Mick LaSalle

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San Francisco Chronicle
For 3,799 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 4.1 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: 2,062 out of 3799
  2. Mixed: 1,037 out of 3799
  3. Negative: 700 out of 3799
3799 movie reviews
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    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Two of Us
    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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Falling
    As Baby Boomers continue to dominate the culture through sheer numbers, you can expect more movies about demented parents. But a good rule of thumb for those who’d attempt such a story in the future should be this: If you want us to care about crazy old Dad, show us that he was once something more than an abusive sperm donor. Show us that he was once a decent father.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Judas and the Black Messiah
    Judas and the Black Messiah quietly announces its modern relevance by presenting as sophisticated a depiction of systemic racism as you could hope to see in a movie.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Mauritanian
    Sure, The Mauritanian is better than staring at metal bars and better than two hours of rigorous legal preparation. But it isn’t better by much.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
    The goal here was to be absurdist, relentless and light. Well, Barb & Star is light — so light it floats off and vaporizes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    I Care a Lot
    I Care a Lot is notable for its colorful supporting and featured roles — Chris Messina as a mob lawyer, Peter Dinklage as a Russian mobster and Eiza Gonzalez as Marla’s girlfriend. But the main attraction is Pike, who doesn’t try to make us like her. She commits to the character’s nature and holds us with her honesty, her intensity and her unmistakable pleasure in getting to play someone appalling.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Blithe Spirit
    Stevens, Fisher, Mann and Dench are all fine. All have good moments. The problem is the script, the script, the script.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Violent Heart
    Going into The Violent Heart, you must understand that the ending is insanely ridiculous. This is not to say that it’s not entertaining — in a way, it’s even more entertaining for being insanely ridiculous. But by the end, you will in no way be able to regard The Violent Heart as anything resembling a serious movie.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Ordinary Love
    I hated this film. I hated every minute of it, and at times it even made me angry.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    The United States vs. Billie Holiday
    So The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a misfire, and what a shame, because Andra Day had it in her to be great in this. The movie just didn’t let her bring it out.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    The Father
    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.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Cherry
    Cherry is like three different movies in one: the teen years, the war experience, and then life as a drug addict. It’s held together by the smart writing, by the overarching tone of tragic absurdity, and by Holland, who hits every bump on Cherry’s way down.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Nomadland
    Nomadland is too singular a film to dismiss on technicalities. It’s very much its own thing, very much an original experience, and must be counted as some odd kind of good movie.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The Dig
    All of it works. All of it holds together, guided by the sure hand of director Simon Stone, who subtly imparts his sense of the story. His idea is that everyone involved mattered, and so we come away with an impression of an entire moment of time.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    Malcolm & Marie
    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.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The Little Things
    Though he crafts a story worthy of a thriller, Hancock’s main concerns here are twofold: the type of personality drawn to this kind of police work, and the effect this work has on them.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Our Friend
    Our Friend is both a tribute to a friend and to those rare people that are too humble to realize their own wisdom.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Spoor
    Any Agnieszka Holland movie is worth seeing, even if Spoor isn’t up to the director’s best (“In Darkness,” “Europa, Europa”).
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    One Night in Miami
    The acting is uniformly strong, which says something about King as a director.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Locked Down
    Certainly, the actors seem to be having a good time, even if the people they’re playing are utterly miserable. Hathaway’s comic timing has become a marvel in recent years, but Ejiofor, too, exults in the chance to throw off his usual gravity.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Pieces of a Woman
    What’s fascinating about Kirby here is that even when she appears to be doing nothing, she’s worth watching.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Sylvie's Love
    Thompson and Asomugha are nicely paired. Too much is made by critics of the notion of “screen chemistry,” but there is something complementary in the personalities of these two actors, as well as in the roles they’re playing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Soul
    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.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Midnight Sky
    The last five minutes of Midnight Sky are touching and beautifully acted — if you’re willing to wait for it.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    Promising Young Woman
    Apart from the excellence of this film, Fennell may have tapped into something tonally that truly expresses the moment we’re in. Point being, we’re in a time of horrible ridiculousness, and ridiculous horribleness. The revelation of Promising Young Woman is that its heightened reality feels more real — closer to actual reality — than comedy or drama.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Wonder Woman 1984
    It’s a grand bogus mess passing itself off as a philosophical statement. It has its moments, but they’re few. Often, it’s a beautiful-looking film — but it’s beauty without substance.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Tenet
    This is a bad film by a good filmmaker. It has the veneer of substantiality, but it’s unsubstantial. It is the product of sincere conviction and artistic confidence, but both were misguided. Every filmmaker needs to take the occasional chance, as Christopher Nolan did with “Tenet.” Not all chances pay off.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Fatale
