Mick LaSalle

Haunting psychological drama.

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.

If you haven’t been to the movies in a while, Top Gun: Maverick is a way to get back in. It’s pretty much what “going to the movies” is all about.

BlackBerry was ultimately left behind — in the cemetery plot next to Myspace. Still, if you ever had a BlackBerry, there’s something not only entertaining but nostalgic in watching this movie.

Wallows in bleakness and settles for sentimental gestures.

The movie has the wisecracking quality of a Sturges screenplay, but it's warm and heartfelt, too. [13 Nov 2016, p.Q16]

In Mimic, director Guillermo Del Toro has created a dark, grotesque world that's hard to look at, and impossible to stop looking at.

A strange good movie, bad in every way but its effect. And it’s an effective woman’s story, not exactly believable, but with another kind of truth, a truth of the heart. If that’s not enough, it’s close.

Still, the film's limitations are serious. Pennebaker and Hegedus did not begin their film until Clinton was already nominated, missing out on the big stories of the primary season: Gennifer Flowers, the draft flap and Clinton's knock- down, drag-out with Jerry Brown in the New York primary...With mixed results Pennebaker and Hegedus attempt to sketch in what's missing via unused news footage and out-takes from ''Feed,'' the Kevin Rafferty-James Ridgeway film about the New Hampshire primary. In one example that I picked up on, Pennebaker and Hegedus juggle the time sequence, giving the impression that a scene of Clinton hanging out in a hotel with his handlers in New York occurred in New Hampshire. [30 Dec 1993, p.E1]

Blanchett in Blue Jasmine is beyond brilliant, beyond analysis. This is jaw-dropping work, what we go to the movies hoping to see, and we do. Every few years.

There’s just one big problem here: It Comes at Night is about as enjoyable for the audience as it is for the people in the movie. On both sides of the screen, misery reigns.

Though I wish Please Give were a little better, there aren't enough American movies like it.

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 no masterpiece. In fact, it's not even all that good. But it has that great character in it -- Falstaff, or in this case, a thinly veiled Vito Corleone -- so it's something to see. [27 July 1990, p.E1]

There’s no question that John Wick: Chapter 4 is really good for what it is. The only bad thing is what it is.

It's really not bad... It's a genuine vault at greatness that misses the mark -- but survives.

Not counting no-budget movies with casts of nonprofessionals, The Humans is one of the worst-directed films in recent memory. It plays like a wicked practical joke or a deliberate act of sabotage.

For all Wong's energy and virtuosity, the relentless stylishness and whimsicality of Chungking Express become irritating. The cast is appealing -- particularly the forlorn young cops. But the velocity of Wong's attack seems out of proportion to the airy, lightweight quality of the stories.

So much love went into Hustle & Flow that it almost glows with it.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a lovingly made, gorgeously realized, meticulously crafted failure. It has big names, a big budget, big sets, a big, thundering score and even big hair. But it doesn't do it. It doesn't excite or fascinate but just lies there on the screen. [13 Nov 1992, p. C1]

You can love or hate “The Chronology of Water,” but if you don’t come away from it marveling at the brilliance of Poots’s performance, you just weren’t paying attention.

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

There’s an absurdist edge, but with nothing of the smart-aleck about it. Rather than use wit as a way of bypassing thought and emotion, Bujalski’s concerns are serious, and his attitude toward his characters is warm without being indulgent.

Johns is terrific, the heart and soul of the movie, playing the kind of guy that’s the heart and soul of any industrialized country on the planet.

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

Moments are stretched. Every recollection must be illustrated by a flashback. Character motivations shift on a dime, and if you understand even half of what's going on - not generally, but specifically - you'll be doing better than most.

It’s Miller, however, who gives the most affecting performance, in that we see the light fade from her eyes. What an awful thing this husband did to her — to praise her for courage and then use all her courage against her.

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

If you partake of the Marvel universe, this movie is for you no matter what. And if you don’t, seeing it would be like going to church if you’re an atheist — an experience of spectacle unmoored from any purpose or definition. In the case of “Endgame,” we’re talking fine spectacle, to be sure, the best that money can buy. But all the same, this one is strictly for the faithful.

Presents us with characters of such humanity and dignity that it begins to seem obscene that until now we haven't exactly given all that much thought to the Kurds.

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.

A sci-fi movie that actually has intelligent things to say about science — that’s all too rare. It’s what we get in Ex Machina.

Strange, moody film.

The quiet intensity of “Blue Moon” is at times agonizing. Any more would have been too much.

Not a mediocre film. It is, by turns, a great and awful film.

Few who see it will be sorry. Sometimes being humane means not being squeamish.

