Mick LaSalle

It's sober, never flashy or exciting but always engrossing.

The film's impact has a lot to do with Fabio Vacchi's original score, which is both plaintive and coldly modernist, with echoes of Charles Ives.

This is an important movie, but it’s not a perfect one. It has one enormous flaw, and it’s a testament to the smartness of the writing and the inherent fascination of its viewpoint that it doesn’t wreck the experience: Director Justin Simien doesn’t know how to shape scenes or pull performances from his actors.

A study of middle-class, middle-aged disappointment in its varying forms, a sober look at different life choices.

The atmosphere of Loving, the feeling it evokes, is the film’s most distinct quality. The mood is somber and restrained, and the characters — not just the principals, but the people they know — seem beaten down.

Instead of settling for a tour de force from McKellen, Soderbergh goes for something better — a fascinating give and take from start to finish.

Still, when you’re making a Christian epic and the best thing about it is the guy playing the inquisitor, you have a serious problem.

Dumb Money is a tale of 2020, and the movie captures that 2020 feeling — gray, depressed, anxious and almost comically miserable.

Kristin Scott Thomas' performance in I've Loved You So Long is one of a small handful of highlights by which people will remember this year in movies. This is acting at its most exalted.

As painstaking as a documentary but without the satisfaction of a documentary or the impact of a drama.

It's a lovely and wistful celebration of youth, time and moments of connection -- and about the experience of living in the midst of a simple, perfect day that you know you'll remember for the rest of your life.

For le Carré fans, The Pigeon Tunnel is a must-see, but the film will also be useful to people wanting an introduction to his work.

It’s true that “Dune 2” is as depressing as watching the news, but that doesn’t make it relevant, because it isn’t the news. It’s more like unnecessary self-torture, like watching a depressing newscast from another planet.

By the end, it is clear just how much in control Sayles has been all along. The resolution, though typically restrained, forcefully puts over the movie's point, that we're all more connected than we think.

Ultimately, The Fighter loses its courage and betrays the terms of its own story by fashioning an interpretation designed to please the people it portrays. It does a switch on us, by changing its focus from Micky's character to Micky's career and then pretending it was really about the career all along.

In The Five Obstructions, we meet the Danish filmmaker for an extended period, and he's exactly what a fan might hope and expect him to be like: impish, insightful, unpredictable, mildly sadistic and rigorously honest.

The world here is so ugly that only beautiful tracking shots, rich close-ups and adroit handheld work could make it bearable.

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.

The strength of the Coens is that they are so witty, skilled and smart, so in command of their medium, so fluid and agile, so capable of surprising and delighting from every angle, that they can make the grimmest story bearable, even palatable.

A new restoration takes a flawed bit of monster camp and turns it back into a strong, serious-minded and occasionally moving science-fiction film.

I hope casting agents and other industry types see Fourteen, because I want them to see Norma Kuhling (of the NBC series “Chicago Med”), who plays Jo. She takes this strong role, by writer-director Dan Sallitt, and hits it exactly right.

The story itself is arresting, and if that’s all “Bang” offered, that would be enough. But “Bang” does more.

Within the realm of a mildly good time.

An action sci-fi blockbuster extravaganza that provides cartoon thrills for thinking people. It's the best movie of its kind since the second "Spider-Man" movie four years ago.

The great strength and slight weakness of “How to Have Sex” is that it’s just like being there — except you might not want to be there.

Only Lovers Left Alive is simply dead, an exercise in style, bland humor and vague gesture that yet seems to have been made in the naive expectation of a conventional response - that is, of an audience's actually caring.

With "Flynt," Love does what Madonna has been trying to do for 12 years -- create a performance filled with humor, intelligence and soul.

Adams sparkles with quick-mindedness and verbal agility. This is a worthy and underused talent.