Minneapolis Movie Reviews - Minneapolis Movies Guide

Movie Reviews

Valentine's Day is an exhausting Hollywood display

Garry Marshall's foray into cupid's holiday is a total pass

In Pretty Woman, director Garry Marshall's personal cinematic high score, the opening credits close (and the closing credits open) with the voice... More>>

By Karina Longworth

Published: February 10, 2010

Film Highlight: Creation

Already a blogosphere punching bag for right-wing Christians, Creation—about Charles Darwin's writing of On the Origin of... More>>

By Ernest Hardy

Published: February 10, 2010

John Travolta in From Paris with Love

Film delivers lobotomized entertainment to battle Febrary's doldrums

As personal assistant to the U.S. ambassador to France, James Reese (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) can keep himself in well-tailored suits and keep his... More>>

By Nick Pinkerton

Published: February 03, 2010

Film Highlight: That Evening Sun

First-time writer-director Scott Teems has given 84-year-old master actor Hal Holbrook a dream role in Abner Meecham, a Tennessean who walks out... More>>

By Chuck Wilson

Published: February 03, 2010

Mel Gibson's Edge of Darkness

Detective investigating activist daughter's death discovers corporate cover-up

"Did you shoot my daughtah?" is the question posed, in flat-voweled Bostonian, in the trailer for Edge of Darkness. And Mel Gibson, much-bereaved... More>>

By Nick Pinkerton

Published: January 27, 2010

Film Highlight: The White Ribbon

The White Ribbon is Michael Haneke's first German-language film since the original Funny Games (1997), and it's his best ever. A period piece set... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: January 27, 2010

Harrison Ford talks about Extraordinary Measures, Star Wars, and aging

Ford: "I'm clearly not 35 anymore"

Extraordinary Measures is a race-against-time thriller in which a desperate dad (Brendan Fraser) sacrifices everything to cure a rare disease... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: January 20, 2010

Film Highlight: Expanding the Frame

The Walker presents its annual series dedicated to works that expand our ideas of what film and video can encompass. In these experimental... More>>

Published: January 20, 2010

Denzel Washington can't save The Book of Eli's warped theology

Film presents world as post-apocolyptic ghetto

Directors Allen and Albert Hughes were raised by an Armenian mother and an African American father. With such a background, it would be hard not... More>>

By Nick Pinkerton

Published: January 13, 2010

Film Highlight: Dead Man

North America's own Heart of Darkness, this underappreciated Jim Jarmusch masterwork may be one of the best films of the past... More>>

By Terri Sutton

Published: January 13, 2010

Youth in Revolt fails to find a worthy film adaptation

C.D. Payne's novel and actor Michael Cera fall flat on screen

For years Hollywood has wrestled with adapting C.D. Payne's 1993 novel Youth in Revolt—which actually was three novels collected under one... More>>

Robert Wilonsky

Published: January 06, 2010

Film Highlight: Ed Wood

Like director Edward D. Wood Jr.'s own odes to the outcast, Tim Burton's highly personal takes on genre have often been accused of narrative... More>>

By Rob Nelson

Published: January 06, 2010

Year in Film '09: Clint Eastwood, Jason Reitman, and more

Plus: Our favorite picks of the year

Read the articles in this week's year-end feature package, the Year in Film: Up in the Air Director Jason Reitman Gets Grounded by Scott... More>>

Published: December 30, 2009

Film Highlight: Big Fan

It takes considerable effort to make Darren Aronofsky seem like a model of restraint, but Robert Siegel pulls it off in Big Fan. Siegel's... More>>

By Vadim Rizov

Published: December 30, 2009

Nancy Meyers's It's Complicated churns out weak women

Even Meryl Streep's character is a high-strung, sex-starved nag

Does Nancy Meyers hate women? The thought ran through my head not very long into It's Complicated, Meyers's biennial stocking-stuffer about the... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: December 23, 2009

Filim Highlight: Ronia, the Robber's Daughter

To mark Ronia's 25th anniversary, Oak Street unveils a new print of this 1984 telling of the classic Astrid Lindgren fantasy, which deigns to... More>>

By Claire Adamsick

Published: December 23, 2009

James Cameron's Avatar glitters in the first half

Titanic director's $25M movie cannot subsist on 3-D alone

The money is on the screen in Avatar, James Cameron's mega-3-D, mondo-CGI, more-than-a-quarter-billion-dollar baby, and, like the Hope diamond... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: December 16, 2009

Sebastián Silva's The Maid challenges our sympathies

Director shot film in the house he grew up in

Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but for the title character of the pitch-black Chilean comedy The Maid, it's closer to an infernal torment.... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: December 16, 2009

Film Highlight: Lord of the Rings Trilogy

The Riverview presents its fifth annual screening of the complete Rings trilogy, including the extended director's cuts of the first two films.... More>>

Published: December 16, 2009

Clint Eastwood's Invictus stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela

With one huge problem: Film doesn't tell the whole truth

Aside from Morgan Freeman, who makes a fabulous Nelson Mandela, there's this to savor about Invictus, a rosy tale of racial reconciliation neatly... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: December 09, 2009

Film Highlight: Let The Right One In

This lucid Swedish indie gem, adapted for the screen by John Ajvide Lindqvist from his novel and directed with imagination and restraint by Tomas... More>>

Elena Oumano

Published: December 09, 2009

George Clooney in Up in the Air

Juno director Jason Reitman is in the pilot seat

There is something oddly familiar about Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, in which George Clooney plays a commitment-phobic business traveler with... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: December 02, 2009

Film Highlight: Minneapolis Underground Film Festival

This year's showcase of more than 40 little-known or -seen films opens Friday night with the world premiere of The Seducer, a modern retelling of... More>>

Published: December 02, 2009

The Road takes the path of least resistance

Viggo Mortenson leads the cast and Nick Cave provides the score in Hillcoat's unpleasant saga

The Road, Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning, Oprah-endorsed, post-apocalyptic survivalist prose poem—in which a father and his... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: November 25, 2009

Film Highlight: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Working with his Life Aquatic co-writer (and The Squid and the Whale director) Noah Baumbach, Wes Anderson has added an existential layer to the... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: November 25, 2009