    The main event here is Swank, who was a plaintive and sentimental figure in her earliest movies and has only fully come into her strength in youthful middle age. This strength makes Fatale an entertaining diversion and holds out the promise for something deeper and more satisfying in the future.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Wild Mountain Thyme
    The gentle spirit of Wild Mountain Thyme envelops us early, to the extent that, midway through, even though there is very little left to resolve, we are in its spell.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    Black Bear
    Ultimately, Black Bear is about the price of art — not only the price the artist pays, but that the people around the artist end up paying, unwittingly. Yet in the actual experience of it, the movie doesn’t feel so lofty. It just feels tense and disquieting, like a thriller. In that sense, it is a thriller, but one of the emotions, and it’s riveting every step of the way.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Superintelligence
    The movie unfolds as a series of enjoyable, pressurized encounters between the lead character and everyone else — particularly, Bobby Cannavale as Carol’s ex-boyfriend.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Buddy Games
    Vulgarity is fine when it’s pure and democratic. But when it’s mixed with sentiment, it feels false. That’s the problem with Buddy Games.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Happiest Season
    Everyone in the movie is excellent, everyone is tonally spot-on, and no one has a single bad moment – which is another way of saying that Clea DuVall, best known as an actress (“Veep,” “Argo”), is a real director. She has made one of the best Christmas movies of the millennium.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Vanguard
    For the most part, this film has the disadvantages of Chinese action films, without the advantages. That is, it overdoes the action and it’s short on character, without attaining the manic, wild heights of Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and early ’90s. Still, it’s nice to see Chan once again in a Chinese environment.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 0 Mick LaSalle
    Jiu Jitsu
    Cage’s latest film, Jiu Jitsu must represent his career worst — and keep in mind, this is the man who made 1989’s “Vampire’s Kiss,” in which he ate a cockroach.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Dreamland
    The important thing is that Dreamland accomplishes its main intention, which is to make us invest in this strange love story.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Come Away
    Come Away is an idea that never takes flight.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    The Life Ahead
    She is a great talent, a legend, someone who has made enduring classics, and just the fact that she’s still working at 86 is a gift. But somehow none of that makes The Life Ahead, coming to Netflix on Friday, Nov. 13, an experience worth having.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    A Rainy Day in New York
    The appeal of A Rainy Day in New York, to the extent it has any, is nostalgia.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Let Him Go
    In the end, Let Him Go is like a Southern Gothic, only set in the Northwest. It’s just a genre movie that delivers the goods, but the restraint and emotional insight of the direction and the quality of the performances bring it up an essential extra notch.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Craft: Legacy
    This is the sequel to “The Craft,” folks. For what it is, the movie’s OK, except that it tried to be more than it is, and it isn’t.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
    Two things to know about Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: It is appalling. And I haven’t laughed this hard at anything in months.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    The Witches
    When it’s not repulsive, The Witches drags, but for one brief yet gripping sequence, in which the boy and his friends sneak into the head witch’s hotel suite.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Rebecca
    Rebecca has a couple of slow stretches, but James is always interesting and always sympathetic, if only because we see her struggling to do her best. After all, it’s much easier to not give up on a character when we see she hasn’t given up on herself. The movie further benefits from the absence of 1940s-style censorship, which suppressed a key plot detail that’s restored here.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Honest Thief
    Still, if you love this kind of movie, you will at least like Honest Thief.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The Trial of the Chicago 7
    Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, the subject brings out everything that’s good about Sorkin’s writing — not just the clever banter, which is a constant delight, but his way of conveying who the good and bad guys are without succumbing to hero worship or moral posturing.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 0 Mick LaSalle
    The War with Grandpa
    When the books are written, The War With Grandpa — the first family film to hit theaters since the pandemic — will have a special place in De Niro’s vast and varied cinematic legacy as the absolute worst movie he ever made.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Possessor Uncut
    Long before the finish, Possessor descends into ugliness, with grotesque scenes of violence and lots of blood. You may feel creeped out, like you want to take a bath. But no, not in a good way.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    On the Rocks
    As for Murray, it’s just a shame he can’t make a Sofia Coppola movie every year. As in “Lost in Translation,” Coppola brings out all of Murray’s many colors, sometimes all at once — his flippancy, his authority, his warmth, his isolation, his expressiveness, his inability to say everything he wants to say.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The Glorias
    The dreaded question with a film like this is, “Wouldn’t a documentary have been better?” In this case, there’s a double answer. The first half of The Glorias is better told as a drama, because it’s fascinating to see (and not just be told) the obstacles in front of Steinem and how she overcame them. But the second half would have been better as a documentary.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The Boys in the Band
    Like all great works of art, the story’s point has resonances beyond its era and even beyond the specific subject of gay people, generally.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The Artist's Wife
    Dolby provides Dern with a chance to be cranky and vicious, but what else is new? The revelation here is Lena Olin, who gets her best role in years as the artist’s second wife, Claire, an artist in her own right who gave it all up to make a home with and for a demanding husband.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Enola Holmes