The experience of watching it is rather like swooping down and catching people living their lives.

As a screenwriter, Lemmons is able to keep all the plot elements in place. But as a director, she is unable to keep things moving.

It’s a great film, but it must be added that it’s also an entertaining film. That is, it’s not at all a chore to sit through. People not only appreciate the film, but also enjoy it — though it’s a sober kind of enjoyment, given the subject matter.

It's never cute for the sake of cute, never trivializes its characters; and even at its most ethereal, it keeps one foot grounded in the real passions of these men and women. Though smaller in scale and with its own unique spirit, it invites favorable comparison with the Merchant-Ivory adaptations of the Forster novels. It's a vivid and realized document of people in a particular time and place -- a nice time, a gorgeous place. [7 Aug 1992, p.C3]

Breillat is inviting us to really look at sex as it occurs in life, and to engage with it mentally, as a driving mystery of human existence.

It is all thoroughly entertaining and even, at times, gripping.

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.

It's so wonderfully silly, coarse and down-to-Earth that its radiance sneaks up only over time.

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.

As fresh as today’s newspaper — or a blog post — or a tweet from a minute ago. It’s a response to what is going on right now, and it feels like it, not only in content, but in form.

Midnight Run has thrills, excellent performances, touching moments, slick plotting, lively dialogue, plenty of laughs, beautiful locations and finely detailed direction. It's an across-the-board success, the best new movie I've seen in years. [20 July 1988]

The movie is more about how many things Michael Bay can smash up -- lots. That might not be a talent most people respect, but it gets through to people anyway, and here Bay does it exceptionally well.

By the time it ends, Mendes has built within the audience an intense desire to see the men’s message successfully delivered, and like a true dramatist, Mendes milks it for every drop of tension. He does not blow his big finish.

Smart, sedate and well acted.

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

The old saying, "It's hard to find good help nowadays" takes on a new meaning in Murderous Maids.

The actors do their best, particularly the impeccable Mirren, but Schepisi draws a shroud of chaste dullness over their scenes and lays on an energy- sapping score.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably the best movie so far this year about a kung-fu fighting panda.

Logan Lucky is not a contemptible piece of work. It’s a genuine effort by talented people that never quite comes off.

It’s admirable, but it has long stretches of dull, and the tickets aren’t free.

Clemency is slow and without much suspense. The real question isn’t whether this person or that person will be executed, but whether Bernardine will go to pieces, and yet with a performance like Woodard’s at the center, that’s all a movie needs.

As a child, I worried about nuclear war. It never occurred to me that I should have been worried about a nuclear accident.

Not the kind of movie anyone will remember at Oscar time. But no one who sees it will forget it.

The Aviator has a hole in its center, and Scorsese fills it the only way he can, with spectacle. He makes The Aviator colorful and entertaining from beginning to end. There are worse things.

There’s a French saying, “In love, there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek,” and usually, the more interesting story belongs to the one doing the kissing. In A Secret Love, that’s Pat.

Till confirms Chukwu as an actor’s director and should establish Deadwyler as a major presence in movies.

When it's not awful, it's dull.

Abuse of Weakness is 20 minutes of a great movie and another 85 minutes of nothing much.

The film’s thoroughness is a virtue or a problem, depending on one’s point of view.

Every so often an obviously talented person makes a bad movie, and that’s what we have in Nope. The talent is there, the movie is dead on the screen.

The Gift stretches things a little too much for it to be a first-rate thriller. Still, among second-rate thrillers, it’s one of the best.

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.

Obviously, no one should wish all films were shot like this. But the approach suits this story and these characters, and that’s all it had to do.

In its own ridiculous way, The Butterfly Effect is an entertaining movie, despite mediocre acting, lackluster direction and a story that's sometimes frustrating. It has the integrity of camp, maintaining an odd earnestness in the face of its own absurdity.

Women Talking has a remarkable cast — Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, among others — and it’s grounded in dramatic real-life events. But it’s mannered in its conception and wooden in its execution, and has little to do with living, breathing people.

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.

We still have Kendrick’s performance. We still have the compelling situation. We still have the unusual subject matter. But it’s enmeshed with unreal nonsense.

What Ritchie is able to convey is the terrifying nature of this kind of small-scale combat, with the enemy coming out from nowhere and from every direction. Even if you’ve never experienced anything like this, there’s something about what Ritchie does here that feels authentic.

The movie rarely, if ever, feels mechanical. Instead, you may find yourself marveling at the fertility of an imagination that could allow itself to toss so many vivid characters and stories—enough to supply four or five movies — into one generous package.

