Movies

FREE SPEECH ZONE | On the film "The Impossible" during Oscar Week

Jeff Strate produces television programs and occasionally writes reviews and commentaries.

Sunday’s Academy Awards will dominate this week’s chatty diet of pop news, gossip and snark from increasingly light-brained local news sets to their uncountable broadcast, internet, soci

MORE »

CENTRAL CORRIDOR VOICES | Somewhere I'll find you: A poem

Photo by Diego Vazquez Jr.

So we moved from my small town in western Minnesota
to St. Paul where I had to go to Murray High,
a school
with more people than in the entire town of Sacred Heart

MORE »

"Warm Bodies" warrants a new take on zombies

In zombie movies the dead come back to life. It’s a rule of the zombie genre. In order to have flesh eaters roaming the streets, the dead need to rise from their graves with an appetite for human flesh. But what if the dead, after rising with a need to feed, could experience a second awakening? What if they could reclaim their human side once again? This question is presented as the focal point of Warm Bodies, a film that looks into the issue of undead redemption, and has a lot of fun with it, too.

MORE »

The Unreasonable Movie Project (Vol. 15): I've Seen This Movie Before and I'll See It Again

It's tough to get my friend Jim out to see a movie. Don't get me wrong, he loves movies, but he loves them much more OFNF - On Flatscreen Near Fridge.

MORE »

Michael Starrbury, Minnesota screenwriter of "The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete," talks about making movie magic

Michael Starrbury. Photo by Jim Brunzell III.

A few days after the Sundance Film Festival premier of the film made from his screenplay, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete, local screenwriter Michael Starrbury sat down at a coffee house table in downtown Minneapolis where I was meeting him to discuss his film. I’d never met Starrbury before, but you’d think that we’d been friends for years; he has an engaging smile and charismatic personality, and knows his movies. We chatted and laughed for a good 20 minutes before we even started the interview.

MORE »

"Gangster Squad": Worth the wait for a history buff

Los Angeles has a highly documented history of gang violence and organized crime.  After World War Two there was a well-known criminal that was “wrapping the West Coast up in a pretty little bow," to quote Sean Penn’s dangerous character, Mickey Cohen. Mickey Cohen had the reigns of Los Angeles and was directing it towards a path of violence, danger, murder, and a whole lot of money in the pockets of the wrong people. 

MORE »

The Unreasonable Movie Project (Vol. 13): Man Vs. The Ocean

The movies we're going to take on today are good old fashioned disaster movies, boys and girls. More specifically, movies about Man Vs. The Ocean.

MORE »

The Unreasonable Movie Project (Vol. 12): 12-Year-Old Kids and Imaginary Kingdoms


When my wife leaves, the conversation often turns to more childish things at my house...

"Will, how was your day at school?" I ask.

"Good," Will says.

MORE »
Syndicate content