    A bright young actress, a movie-star actor and a potentially interesting concept gets smothered in 128 minutes of colorful, empty nonsense.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Antebellum
    Unfortunately, there’s a gulf between a great idea and competent execution, and this first feature, from writer-directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, can’t bridge it.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The Devil All the Time
    The Devil All the Time is really a portrait of a place, told through the lives of several people across a span of about a dozen years, and the thing that makes it interesting — from start to finish — is that this place is so brutal and appalling and unexpected in its various cruelties that we cannot stop watching.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The Social Dilemma
    The Social Dilemma should be mandatory viewing for everyone who has a social media account. After seeing it, you may look at your phone differently, as something that isn’t really your friend.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Sibyl
    Sibyl is for people who like French movies even when they’re a little ridiculous.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    i'm thinking of ending things
    The movie asks us to wonder what’s real and what’s false, and what it all means. But it goes on for 134 minutes without ever giving viewers a reason to keep watching. Few Netflix customers will make it all the way to the end, and even fewer will be glad they did.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    Mulan
    Mulan is a spirit lifter, and though it doesn’t arrive as planned, it could not arrive at a better time.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Boys State
    Boys State is the most depressing film about boys since “Lord of the Flies.” If anything, it’s even more bleak, because it’s not fiction and it’s not allegory. No, this is a documentary about actual boys.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    An American Pickle
    That none of this seems snarky, but sweetly human, is largely thanks to Rogen, who never makes Herschel ridiculous, but aspirational, as if he has a vision he’s working toward.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Creem: America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine
    As the documentary shows, while it lasted, it was really something.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Waiting for the Barbarians
    The film is deadly slow and uneventful, with brilliant scenes bursting to life, here and there, like roses in a wasteland.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Rebuilding Paradise
    An occasionally powerful, yet occasionally frustrating documentary.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Summerland
    The main appeal of Summerland, a considerable one, is that it allows Gemma Arterton to hold the screen for a nearly unbroken 90 minutes. It showcases her in a variety of modes and moods and provide some huge acting moments that make us recognize that, somewhere along the line, Arterton has become a powerhouse.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Radioactive
    Pike’s own commitment is wonderful to witness. Radioactive is a good movie, a bit more imaginative than most (at several points, the movie takes a quick leap into the future to show the various ways radioactivity has been used, for good and for ill), but Pike makes it something to see, simply by giving it everything.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Rental
    Instead of slavishly appending cliched horror tropes onto his otherwise worthy script, Franco should have at least taken the horror genre seriously enough to investigate how he might stretch it and make it better. That was within his reach, if only he’d reached for it. Maybe next time he will.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Fatal Affair
    In any case, Fatal Affair is one of those lucky efforts in which everything good about it is good and everything bad about it is fun. The cheesiness is part of the experience.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Palm Springs
    An unusual and imaginative romantic comedy that takes the central idea of “Groundhog Day” and builds on it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Greyhound
    All of which is to say that, when it’s Hanks steering the ship and fighting the Nazis, it means something extra. It’s not just happening to him, or them, but to us. And so, we can better imagine what it cost those guys, who had to make that back-and-forth ocean voyage in the awful months before their leaders figured out how to sink the U-boats.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    The Old Guard
    The Old Guard shows that, in the hands of a smart writer and director, something can be made of it that’s worthy of our attention. This genre can grow. Let’s hope it does.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Desperados
    Desperados is a lot of fun and announces “Saturday Night Live” alum Nasim Pedrad as a comic actress in the tradition of Sandra Bullock.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    John Lewis: Good Trouble
    A rambling documentary that freely moves back and forth through time but maintains interest and cohesion by virtue of its subject. The more you watch Lewis, the more fascinating he gets.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    You Should Have Left
    It’s low-key in tone and not a splatter fest, even remotely. You Should Have Left is horror for a thinking audience.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    7500
    This is one well-made thriller, and for a director who wants to work in that genre, this is as strong a first feature as any filmmaker could hope for.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Artemis Fowl
    There are people who like movies like this, who like when a movie screen looks like their computer screen and who don’t mind when everything is fake, including the emotions. Artemis Fowl is a genre movie, and as such, it’s an OK version of the thing it is. I just can’t stand the thing it is.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Da 5 Bloods
    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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The King of Staten Island
    Davidson’s appeal is essential to the movie’s success. If you know him only from “Saturday Night Live,” you’ll be surprised by him here. On “SNL,” he can be zany and annoying. Here he has a very particular quality that seems to be coming from a place of past pain. He has equanimity. Without making a fuss about it, he’s attentive to other people’s feelings. He just seems like a decent, thoughtful young guy, someone that you’d like to see come into his own.
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