Mick LaSalle

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San Francisco Chronicle
For 3,799 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Mick LaSalle's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 Sound and Fury
Lowest review score: 0 Nightbreed
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,062 out of 3799
  2. Mixed: 1,037 out of 3799
  3. Negative: 700 out of 3799
3799 movie reviews
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    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Heart of Stone
    In this film, whenever Harper gets to do nothing but direct, as in the action scenes, Heart of Stone works. It’s in the convolutions of its flat script that the movie falls apart.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Gran Turismo
    Gran Turismo is just the same cars, going around and around and around.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Happiness for Beginners
    Kemper is good throughout. Her radiant likability gives her the power to sell weak material, which means she will often be offered weak material. But there’s enough in Happiness for Beginners to make me glad that she did it.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Sympathy for the Devil
    Sympathy for the Devil does the two things that every good Nicolas Cage movie must do: It gives him license to be manic, but it also gives him a realistic context in which his mania can delight and surprise.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Haunted Mansion
    Haunted Mansion shouldn’t have been rebooted, but if made, it should have clocked in at a modest 90 minutes.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    Oppenheimer
    In Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan takes an eggheady topic and, without insulting anyone’s intelligence, turns it into a gut-level experience. He shows that the kind of hyper, jacked-up, ultra-modern filmmaking associated with the action and superhero genres can be harnessed in the service of a smart, serious movie.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Barbie
    Barbie is an impressive and original work of the imagination. Its story holds up most of the time and for most of the way, with the unifying through line being Barbie’s existential crisis.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The Miracle Club
    The Miracle Club won’t rock your world, but it’s a nice movie. There’s always a place for nice movies.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
    Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One may not be a great movie, but it’s a special movie deserving of its own kind of event and worth appreciating. Only Tom Cruise makes movies like this, and you either understand why this is pretty wonderful or you should give yourself the chance to find out why.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Biosphere
    This film never had any business being stretched into a feature, much less one running 106 minutes. At that length, Biosphere is soporific and repetitive and puts viewers in the position of always being two steps ahead of it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Joy Ride
    Joy Ride feels like it easily could have been better, but it’s certainly good enough, and it might be remembered as an early milestone in some significant careers.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Earth Mama
    Leaf applies a documentarian’s dispassion to the telling of this fictional story, and to a large extent that works. One of the virtues of documentaries is also a virtue of this narrative feature — it depicts a kind of person who usually doesn’t get movies made about her and tells the world her story with respect and empathy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Wham!
    Wham! tells a sweet story, but also a goofy and entertaining one, because these guys were more ’80s than anybody, more even than “Miami Vice” and Duran Duran.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Prisoner's Daughter
    Prisoner’s Daughter is, in a way, a simple movie. It’s also a cleverly (perhaps unconsciously) disguised version of John Wayne’s swan song, “The Shootist.” It’s one of those movies that you’ll enjoy as it goes along, only to realize, a day or two later, that it was even better than you thought.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
    So, Dial of Destiny isn’t great, but it’s still a lot of fun — even compared to some previous “Indiana Jones” movies.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Perfect Find
    It’s as if no aspect of Perfect Find were thought through because everyone expected that, whatever happened, Gabrielle Union could be counted on to carry the movie. She almost does, but doesn’t.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    No Hard Feelings
    Basically, No Hard Feelings is everything you like about Jennifer Lawrence, brought together in one movie and then magnified: her down-to-earth irreverence, her comic timing, her idiosyncratic naturalness and her unexpected sensitivity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    Asteroid City
    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.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    The Act of Killing
    You have never seen anything like this.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Extraction 2
    The sequel is even more enjoyable than the first, with action sequences that are as good or better than anything you’ll see at the theater.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    The Flash
    The Flash gets credit for effort, because this superhero movie isn’t trying to be stupid and convoluted. It gets there by accident.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Persian Lessons
    For Pérez Biscayart, it’s the sound equivalent of a masterful silent-film performance, and for Perelman, it’s the welcome return of an important filmmaker.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Elemental
    In Elemental, we have a visually splendid and absolutely gorgeous rendering of a half-baked idea. For some of its running time, it can get by on looks. But ultimately, things like story and making sense start to matter, and that’s when the movie takes on water.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Lynch/Oz
    Unwittingly, Lynch/Oz ends up demonstrating the flimsiness of comparison as a tool of film criticism.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Dalíland
    At its base level, Dalíland is all about what a drag it is getting old, especially for a narcissist. But more importantly, it’s also a cautionary tale about the dead-end that is narcissism — not just in life, but in art.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 0 Mick LaSalle
    Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
    The only people to feel sorry for in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts are Anthony Ramos (“In the Heights”) and Dominique Fishback (“Swarm”) who play actual humans trying to save the planet, when in real life they’re just humans trying to save a movie. They’re fine, but they can’t make a dent in the awfulness.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 0 Mick LaSalle
    Sanctuary
    After 96 minutes with these people, you’ll care even less than you do now.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    You Hurt My Feelings
    In its modestly comic way, the movie delves into the question of when it’s better to lie than tell the truth.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Master Gardener
    The pace of Master Gardener is measured, but there’s nothing relaxing about it.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Fast X
    If you love the “Fast & Furious” franchise, you will like Fast X. If you merely like the series, the new movie will leave you indifferent. And if you’ve never seen a “Fast & Furious” movie, Fast X is not the place to start. It’s a middling installment, a big step down from the stupid-wonderful “F9: The Fast Saga,” but with just enough of the crazy stunts and chases that you can’t find anywhere else.
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