Mick LaSalle

Other films about Marie Antoinette have had their moments, but Benoît Jacquot's Farewell, My Queen is the first to give a real sense of what it must have felt like to live inside that palace as the walls were caving in.

The movie has the simplicity and confidence of a Johnny Cash song.

Without question, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a remarkable piece of work, one of the most original and creative films of the past couple of years.

This is a movie that can be enjoyed in different ways and for lots of reasons. It’s dramatic and it’s funny, and it has a warm humanity at its center.

The year's best romantic drama.

One of the great Holocaust films.

In addition to being extremely funny, the film has a warm spirit and respect for the characters.

It's big, perfectly cast and entertaining in every way, but more than that it feels like a generous public event.

Its virtues are velocity, energy, innovative storytelling - and something that seems even more the province of young directors: a certain heartlessness and ironic distance in the tone.

The thing most people will take away from Stand Up Guys is that it contains Al Pacino's best performance in years. So if you don't think Al Pacino still has it in him, this is a welcome chance to be proved wrong. But here's something interesting. Stand Up Guys also contains Christopher Walken's best performance in years. In addition, the film is extraordinarily well cast, and the acting, even in the smaller roles, is more than noteworthy.

But it would be a mistake to leave the impression that the rewards of They Shall Not Grow Old are in any way akin to that of the usual BBC historical documentary. There is some overlap, to be sure, but by and large this Peter Jackson film does not offer a historical encounter, so much as an encounter of humanity, a psychic linking of hands across time.

An exceptional example of Shakespeare on film.

Extraordinary.

Hacksaw Ridge is one of the best films of 2016. And the victory is all the more sweet for Gibson in that he succeeds on his own weird terms.

The human connection the two characters make in this film would be understandable to anyone in any century, past or future. For that reason, there’s a very good chance here that Hall, Penn and Johnson have made more than a good movie with “Daddio.” They may have made a classic.

Ford's bottled-up fierceness is perfectly in sync with the sustained atmosphere of quiet tension provided by director Alan J. Pakula (Sophie's Choice, All the President's Men). Presumed Innocent is more than two hours long and has a leisurely pace, yet maintains a high level of interest most of the way. [27 July 1990, p.E1]

A fable about women struggling to free themselves from that myth, and even at its most obvious, it's exhilarating.

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 a love story only in passing. And yet the love story is what lingers in the mind and gives energy and meaning to everything that happens on-screen.

45 Years is very much an English film and in the best sense. It’s subtle, understated and ultimately devastating, but only if you’re paying attention.

In this one masterpiece, Federico Fellini achieved the ideal balance -- between social observation and unconscious imagery, between artistic discipline and freedom, and between the neo-realism of 1950s Italian cinema and the orgiastic flights of his later work.

The performances are extraordinary, as they often are in Beauvois’ films, with Baye a study in quiet suffering and Bry wonderfully enigmatic — seemingly simple, but hinting at a soul capable of expansion and adaptation.

The Oath is harsh. It’s extreme. It goes to places you don’t expect, and then past those places. It’s the most unpleasant comedy in a long time, and lots of people will absolutely hate it. It’s also one of the best movies of the year.

Mulan is a spirit lifter, and though it doesn’t arrive as planned, it could not arrive at a better time.

There's no other film like it. It's embarrassingly frank and self-revealing, sometimes funny, sometimes creepy, sometimes both.

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.

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.

This is a remarkable feat, not only of cinematography, but of choreography. Just to film Michael Keaton and Edward Norton walking down a Manhattan street, everything had to be timed as in a dance — when the camera swirls ahead, when it goes behind, when it swoops back around. It’s all accomplished so smoothly that it would be worth doing merely as a stunt, except this is no stunt. This method carries the mood and soul of one of the best movies of 2014.