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Critics Consensus

Led by arresting performances from Steven Yeun and Yeri Han, Minari offers an intimate and heart-wrenching portrait of family and assimilation in 1980s America. Read critic reviews

Audience Says

Prepare for an ambiguous ending, but along the way, this is a beautifully filmed blend of comedy and drama, brought to life by a wonderful cast playing well-written characters. Read audience reviews

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A tender and sweeping story about what roots us, Minari follows a Korean-American family that moves to a tiny Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. The family home changes completely with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed, but incredibly loving grandmother. Amidst the instability and challenges of this new life in the rugged Ozarks, Minari shows the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.

Rating: PG-13 (Some Thematic Elements|A Rude Gesture)

Genre: Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Producer: Dede Gardner , Jeremy Kleiner , Christina Oh

Writer: Lee Isaac Chung

Release Date (Theaters): Feb 12, 2021 limited

Release Date (Streaming): Feb 26, 2021

Box Office (Gross USA): $700.0K

Runtime: 1h 55m

Distributor: A24

Production Co: Plan B Entertainment

Cast & Crew

Steven Yeun

Youn Yuh-jung

Will Patton

Esther Moon

Eric Starkey

Randy Boomer

Lee Isaac Chung

Screenwriter

Dede Gardner

Jeremy Kleiner

Christina Oh

Joshua Bachove

Executive Producer

Lachlan Milne

Cinematographer

Film Editing

Emile Mosseri

Original Music

Yong Ok Lee

Production Design

W. Haley Ho

Art Director

Hanrui Wang

Set Decoration

Susanna Song

Costume Design

News & Interviews for Minari

Know Your Critic: Inkoo Kang, TV Critic at The Washington Post

Awards Leaderboard: Top Movies of 2020

Who’s Going to Win Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress at the 2021 Oscars?

Critic Reviews for Minari

Audience reviews for minari.

In other hands this might have been more overtly nostalgic with an exhausting "Remember the 80s?" aesthetic but Chung instead presents the characters and the past honestly which makes everything more enduring.

My first theater experience in 13 months. I don't know if my tears were flowing because of that fact or because of this gorgeous film. Oh wait that's right, it was both. As lush and soothing as a brook in spring. I look forward to letting 'Minari' wash over me again.

Overflowing with love, passion, and truth, Minari is the must-see film of the season. Featuring impressive cinematography, strong writing, and an incredible ensemble, the film tells a powerfully relatable story about family, sacrifice, resilience, and the beauty of small and unexpected victories. Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, and Youn Yuh-jung all deserve Oscar recognition for their performances, Lee Isaac Chung deserves Best Director, and the film itself deserves the highest prize.

I can't remember watching a family drama as heartfelt and poignant as Minari. Told mostly from the perspective of the very young David, it offers audience an intimate view into the life of an immigrant family trying to make their life work in America. Thankfully, the movie avoids the stereotypes of intolerance and instead embraces multiculturalism and humanity, a huge relief as we (speaking as an American) put the last 4+ horrendous years behind us. The acting across the board is wonderful to behold. I forgot how enjoyable Steven Yeung is to watch. Yeri Han who plays the mom and wife is also fantastic. But the grandmother Yuh-jung Youn I think stood out the most as she had to portray such a range with her character. When I'm a grandparent I want to be just like her. And while mostly a drama, this movie had me laughing uncontrollably at times. "Don't count your chickens before their hatched," especially if your job is staring at the ass-end of a baby chick to determine its sex while having a serious marriage conversation.

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Lee Isaac Chung ’s “Minari” casts a spell from its opening moments, a Terrence Malick-like evocation of human beings trying to stay in harmony with the natural world. As a family car travels through a green American landscape, the earth itself seems to be speaking to the characters, and through them, to us.

It is a classic immigrant story with specific, often unique new details. A Korean American family headed by a father, Jacob ( Steven Yeun ) and mother Monica (Yeri Han), came from Korea in the 1980s and spent time in California working as chicken sexers, separating baby chicks by gender. Now they have moved with their two American-born children, a serious and mature girl named Anne ( Noel Kate Cho ) and a six-year-old named David (newcomer Alan S. Kim), hoping to start a 50-acre farm in a small Arkansas town.

Culture clash is the unifying subject here, though not the only one. Chung, who waited to make this autobiographical drama until he had several acclaimed films under his belt, knows exactly the story that he wants to tell and how he wants to tell it. Monica and Jacob fight over their shared goals as a couple and their ambitions for their children. The tension of assimilation versus independence underscores every exchange, whether it’s intimate and private or connected to the larger community that they are tentatively getting to know.

It’s clear that Jacob has bought into some version of "the American dream" and carries himself like a prototypical mid-20th-century white American farmer, complete with gimme cap, terse speech, breast pocket cigarette pack, and ambling gunfighter walk. Monica seems more torn, and it is obvious from seeing the two of them interact that she comes from a higher social class and is more comfortable in the cities. As the story goes on, we begin to wonder if she regrets having moved to America in the first place. Even though she’s game, it’s a tough road that never seems to get easier.

Ordinary rituals become fresh and alive when a different frame is put around them, and this is the case in Chung’s film. The couple talks about whether to get a small farm in a community with a larger Korean American population or stick where they are and tough it out in relative isolation, a conversation many couples might have in a similar situation, here it is with all sorts of secondary challenges. What church do we go to? Should we go to church at all? How forward should we be in trying to make new friends with people who do not share our cultural heritage? These are problems that individuals raised in a monoculture don’t think about often, or at all.

The movie loses tension at certain points, relying a bit too strongly on atmospheric nature shots and a haunting score that seems to be performed on a slightly out-of-tune upright piano, and sometimes punting conflicts down the timeline when the viewer may want a bit more examination of them at that moment. But Chung’s grip as a storyteller remains sure. There is a ring of truth to every moment and conversation. The best of these are imbued with a complexity and contradiction that suggests that there’s more to human interactions than whatever advice we were given as kids. A moment after church when young David is casually racially insulted by a young white boy who then immediately speaks to him as a friend, and invites him over to a sleepover, will ring true to anyone who has been on the receiving end of that type of behavior. Everyone in this movie is still learning the right way to behave, including the adults.

