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Minnesota Movie Ads - June 1936

Film Review - Gambit

“Gambit” announces its retro intentions right away, kicking off with an animated title sequence not unlike those found in the “Pink Panther” series. Although credited as a remake of a 1966 picture starring Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine, the new “Gambit” is more of its own thing, only retaining the comedic sensibilities of the 1960s, along with a jazzy score. Colliding into today’s marketplace of irony and improvisation, and the update’s silly sense of rehearsed humor might appear ridiculously old-fashioned, yet it works in small doses. The feature is seldom funny, but it’s consistently amusing thanks to a screenplay by Joel and Ethan Coen and performances from stars Colin Firth and Alan Rickman, who appear to enjoying themselves immensely while the story concocts rising flood waters of humiliation and mischief. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Saturdays with Siskel & Ebert - License to Kill / When Harry Met Sally / Peter Pan (1989)

Film Review - Bert Stern: Original Madman

The Bert Stern that we know is the legendary advertising and celebrity photographer, a man with a singular eye for feminine beauty and unforgettable composition, building his career on iconic pictures, most notably of Marilyn Monroe just before she passed away in 1962. The Bert Stern of the “Original Madman” documentary is an older gentleman with limited patience, allowing his longtime infatuation, director Shannah Laumeister, to track his life and career, interviewing the subject seemingly whenever she could find five minutes of his undivided attention. Candid but cold, “Bert Stern: Original Madman” remains a riveting sit, granted front-row access to an obsessive mind and a startling artistic visionary. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Film Review - Iron Man 3

When we last saw Iron Man saving the day, he was a member of the Avengers, teaming up with his superhero friends to save the Earth from a city-smashing alien invasion. Unable to topple that mighty achievement, co-writer/director Shane Black selects an insular path for the arrogant but lovable Tony Stark, and that unusual mix of spectacle and personal inventory keeps “Iron Man 3” stuck in neutral, unwilling to soar as summer entertainment while frustratingly confused with its gratuitously expansive storytelling. One major sequence nearly saves the whole endeavor, but what Black has here is flat and overstuffed with contrived comic book business, feeling about as heavy and immobile as Stark’s famous armor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Film Review - Upstream Color

In 2004, writer/director/actor/producer/composer/editor Shane Carruth brought “Primer” into view. A no-budget but highly sophisticated picture that exhaustively explored the elasticity of the time travel subgenre, “Primer” was appreciated by a cult following that adored Carruth’s attention to detail and steely moviemaking approach. Nearly a decade later, the filmmaker returns to screens with “Upstream Color,” out to top his earlier work in the realm of abstract details and indie cinema polish. A brain-bleeder with no particular need for an audience, “Upstream Color” marks a bold creative step forward for the helmer, now blessed with more forgiving funding to explore his nervy yet calculated eccentricities. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Film Review - Kiss of the Damned

Vampire movies have had it rough lately, what with the “Twilight” saga managing to regress fearsome, sensual creatures into dour Teen Beat centerfolds, complete with shimmering skin. “Kiss of the Damned” isn’t a rebuttal to the world of Edward Cullen, but it does a fine job reminding audiences that bloodsuckers are far more amorous and reprehensible than popular culture suggests. Stylish and seductive, “Kiss of the Damned” is more of a macabre snapshot than a cohesive picture, capturing a specific throb of sexuality that helps to ignore frustratingly slack storytelling from writer/director Xan Cassavetes, daughter of famed filmmaker John Cassavetes. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Film Review - Generation Um...

There are times when “Generation Um…” is an authentic indie production, and there are moments where it feels like a parody of one. At the very least, it’ll be the one film this year where the audience is treated to a sequence comprised entirely of star Keanu Reeves eating two cupcakes. Perhaps that alone should be a gauge to the must-seeness of the movie. For those who decide to stick it out, “Generation Um…” doesn’t reward the patience, supplying a meandering, intellectually shallow inspection of fried minds attempting to communicate their innermost pain while bombing around New York City. It’s a patience-tester, salvaged only a smidge by Reeves’s uncanny ability to remain perfectly still while his co-stars strap on acting school rocket packs and pinball around the frame. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Blu-ray Review - Dead Sushi

"Dead Sushi" hits a note of insanity that's wholly entertaining and frequently uproarious. It's a Japanese production that manages to merge the madcap and the macabre with a defined sense of humor, making sure to remind those horrified by the geysers of blood and peels of filleted skin that, in the end, it's all about having a good time at the movies. It's a difficult tonal tightrope walk, yet writer/director Noboru Iguchi manages to construct an outlandish feature that never overstays its welcome and offers some true originality as it mines the monster madness of old. After all, it's nearly impossible to dislike a film that highlights flying sushi, a man-sized tuna antagonist (wielding an ax, natch), and offers a song performed by a friendly portion of tamago. "Dead Sushi" is nuts, but its absurdity is most appetizing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Minnesota Movie Ads - June 1996

Blu-ray Review - Earth from Space

Earth is an extremely complex planet, and we don't always have the best perspective when it comes to assessing its sophisticated performance. Up high in the sky is a network of satellites (some reaching up to 25,000 miles above Earth) tasked with studying the meteorological systems of the planet, helping to create useful graphics that provide a deeper understanding of routines and changes in the atmosphere. "Earth from Space" is a "Nova" episode that details the work of this eye-in-the-sky team as it isolates planetary habits and sudden changes, helping scientists understand significant threats facing the continents, while solving a few mysteries along the way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Film Review - The Numbers Station

