Mick LaSalle

The language is brilliant, and the laugh lines come so quickly that you'd probably have to watch the movie twice to get them all.

The beauty of Soul is that, just as animation is finding more being demanded of it, Pixar is answering that demand. It is making the case for animation as an ideal vehicle for exploring the grand, the general, the universal.

You won't see another film like Fay Grim this year, and we should give Hartley credit for making it work on his own terms.

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]

Witless banter might have won Ginger Rogers for Fred Astaire, but Thompson is too smart for that.

Green Border has the directness and truth of a documentary and the emotional immediacy of a narrative feature.

The Lighthouse is more than four times longer than a “Twilight Zone” episode, and 100 times worse.

Smart, fun entertainment.

20th Century Women is not especially dramatic. At times, it eschews drama. Every time the story is on a knife edge and can drop deeper into turmoil or recede back to the normal flows and ebbs of life, Mills chooses the latter. But this time, the strategy works. It feels real.

The result is a movie that's kinetic yet slow, whose joys are architectural more than spiritual.

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.

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.

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.

In the end, that just might be the takeaway from the "Up" series, that a 28-year-old, say, has more in common with another 28-year-old than with his own incarnation at 70. Who knows? There are mysteries of life captured within the frames of this film that are eluding our grasp. We're still too close to it.

With Milk, a great San Francisco story becomes a great American story.

The acting is uniformly strong, which says something about King as a director.

This is one of the wisest, slickest and most unorthodox feminist films one could ever hope to see.

All [Tarantino] has to do is trim a full hour out of "Vol. 1" and a half hour out of Vol. 2, combine what's left and he'll have something not just amusing and idiosyncratic, but outstanding.

Expansive, but succinct. Leigh tells a small story and doesn't try to make something huge of it.

Spike Lee is relevant again. He's necessary again.

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.

Under the Skin can be confused for a movie that hides its meanings, when it's really a movie that hides its meaninglessness.

The Post is on safe ground when it focuses on Streep as Graham — tentative, slightly affected, but growing by the day — and with Graham’s relationship with her gruff, hotshot editor, Ben Bradlee, played by Tom Hanks, against type but winningly. The movie’s challenge is the journalism story, which is not as clear-cut as Watergate and is therefore harder to dramatize.

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.

A powerful document of cruelty and sadism.

Toback has found a documentary subject as tragic and ridiculous, as bizarre and driven, as the heroes of his other films.

A thoroughly entertaining film by a director at the height of his ability.

The result is a beautiful void, a structureless emptiness buoyed by some good scenes and performances.

Told from a different angle than any other Holocaust film I've seen.

An unusual and imaginative romantic comedy that takes the central idea of “Groundhog Day” and builds on it.

As for the movie’s ultimate resolution, nothing specific can be said here, except that it borders on inexcusable.

The real story of the King Richard dig is fascinating, but the movie, directed by Stephen Frears (“Cheri,” “The Queen”), is just OK.

Cinema is not about special effects, but about human emotion and a face in close-up. For those in doubt, Locke is the proof.

The screenplay by Payne and Jim Taylor, based on the novel by Tom Perrotta, sees the lives of these suburban students and teachers through a prism of absurdity that refracts more truth than any straightforward telling.

Rocky might not be the brightest guy, but he knows things. He has his limitations, but he is, in his own way, extraordinary, and when we look at his/Stallone’s face, we can have no doubt that Rocky has gone through life and learned things. He has been awake all these years, and growing. With no exaggeration, this is a beautiful and moving thing to see.

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.

Cage's great performance is matched by Shue, who becomes the focus by the middle of the picture.

We can only describe the result, which is that this director — in her first feature film — has the ability to synthesize emotions and ideas through pictures. She shows you something; it means something, and you know what it means. She has an emotion, so she shows you something else, and you feel it, too.

Hit Man is not among Linklater’s best movies, but he gives his best to it, and the results are on the screen.

At its best, Ajami shows you things you never would have considered or imagined.

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.

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.

Wallace’s 2008 suicide informs the film and Jason Segel’s performance. What Wallace wants to say, tries to say but can’t quite say is that, having reached the summit of success, he sees an even bigger mountain in front of him. His anxiety about holding it together in the face of newfound celebrity is no affectation. He’s frightened of it and probably has good reason to be.

The details feel authentic: The empty Paris streets, the profanation of German anti-aircraft guns atop belle epoque buildings. And Devaivre's adventures provide high tension.

Ultimately Maiden is very much a feel-good movie, a tale of underdogs finding their strength, combined with a character study and a sprinkling of social history. After the Maiden, women in sailing had to be taken seriously.

In the new film, War for the Planet of the Apes — the best of the series, by far — the series’ viewpoint comes into focus, and it’s a lot more intricate and enlightened than some unthinking death wish.

It's a love story only in passing. And yet the love story is what lingers in the mind and gives energy and meaning to everything that happens on-screen.