The supporting characters are vividly drawn. The great American character actor Will Patton is superb as an evangelical Christian farmer who praises Jesus every minute and is glimpsed in one scene carrying a big wooden cross on his back as he walks along the country road. (Jacob asks if he wants a ride and he says no, he’s got this.) But the best performance belongs to Yuh-Jung Youn as Soonja, Jacob’s grandmother, who is brought in from the old country to provide advice and childcare help. She is a live wire—a cosmopolitan who always speaks her mind and is at ease with profanity, practical joking, and making moral/ethical decisions that could have major repercussions without consulting Jacob or Monica. (When Monica puts a $100 bill in the church collection plate, presumably to make a big impression during their first visit, grandma deftly removes it.)

Chung has a knack for capturing those moments when people behave according to their own internal compass, in ways that may not make sense to an outside observer. And it’s impossible not to appreciate the deep understanding of human behavior, as well as the way that ordinary objects and situations acquire symbolic meaning when we think about them in relation to the characters. This is a lovely, unique film.

Opening today, December 11th, for a limited release qualifying run before a wider release in 2021.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Tomris laffly, film credits.

Minari (2021)

115 minutes

Steven Yeun as Jacob

Han Ye-ri as Monica

Youn Yuh-jung as Soonja

Will Patton as Paul

Scott Haze as Billy

Noel Kate Cho as Anne

Alan Kim as David

Eric Starkey as Randy Boomer

Esther Moon as Mrs. Oh

Darryl Cox as Mr. Harlan

Lee Isaac Chung

Cinematographer

Lachlan Milne
Emile Mosseri

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“Minari,” Reviewed: A Strangely Impersonal Tale of a Korean-American Boy in Arkansas

By Richard Brody

The main cast of “Minari” standing together

Sometimes technique is so showy that it overwhelms a movie, but there’s also technique that dominates by flaunting its modesty. That’s the kind on display in “Minari,” Lee Isaac Chung’s quasi-autobiographical drama about growing up, as the child of Korean immigrants, in rural Arkansas, in the nineteen-eighties. (The film “opens” online for two weeks at Film Forum and at A24’s virtual cinema, starting Friday.) As a result, what’s original, particular, and personal in the story gets reduced to the familiar dramatic conventions used to tell it.

As a young boy, David Yi (Alan Kim) moves from California to rural Arkansas with his family—his older sister Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and their parents, Monica (Yeri Han) and Jacob (Steven Yeun). In Arkansas, they live in a mobile home propped up on blocks amid a large tract of vacant land, which Jacob plans to turn into a farm that will support them. But the new surroundings spark a confluence of family conflicts—some that arise, and other, longstanding ones that are quickly exacerbated. For starters, Jacob seems not to have made clear to Monica that they’d be living on an undeveloped and isolated property, and in a mobile home.

Monica and Jacob have long been at odds over money—they have been in the United States for a decade but have little to show for it. (This, he reminds her, is because, by Korean tradition, he, as his parents’ eldest son, has had to provide for family back home.) In Arkansas, both Jacob and Monica work as chicken sexers at a hatchery—that’s what Jacob did in California, and he’s considered exceptionally good at it—until he leaves to get the farm started. Jacob has long been bored and frustrated by his repetitive, monotonous labor, and his dream of the farm is as much a matter of independence and creative energy as it is one of profit. David was born with a heart murmur and requires frequent monitoring (he isn’t even allowed to run), and, in case of an emergency, the farm’s great distance from the nearest hospital worries Monica. In their new home, she’s angry, frustrated, and desperately lonely; though there are a handful of Korean immigrants in the area, she hardly connects with them. So to give Monica companionship, and to help with child care, the family brings her widowed mother, Soonja (Yuh-jung Youn), over to live with them.

Soonja’s arrival transforms David’s life. She is wise and loving, gruff and tender, profane, impulsive, and fiercely devoted to her bright and burdened grandson. Meanwhile, Jacob’s efforts to start the farm are greatly aided by a neighbor named Paul (Will Patton), an effusive, awkward Christian mystic who, when the spirit moves him, speaks in tongues. A gregarious hermit, Paul is something of a local laughingstock, but he is a knowledgeable farmer; he quickly befriends Jacob and offers his experience and labor. (It’s never made clear whether he’s paid or merely lending a hand.) Jacob’s enthusiasm for the farm makes him overweeningly optimistic about his endeavor. In quest of a place to dig a well, he repudiates the services of a dowser—he boasts that “Korean people use their heads”—only to risk losing his entire crop when the well he digs runs dry. That arrogance sets in motion a chain of misfortunes that start small and end up catastrophic.

The movie takes note of the business of farming, but only glancingly; it delineates family relationships and bonds with townspeople in quick, sharp touches. Its sketch of the parents’ marriage resounds with quietly painful confrontations. But most of the best things in the movie, arising from Chung’s fine and subtle sense of observation and the ardor that he brings to them, are undercut by their presentation. The movie’s anecdotes and observations may be personal, but they are filmed with an utter lack of subjectivity—whether from the filmmaker or the characters. History is winked at, with glancing references to the Korean War, once by an American character and then by a Korean. Otherwise, the movie is a blank framework that pre-organizes the story to the essential information needed for the plot and the significant character traits that explain it. The movie (and, by implication, the memorious observer, David) never gathers a rich and varied enough range of perceptions to suggest a lived-in depth of experience or idiosyncrasies of character. This is a familiar style, an academic realism of calculated understatement that maintains its restraint even in the midst of terrifying events and grave danger.