In "Fatal Attraction" [Close] was a woman out of control. Here she's in control of her emotions, too much in control. When Merteuil finally lets loose and gives way to complete animal despair, Close is horrifying. [13 Jan 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

There are some nice things to be said about Hairspray, the John Waters movie which opened over the weekend, but not enough to explain all you've been hearing about it. It's a fairly run-of-the-mill teenage dance movie, set in Baltimore in the early '60s, with a certain oddball humor that only occasionally lifts it out of its class. [29 Feb 1988, p.F3]

One must be very, very, very, very, very interested in Yorkshire, circa 1980, to embrace and enjoy The Red Riding Trilogy. And yet ... there is something to be said for an enterprise this specific and uncompromising.

There’s nothing wrong with Aftermath, but for one strange and nagging thing: To watch it is to want to be faraway from its world and everyone in it. The movie draws a circle around itself that holds no attraction or appeal, though it’s in every other way competent, well-acted and reasonably intelligent.

Here's another thought: This old man who can't leave the house has just made the first important film of 2010.

Burden is a film of integrity, with something even better than a social conscience. It has a social purpose. If you see it, you’ll learn something.

While We’re Young is one step forward and two steps back for writer-director Noah Baumbach, whose movies are never less than intelligent but, at their worst, tend to settle for gestures instead of movements.

The limits of Dallas Buyers Club are the limits most true stories come up against, which are the facts. A good story lands and reverberates. In real life, stories have a way of just stopping and leaving you a bit unsatisfied. The latter is what happens in this movie, but perhaps that couldn't be avoided.

It's hard to sell people on a movie about grief, but A Single Man deserves recognition for being about something real that usually goes unexplored: The grief from which there really can be no return.

A privileged glimpse into people's private pain, a drama shot with the simplicity and immediacy of a documentary.

In the end, what makes Equity an intelligent and honest movie keeps it from being a total crowd-pleaser.

There are some brief minutes when the tension drops and the story starts to sag, but Fukunaga almost always fills the frame with something worth seeing, and the story has a built-in suspense.

The film is notable as the first English-language role of Peter Lorre, who is creepily appealing as the leader of the conspiracy. [03 Feb 2013, p.Q19]

It’s buoyant. It’s bright. It has lots of pop music on the sound track, none of it from 1991 or 1994, and almost all of it from the late 1970s, mostly 1977 and 1978. The movie’s mix of music and era doesn’t quite make sense, strictly speaking, but like everything in this loose, inspired and yet tonally precise film, it feels right.

Worthy but dull.

The Rodriguez segment is terrific; the Tarantino one long-winded and juvenile.

Serious intent may be lurking somewhere in there, but it's buried under layers of stupidity - not just stupid jokes, which is what you want from Sandler, but also stupid, shallow thinking.

There's a lot to process when watching The War Tapes, and that's probably why the documentary gets even better a few days later.

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 comedy, to the extent there is any, consists mainly of Carrey's verbal asides and strained reactions to people. The script gives him very little to work with.

There's a real commitment to key moments; a sense of depth and understanding. It has labor of love written all over it. [22 Aug 1990, p.E1]

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.

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.

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.

Its take on the political scene is unsophisticated, and its humor heavy- handed. Like any satire, it exaggerates, but it exaggerates the wrong things. [11 Sep 1992, p.C1]

Neeson also does a good job tracing his character’s cognitive deterioration over the course of the movie. As such, Memory is like a hybrid, mixing serious sections with Neeson’s usual action stuff. Call it a little bit of this and a little bit of that, or not enough of this and not enough of that.

By the time we get to the last 20 minutes, Empire of Light is so scattered, so without impact or focus, that every scene could be the last. Ending it anywhere would make equal sense, because making sense is no longer a possibility. The movie is a glossy wreck.

Philomena is a wiser movie than it seems, with much to say about justice and forgiveness and the healing of wounds over time. Actually, it says next to nothing about any of those things, just implies its messages with a light hand.

The movie's pleasures are acting pleasures, but the movie doesn't compel attention and never seems like more than the frame for a performance.

The film is dreadfully slow without much in the way of rewards.

Detroit is a movie that will make you angry. It is designed to make you angry, and it does nothing to soften the blow or create some artificial uplift. But there is something about honesty that’s exhilarating. Detroit is tough, but it’s worth it, every minute of it.

While The Edge of Seventeen does deliver on the promise of being funny, it’s mostly dead serious and deserving of respect and attention. It’s far from the usual thing — and better than the usual thing.

The result is a worthy woman's film and Jolie's best showcase to date.

The Plot Against Harry isn't stark and merciless enough to be a black comedy or zany enough to be just plain fun. After a while the oddball characters and unlikely twists of the plot lose their charm, and the movie just seems self-conscious and cute. [07 Feb 1990, 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.

