Minneapolis Movie Reviews - Minneapolis Movies Guide

An Education and star Carey Mulligan get good marks

Sundance hit is classily directed nostalgia trip

The title is a double entendre in An Education, the film version of British journalist Lynn Barber's memoir about the crash course she received... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: October 28, 2009

Film Highlight: Halloween

Pity the teenage movie fan who thinks Scream is the Rosetta stone of horror. If only he or she could've seen John Carpenter's peerless... More>>

By Jim Ridley

Published: October 28, 2009

Cirque du Freak is a really sucky vampire movie

Film is half-assed attempt to sell popcorn

Like the ominous fingernail moon early on in Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, the bloodsucker trend is again in a waxing phase thanks to... More>>

By Aaron Hillis

Published: October 21, 2009

Highlight: Revanche

This deliberate, meticulous heist-gone-wrong flick eschews all the usual excitement of crime movies. Instead, Austrian writer-director Götz... More>>

By Brian Miller

Published: October 21, 2009

Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are can't quite capture the beasts' spirit

And so begins the mild rumpus

Directed by Spike Jonze from a 400-word children's picture book first published in 1963, Where the Wild Things Are may be the toughest adaptation... More>>

J. Hoberman

Published: October 14, 2009

Film Highlight: Secret of the Grain

In this remarkable third feature by the French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche, a 61-year-old shipyard worker in the port city of... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: October 14, 2009

Oak Street Cinema revives Jean-Pierre Melville's film noir masterpieces

French director is known as forefather of French New Wave cinema

The French have shown a cinematic obsession with mobsters, jewel thieves, and petty criminals that is at least a match for American films, and... More>>

Published: October 07, 2009

Film Highlight: Breakfast at Tiffany's

In this 1961 classic, Audrey Hepburn and director Blake Edwards perfected the filmic prototype that so many would later copy: the story of a... More>>

By Kate Sullivan

Published: October 07, 2009

Coen brothers take A Serious Man into a truly vicious realm

This isn't your ordinary Coen-esque sadism

The Yiddish shtetl shtick that opens Joel and Ethan Coen's new movie—a Jewish peasant stumbles on an old Hasid who may or may not be an... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: September 30, 2009

Film Highlight: Afghan Star

If you think it's impossible to underestimate the cultural significance of American Idol, go see British filmmaker Havana Marking's documentary... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: September 30, 2009

Somers Town gets at the heart of the working class

Film highlights ability of imagination to offset life's harsh realities

The title of Shane Meadows's Somers Town refers to the bleak, working-class neighborhood that lies in the shadow of London's St. Pancras train... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: September 23, 2009

Film Highlight: Sound Unseen

Minneapolis's annual showcase of films about music launches this month with 20 movies screening at theaters around town. This week, the festival... More>>

Published: September 23, 2009

The Informant! gets cute with scandal and blows the story

No exclamation point necessary, really

As evidenced by The Informant!, it's a hell of a tricky thing turning real-life pulp into floss sugar. The story of Archer Daniels Midland... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: September 16, 2009

Film Highlight: Jennifer's Body

A premeditated cult classic—they're kind of like "pre-worn" designer jeans—Jennifer's Body seems designed more to be quoted than... More>>

By Nick Pinkerton

Published: September 16, 2009

Shane Acker's 9 creates animated post-apocalyptic hellscape

WALL-E would never get out alive

Early in Shane Acker's computer-animated debut feature, 9, a diminutive anthropomorphic whatsit with wooden hands, copper fingers, and the... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: September 09, 2009

Film Highlight: Captain Abu Raed

Abu Raed (Nadim Sawalha) is an elderly widower who works as a janitor at the international airport in Amman, Jordan. He's well read,... More>>

By F.X. Feeney

Published: September 09, 2009

Mike Judge's Extract takes another look at inanities in the workplace

Film feels super authentic next to hilarious cult classic Office Space

Mike Judge began writing the screenplay for Extract not long after Office Space opened and closed in a matter of weeks in the late winter of... More>>

By Robert Wilonsky

Published: September 02, 2009

Highlight: The Warriors

Set in a pre-Giuliani New York that seems to be populated entirely by gangs ("They outnumber the police five to one," went the ad campaign), this... More>>

By Derek Nystrom

Published: September 02, 2009

Taking Woodstock is simply a bad trip

Three days of peace still oppressing us 40 years later

"If you remember Woodstock, you probably weren't there," the expression goes. And if you were, can you please stop gassing on about it? Aquarian... More>>

By Melissa Anderson

Published: August 26, 2009

Film Highlight: Into Temptation

Minneapolis and the Stone Arch Bridge play a supporting role in this modest but engaging indie by Minneapolis filmmaker Patrick Coyle, which... More>>

By Matthew Smith

Published: August 26, 2009

Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds proves hugely entertaining

Juvenile premise can't overshadow great performances, dialogue

Energetic, inventive, swaggering fun, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is a consummate Hollywood entertainment—rich in fantasy and... More>>

By J. Hoberman

Published: August 19, 2009

Mr. Blood Red, Vol. 2

Two decades after the severed ear of Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino serves up Hitler's head on a plate

Seventeen years ago, when Reservoir Dogs was setting American cinema on fire, Quentin Tarantino drove up to his favorite watering hole, a... More>>

By Ella Taylor

Published: August 19, 2009

Film Highlight: A Clockwork Orange

How are we supposed to respond to Kubrick's most problematic movie (1971) so many years after its release? Should we be repulsed by it as an... More>>

By Matthew Wilder

Published: August 19, 2009

District 9 uses alien invasion as apartheid metaphor

Director Neil Blomkamp uses computer effects to enhance, not dominate

The aliens have been with us for 20 years already at the start of South African director Neill Blomkamp's fast and furiously inventive District... More>>

By Scott Foundas

Published: August 12, 2009