The narrow and merely illustrative drama is matched, unfortunately, by an impersonal cinematography that fails to suggest texture or intimacy. The images depict what’s in the script, not the characters’ lives; between the scenes, neither the characters nor the story seem to exist. As for a sense of place, it’s approximate: locations play like sets, with neither a sense of space nor a sense of touch; the landscape is reduced to a few illustrative shots. The actors are both charismatic and talented (Yeun, of course, is the best known of the cast, and Youn is a veteran of many of Hong Sang-soo’s films and of Im Sang-soo’s “The Housemaid”), yet here their performances are contained; they bring out the logic of the story without allowing emotion to expand idiosyncratically beyond it. Despite the charm and nuance of Youn’s performance, her role is drawn from a deck of clichés not unlike those of Glenn Close’s character in “ Hillbilly Elegy .” The result is to turn particular experiences general, to render strange ones plausible, exceptional ones average.

For a movie centered on a child’s experience (David is far more prominent in the action than Anne is), “Minari” oddly neglects curiosity and wonder, fantasy and terror. The strongest moments in the movie are the few that evoke the anxious shadows of David’s view. One day, he overhears his mother explaining to his grandmother that he’s in danger of dying. That night, before going to sleep as usual, in the bed next to his grandmother’s, he asks whether he’s going to die, and she dismisses the fretful prayers and rites with which his mother has raised him as foolish. (When she tells him to stop worrying about Heaven, he asks, “But what if I go to Hell?”) They’re the scenes that come closest to suggesting the blend of gravity and innocence, of fear and the fear of its expression, that makes the child’s inner life deep and strange and singular. Elsewhere, Chung’s teeming recollections and extrapolations are muted by the reductive conventionality of their depiction. “Minari” ’s style is a disheartening example of the gravitational pull that such conventions exert on the cinema at large.

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Yeri Han, Steven Yuen, Alan S Kim and Noel Cho in Minari.

Minari review – an enchanting drama of faith and farming

Lee Isaac Chung’s Oscar-nominated tale of a Korean family putting down roots in 1980s Arkansas beautifully balances the feelgood and the gritty

T he title of writer-director Lee Isaac Chung ’s enchanting film about a Korean family making a new start in rural 80s Arkansas refers to the tenacious edible plant that we see taking root and flourishing by a shady creek. “It’s a poetic plant,” Chung has said, not least because it “will grow very strongly in its second season, after it’s died and come back”. That theme of death and rebirth runs throughout Chung’s drama, inspired by his own family history (the minari used onscreen actually came from his father’s crop in Kansas City) and boosted by terrific performances, glowing visuals and a wonderful musical score.

Steven Yeun and Yeri Han are Jacob and Monica Yi, an immigrant Korean couple who relocate from California to a large plot in the Ozarks with “the best dirt in America”. For Jacob, it’s his dream – the chance to escape the monotony of sexing chickens for a living and to make something of himself. Monica is more sceptical, appalled by the leaky mobile home into which this reckless venture has placed them. A farming novice, her husband must learn the ropes from scratch, aided only by their eccentric neighbour Paul (Will Patton), a Korean-war veteran and religious fanatic who speaks in tongues, performs makeshift exorcisms and spends his Sundays dragging a cross up the local highway.

Alan S Kim and the scene-stealing Youn Yuh-jung in Minari.

Adding to Monica’s anxieties is the fact that their young son, David (Alan S Kim), has a heart problem and has been told to avoid stress or exertion on pain of death. So Monica’s mother, Soonja (scene-stealing Korean screen veteran Yuh-jung Youn), comes to live with the family, greeted initially with disdain by David, who thinks she “smells like Korea”, but inevitably recognised as the catalyst for healing and redemption.

From the moment Jacob turns his nose up at the services of a water diviner who has seen others try and fail to work this land, it’s clear that faith will be a central theme of Chung’s movie. Indeed, with its invocations of the Garden of Eden, biblical storms, prayers for miraculous healing, and even a Forrest Gump - inflected finale, Minari is littered with the kind of trial-by-fire tests and everyday spirituality beloved of Oscar best picture contenders.

Yet what makes this more than just another formulaic feelgood film is the grit with which Chung evokes the hardscrabble lives of his characters, balancing the dreamier elements of the drama with a naturalism that keeps it rooted in reality. Early on, David learns what happens to the “discarded” male chicks at the poultry plant where his parents work, and is told the importance of making yourself “useful” – or else. Later, the toll that this American life has taken upon Jacob and Monica’s marriage is heartbreakingly tangible, with Han’s expressive face telegraphing bitter doubts and conflicts long before they are explicitly voiced. When Jacob plaintively reminds Monica that “life was so difficult in Korea”, I thought I heard echoes of Ozu’s Tokyo Story .

By contrast, Youn is a ball of barely contained energy, rivalling Tsai Chin ’s performance in Sasie Sealy’s Lucky Grandma as the screen’s most lovably unlikely pensioner. Scenes between her and Kim crackle with an irresistible tragicomic spark that perfectly counterpoints the more down-to-earth travails of the central couple.

Serving as an intermediary between the mundane and magical-realist elements, Emile Mosseri ’s score blends woodwind, piano and guitar with synthesised theremin-style sounds and processed vocals to create a mood that is at once earthy and ethereal. Having elegantly scored The Last Black Man in San Francisco (and saved Miranda July’s Kajillionaire from terminal quirkiness), Mosseri provides the key to Minari’ s universal appeal, conjuring a soundtrack that reminded me of Jack Nitzsche’s haunting musical-saw theme from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – an understated symphony of sentiment and strangeness, forming a bridge between this world and the next.

Minari is available on various VOD platforms

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Movie Reviews

Review: 'minari,' an american story of uncommon warmth and grace.

Bob Mondello

A family of Korean immigrants resettles in Arkansas in the Sundance favorite and Golden Globe nominee, Minari.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

A young family, a fresh start, a lot of baby chicks and a grandmother who comes to stay - critic Bob Mondello says the Golden Globe nominee "Minari" has everything it needs to be the year's most heartwarming film.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Monica and Jacob Yi have spent the last decade scraping by in California, separating male from female chicks in a chicken processing plant. It is not the life they hoped for when they emigrated from Korea. And now that they have two small kids, Jacob's promised his wife a fresh start. As the film begins, Monica is getting her first glimpse of their new home, a double-wide trailer in the middle of an Arkansas field. The kids are excited.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MINARI")

NOEL KATE CHO: (As Anne Yi) Wheels. They're wheels. It's like a big car.