The movie makes something of a case for him, in that he is quite a good piano player, with absolute command of the blues, country and rock idioms, but there isn’t enough here to make someone a fan who isn’t already interested.

Presented without preachiness or affectation, Kandahar is a short, matter-of-fact visit to hell.

The inescapable, undeniable weakness of Father Mother Sister Brother is that, while its first part is thoroughly satisfying, its second part is just OK, and its third part is close to a waste of time.

There’s also a lightness in the tone that yet allows for real emotion and impressive performances. Maggie’s Plan doesn’t quite transcend the limits of the romantic comedy genre, but it pushes at them.

This film makes you wonder why aren't there more young love movies?

To see this film is to understand — not in an intellectual way, but in a direct, visceral way — why the British ignored the threat of Adolf Hitler for so long.

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.

Barely 20 years old at the time of filming, Pugh has a surface poise and an inner turbulence, a capacity to command the screen with the spectacle of her watching and thinking. The last time something like Pugh happened, she was called Kate Winslet, and the movie was “Heavenly Creatures.”

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

Its main virtue is that it provides Murphy with a juicy role.

Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty much where action movies are these days - a combination of comedy without wit, action without drama and elaborate visuals that are nothing much to look at.

The worst failing of Corsage is that it makes Sisi boring and unsympathetic when it’s trying to do the opposite. You kind of catch on that there’s something wrong with a Sisi biopic when you start sympathizing with Franz Joseph, who not only was a lousy husband but helped start World War I.

The picture is a soggy, all-over-the- place mess.

Flows in a way that seems effortless, following its own path, arriving at its own place. Only after the movie is over are the outlines of its story apparent. I found it impossible to outguess it. [12 July 1991]

Only partly successful.

As in The Florida Project, Baker lingers too long on the atmospherics, and that’s fatal here, because Red Rocket is a comedy and needs a brisk rhythm.

The finest American Westerns have a characteristic that 3:10 to Yuma shares. In a way that's almost mystical, they suggest a truth beyond the specifics of the tale.

This latest adaptation of the Charlotte Brontë novel is careful, respectful and even enjoyable, and yet dry, singularly humorless and played without the lavishness of spirit that makes sense of Gothic melodrama.

The documentary shows Buck over the course of a year, as he travels and teaches. Along the way, Robert Redford is interviewed about Buck's contribution to "The Horse Whisperer" (1998). Redford likes him, so he can't be a phony.

For a thoroughly fascinating, true glimpse into the horrors that vanity and self-delusion can wreak, take some time to see The Baader Meinhof Complex.

Indeed, without Hudson's magic, without that extra feeling that comes from seeing the launch of something extraordinary, Dreamgirls might have been a break-even affair. The film has strong roles, good actors and a compelling story that takes place over the course of 10 or 15 years. But it has, with only a couple of exceptions, a pedestrian score that sounds like generic show-music schlock and lyrics that are not distinctive.

There are dull stretches — interrupted by moments of terror — but that’s not really a complaint for a movie such as this. “All Quiet on the Western” is only partly a narrative. It’s also an immersive experience, an invitation to walk in someone else’s shoes, albeit from the safe side of a screen.

The plane crash in Flight must go down as one of the strongest single scenes of 2012: It's extended, detailed, technically and emotionally realistic, and beyond that, it reveals character.

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.

The Lunchbox is better as an experience than as a memory. When you're watching it, you can still believe it might actually be heading somewhere.

Has its awkward and rough edges, but there's a purity here, a goodness of intention and a commitment to justice.

The movie's biggest weakness is in the presentation of Caine's grandparents.... The attempt, it seems, is to show a potentially positive influence in Caine's life. But the grandparents come across as canned characters, corny and concocted. [26 May 1993, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

A smooth, elegiac mood piece.

It's rough when it works and rough when it doesn't. Much of the first hour is made up of slow patches, while the last 20 minutes are ugly and terrifying.

Lacking the velocity and excitement of an action movie and the reality of good drama, The Mother is the worst of both worlds.

As the record of a cultural event, Soul Power is a hit-and-miss affair.

In all ways, it’s unexpected — in its subject, in its treatment of its subject, and in its whole look and feel. It’s an original and interesting movie.

Midnight Special is a sincere movie, but sometimes sincerity is half the problem.

It’s oddly worth seeing.

Tells the story of Leo Tolstoy's last year from a refreshing new perspective.

Until it becomes completely demented, The Guest is a perfectly respectable thriller, and even when it stops being respectable — even when it goes off the rails and becomes ridiculous — it’s still entertaining.

