Mick LaSalle

It's that rare kind of movie that comes along only a handful of times each year -- gut-level entertainment that's oddly profound.

There’s something so deeply right about this movie, so true to the time depicted and so welcome in this moment; so light in its touch, so properly respectful of its characters, and so big in its spirit that the movie acquires a glow.

Either Live Free or Die Hard will go down as the summer's best action blockbuster, or it's going to be one exceptional summer.

In color, style and humor — even in its graphics and editing — it’s very much like a Godard film from the mid-1960s. Thus, the experience is like watching an actual Godard film — the first great Godard film since “Masculin Féminin” in 1966.

Don’t mistake his movie’s lack of sentimentality for callousness. Babylon is coarse, hard and wild, but its emotion is undeniable. Babylon is what movie love really looks like.

A movie that's loving and wistful and often hysterically funny.

The latest in the wonderful "Before" series does three important things: It breaks out of the courtship formula, yet retains the series' quality, and it moves the lives of Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) forward in ways that are satisfying and believable. True, a romance you once envied might now be a relationship you'd not want to be in, but as long as Celine and Jesse are still talking, there's hope.

The most coolheaded of the Iraq war documentaries, the most methodical and the least polemical. Yet it's the one that will leave audiences the most shattered, angry and astounded.

So comically fertile and yet so grounded in the reality of its characters that it's really a kind of marvel.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man is one of Chevy Chase's best movies. Though more or less a comedy, the picture gives Chase a chance to do much more than smirk and be a wise guy, while providing a good showcase for his dry style of humor. [28 Feb 1992, p.D1]

Stuns with writing, acting, direction.

Every year, we get only a few of these, movies that come out of nowhere, that are different, unexpected and wonderfully right. Moonlight is that kind of movie, one of the gems of 2016.

The complexity, richness and fullness of what Leo does here is acting at its most illuminating and useful.

One of the most incisive and perceptive Hollywood films about Hollywood.

If you liked Whitney Houston before, you’ll like her even more after seeing this. You’ll also admire her and feel pity for her and feel frustrated by her.

Benedetta continues Verhoeven’s strong run with as good a movie as he’s ever made.

The film documents how Lucy used her clout to get her husband cast as her co-star. It was a way for them to see each other. The rest is history, but a really interesting history.

Three Identical Strangers tells a remarkable story. In fact, it tells several. It’s already extraordinary 20 minutes in, and then it goes to unexpected and yet more amazing places, like a narrative feature by a master storyteller.

In every way, Miss Potter is a very beautiful thing.

With Boogie Nights, we know we're not just watching episodes from disparate lives but a panorama of recent social history, rendered in bold, exuberant colors.

Haynes elicits two great performances and provides the perfect frame for them, not just in terms of setting, but through smart casting and attention to the smallest of performances.

No, T2 is not a great film, but its pleasures are great — and so rare and accomplished that they raise T2 to a level approximating greatness. There is something to be said for a movie this enjoyable. T2 is great enough.

Director Duncan Jones achieves a strange and winning amalgam, a gripping action film that also works as poetry.

The Substance gets more wonderfully appalling as it goes along, but it’s impressive from its first moments, and it never lets up.

Emotionally sophisticated, humane and worth talking about for hours.

It is the best and most enjoyable American film to be released this year.

This is a profound saga that makes for a great American movie.

It turns out that Pepe Le Moko is even better than "Algiers."

in addition to the quality of its dialogue, Levinson’s script is a testament to the value of talking and listening, past the point of discomfort, past the point it hurts.

The result is a film of sadness and power, the first great 21st century movie about a 21st century subject.

This new film is exceptional and one of Ozon’s best.

Henry Fool is far and away writer-director Hal Hartley's best movie.

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

Casino Royale is fresh, actually fresh.

The storytelling in The Force Awakens is masterful, in that it seems to be taking its time but is always moving relentlessly forward and coming up with surprises.

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

The result is something rare, especially considering how fine the novel is, a film that's fuller and deeper than the book.

That perception of Fiennes and Gustave is central to the whole enterprise. Without it, the movie just breaks off and flies away. But with it, The Grand Budapest Hotel becomes something wonderful.