STEVEN YEUN: (As Jacob Yi) (Speaking Korean).

MONDELLO: Monica less so. This farm is not the fresh start she'd envisioned. Looking around at the five acres he's bought, Jacob, played by Steven Yeun, tells the kids...

YEUN: (As Jacob Yi) David.

MONDELLO: ...They're going to have a garden...

YEUN: (As Jacob Yi) (Speaking Korean).

MONDELLO: ...Which earns him a little swat from his wife.

YERI HAN: (As Monica Yi) (Speaking Korean).

YEUN: (As Jacob Yi) No, Garden of Eden is big, like this.

MONDELLO: Writer/director Lee Isaac Chung is recreating elements of his own childhood here. His dad moved their family to Arkansas when Chung was six. And the filmmaker tells this story through the eyes of 6-year-old David, who doesn't always understand the family tension...

MONDELLO: ...But who has a strong point of view. When Monica's mom comes to stay with them - bringing peppers, anchovies and other Korean delicacies - David's immediate reaction is that grandma smells like Korea. And after she's been with them a while, he decides she isn't even a real grandma.

ALAN S KIM: (As David Yi) (Speaking Korean).

MONDELLO: Real grandmas bake cookies, he says. And they don't swear.

YUH-JUNG YOUN: (As Soonja) Oh, pretty boy, pretty boy. Pretty...

KIM: (As David Yi) I'm not pretty. I'm good looking.

MONDELLO: Clearly, they're going to end up friends. Also helping out is a Pentecostal farmhand played by Will Patton, who knows enough about working the land to be useful, even if, for him, everything comes down to religion, including planting cabbages.

WILL PATTON: (As Paul) You know what an exorcism is?

YEUN: (As Jacob Yi) Yeah.

PATTON: (As Paul) Out in the name of Jesus. Out in the name of Jesus - out.

YEUN: (As Jacob Yi) (Laughter) OK. Now things - things will grow.

PATTON: (As Paul) So how come you putting them so close together? You don't want to put them so close together like...

MONDELLO: The filmmaker named his movie "Minari" after a Korean herb grandma brought with her that is resilient and grows wherever it's planted - a nice metaphor for immigrant families. The Yi family has its challenges, certainly. Little David has a heart murmur. Mom's not happy about being uprooted. Dad's trying to prove himself. And there are natural challenges.

(SOUNDBITE OF THUNDER)

MONDELLO: But resilient they are and grow they will. Their dream is the American dream, and their story in "Minari" an American story of uncommon warmth and grace.

I'm Bob Mondello.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Screen Rant

Minari review: steven yeun leads this wonderfully authentic family drama.

Anchored by a poignant story and wonderful performances from the ensemble cast, Minari is an excellent addition to the domestic drama genre.

The best movies are ones that feel lived-in; the characters feel real, their experiences authentic. Family dramas will often strive to reach this level of realness, but too often they resort to stereotypes and melodrama. Thankfully, Lee Isaac Chung's awards hopeful Minari avoids that typical trap with great success. Inspired by Chung's own childhood, Minari tells a classic immigrant story while managing to sidestep certain plot points that might be expected of a movie like this. To be sure, there are elements that feel familiar, but they do nothing to lessen the film's overall impact. It's been said many times already, but Minari is sure to make a dent in the ongoing awards season. Anchored by a poignant story and wonderful performances from the ensemble cast, Minari is an excellent addition to the domestic drama genre.

Minari begins with a reluctant move: Patriarch Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) has dreams of owning his own classic American farm, so he uproots his Korean family from their home in California and brings them to the middle of nowhere in Arkansas. His wife Monica (Yeri Han) disapproves of this right from the start, particularly when they arrive at their rundown mobile home, which stands all alone in a large field. Monica has many concerns; Jacob has none. As he attempts to bring his agricultural dreams to life, Monica's mother Soon-ja (Yuh-jung Youn) moves from Korea to be with them, putting her at strange odds with grandson David (Alan S. Kim).

Related: The Most Anticipated Movies of 2021

Much of Minari is viewed through David's eyes, though every family member gets their chance to shine. Chung also wrote the script and he crafts a loving story that manages to avoid stereotypes and melodrama. Going into Minari, it's easy to believe one knows which standard dramatic moments will arise, particularly when elements like David's weak heart is introduced. However, Chung resists the urge to dig into a good number of them, leaving only a story that genuinely feels like real life behind. This isn't a soap opera, or a showy tale of domestic woes (like, for example, fellow awards contender Hillbilly Elegy ). It's something far more poignant and authentic.

Further aiding this affecting tale is the cast. Yeun might be best known for his work in The Walking Dead, but he truly shines in this understated performance of a father who struggles to find the balance between providing for his family and chasing his own dreams. A part like this could descend into caricature with someone else, but Yeun keeps Jacob a sympathetic figure, even as the audience might begin to question his actions. The other standout is Youn as displaced grandmother Soon-ja, who remains cheery about her surroundings even after she moves from Korea to the United States. Her relationship with David, the grandchild she's never met, is ultimately the beating heart of Minari , as the two slowly feel each other out before growing closer (with more resistance coming from David, who wants an American grandmother). Really, though, the whole cast is excellent, including Han, Kim, and Noel Cho as daughter Anne.

There are little touches throughout Minari that make it a subtle, but no less impactful film. From Soon-ja's makeshift minari garden out in the creek (which seems to hold a clever little metaphor) to Monica's quiet search for pieces of their culture in the unfamiliar terrain of Arkansas, it's clear Chung has put a great deal of thought into every piece of this movie. Yong Ok Lee's production design grounds the family's surroundings, while Lachlan Milne's cinematography keeps the audience close to the Yis, almost as if they are a part of their struggles, too. Because in the end, it's easy to resonate with their highs, lows, and everything in between. Minari is being lauded (rightfully so) as an important immigrant story. But, more than anything, it's a very human tale that deserves to be told.