In essence, Sorrentino thought his way up to the middle of The Hand of God and assumed the rest would take care of itself. He started filming too soon. His screenplay needed work.

An extraordinary and effective film.

An entertaining film, but also an uncompromising one. It is harsh and not particularly hopeful, and it presents a situation so tangled and contorted, with so many interests in collision, that a lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians seems a distant prospect.

Wonder Woman achieves touching and powerful moments that are unusual for a movie of this kind.

It takes one of the most gifted screen actresses of her generation and casts her out to sea with nothing to hold onto but a hideous script that’s all attitude without depth or understanding.

A melancholy, well-observed film.

I might be tempted to vote DiCaprio best actor — or at least to propose a new category be inaugurated, the acting equivalent of the Purple Heart.

September 5 succeeds as a tense and involving film, at least partly because it makes the case that the tragedy, despite all its other consequences and ramifications, marked a signal moment in news broadcasting. It was the first time that a hostage drama played out on live television.

You don't walk out thinking or feeling anything in particular, except satisfied that you got your money's worth and maybe even got a little tired from laughing so hard. [2 Dec 1988]

The pregnancy monologue isn't funny at all, despite cuts to audience members laughing it up. It's a small false note in a movie that's otherwise as honest as they come.

It's made by a director who knows comedy, working from a script founded on a surefire slapstick premise.

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.

Once the focus switches to Venus, whatever is going on with Richard becomes secondary. In her scenes on the court, Sidney is able to convey the double quality of a killer in embryo and a vulnerable kid.

Though there are political elements here, to be sure, Pray Away has more the feeling of witnessing multiple spiritual journeys. These journeys are, by their very nature, moving.

Shirley is slow and uneventful, but intermittently interesting, and Moss is great. In the end, what tips Shirley into the realm of recommendation is that Moss will be the only thing anyone remembers of the movie. That means that, even if it’s only an OK experience, it should last as a good memory.

Buscemi eschews the conventional and ends "Trees Lounge" on a stranger, more tantalizing note.

An inspired and funny vampire comedy, one that’s more than just a smart premise but that remains fun and inventive from beginning to end.

Self-consciously bleak.

At one point, this movie had me so on edge that I had a fleeting impulse to run out of the theater. It might be weird to say that and mean it as a compliment, but good thrillers work that way sometimes.

Instead we get Knightley, who juts her chin, quakes, shakes and bugs her eyes, but nothing about her pain calls out to us, because nothing in it seems real.

As a viewing experience, the film is by turns heartrending and stultifying, but mostly stultifying.

The most Stillmanesque Stillman movie yet. It's about a mood, part wistful, part sardonic. It's about a time of life, about repartee, about the vivid character saying the unexpected thing.

Ridley Scott gives it the grand treatment, 157 minutes worth, but in the end, it doesn't stack up as the portrait of an era (the 1970s, in this case) or an important tale of a criminal mastermind.

Things isn't linear, and it isn't all that lively. But it captures the experience of some modern women, and it feels from the heart.

Might have been about the rise and fall of a family of gifted children. That would have been the typical way to approach the story. Instead, it's something rare -- a movie about people who have already fallen, whose best days are behind them.

A cute and amusing little romance that has all the fiery impetuosity of an egg sandwich.

Unfortunately, Sucka falls apart after the first half-hour. The action sequences are confusing and senseless. The setups for the action scenes are long and pointless. You know where the movie is heading, and there are no surprises along the way. It's one joke, over and over. [17 Feb 1989, p.E7]

There are moments that are too macabre and outlandish, but Gilroy steers the movie just this side of farce, just this side of Chayefsky, and keeps it all within a realistic framework. At times watching, you might wonder how he’ll keep the story going, how he’ll top himself. But he does.

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.

Best in its first hour, when it concentrates on the politics and the specific horrors of Panem. It becomes more conventional in the second half and loses steam, but it's always heading somewhere.

Depictions of an aide talking about her hospital vigil and her words of comfort to a distraught Laura Bush are creepy and exploitative -- and borderline disgusting.

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.

Wild has so many things in its favor that it’s tempting to leave out the fact that it’s a movie about a hike that sometimes feels like being on a hike, a long one, without many changes of scenery. But the movie’s achievement is that it overcomes this.

For pure laughs, for the experience of just sitting in a chair and breaking up every minute or so, Superbad is 2007's most successful comedy.

The film holds us rapt not through narrative suspense but through the eerie and demanding spectacle of profound moral courage, of a powerless good person in collision with absolute evil.

At any given time, a different character will seem to be the movie’s focus. But as long as we recognize that love’s transformational power is the real subject, there can be no mystery about the movie’s intentions or how it’s unfolding.