A brilliant and irresistible counterfactual overview of American history.

Riveting.

One Day is a beautiful movie, but beautiful in a way that life often is, not movies. Nothing is sudden or easy, either for the characters or for the audience, and there are no thunderbolts from the blue.

Benediction is an awesome combination of wildness and control. Davies is out there all by himself, speaking a cinematic language that is his own and that has little to do with plays or literature.

The Farewell has a special feeling about it. It’s full of truth and emotion, and lacking in sentimentality. It has an eye for absurdity and for the telling detail, and it marks Lulu Wang as a director with the rare but essential ability to make you care about what she cares about. It will go down as one of the standout movies of 2019.

At times trying and perplexing, but it also contains some of the most psychologically insightful and ecstatic filmmaking imaginable.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that conveyed with such vividness and precision the helplessness of childhood.

A remarkable documentary about an almost unfathomable ordeal.

A serious movie that slowly earns its emotion and enlists our involvement. Even before the finish, it’s goosebumps all around.

Like her (Cholodenko) other movies, this one has vivid characters and strong performances and flows like a slice of life set in an appealing, interesting world. But this one also has a good story and, if you're paying attention, a distinct point of view.

The best American movie about women so far this year, and probably the best that will be made this year.

Audiences will come away feeling like they’ve really been somewhere, that they were moved by the people they met and expanded by the experience. You can’t ask more from a movie.

Klapisch's masterstroke was to place at the center of a movie a man, forced by circumstances, to stop and simply observe.

This is one of Kubrick's best, not gimmicky or arch, not somnambulant or mannered, just finely detailed, measured, richly photographed and, at every step of the way, entertaining and interesting.

It's one of the best documentaries ever made about show business, about what it really consists of and what it demands.

It's an exuberant, well- crafted film that gets the audience involved on a gut level even before the opening credits are over.

A brutal movie, brutal in all the right ways -- brutally stark, brutally funny, brutally brutal. [30 Oct 1992]

The film's freedom and control, its inspiration and focus, announce it as the work of a confident and mature artist.

It's shockingly funny - you don't sit there deciding to laugh. Your own laughter catches you by surprise. [14 Apr 1989]

First Reformed has a confidence about it, the presence of filmmaking consciousness that can’t do wrong, because this time he knows exactly what he wants to say, not only in a general sense, but second by second and shot by shot.

A movie unlike any other.

A wonderful movie, sincere and inspired, with four terrific performances and a story that doesn't let up. The picture has the gentle, nourishing quality of a fairy tale that you want to believe, and the unsoftened impact of gut-level entertainment. [13 July 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

The film's tone is extraordinarily flexible, holding within the same reality elements of the absurd, the ridiculous and the comic while sustaining a sense of tension and dread throughout. This is, of course, one of the classic Pacino roles - he's so appealing - but don't overlook the late John Cazale as his accomplice, who gives us a character who's stupid and scared, troubled and dangerous, and disturbingly inscrutable.

It’s hard to know what to make of this, but it’s quite enough that it happens at all. The film has some longueurs — it isn’t scintillating for every second of screen time. But Marques-Mercet and his actors establish an intimacy with the audience that’s practically unique. Even if you love it only a little, not completely, you will probably remember 10,000 Km for the rest of your life.

Waitress deserves an essay, not just a review. There are perfect moments that stand out, and the reasons for their perfection are interesting.

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.

As in a good European film, shots are allowed to breathe. The focus is on character and human emotion. At the same time, the movie shows an American concern for pace and story development. The result is the best of both worlds.

The films never lose sight of Mesrine the man, a fascinating character in that he's brutal yet extremely intelligent, has a skewed but discernible conscience, and, under the right circumstances, can be warm and generous.

Those willing to meet (Untitled) even part way will discover a comedy of intelligence and wit, with some strong performances.

Third Person is Paul Haggis' best movie, and the one he has been building toward for years.

Thanks to Radner’s letters, diaries and autobiography, director Lisa D’Apolito is able to tell us, with great immediacy, what Radner’s thoughts were at the time. We come away with the portrait of someone who was never just going along for the ride, but who was always questioning and challenging herself, working toward professional excellence and hoping for an ideal romance.