On the surface, Minari might seem like a very familiar movie. However, thanks to Chung's careful hand, it's something far more special. By not giving into what might be expected from a typical immigrant story, Chung has given the material space to breathe on its own, creating a space that can be appreciated by all kinds of people. The cast shines, the story hits home, and Minari stands as a winner.

Next: New Oscar Rules Explained: How 2021's Show Will Be Different

Minari debuts in theaters on Friday, February 12, 2021 and on VOD on Friday, February 26. It is 115 minutes long and rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and a rude gesture.

Let us know your thoughts on the film in the comments!

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In the Gently Moving <i>Minari,</i> a Korean Family Finds Home in America’s Heartland

In the Gently Moving Minari, a Korean Family Finds Home in America’s Heartland

M ost stories about immigrants adjusting to America take place in cities, environs where a newcomer may already have family or friends, or at least be able to find a community. The family in writer-director Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari takes a different route: Jacob and Monica (Steven Yeun and Yeri Han) have come to America from Korea to seek better opportunities—we don’t know much more than that. But we do learn that Jacob has a dream of growing things, of being a farmer. Jacob, Monica and their two young children, David and Anne (Alan Kim and Noel Cho), have lived for a time in California, but as the movie opens, we see them driving to what will be their new home: A blocky rectangle of a house propped on cinderblocks, adjacent to a stretch of land that looks like paradise to Jacob—but not to Monica. She says little at first, but her stern silence tells us what she’s thinking: Why have you brought us here? This is 1980s Arkansas; there may be a few Koreans here and there, but there’s not much of a community. What’s more, David has a health issue, a weak heart. How could Jacob have brought his family so far from a hospital, from civilization?

Minari is a gentle, lovely picture, one that acknowledges there really is no “immigrant experience,” beyond the pure human experience of finding yourself adjusting to a new environment. The film—which is semi-autobiographical, reflecting Chung’s own experience of growing up on a farm in rural Arkansas—enfolds reflections on isolation and loneliness, on masculine pride and duty, on just the pure weirdness of being a kid, let alone the child of immigrants. If its setting is specific, its vibe is universal.

Chung tells us everything about this family via small details, often seen through David’s eyes: we get an inkling of his heart problem when we see him running across a field—and then stopping abruptly, sullenly, when his mother calls out, “Don’t run!” Jacob works on getting the farm started in his spare time—he hires a helper, Paul, a local oddball and religious nut whose generosity is revealed in quiet, quirky moments. (He’s played, wonderfully, by Will Patton.) But Jacob and Monica also have jobs at a local hatchery, determining the sex of chicks. When David asks about the smoke rising from a smokestack at the plant, his father tells him that that’s where the male chicks are burned. They don’t taste good, and they don’t lay eggs, so they’re of little use. “So you and I should try to be useful,” he tells his son, a hint at how heavily the responsibility of being the man of the house—and of providing for his family—weighs on his own shoulders. Yeun’s performance is terrific, a multilayered exploration of what it means to chase a dream when reality—your family, the people you’re entrusted to care for—is sitting right there with you at the dinner table.

Read More: Minari and the Real Korean-American Immigrants Who Have Farmed U.S. Soil For More Than a Century

Monica is lonely and unhappy on this farm in the middle of nowhere. When she and Jacob fight, David and his sister send a squadron of paper airplanes—crayoned with the words “Don’t fight!”—soaring into their parents’ airspace. Their desperation, and their rapid action, captures the delicate texture of children’s helplessness and fears in the face of their parents’ problems. Eventually, Jacob and Monica hammer out a tentative solution to their differences of opinion: Monica’s mother will come—from Korea—to live with the family.

When Soonja (Youn Yuh-jung) arrives, bringing with her special chili powder, anchovies, ground antler and other delights that can’t easily be procured on American shores, David sulks. She isn’t, as he protests both to his parents and directly to her, “a real grandma.” Soonja doesn’t make cookies; in fact, she can’t cook at all. She likes playing cards, watching wrestling on television, and swearing. David complains that she “smells like Korea.” Soonja seems unable to win him over, until they reach a truce—the specifics of which involve a plot detail that’s best left unrevealed.

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'Minari' is not just the best American movie of the year, it's the best movie of the year

"Minari" is a perfectly made American movie directed by Lee Isaac Chung.
The beautiful movie follows a family of South Korean immigrants trying to make it in 1980s Arkansas.

Steven Yeun is proving to be quite the leading man. Since he left "The Walking Dead" in 2016 he has developed into one of the most interesting and versatile leading men in Hollywood, including a sublime turn in 2018's Korean psychological thriller "Burning." Now, he delivers his most nuanced performance yet in Lee Isaac Chung's "Minari."

The movie follows South Korean immigrants Jacob Yi (Yeun) and his family trying to make it in rural Arkansas in the 1980s.

Don't be distracted by the nonsense ruling by the Golden Globes and subsequent controversy, "Minari" is a distinctly American, flawless movie.

Why you should care: 'Minari' is a best picture contender, and rightly so

"Minari" is an American movie. It has an American director, a largely American cast, American production companies (A24 and Plan B), and it explores very American themes. But because the movie, set in Arkansas, is spoken 70% in Korean, the Golden Globes classed the film as a foreign language movie — meaning it was ineligible for the top prizes and was only nominated for best foreign language movie.

"The Farewell" director Lulu Wang is one of many filmmakers who have spoken out against the Globes' decision, writing that she has "not seen a more American film than 'Minari' this year."

—Lulu Wang (@thumbelulu) December 23, 2020

The confusion and annoyance saturating this topic is understandable. Jacob and his family are essentially on a quest to fulfil their own American dream. Watch this movie and it'll be clear how American it really is.