[Streep] isa pleasure to watch -- and to marvel at -- every second she's onscreen.

In a sense, Jacobs has made a movie about sex that’s not about sex at all. We often hear about “sexual sublimation,” but The Lovers depicts the reverse, which is probably more common, in which sexual adventure becomes the most available substitute for cherished lost dreams.

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.

Jennifer Jason Leigh (Baumbach's wife) appears in two scenes, as an ex-girlfriend of Greenberg, and she's quietly brilliant, as always.

A movie of intelligence and power, of beauty, universality and largeness of spirit.

Ashkenazi is a terrific actor, commanding and grand-scale in his aura, but with an unmistakable warmth. And Gere, cast against type, couldn’t be better. In a career of only good performances, this is one of his best.

Man on a Ledge doesn't aim high, but what it aims to do, it does. It grabs the audience's attention, engages its anxieties, stokes its resentments and, at the finish, sends people out saying, "That was good."

Mamet finds an angle just new enough to be fresh.

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.

Easy Money takes its time telling us how all the fortunes of all three men intersect, and the movie's failing - or at least its significant imperfection - is that when the stories and lifelines do converge, the results just aren't satisfying.

As is appropriate in a well-crafted and meticulous movie, the acting is strong down the line.

Neeson is a delight and seems to be having as much fun as the audience. But the surprise here is Anderson, who was sad and plaintive in “The Last Showgirl” and now reveals herself a skilled and self-aware comedienne. Anderson is having a moment right now, and I’d like to see it continue.

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.

Taps into the same emotional current that sustains the entire "buddy picture" genre, but does so with feeling and unmistakable insight.

It's a one-of-a-kind experience -- dark, bleak, twisted carnival noir.

The emotion the Zucheros are trying to express and illustrate here is a deep, fathomless, infinite loneliness, and here and there, but more than once or twice, they hit their target.

This is smart, inspired, no-fuss entertainment.

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.

Martha Marcy May Marlene is a strange case, a drama that's disturbing and yet inert. Writer-director Sean Durkin builds an atmosphere of dread, which means that he persuades us to believe in the characters and in the central situation. But he doesn't build interest.

Just because it's a conscious commentary on other vile, useless, pointless cinematic exercises doesn't make it any less vile, useless and pointless.

It's a strange film, very original and very good. Just by virtue of the subject matter, it can't help but be erotic, and yet eroticism is not the movie's purpose.

Not surprisingly for a movie of this type, there are lots of scenes of violence, including hand-to-hand combat. The fight choreography is exceptional. In the “John Wick” movies, the violence seems almost like a ballet. Here the fighting is just as intricate, but it also seems like actual fighting, and Hemsworth seems like an actual person who’s doing it.

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.

Oh, Hi! is that rare case, a movie that’s engaging and interesting moment by moment, but everything else is wrong with it.

Film anybody's trip to Italy, and it would be more interesting than this, or at least equally boring.

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.

The result is a gutsy little picture and a nice slice of life.

Turns out to be the most unnerving film of the year. Easy.

A gentle movie. It’s valedictory, with a sense of the ephemeral nature of life, the inevitability of regret, and the bittersweetness of looking back on past happiness.

The obvious thing to expect here is that writer-director Christian Petzold is using the Undine”myth as a metaphor. But no, he’s doing the actual myth.

Attack the Block is the other alien-invasion movie opening today, the lousy one, the one from Britain. In Britain, it's probably just a regular bad movie, but here - with accents that are barely comprehensible and in-jokes about council flats, not to mention a swerving handheld camera and some of the cheapest effects since "Night of the Lepus" - it's surprising this thing ever got released.

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

In “My Name is Alfred Hitchcock,” Cousins gives us a new way of looking at Hitchcock, as a filmmaker with an evocative visual world, and a case could be made that it would be easier for viewers to appreciate that aspect of Hitchcock on a second or third viewing.

The Two Popes is movie nirvana, but anyone watching could appreciate the clash between these opposing dispositions and world views.

In a way, Misery is a ghoul comedy. But it's more than that, because it's genuinely, consistently scary. With his enthusiastic direction -- the cutting, the odd angles, the unexpected timing -- Rob Reiner takes what might have been a static set-up, a couple of people talking in a room, and makes it harrowing. [30 Nov 1990, p.E1]

Bigger is not always better. Thor: The Dark World pumps up the action and special effects and loses some of the human element that made the original "Thor" something charming and unexpected. True, this sequel gets better as it goes along, but that's a very steep climb just to arrive at not bad.

