Mick LaSalle

One of the best war movies of the past 20 years.

It’s buoyant. It’s bright. It has lots of pop music on the sound track, none of it from 1991 or 1994, and almost all of it from the late 1970s, mostly 1977 and 1978. The movie’s mix of music and era doesn’t quite make sense, strictly speaking, but like everything in this loose, inspired and yet tonally precise film, it feels right.

Though Mom is ditzy and, at times, irritating, we come to recognize her as the family's most original creative spirit.

If you want to see great acting that’s unadorned, not fancy, and very much in the style of 2024, see Plaza in the climactic scene from “My Old Ass.” You will walk out of this film different than when you walked in, and a little bit better for the experience.

Coming now, today, In Time is not just satisfying. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's important, because that would overstate it, but it certainly feels like part of the national conversation. It arrives in theaters at a time when people are camped out in New York saying the same things as the people in the movie. It's weird the way films often anticipate the near future.

American Hustle is David O. Russell's best film, one that finds him in that ideal zone of spontaneity and complete control.

A grounded and unusually matter-of-fact adaptation.

This lushly photographed, brilliantly acted and wonderfully entertaining movie has its own claims to uniqueness. It's the most thoughtful of the three films, and its climax brings the entire series into sharper focus. [25 Dec 1990, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

Love & Mercy captures with striking immediacy the unbound power of the artist in his element.

Presents us with characters of such humanity and dignity that it begins to seem obscene that until now we haven't exactly given all that much thought to the Kurds.

The word "delightful" is thrown around so much that it often means nothing. Movies that truly have the capacity to delight - that amuse and lift the spirits and create a warm feeling - are rare. Romantics Anonymous is one of those rare delights.

Gets it right. It's a wonderful movie. Watching it, one can't help but get the impression that everyone involved was steeped in Tolkien's work, loved the book, treasured it and took care not to break a cherished thing in it.

If In the Cut falls short of the masterpiece Campion intended, it's unquestionably the most ambitious and important film to come along in months.

The pacing is superb, quick and agile without being frenzied, and the special effects are jaw-dropping.

Across the veil of years, we have seen tall Churchills, obese Churchills, sloppy Churchills, gross Churchills and scowling bull dog Churchills, and yet not one movie or TV Churchill has come close to giving us the man in full, both in look and spirit, until Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour.

Baker is concerned with people who are broke and on the outside (“The Florida Project,” “Red Rocket”), and while there are aspects of “Anora” that make us aware of the distance between people born with everything and those born with nothing, he doesn’t let politics or economics dwarf his characters.

In Darkness is an extraordinary movie, and somehow good art creates its own uplift.

Bride Flight gives a panoramic sweep of lives as they're lived, as there is a lot of beauty in it.

Mothering Sunday is most likely a one-of-a-kind hybrid, a brilliant one-off.

It’s an inward-looking film that seems to be saying something about life. Whatever it’s saying — and it’s not clear that it’s saying anything specific — it connects. It’s not just another good movie. Somehow, it all adds up as something more important.

Ultimately, Ford v Ferrari is about art versus commerce, devotion versus cynicism, and inspiration versus deadness. It’s one of the year’s great films, and of all the great films so far, the most accessible.

This is an intense and complicated story, and the film doesn't rush it. It lets it unfold and build, methodically.

The Details has a light tone, but it's anything but light in purpose. It's committed and passionate, one of the most perceptive and morally persuasive movies of 2012.

Riveting from its first moments.

There's a lot to process when watching The War Tapes, and that's probably why the documentary gets even better a few days later.

A hard, funny and realistic movie about the future.

“Popstar” has more going for it than outrageousness, though it certainly has that. It has genuine outrage, a good-humored but clear-eyed take on today’s pop culture as a morass of corruption, idiocy and relentless self-promotion.

It’s one of the best war films ever made, distinct in its look, in its approach and in the effect it has on viewers. There are movies — they are rare — that lift you out of your present circumstances and immerse you so fully in another experience that you watch in a state of jaw-dropped awe. Dunkirk is that kind of movie.