What's hot: It's a beautifully written and shot movie with a stunning cast

Lee Isaac Chung's clever script is sharp and detailed, but is often sparse on dialogue. That means there are a lot of scenes where actors have to use their facial expressions to convey what might have otherwise been a monologue in other similar movies. "Minari" is far more sophisticated and refined than most family dramas — it doesn't rely on hammy exposition or rambling speeches, it steps back and simply presents the story to us.

Yeun proves himself to be a master of this style of acting. You can see the burden and longing Jacob is feeling in every crevice of Yeun's face; in every glance and gesture. His performance makes you root for him as soon as you first lay eyes on the red cap he wears while toiling away. But it's not just about money. He wants his kids to see him be successful, and you can feel that weight of responsibility pressing down upon him.

It's no surprise that Yeun earned an Oscar nomination for best actor for this performance. With that, Yeun became the f irst ever East Asian American nominated for best actor.

Yeun's co-stars also deliver imposing performances. Han Ye-ri goes toe to toe with Yeun on several occasions, and their scenes always stay the right side of melodrama thanks to smart writing and their considered performances. Meanwhile, Youn Yuh-jung has the most colorful role as foul-mouthed Grandma Soon-ja. She is great fun to watch, and provides many of the movie's laughs, but she isn't without heart and drama herself. She's the favorite to win best supporting actress at the Oscars, and it would go down as a joyous win.

Similar to Helena Zengel in "News of the World," child actor Alan Kim is the heart of his story. He does everything so charmingly and so genuinely, you'll forget you're watching an actor. In fact, the entire movie feels so natural that if it weren't for the stunning cinematography by Lachlan Milne, you might think you're watching a real family in a documentary rather than a fictional movie. The last movie to look this radiant and transcendent was Barry Jenkins' "Moonlight."

Coupled with this cinematography is an ethereal (and Oscar-nominated) score by Emile Mosseri and a moving original song ("Rain Song," performed by Han) — making "Minari" at once a beautiful piece of art and a naturalistic study of one particular family's American dream.

What's not: Steven Yeun features less than you'd expect

Yeun is up for best actor at this year's Oscars, but arguably he could have campaigned in supporting actor instead as the story follows Kim's David more consistently than Yeun's Jacob. In fact, the movie could easily be read as David's story rather than Jacob's.

Yeun is absent onscreen for a longer-than-you'd-think while during one portion of the movie's second half, and those who come to see the film for him may be disappointed at that. Yeun's impact is felt on and off-screen (he's an executive producer), and he does feature enough to be considered a leading actor rather than supporting.

The bottom line: A perfect movie that will move you with every scene

Lee Isaac Chung has delivered a perfectly crafted film that combines the naturalistic story of a family working for their American dream with the magical look and feel of an arthouse movie.

This movie tells the specific tale of an Asian American family working to accomplish something and stay together while doing so, and no doubt a lot of Asian Americans will feel a strong connection with this. But the power of this movie is so paramount that anyone of any background will be able to take something away from this movie. Immigrants of any background. Those with ambition. Those who have struggled to fit in. Anyone who has seen their parents work tirelessly to offer them a better future.

As Steven Yeun has said consistently across his social media about this movie: "this one is for everyone."

Watch the full trailer below:

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‘Minari’ Review: Sinking Korean Roots in the Arkansas Soil

Steven Yeun plays the patriarch of an immigrant family adjusting to American rural life in Lee Isaac Chung’s lovely new film

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‘Minari’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The writer and director lee isaac chung narrates a sequence from his film featuring steven yeun, yeri han, noel kate cho and alan kim..

“Hi, my name is Lee Isaac Chung. And I’m the writer director of “Minari.” So this is a scene that happens at the very beginning of the film as the family pulls up onto a plot of land, and they find this trailer home sitting there. The first person who we see getting out of a vehicle is Steven Yeun, who plays Jacob. And I filmed that wanting to evoke the feeling of a man getting off of his horse. We see coming out of the station wagon Monica played by Han Yeri and then coming out of the back of the station wagon are the two kids. There’s Anne played by Noel Kate Cho and David played by Alan Kim. So we start off the scene with three different perspectives. That was the unique challenge of this scene, start off with the father, start off with the mother, and then you see the kids’ perspectives. And each of them has a very different take on what this new place is. Jacob sees it as a place of opportunity. You know, he looks at the land. He’s thrilled with this new place of promise. Monica sees something that she had not signed up for. She didn’t know that she was going to have to come here. She sees a house without stairs, a house in the middle of nowhere. And the kids, they’re just having fun. They see a house on wheels. So this was my way of trying to start off the film with three different unique perspectives. And to me, that’s what a family is. A family has different perspectives. And somehow, they converge in a very funny way. Once we got into the field, we were all pretty aligned on the way that everybody should be approaching this new land. Jacob sees it for all its magic, and he’s very excited. Steven was so good at showing his perspective of how much he loves this place, how much he sees the potential in it, you know. When I was writing this scene, I just loved that Jacob bends down, digs his hands into the dirt, and says, look at the color. And that was a moment that just came to me as I was writing this script. And I felt this joy for him. I just felt like a deep sympathy for him as well. With the direction that I gave Yeri as she plays Monica, I basically told her most of the time, there’s not going to be dialogue for what she has to deliver. Everything that she has to convey has to be through her looks, her expressions, her gestures. And I told her everything that she does has to be very subtle.” “Garden of Eden is big.” “With the two kids, I just told them to go out and have fun. We didn’t want what they were doing to feel staged but to always feel as though we’re capturing them as children.”

By A.O. Scott

Minari is a leafy green vegetable ( sometimes called water celery or water dropwort ) popular in Korean cooking. In Lee Isaac Chung ’s lovely new film, it flourishes in an Arkansas creek bed, supplying a title, a precise bit of detail, and maybe also a metaphor.