Any director who sees Short Term 12 will want to cast Larson in something. This movie puts her on the map.

The drama builds and builds until the last seconds and never really lets up. It’s a striking debut from Meneghetti, in his first feature film.

But for director David Cronenberg and the commitment of his actors, A History of Violence might have been a cartoony action film. Its origins are in a cartoon, of sorts -- specifically, in a graphic novel, by John Wagner and Vince Locke.

An entertaining and perceptive film with one big problem.

Stays in the mind, changing the way we look at the world.

At its best, the effect is like seeing life panoramically, past and future, simultaneous and magnificent.

Guare's play is austerely funny and cerebral, and the film stays true to it, neither warming it up nor dumbing it down. [22 Dec 1993, p.E1]

A Quiet Place is the closest thing to a silent movie since “The Artist.”

Washington, no surprise, is terrific, his sensitivity offset with touches of knowing, self-deprecating humor.

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.

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.

So it's two guys traveling, eating and talking. Doesn't sound like much. But it's terrific.

A different kind of Harry Potter movie, a better kind... It's where this fantasy series has wanted to go all along.

The world of this film is like nothing most Americans have seen. But we know what it's about. It's about greed and guilt and how inconvenient it can be to have a soul.

Has a slow build and a strong payoff, but George Clooney is the element that holds it together.

The first great Hitler movie.

The mysteries of Dolores Claiborne are never gripping enough to consume an audience, and there are few, if any, surprises along the way. But the women are wonderful and reason enough to see the picture.

One of the consistent pleasures of Knives Out is that, while its style evokes an earlier era, the script is very much a witty response to today’s world.

The hardest thing to describe is tone, but it's the thing that most sets Killer Joe apart and makes it one of the most interesting and satisfying movies of the year so far.

Original, truthful and moving.

One of the nicest things about Hearts Beat Loud, and there are several nice things, is the way that Offerman and Clemons seem like father and daughter. This is the work of the actors, but also of the director.

It's the picture that proves action films don't have to be silly, that a few thrill sequences don't mean every other value has to be shot to pieces.

Later, as the picture becomes a Petrie dish in which James' theories are put to the ultimate test, Certified Copy loses some of its magic, but it retains interest as an appealing and one-of-a-kind experience.

As for Fraser, his clumsy humanity is endearing, but by now, assuming he has invested wisely, he should have enough money saved so as to not have to waste his talent anymore.

From the movie’s first minute, viewers will know they’re in the hands of a sure-footed storyteller.

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.

To be sure, Steve Jobs has its own integrity as the story of the young innovator, but it’s a little like making a movie about Thomas Edison and stopping somewhere between the phonograph and the lightbulb.

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.

Someone should steal this concept and make a decent movie out of it.

Kaurismäki stalwart Kati Outinen, as the old man's silent and ailing wife, is the key to the movie, even though she appears only sporadically. Something in her timid, understanding and impassive gaze, which is Kaurismäki's gaze as well, lets us know that she sees things in the old man that we don't see.

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.

Trust never lives up to its snappy opening. Everything is tongue-in-cheek here - yet it's never remotely clear what the point is or what's getting satirized. [16 Aug 1991]

In the end, Da 5 Bloods feels like a clumsy hybrid of two fine impulses — to make a heist movie set in Vietnam, and to make a statement about race in 2020. Alas, each intention doesn’t serve the other, and so both go unrealized.

The story here isn't much, and the truth it reveals, to them and us, isn't earthshaking, just quiet and somber.

At its best, the movie expresses an affection for dogs and is very much attuned to what is wonderful about dogs and what’s funny about them — their sincerity, their credulousness, their odd tendency to get nervous over nothing and yet to occasionally remain oblivious to real threats.

A complete bust, but the ways in which it fails are interesting.

Convoluted.

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.

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.

Rhys Ifans is an engaging protagonist, playing Marks as a passive and seemingly unflappable character whose iron nerve and ability to keep cool in a crisis get him out of more than one desperate situation.

We end up with a movie in which it becomes very possible to respect the intent and yet be frustrated by the result.

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.

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?

Cleaner is a good-not-great thriller in the “Die Hard” mold that gets an extra lift from Campbell’s skillful direction and from Ridley, who is slowly but surely showing herself to be a performer of wide range and appeal.

This is an intense and complicated story, and the film doesn't rush it. It lets it unfold and build, methodically.

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.

For almost half of the movie, you might wonder why Nicole Kidman chose to take such a lackluster role. The answer: Just wait — and brace yourself. Kidman is never happier than when she gets to go to extremes, and by that measure, Queen Gudrun is one of her happiest roles.

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.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is boring, but not in the usual way of boring movies. It is colossally, memorably and audaciously boring.

Stranger by the Lake has no rating, but if it had, it would earn an NC-17 ten times over.

The Maid would have been worthwhile just as a showcase both for good acting and for the director's virtuosity. But the movie's ultimate virtue is its humanity.