kenneth Branagh’s autobiographical Belfast, one of the glories of this year’s cinema.

One of the smartest and most impassioned films about Christianity in recent memory, though to say that might give the wrong impression. In tone and strategy, the film is low-key and subtle; and the story can be appreciated both for its surface qualities and its deeper intentions.

Spotlight one of the best movies about journalism ever made, at once gripping and accurate. It doesn’t just get the big things right, such as how news stories evolve, but the small things, such as what offices look like and how staff tends to react to a new boss.

A unique and hilarious British comedy.

A dark comedy that confirms Diablo Cody as a screenwriter of importance, eliminates the last shred of doubt that Jason Reitman is a major director and gives Charlize Theron her best showcase since "Monster."

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.

The goal of this review - why not just say it? - is to disclose as little about the story as possible while instilling a ravenous and even rabid desire to see Love Crime immediately.

Alan Rudolph's direction is active but unintrusive, highlighting some of the more chilling moments with slow-motion sequences and odd cross-cutting. [19 Apr 1991, p.E1]

This movie is seriously funny, surprisingly funny, not funny in a way that you ever decide to laugh, but funny like you couldn’t keep quiet even if you wanted to. The laughs, as they say, keep coming.

A disturbing film about grim subject matter, but the overall experience is more exhilarating than saddening. There's just something satisfying about seeing a movie so well made.

It’s a deep and moving investigation into one woman’s inner struggle as she goes about looking for true love.

An intelligent, well-made film about a seemingly well-adjusted, likable and loquacious woman.

The movie is about a sculptor, played by Michelle Williams, in the days leading up to a gallery show. That’s all it’s about, and yet it’s enough. The pleasure of Showing Up is in being dropped into this woman’s life and, more profoundly, into her consciousness.

Anyone with any doubt as to the importance, in a functioning democracy, of American newspapers - with working newsrooms full of professional, paid journalists - needs to see this movie.

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.

All this is dramatized expertly and with a lightness of touch in Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay and in the direction of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the team behind “Little Miss Sunshine.”

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.

A work of art such as A Good Person cannot be the product of some casual connection. It’s the product of a soul connection, and I hope Braff and Pugh get another chance to work together.

Almodóvar presents this material in a way that never splits our attention, even as he’s giving us a deluge of sensory and emotional detail. It’s as if he’s internalized the story so completely that he can’t make a gesture — can’t move the camera, can’t shape a moment — without saying something true.

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.

Structured like a 17th century comedy of manners, the picture is a social critique of the idle rich that's part comic and part tragic, that's light and airy and yet haunted with meaning. [08 Feb 2004]

Lindon is a strong, sensitive actor, heir to the stoic French working-class tradition of Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura. And not enough can be said for Kiberlain, an actress willing to be seen in all her ranges.

Director Bernard Rose has created a committed, intelligent and fascinating piece of work with no irony about it.

Christian McKay who, as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles"gives what I believe is the most exact and uncanny screen portrayal of an historical figure, ever.

This is the legal movie that lawyers most often praise for its realism, in terms of not only story but also tone and atmosphere. It's full of great scenes. [08 Apr 2012, p.P19]

A film of audacity and total gut-level appeal.

In this small and very smart film, Cronenberg does several things at once and makes them all look effortless, capturing various shadings of consciousness and versions of reality.

The 1931 version, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, is the standout, featuring two great performances, one by Fredric March (who won the Academy Award for the title role) and the other by Miriam Hopkins, as Ivy, the lovable trollop. [28 Dec 2003]

The story is minimal, just a series of events in the life of a young man and his circle, but every scene is rendered with such authenticity that it’s riveting, almost like it’s a privilege to be stepping back in time.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is a perfect thriller. It may not be as good a movie as ''Cape Fear,'' which is a sort of cinematic extravaganza, but in many ways I liked it more. It's stripped- down and lean, without a moment wasted, and the plot works like a delicate machine. [10 Jan 1992, p.C1]

Out of the Past is cinematic perfection, a Hollywood classic that's as great and as enjoyable as its reputation has promised.

There's such a thing as smart angry, and such a thing as stupid angry, and after seeing Inside Job, audiences will be smart angry.

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.

It touches, in a way movies rarely do, on some essential current of life.

One of the best films to open in the Bay Area in 2007.

The movie's satisfactions are subtle, but they run deep, and there are many.