Mick LaSalle

A tense, concise and elegantly shot film.

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]

More than one joke or one idea. It's a thoroughly satisfying comedy --and a respectable space adventure, as well.

Masterful documentary.

Directed with playful wit and energy, with steamy sex scenes played as much for laughs as anything else.

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]

Not only more crazy than “Reservoir Dogs,'' but it also feels more real. [1 Jan 1993, Daily Notebook, p.D1]

If you want to fall in love with Catherine Deneuve, don’t start with her youth. Start with her here, in her 70s, and then work your way back.

The experience of watching Daniel Day-Lewis in this role is nothing less than thrilling. This is Lincoln. No need for a time machine, there he is.

The evocative nature of Nelson's stillness is essential to the whole last movement of Fresh, an intricately plotted series of unexpected and related events. In a way, the audience has to read the meaning of the ending in Nelson's face. Fortunately Nelson has a face that can make you believe anything. [31 Aug 1994, p.E1]

A brilliant piece of construction, and talking too much about its specifics would only spoil the overall experience.

In the end this is Hoffman's movie, and it's refreshing, finally, to see him not as an oddball or eccentric but as a decent, capable guy who is ultimately a lot more intense than most people.

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.

A triumph that goes well beyond Hoffman's tour de force performance.

Fascinating in its depiction of presidential leadership in action.

What makes Ben Is Back different is that, even if this kind of pain is completely outside your own experience, you’ll feel some of it watching this movie.

It brings together several popular strains of contemporary moviemaking and combines them into one big, shameless, audacious, compulsively watchable, irresistibly likable piece of pure entertainment.

This laugh-out-loud comedy is set in the world of daytime television and is reminiscent of the sex farces that were popular in the early and mid-'60s -- except that Soapdish, unhampered by a desire to be perceived as sophisticated, is actually more sophisticated and much funnier than the movies that were around then. [31 May 1991, p.E1]

It's a humane and witty treatment of an average life that, incidentally, speaks to the worth and inherent drama of average lives.

An absolute delight, combining the cheap thrills of a biopic with the gentler, but more lasting, pleasures of a brilliant character study.

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]

It's a pumped-up, intricate and fast-moving yarn that never flags and continues to play out in unexpected ways as it unravels.

You have never seen anything like this.

Almost too much to bear. But brace yourself and see it anyway. It’s worth it.

I’ve been fascinated by McCartney for decades, and “Man on the Run” made me feel like I was getting closer to understanding the real guy.

Mel Brooks has made a movie that's completely free and spontaneous, which at the same time is not in any way lazy or sloppy. [28 July 1993, p.E1]

Clark Gable was at his most virile and Charles Laughton at almost his most vicious and sneering in director Frank Lloyd's vigorous adaptation, the first and best screen version of the Bounty story. [22 March 1998, p.52]

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