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.