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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    • 50 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Blonde
    Ana de Armas is inspired and flawless as Marilyn Monroe, and yet “Blonde” is a total bomb. Intuitively, that would seem impossible, for someone to be that good in a failed picture. Here’s something else that would seem impossible: “Blonde” has seriousness of purpose and a strong director, Andrew Dominik, who clearly made the movie he wanted to make. It’s still bad.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Clerks III
    The banter, often Smith’s strong suit, is witless and tiresome, mostly obsessive conversations about minor characters in “Star Wars” and other aspects of pop culture. It’s probably not Smith’s intention, but we end up feeling sorry for the characters, that they inhabit such a tiny mental landscape.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Breaking
    In his quiet, sad stoicism, Boyega at times seems to be channeling Denzel Washington. He embodies the dignity of suffering.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Look Both Ways
    Look Both Ways has a couple of things going for it, namely a compelling premise and the charm of Lili Reinhart (“Riverdale”) in the lead role. But the whole movie is a lie, and once you figure that out, the realization cuts into a lot of the pleasure.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The Princess
    The movie captures something that we missed on this side of the Atlantic. The British public’s obsession with Diana was unrelenting. Every move she made became occasion for analysis — most of it idiotic — on the endless string of talk shows they have over there.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    Emily the Criminal
    It’s a crime movie, but as the title suggests, it’s a personality study, a detailed one that grows in dimension. It’s fascinating to watch Plaza fill in those details. Her face is almost blank, but only almost. We always know what she’s thinking.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Mija
    Ultimately, “Mija” fails almost totally, and two main things tank it: (1) the lack of complete access to the subjects, who should have been grateful for the exposure, and (2) too much collaboration between the director and her subjects. There are documentaries and there are promotional films. A documentarian needs to keep those categories rigorously separate.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Bullet Train
    It’s not like bad Tarantino. That would be too kind. It’s like an imitation of a bad imitation of Tarantino — violent, unfelt and witless, and straining to be funny.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Thirteen Lives
    Thirteen Lives deserves to be seen. The only question is whether audiences will be up for it. I saw it on a huge screen and had to occasionally remind myself that if it got really overwhelming, I could always close my eyes. It’s that intense.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Vengeance
    Vengeance is unexpected and, in the best way, weird. In his first film as a writer-director, B.J. Novak takes familiar elements, but puts them together in ways that are original and unexpected. Even when the plot turns go off the deep end, it’s impossible not to appreciate Novak’s audacity.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    My Old School
    In the end, “My Old School” is a well-made documentary that succeeds in most ways but that starts to crumple in the face of a single question: Who cares?
    • 77 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Nope
    Every so often an obviously talented person makes a bad movie, and that’s what we have in Nope. The talent is there, the movie is dead on the screen.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    My Donkey, My Lover & I
    Writer-director Caroline Vignal could have made "My Donkey” into a 90-minute monologue, with Antoinette talking to the donkey. Instead, there’s lots of variation, smart turns of story and well-drawn, well-defined characters. Vignal makes even the bit characters, the ones with just three or four lines, vivid.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Gray Man
    The Gray Man gets better as it goes along, and it contains a couple of action sequences that are as imaginative and well-crafted as any that you’ll see all year. So don’t dismiss it. Netflix it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down
    Irrespective of what the future holds in terms of gun control, the movie is a striking portrait of a married couple who expected one kind of life, got another, and are making something useful from their misfortune.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
    This world of entirely nice people seems like a trite fantasy — trite because the movie never makes you believe it. But it does makes you want to believe it, and so, like a lot of these movies, it takes you halfway there.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Thor: Love and Thunder
    Most of Thor: Love and Thunder is a mess, pleased with itself and tonally everywhere. As bad as one of the better “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, but that’s still pretty horrible.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Both Sides of the Blade
    Both Sides of the Blade is what people like about French cinema. Its indulgences are worth wading through because, in its commitment to the truth about people and its willingness to explore the hugeness of normal human life, it’s unlike anything you’ll find in America.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    The Princess
    Director Le-Van Kiet and screenwriters Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton succeed by making the action look real, by coming up with intriguing plot twists and keeping our heroine in danger at all times.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    The Man from Toronto
    As a 110-minute diversion, as a source of some laughs, as an opportunity for two funny guys to be funny — and to be funny with each other — what’s not to like? Just go in not expecting much.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Official Competition
    Argentine filmmakers Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn (who wrote the film in collaboration with Duprat’s brother, Andrés) direct Official Competition with a sophisticated understanding of its tone, which is essentially realistic and deadpan. The world isn’t crazy, just the people in it.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    The Black Phone
    The Black Phone has better-than-average acting, an interesting period setting and well-developed characters. But it runs out of story less than halfway through, forcing the filmmakers to repeat the same kinds of actions, over and over, in order to stretch it to feature length.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    Elvis
    It’s extraordinary how Luhrmann is able to tell this story honestly, while still making it palatable. It’s equally extraordinary that he can take this short and tragically misdirected life and make it feel like a triumph.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Spiderhead
    In dramatic terms, Spiderhead is mostly a face-off between Hemsworth’s irresistible force and Teller’s immovable object. It offers the pleasure of watching two actors, just coming into their full powers, going at it full-bore, moment by moment. And each makes the other’s performance better.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Mick LaSalle
    Cha Cha Real Smooth
    By end of Cha Cha Real Smooth, you feel like you’ve met some people, and you liked them all, and it all felt true. For a 24-year-old filmmaker, that’s not bad.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Lightyear
    Ultimately, the people who made “Lightyear” bet too much on the appeal of Buzz, when they really needed to be deepening him and transforming him. Buzz is no Woody, and to sustain an entire movie, he pretty much had to be.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Jurassic World Dominion
    The ultimate failure of Jurassic World: Dominion is not only that it relies too much on action, but that the action is lousy.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Mick LaSalle
    I'm Charlie Walker
    The movie is so enamored of Walker, and Colter radiates so much charisma and pleasant mischief in the role, that it takes about half the running time to realize that the movie is not delivering on the basics.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 25 Mick LaSalle
    Crimes of the Future
    As writer and director, Cronenberg devises for himself a compelling situation, but a situation is not the same as a story. Within 20 minutes, Cronenberg has written himself into a hole, one populated entirely by passive characters who do nothing but get cut up or watch other people get cut up.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Mick LaSalle
    Benediction
    Benediction is an awesome combination of wildness and control. Davies is out there all by himself, speaking a cinematic language that is his own and that has little to do with plays or literature.
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