Alas, the main thing that comes through in Heaven Knows What is that a junkie’s life is really, really monotonous.

Fifty Shades Freed has something extra going for it, in that it depicts something that movies and pop songs and pop culture in general tend to avoid, which is the romance of familiarity.

Light entertainment that doesn't quite work. The film has too many scenes that meander, and the picture's offhandedness begins to seem less like clumsy charm and more like pointless vamping.

The artistic signature is unmistakable — 30 seconds in, you’d know you were watching a Wes Anderson movie. But Anderson’s human connection seems to have short-circuited, so that his irony now bypasses the world and becomes an ironic contemplation of his own work. This is a dead-end, and it’s just not interesting.

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

Mighty Macs further distinguishes itself by, for once, giving a fair shake to nuns, who are treated with respect both in the performance of Ellen Burstyn, as the mother superior, and of Marley Shelton, who plays the assistant coach. It's about time.

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

Very good at pointing out the social difficulties surrounding the Dickens-Ternan relationship, the power dynamics within it and the lasting effects of it.

Tully doesn’t expand as it goes along. It feels insulated and hermetically sealed, and it seems to get smaller.

Elizabeth works in a number of ways. It's a feminist film. It's also a kind of spy thriller and a superior historical drama.

Across the veil of years, we have seen tall Churchills, obese Churchills, sloppy Churchills, gross Churchills and scowling bull dog Churchills, and yet not one movie or TV Churchill has come close to giving us the man in full, both in look and spirit, until Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour.

Virtually everyone who sees this movie will be galvanized to do something about global warming -- and everyone should see this movie.

A good French film that was inspired by an American classic.

A thoughtful, satisfying action thriller.

The result is a film that's honest and tepid, intelligent and dull, worthy and forgettable.

A sequel was called for, and so a sequel has arrived -- but it's a slightly zombie-like version, with the size, look and shape of the original movie, but without its lightness or spirit, its soul.

Jack is a warm, heartfelt disaster that shows that life is fleeting but movies can be very long indeed.

Beauty and the Beast creates an air of enchantment from its first moments, one that lingers and builds and takes on qualities of warmth and generosity as it goes along.

Now after 43 years in feature films, Danner has gotten the opportunity to show what she can do, and in I’ll See You in My Dreams, she is simply jaw-dropping, just wonderful.

Using footage mostly from the cameras of various passengers and crew, the documentary takes us inside the experience of being stuck inside a floating prison, unwanted by any port, as COVID cases and fears mount. It’s an experience you would not want to have directly, but it’s fascinating to watch.

Nobody is better than McCarthy at over-the-top comic hostility.

Here's a tiresome feature that could be made into a wonderful 20-minute film -- or, with a few adjustments, into two or three 10-minute shorts.

Those who love Nader will appreciate the respect and attention given his career. Yet others, even those for whom the mere sight of Nader's face is enough to cause a spike in blood pressure, will appreciate the film's evenhanded elucidation of Nader's faults.

Night Moves, which shows her at her best and worst, also shows two roads, right and wrong, that Reichardt can choose to pursue. As someone who likes this filmmaker even when I don't like her movies, I hope she takes the harder road.

No, this is not good. This is just not good.

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.

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

It's a gripping, maddening and thoroughly satisfying thriller, made with artfulness and integrity. Soderbergh sees things in his actors and gets things from them that other directors don't.

The last hour of Titanic is huge and staggering, but there's no horror in it. No gravity, either. Entrusted with one of the century's monumental stories, Cameron can present it only as a crying shame. And that's a crying shame.

One of the year’s great films, and somehow you can tell from the opening moments.

Superior animated film from Japan.

Pike’s Colvin is brave, but she’s not tough, and, scene by scene, she reveals more and gives more than she probably means to.

Perrotta and Field succeed, not by guessing, but by knowing this world. They understand it enough to see it with cold precision -- and to approach it, at times, with disarming warmth. The characters aren't types, but people.

Terminator 2 imagines things you wouldn't even be likely to dream and gets these visions onto the screen with a seamlessness that's mind-boggling. [3 July 1991, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

The strange thing is that for all of Fonda's whining, Pullman's wary squinting and muttering, the bad dialogue, the cheesy effects, the severed toes, the severed heads, the severed bodies and the cliched directorial choices, Lake Placid adds up to a halfway enjoyable time at the movies.

By the Grace of God begins to spin its wheels, with unnecessary scenes that give color to the events, when we’re more interested in the grand movements.

Robert Downey Jr. gets to remind everybody that before this blockbuster turn he was actually a serious actor and may still be again. Stark’s frustration at the rigidity and short-sightedness of his confreres and his anguish at where it all leads are vivid and felt.