“The Numbers Station” earns points for being a somewhat original take on the bunker thriller subgenre, using a spy vs. spy world of codes and assassination attempts to beef up an otherwise simplistic siege story. While not a terribly convincing picture, “The Numbers Station” has a few moments of workable suspense and puzzle solving, while star John Cusack supplies an appealing restless energy to the effort, strengthening scenes that would otherwise die on the vine. Strictly for fans of the stars and perhaps those with an insatiable curiosity about career low points, the feature is certainly digestible, but rarely memorable. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Saturdays with Siskel & Ebert - Sudden Impact / Christine / Silkwood / Thriller (1983)

Film Review - Arthur Newman

It’s interesting to consider how some actors find their way into starring roles. A few years back, Colin Firth won an Oscar for his work in the worldwide smash “The King’s Speech,” and now he’s found himself in “Arthur Newman,” which is far removed from the high-profile screen challenges the leading man has enjoyed recently. Although the material is threatened with a dark undertow of mental illness, the overall inertia of the effort comes to rob the film of such intensity, meandering through misadventures with the two leads instead of attacking the story at hand. Though Firth and co-star Emily Blunt work to inject honesty into their performances, the feature doesn’t sustain much substance deeper than surface ache. It’s more indulgently mournful than motivated. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Film Review - The Big Wedding

It doesn't take long, perhaps five minutes, before it's abundantly clear that "The Big Wedding" is going to be of no use. Commencing with vague introductions, the material is soon asking Robert De Niro to prepare Susan Sarandon for an impromptu session of oral sex on a kitchen countertop before Diane Keaton nervously interrupts, resulting in a touch of physical comedy as the amorous characters try to find their composure while dealing with dangling underwear and an untamable erection. It's how the movie begins, folks, and the next 80 minutes aren't an improvement. Unlikable, unthinkable, and unwatchable, "The Big Wedding" proves that bright stars and a reliable romantic event is no match for an ugly and tone-deaf screenplay, chased by amateur direction. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Film Review - My Brother the Devil

"My Brother the Devil" has powerful individual moments, truly honest emotional searching that gives the material depth the movie doesn't otherwise possess. Though it comes across as yet another inspection of misspent youth in a rap-saturated council estate setting, writer/director Sally El Hosaini scratches a little deeper to explore the bonds between siblings, where influence and approval reign supreme. Being her first film, "My Brother the Devil" is kneecapped by stiff scenes and overcooked performances, but as a whole, the picture introduces the world to a promising storytelling talent with more on her mind than sneers and straightforward criminal interests. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Film Review - Birdemic 2: The Resurrection

The key to 2010’s “Birdemic: Shock and Terror” was its sincerity. It was a genuinely awful feature from an enormously incompetent filmmaker, a man who thought he could match his idol Alfred Hitchcock in the suspense department, only to make a mind-numbingly tedious, technically disastrous picture about global warming, attacking birds, and young people dealing with vaguely defined vocational triumphs. Of course, it was hilarious to watch, leaning into every last creative pothole writer/director James Nguyen created, studying a movie that had absolutely no ambition beyond being a movie, and it often failed at that. Molded into a midnight movie phenomenon, sold on its badness, “Birdemic: Shock and Terror” transformed into something of a hit. And with any unexpected cinematic success comes a sequel, whether we want one or not. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Film Review - Pain & Gain

After the 2011 release of the global blockbuster “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” director Michael Bay wanted to challenge himself again. After years of gargantuan features, “Pain & Gain” represented a return to roots planted with the 1995 action comedy “Bad Boys,” offering Bay a chance to cause a comparatively low-budget ruckus in his favorite filming location: Miami. The robots in disguise are gone, replaced by equally destructive bodybuilders on the hunt for the American Dream, and while the potential of this true story is immense, Bay resorts to his old tricks, making the picture more frustrating and deadening than raucous. Intentionally ugly and mean-spirited, “Pain & Gain” somehow believes itself to be a coked-out, body-smashing good time at the movies. Instead, it’s quite a chore to sit through. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Film Review - Mud

The power of great cinema is a special thing. With “Mud,” the screening audience I attended the film with fell in love with the picture, physically and verbally invested in story and character to a degree I haven’t been exposed to in a very long time. It was a unique moviegoing adventure for a classically conceived effort, standing somewhere between a Mark Twain novel and a David Gordon Green feature (at least one where he’s not trying to be funny). Somber and engrossing, “Mud” is like paging through a terrific book containing a few dull chapters, with writer/director Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter”) creating an evocative atmosphere of mystery and misfortune, captured through well-rounded personalities, patient screenwriting, and ace acting from most of the cast. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Blu-ray Review - The Central Park Five

With "The Central Park Five," Sarah Burns enters the filmmaking scene, accepting the challenge of a documentary concentrating on a monumental perversion of justice. Of course, Burns has a few aces up her sleeve, bringing in husband David McMahon and father Ken Burns (the man behind such iconic programming as "The Civil War," "Baseball," and the recent "The Dust Bowl") to co-direct, joining the family business as a seeker of truth and an admirer of history. Those already in step with the Burns way won't be surprised by the look and feel of "The Central Park Five," but the story is unforgettable, detailing a nightmare scenario for five Harlem teenagers facing hard prison time and the condemnation of America for a crime they didn't commit. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com