Mick LaSalle

As plain awful as Untraceable is, possibly the worst thing about it is that it pretends to mean something.

Living in Oblivion is a rarity, a dark comedy that takes place almost entirely on a film set. Written and directed by Tom DiCillo, this is a very funny picture that presents the world of independent film making as a nightmare of conflicting egos, budgetary squalor and incompetence.

Everybody in Admission is funny - Tina Fey, Paul Rudd, Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn - but they're not funny in Admission.

Bridge of Spies tells us that the Constitution is not some quaint national luxury but the road map out of the darkness.

Subdued yet percolating with suppressed emotion.

Invisible Life is not an entirely fun watch, and its 139-minute running time is an investment and sometimes feels like it. But it offers something more than the usual experience.

Denis' viewpoint and sympathies are sophisticated, complex and humane.

The experience of watching Foxcatcher is of constantly waiting for something to happen — and of giving up, long before something actually does.

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

As for Plummer, I don't know how he does it, but he somehow radiates gayness. It's nothing overt, just some internal shift, but if you saw only 10 seconds of Plummer in this film, you would know he was playing a gay man. You just might not know how you know it.

It is a mess of a film, botched but also misconceived, with a central performance by Natalie Portman that evokes nothing about Jackie Kennedy, beyond the stylish clothes and the secret smoking.

Deep Cover is a sleazy crime picture and a peculiar and twisted moral journey. It's also a terrific movie, and once you trace its lineage you begin to see why.[15 Apr 1992, p.E1]

Compelling.

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.

American Fiction is not a perfect film. The book trails off at the finish, and though the movie comes up with something better, the end still doesn’t feel ideal. But none of that matters as much as it might, because Wright gives the perfect performance.

We see the tormented, limited and potentially dangerous man underneath.

Even as it stands, Fish Tank is a valuable movie, though it aspires to a social insight it doesn't attain and a psychological penetration it won't maintain.

The film leaves us staggering with a strange, almost unbearable embrace of childish innocence and treacherous spite. It is powerfully depressing. [02 Mar 1990, p.E1]

Bernal is quite good as the young media specialist - it's always surprising to see how strong a presence he is in his Spanish-language films and how he all-but disappears in his American films. Is it a matter of the roles or the language? The jury is still out.

A movie about serendipity and spontaneity.

A Man Called Otto is a formula movie, and no matter the nuances, this formula is not that satisfying.

A fascinating look at a bizarre man and a brilliant talent. But a good deal of the movie is described by its subtitle -- "A Son's Journey'' -- and to the extent it is, the movie sags.

With his crisp intelligence always a step away from collapsing into paralyzing self-consciousness, and his polished good-boy veneer often giving way to hysteria and vulgarity, Grant is a delight. [18 March 1994, Daily Notebook, p.C-3]

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.

If this is the best we can do in terms of movies - if something like this can speak to the soul of audiences - maybe we should just turn over the cameras and the equipment to the alien dinosaurs and see what they come up with.

When the end finally arrives, it brings no sense of completion, just a sort of numb awareness that the pain has stopped.

Last time, Peele made a movie about the country. This time he made a movie about himself, and it’s even better.

Simply the most relentlessly entertaining film of the last few months.