Like the minari, Jacob and Monica Yi and their two children, Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and David (Alan Kim), are transplants. In the 1980s, reversing the path of an earlier, Dust Bowl migration, the family, originally from South Korea, has left California to take up farming near the Ozarks. The parents (Steven Yeun and Yeri Han) work as chicken sexers in a local poultry processing plant, but Jacob has entrepreneurial ambitions. Every year, he explains to his wife, 30,000 Koreans arrive in the United States, and he wants to grow the kind of produce that will give them a taste of home.

“Minari” is partly the story of his struggle to get the business off the ground. The film’s moods and rhythms — the gentle intensity of the scenes, the way the plot emerges from hard work, careful attention and the mysterious operations of the natural world — feel rooted in agrarian life.

This isn’t to say that everyone is happy on the farm. Home is a trailer propped up in the middle of a meadow, far from any neighbors. The isolation bothers Monica, who isn’t entirely sold on her husband’s plans. David, the younger child, has a heart condition that magnifies his mother’s worry. “Stop running!” she scolds him, an order that’s almost impossible for a 7-year-old boy in a wide-open space to obey.

The household expands — and the movie takes on layers of intergenerational drama and domestic comedy — with the arrival of Monica’s mother, Soonja ( Yuh-Jung Youn ). The children are put off by her old-country ways and the weird things she eats and drinks. “She’s not like a real grandma,” David complains. “She doesn’t bake cookies.” But the two of them forge a wary, increasingly close sitcom-style bond. Soonja teaches her grandson a card game that involves a lot of Korean swear words, and he introduces her to the pleasures of Mountain Dew.

A lot more happens, some of it predictable, some of it not. A warm sense of familiarity is one of the film’s charms. The chronicle of an immigrant family, often told through the eyes of a child, is a staple of American literature and popular culture. But every family — every family member, for that matter — has a distinct set of experiences and memories, and the fidelity to those is what makes “Minari,” in its circumspect, gentle way, moving and downright revelatory.

It’s not just that Chung, a Korean-American filmmaker in his early 40s who grew up on a farm in Arkansas, is drawing on what he knows. Any movie-watcher knows that real life can all too easily be falsified by melodrama or drowned in sentimentality. There is certainly plenty of emotion here; Jacob, who has some trouble with his well, could irrigate his crops with the audience’s tears. But Chung’s touch is careful and precise. Everything is weighed. Nothing is wasted.

There is no need — no time, no room — for cultural generalizations. David and Anne, in their early encounters with other children, are made aware that they are different. “Why is your face so flat?” a white boy asks David. It sounds almost like an innocent question. A girl rattles off nonsense syllables to Anne, saying “stop me when I say something in your language,” which somehow happens. But exoticism can be a two-way mirror, and America is a pretty outlandish place. Jacob makes fun of the local practice of looking for water with dowsing sticks, which offends his sense of rationality.

He also befriends Paul (Will Patton), a middle-aged fellow who served in Korea with the U.S. Army and who tries to banish evil spirits from the Yis’ property with prayer. Paul’s eccentricities — on Sunday, while his neighbors are in church, he carries a homemade crucifix along the rural back roads — are appreciated rather than mocked. People are different, after all.

Even members of the same family. “Minari” doesn’t insist on making its characters representative of anything but themselves. Youn is a sly scene-stealer, but that’s also true of her character, who infuses her daughter’s home with mischief, folk wisdom and mostly unspoken memories of war, poverty and other hardship.

She is tough but kind, and wise by virtue of having lived long and seen a lot. David and Anne — the big sister is a somewhat neglected figure in this group portrait — are as wide-open as satellite dishes, gathering information from every corner of the known universe and decoding it as well as they can. The grandmother and her grandchildren are free in a way that Jacob and Monica are not, hemmed in as they are by responsibilities, anxieties and promises that may prove difficult to keep.

Jacob is a traditional patriarch, but he’s also a young man who has taken an enormous risk, and his struggle to grow into a new version of himself is the film’s dramatic heart. Yeun, an effortlessly magnetic actor, finds the cracks in the character’s carefully cultivated reserve, the large, unsettled emotions behind the facade of stoicism.

It all seems simple and straightforward. “Minari” is modest, specific and thrifty, like the lives it surveys. There’s nothing small about it, though, because it operates at the true scale of life.

Minari Rated PG-13. In Korean and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.

A.O. Scott is a critic at large and the co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Review: After an exhausting 2020, the gentle ‘Minari’ is the movie we need right now

Steven Yeun and costars in the film "Minari."

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials .

In the opening moments of Lee Isaac Chung’s moving immigrant drama “Minari,” Monica (Yeri Han) looks out the station wagon window at the lush Ozark landscapes she’s passing through while following her husband, Jacob (Steven Yeun), on the way to their new home in rural Arkansas. When Jacob’s moving van pulls up to a mobile home in the middle of an isolated field and stops, the look of horror on Monica’s face calls to mind a line from another of the year’s finest movies, the David Byrne theatrical concert “American Utopia.”

“This is not my beautiful house!”

Monica asking herself, “Well, how did I get here?” is the starting point to “Minari,” the delicate, vividly textured story of a Korean couple who have decided (or, at least, the husband has) to move their two American-born children from California to a farm in the heartland to stake a claim for independence and a more meaningful life.

The movie, which won dramatic grand jury and audience awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival , takes its name from a hardy Korean herb that thrives if given time, an apt emblem for what this family — and most immigrant families — must sacrifice to pursue the American dream.

The story is mostly seen through the eyes of the precocious youngest child, David (newcomer Alan S. Kim), something of a stand-in for Chung himself, as he based the screenplay on his experience of growing up on a small farm in Lincoln, Ark., in the 1980s. This point of view lends “Minari” a feeling of dreamlike wonder, which is harmoniously conveyed through the storytelling, cinematographer Lachlan Milne’s gorgeous imagery and composer Emile Mosseri’s sublime score. For all the struggle that takes place in this movie, it is its quiet grace that you most remember. “Minari” shares its secrets with a whisper, and as it unfolds, you find yourself leaning into it, enraptured.