This is the world through the idiosyncratic eye of Cassavetes, which is both all-forgiving and inexhaustibly, passionately nosy. [28 Jun 1991, p.F8]

The funniest film to come along since "South Park," and one that succeeds in a more difficult and satisfying way.

The true soul of the New York mob is portrayed in Donnie Brasco, a first-class Mafia thriller that is also in its way a love story -- perhaps director Mike Newell's best.

Like the best wines and the best films, there’s a complexity to the finish, so that it reverberates with meanings beyond the obvious. Indignation has the disconcerting quality of truth and is an altogether adult piece of work.

One of the best American films of the year so far.

Has genuine life in it. It's an energetic comedy that consistently looks for and finds unexpected ways to be funny. [31 Mar 1995, p.C8]

The most consistently entertaining movie of 2012. It's 165 minutes long and shouldn't be a minute shorter, a film of surprises, both in story and in casting, and of moments of agonizing, teased-out tension. The dialogue is dazzling.

The film captures the harshness and the sweetness of our time.

The Irishman is all about the end of something. It is to gangster movies what John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” was to westerns. Without a doubt, it’s a masterpiece.

By the way, The Tillman Story has an R rating because of language. Think about that one, too: Lies are rated G and can be heard around the clock on television, but try saying the truth with the proper force and you end up with a restricted audience.

As a first-time director, Pearce manages something difficult. He creates a tone that acknowledges absurdity, but also consequences. He finds an edge that’s extreme, that’s weird, that’s satirical and that goes right to the edge of farce, and yet the movie is at all points as involving as an intense drama.

City Slickers is a funny and affecting comedy, with wonderful jokes and a script flashing intelligence in every direction. [7 June 1991, p.E1]

They talk and talk, and somehow it's delightful.

One of his better efforts, not up there in the Vertigo-North by Northwest-Psycho stratosphere, but a cut above his competent thrillers such as Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur and Lifeboat. [19 Dec 2004]

To think of how people thought and acted just 45 years ago is to realize that the women in this film were the advance guard of the modern era. That makes them important, and they make this documentary important.

Carries a lot of emotional power.

Freeway is rude in the way the truth is rude -- only funnier. The movie seduces with its humor, all the while presenting a realized vision of a harsh, absurd world.

Anybody who talks about True Romance has to start with the writing. It's dazzling. In scene after scene, Tarantino surprises the audience even while coming up with dialogue that rings much more true than anything you could have anticipated. [10 Sept 1993]

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.

As the corpses pile up and the cocoons hatch, the spiders become more brazen and finally start invading houses. The last 45 minutes of Arachnophobia is a blast, with attack-of-the-killer-spider scenes coming nonstop. This is not great art, but it's a good time, and the climax is terrific. [18 July 1990, p.E1]

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

Though One Fine Morning is low-key and flows easily from one scene to the next, it’s truly innovative and original. Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve has cracked a code. She figured out how to make a kind of movie that other filmmakers would love to make but don’t know how.

Hopkins makes himself transparent. He lets us see both who this man was and what he is now. There’s dignity in the crumbling facade and child-like terror in the eyes — and a warning to those who’ll be lucky enough to live so long.

It’s a crime movie, but as the title suggests, it’s a personality study, a detailed one that grows in dimension. It’s fascinating to watch Plaza fill in those details. Her face is almost blank, but only almost. We always know what she’s thinking.

Smart, fun entertainment.

It's a rare, beautifully made movie that offers you another world. [23 June 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Red Sparrow is a thoroughly entertaining movie that stays fresh and interesting for all of its two-hours-plus running time. But what kicks it into a higher level is that it’s a terrific vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence, one of the few movie stars who deserves one, who is a film star in the classic sense.

In the end, the power of Final Account resides in the way it shows how human nature reacts to lies, propaganda and state-sanctioned atrocity. Some people, looking for an excuse to do evil, will jump right in. A very tiny faction will risk all to fight against them.

What a shrewd achievement for writer-director Henry Selick ("The Nightmare Before Christmas"), to have made a movie that everyone will acclaim as beautiful, when perhaps the most beautiful thing about it is the sheer ugliness of it all.