It’s Lively’s movie, and it’s she who kicks this superior thriller up an extra notch, to the point that it’s not only worth seeing for the excitement and thrills, but for her.

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

What makes Middle of Nowhere a break-even proposition, rather than something to avoid, is that it deals with an aspect of life and with characters rarely seen in movies.

Fascinating.

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.

What lingers in the memory is the impression of having experienced a frolic, a ride through the park on a bright winter day.

Most important, there is an emotional undercurrent in this installment that the earlier films only aspired to. When for a brief moment, the younger Charles Xavier meets the older, there is the sense of time's mystery - and also of the long, magnificent slog of a purpose-driven life.

In her feature debut, Manzoor does something truly bizarre here, and not in a good way. She gets a whole audience rooting for love to triumph but then tries to make a lovable heroine out of the irrational, malevolent character who wants to undermine everything the audience is looking forward to.

The resulting film has the integrity and the ugliness of the truth. It's not true because it's ugly; no, it's ugly because it's true.

This is not one of the good Altmans. This isn't even one of the mediocre Altmans.

From its first minutes, Mid-August Lunch establishes a special tone and quality that could only be Italian. It's a mixture of warmth and gentle farce, tender observation and absurdity.

It’s a nice movie, and perfectly watchable — yet it’s hard to escape the sense that it should have been more.

Baadasssss! is the portrait of a visionary with a blind spot, a man starved for kindness who can no longer recognize the responsibility to be kind, even to his kids. But it's a portrait of a visionary nonetheless.

Romantic comedies can go in all sorts of directions, but they depend on the audience’s believing that a couple should get together and stay together. But in Trainwreck, that belief is hard to come by.

This is a likable documentary that casts light on two respected but relatively unknown people, who made major contributions to film and managed to have a normal life — and in Hollywood, of all places. It’s nice to know such things are possible.

In addition to being a smart comedy and an excellent showcase for Grant, it's an honest movie about childhood that avoids sappiness and sentiment and goes in unexpected directions.

It’s all rather enjoyable, and O’Connor, having starred in “Mansfield Park” (1999), certainly knows her way around 19th century romance. Yet the question remains: What is the point of all this?

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.

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 movie is directed by Anjelica Huston, and like a lot of actors who direct, Huston shows an ability to elicit strong emotions from her actors. But Huston also demonstrates a sense of where to place the camera. [13 Dec 1996, p.C1]

This one is dazzling.

Bleak, dark and strangely arresting throughout, Blast of Silence is not quite a can't-miss proposition, but one comes away from it feeling as if one has seen a minor classic of some kind. Yes, minor - but still a classic. [04 May 2008, p.N36]

A House of Dynamite is an attempt to make a white-knuckle thriller, but there’s very little suspense to it. We have a pretty good idea of how it’s all going to end even before the first segment is over. And after that, we really know it, as we’re forced to watch the same events play out two more times.

As Barkin's nemesis, Moore is evil, and that's a good thing - she doesn't back off. Kate Bosworth plays Barkin's fragile daughter and is a pleasant surprise: Who knew she was an actress?

The story is the story, and you’ll either connect with it or you won’t. But no matter how you react, Titane has the integrity of sincerity and the authority of a filmmaker’s real skill and vision.

McQuarrie devises a film that’s a succession of riveting sequences, filmed in a way that’s active and yet elegant. The camera keeps moving within shots, but not in a subjective, jittery way, but rather like a third person narrator calmly emphasizing the essential points.

Hatching has the quality of a fable, and like the best fables, it has meanings that reverberate well beyond its story.

An extraordinary and heartfelt film.

The back and forth, the listening and reacting between Mirren and McKellen, as each of their characters gauges the other and as we mark the incremental shifts and exchanges of power, is pure pleasure.

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

Claude Chabrol has a wonderful way of making audiences nervous.

So this is a very worthy movie, not that this will hold any sway with illness-phobes, who’d rather stare at the wall for 105 minutes than see a good movie about sickness.

Sicko will scare people, and it probably should.

A Bigger Splash takes four characters with strong needs, drops them into a single location and invites us to watch what happens. It’s strange how compelling that can be.

Morris is a storyteller of the highest order, and within seconds, he draws us into his subject, doling out details, making us wonder what will happen next and dropping bombs for maximum impact.

Southside With You proves once and for all that a romantic film doesn’t rely on suspense. We know these people are getting together. What holds us to our seats is wondering how it will happen.

Powerfully documents the human cost of the Iraq war.

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

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 style is documentary-like, in that it feels like life and that anything might happen. There is also a nice sense of being in the midst of the action and right there in the room with the characters.