Minneapolis Movie Reviews

Movie Reviews

Randall Miller's Nobel Son is a tone-deaf trainwreck

Feel-good filmmaker goes bad ... very bad

Nobody in the film industry wants to be pigeonholed. Personal assistants long to be studio heads, gaffers want to direct, and name actors... More>>

By Tim Grierson

Published: December 03, 2008

Film Highlight: Sunset Blvd.

The Parkway kicks off its Monday-night film noir series with Sunset Blvd. Narrated by a dead man, predating other mean-old-broad thrillers by a... More>>

By Rob Nelson

Published: December 03, 2008

Australia makes you want to take Jackman, Kidman out back

Baz Luhrmann's film is sorely predictable

You don't have to have been raised on colonial Brit lit, classic melodramas, Westerns, and war movies, or Gone With the Wind to figure out the... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: November 26, 2008

Film Highlight: Milk

Gus Van Sant has never been what you'd call a risk-averse filmmaker, but he directs his Harvey Milk biopic so carefully you'd think he had a Ming... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: November 26, 2008

Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire lets you leave the theater a winner

Film mates Bollywood and Hollywood with feel-good style

Who wants to be a millionaire? Well, who wouldn't in this economy, even if the currency in question is rupees and winning the loot means being... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: November 19, 2008

Film Highlight: Bolt

Like every other kids' movie coming off the studio line these days, the charming and well-crafted animated feature Bolt, about a celebrity pooch... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: November 19, 2008

Marc Foster's Quantum of Solace renders James Bond pointless

Director has license to confuse and bore in this unwatchable mess

Those of us who adored Casino Royale, the 2006 reboot of the haggard, self-parodic James Bond franchise, had some trouble trying to decide where... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: November 12, 2008

Film Highlight: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

During World War II, a Nazi officer (David Thewlis) receives a promotion and moves his wife (Vera Farmiga), teenage daughter (Amber Beattie), and... More>>

By Chuck Wilson

Published: November 12, 2008

Bernie Mac's comedy lives on with Soul Men

Mac channels his authentic comic self in his last film

If the dream of every comic is to have his humor live on long after he's left the stage, then the late Bernie Mac has exited this world on a high... More>>

By Chuck Wilson

Published: November 05, 2008

Film Highlight: Synecdoche, New York

If you traveled the length of John Malkovich's medulla oblongata and walked through the adjoining door of the interstellar hotel room at the end... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: November 05, 2008

Kevin Smith blows his wad with Zack and Miri

New film's gross-out tactics pander to audience

Ostensibly, Zack and Miri Make a Porno should be a money shot for Kevin Smith: Pals make a porn to pay the bills and, in the process of gettin'... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: October 29, 2008

Film Highlight: Breakfast with Scot

Like a diva in training, 11-year-old Scot (Noah Bernett) spells his name with one T, wears a feather boa, and isn't shy about kissing boys at... More>>

By Chuck Wilson

Published: October 29, 2008

Pride and Glory cop drama unsaved by Norton, Farrell

Movie reads Miranda Rights to optimistic audiences

Pride and Glory doesn't make any effort to disguise precisely what it is: a barely held-together string of vignettes lifted from every cop movie... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: October 22, 2008

Film Highlight: Sound Unseen

The annual festival of films about music returns for its ninth year with a lineup of nearly 20 entries. The opening-night film, Garrison Keillor:... More>>

Published: October 22, 2008

Oliver Stone got the W but missed T and F

Famous director assigns motive to Bush's M.O., but at this point, who cares?

W. may be less frenzied than the usual Oliver Stone sensory bombardment, but in revisiting the early '00s by way of the late '60s, this... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: October 15, 2008

Film Highlight: Topsy-Turvy

Mike Leigh's work of brilliant improvisation deconstructs the legendary Gilbert and Sullivan "magic" as the product of two gargantuan egos, much... More>>

By Rob Nelson

Published: October 15, 2008

Aptly timed Body Of Lies is tempting terror thriller

Ridley Scott's latest delivers the post-9/11 tech-savvy terror thriller we deserve

A new kind of war movie for a new kind of war, Body of Lies is about the War on Terror as it is being waged on the ground, in the air, but most... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: October 08, 2008

Film Highlight: Happy-Go-Lucky

After extended cameos in two previous Mike Leigh films (as a resourceful pop tart in All or Nothing and the date-raped rich girl in Vera Drake),... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: October 08, 2008

Fernando Meirelles's Blindness is worth seeing

The Brazillian director who filmed City of God has scary new vision

The most recent example of bleak chic, Fernando Meirelles's mostly harrowing adaptation of José Saramago's international bestseller... More>>

By Anthony Kaufman

Published: October 01, 2008

Film Highlight: Religulous

Bill Maher's one-man standup attack on religious fundamentalism is a dog that has more bark than bite—a skeptical, secular-humanist... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: October 01, 2008

Choke adaptation needs the Heimlich

This film is a sex crime

There's a whole lotta fucking going on in Choke, Clark Gregg's adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's first-person novel about a sex addict named Victor... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: September 24, 2008

Film Highlight: The Duchess

Based on Amanda Foreman's biography of Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire, Saul Dibb's costume drama tells how Princess Diana's... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: September 24, 2008

Lakeview Terrace: A Black-and-White Film

Racial tension lurks above and beneath the surface of Neil LaBute's movie

Earlier this year, when I found myself assigned to jury duty on a drug-related trial in Angeles Superior Court, our jury foreman turned out to be... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: September 17, 2008

Film Highlight: Trouble the Water

By following Scott and Kimberly Roberts, a couple from New Orleans's stricken Ninth Ward, through Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, directors... More>>

By Jim Ridley

Published: September 17, 2008