Mick LaSalle

A movie of intelligence and power, of beauty, universality and largeness of spirit.

Rarely does a movie come along that captures an aspect of everyday consciousness that has not yet made it onto film.

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]

An enchanting, beautiful and brilliantly imagined film.

The films never lose sight of Mesrine the man, a fascinating character in that he's brutal yet extremely intelligent, has a skewed but discernible conscience, and, under the right circumstances, can be warm and generous.

Die Hard 2 is a huge movie done right. [3 July 1990, p.E1]

Elaine May (left), known for making comedies, wrote and directed this brilliant crime film, which easily ranks among the best movies of 1977. [09 Jan 2005]

The documentary shows the stranglehold that the teachers union has on politicians, particularly Democratic politicians. The arrogance and ignorance of some of these politicians is galling.

Don’t Look Up might be the funniest movie of 2021. It’s the most depressing too, and that odd combination makes for a one-of-a-kind experience. Writer-director Adam McKay gives you over two hours of laughs while convincing you that the world is coming to an end.

Payback has a completely different spirit from "L.A. Confidential'' -- more wild, more silly -- but it has the same attention to the fine points of plot and character.

A good rule of thumb for Richard III is that if it's not fun, somebody's doing something wrong. Nothing's wrong here. Some of the unexpected visual touches are brilliant, others simply entertaining. But the picture never stops coming at you.

Just in physical terms, Eddie Redmayne transformation’s into Stephen Hawking is something remarkable.

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

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

Watching Licorice Pizza is simultaneously like watching life with all the boring parts cut out and like watching movies with all the phony parts cut out.

Verhoeven creates an elegant frame for his lead actress and lets her fill it, and what we end up with is Huppert’s best collaboration with a director since the death of Claude Chabrol.

Dan in Real Life fires on so many circuits that at times it's actually shocking how good it is.

Ultimately, Black Bear is about the price of art — not only the price the artist pays, but that the people around the artist end up paying, unwittingly. Yet in the actual experience of it, the movie doesn’t feel so lofty. It just feels tense and disquieting, like a thriller. In that sense, it is a thriller, but one of the emotions, and it’s riveting every step of the way.

A very smart, very shrewd movie, and the smartest, shrewdest thing about it is the way it masquerades as just a fluffy comedy, a diversion, a trifle.

A masterpiece.

You leave Cinema Paradiso with that feeling that's kind of like getting kicked in the stomach, but nice. It's one of those breathless, swept-away-by-a-movie experiences that you might have once a year, if you're lucky. [16 February 1990, Daily Notebook, p.E-1]

It's extremely funny, one of the funniest films of 2012, with a particularly winning style - far-fetched, extreme and nonstop.

I like to think that sometimes when a film maker takes no shortcuts but does everything truthfully and sincerely, with an interest in nothing but the creation of something wonderful, he can be visited by a muse or a spirit that comes out of nowhere and, as a kind of reward, infuses his film with that extra element that can't be earned or whipped up from a recipe: magic. Much Ado About Nothing is a wonderful, beautiful film. It's not a perfect film -- it has Keanu Reeves in it. But it has that kind of magic. Very early on, from the first scene, really, it lifts up off the ground; and there it stays till the last shot, when the camera itself lifts off, and we in the audience look down on lots of happy people dancing in an elaborate Italian garden. [13 May 1993, p.E1]

This is the kind of pure entertainment that, in its fullness and generosity, feels almost classic.

12 Years a Slave has some of the awkwardness and inauthenticity of a foreign-made film about the United States. The dialogue of the Washington, D.C., slave traders sounds as if it were written for "Lord of the Rings." White plantation workers speak in standard redneck cliches. And yet the ways in which this film is true are much more important than the ways it's false.

My Penguin Friend is what you’d expect from an animal picture, except that it’s better — lifted by a smart script, sensitive direction and a truly beautiful performance by Jean Reno.

I loved the picture, without being blind to its faults. But you don't judge a movie with a scorecard but by what it gives you, and this one gives more than anything I've seen in months. [04 Oct 1991, p.D1]

Make no mistake, Blue Is the Warmest Color constitutes a breakthrough, in addition to being the best film of 2013.