Jacob dreams of transforming his five acres into a farm full of Korean fruits and vegetables. But his ambitions are also more personal. He wants his children — David and the quiet Anne (Noel Kate Cho) — to see him succeed at something. “Daddy’s going to make a big garden,” he tells them. But when he scoops up a handful of the dark soil to impress the pragmatic Monica, she’s incredulous. For her, the farm risks throwing the family into financial and emotional ruin. Plus, she’s living in a home on wheels, something that could easily fly away if a tornado were to hit. (The distinction between a tornado watch and tornado warning is quickly discovered.)

As they did in California, the couple work as chicken sexers in a warehouse, sorting female chicks from the males, which are discarded because they’re “useless.” That’s how Jacob explains it to David, anyway, a comment on his own lingering feelings of inadequacy in this new country. He works the farm at night and weekends, leaving Monica alone. To alleviate her isolation, her mother, Soonja (Yuh-Jung Youn), is brought from Korea to stay with them. Their lives will never be the same.

Alan S. Kim and Yuh Jung Youn in “Minari.”

Soonja is both childish and wise, eccentric, often embarrassing, lewd and loving. Paired with the mischievous David, they make for a charismatic combo, lifting and changing the film with wonderfully observed humor. The Americanized David initially recoils at her arrival. Soonja doesn’t bake cookies and can’t cook or read. She’s not like a real grandma, he complains. Plus, she “smells like Korea,” an observation that prompts his father to tell Monica to “go get the stick.”

But the two soon bond, as Soonja intuits precisely what David needs. Because he has a heart murmur, David has had a relatively sheltered life, and he can feel his family’s anxiety. Soonja, an unpredictable force of nature, isn’t one for coddling, and their friendship eventually frees both David’s mind and spirit from worry. “Things that hide are more dangerous and scary,” she tells David, referring ostensibly to a snake they see by a stream, but really addressing the poison that comes from unexpressed feelings.

Youn, a star in Korea making her American feature film debut, is marvelous, as is the rest of the cast. Continuing his transition to film after years starring in “The Walking Dead” on TV, Yeun follows his flawless work in 2018’s South Korean success “Burning” with a subtle performance that reveals Jacob’s strengths and insecurities. In a world free from pandemic, the adorable Kim would’ve been charming film festival audiences all year long, walking red carpets in cowboy boots . Instead, we’ll just have to savor his sweet naturalism on the screen, a gift in this year filled with extraordinary unrest and pain.

But then, “Minari” in its entirety feels like a balm right now, a gentle, truthful and tender story of family filled with kind people trying to love one another the best they can. It’s filled with the specifics of Chung’s Korean American upbringing, but it’s also universal in its insights into the resiliency of the human spirit.

Chung has cited Flannery O’Connor’s writing as an inspiration for the way she portrayed rural Southerners searching for salvation. Her spirit courses through the film, finding its most obvious vessel in the character of Paul (Will Patton), a fervent Pentecostal who helps with the farm. One Sunday, the family encounters Paul carrying a wooden cross up a dirt road. “This is my church,” he explains, a remark that embodies the movie’s deep humanity and lingering mysteries.

Rating: PG-13, for some thematic elements and a rude gesture Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes Playing: In general release where theaters are open; available on VOD platforms Feb. 26

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‘Minari’ Review: Growing Up Korean Outside Little Rock, Arkansas

Korean American director Lee Isaac Chung looks back on his childhood in rural Arkansas with sensitivity and warmth.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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It took four movies before Lee Isaac Chung was ready to tell the kind of story first-timers so often rush to share straight out of the gate. Not a coming-of-age movie so much as a deeply personal and lovingly poetic rendering of his Korean American childhood — specifically, how it felt for his immigrant family to adjust to life in small-town Arkansas — “ Minari ” benefits from the maturity and perspective Chung brings to the project. Waiting until his early 40s to make sense of memories from when he was 6, the year his grandmother came to live with them in the U.S., Chung transforms the specificity of his upbringing into something warm, tender and universal.

Debuting in competition at Sundance , “Minari” quickly emerged as one of the strongest films of the 2020 edition, inspiring laughter and tears from predominantly white audiences. That’s significant because the Asian American experience remains vastly underrepresented in Hollywood, a glaring blind spot amid so many inclusion initiatives, whereas the reaction among Park City audiences — which culminated in a standing ovation — shows just how sincerely art-house audiences might connect to this bilingual family drama.

Still, it remains to be seen whether A24 can repeat the success of “The Farewell” (which had Awkwafina as a hook) when it releases the film later this year. Chung’s three previous narrative features weren’t exactly commercial. His first, the Rwanda-set “Munyurangabo,” premiered at Cannes, earning less than $1,000 when it played for one week on a single U.S. screen. The next two, “Lucky Life” and “Abigail Harm,” traveled the festival circuit but never played theaters. So the fact that “Minari” entered Sundance with a distributor in place is a happy miracle for a director who has always held true to his vision, and good news for audiences. (Of A24’s slate, “Minari” most resembles indie memoirs “Moonlight” and “Lady Bird.”)

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Who among us — especially those who’ve had to move to a new place — hasn’t felt like an outsider to some degree during our early years? In “Minari,” which reframes the American dream through a Korean lens, Jacob Yi (“Burning” star Steven Yuen) decides on behalf of his family that they stand a better chance in Arkansas than they did in California. On the West Coast, Jacob and his wife, Monica (Yeri Han), spent a decade scraping by with the money they earned chicken sexing — highly skilled but extremely monotonous work that involves checking the gender of thousands of chicks a day (the females are kept for eggs and meat; the males are discarded).

Jacob has located a hatchery halfway across the country where someone with his talents can find work (and where Monica’s slower pace won’t get her fired). But more importantly, land is a lot cheaper in Arkansas, and his dream is to quit the chicken biz and start a farm of distinctly Korean fruits and vegetables. Back in the ’80s, Chung’s dad tried to do the same thing, which explains why “Minari” is told from the perspective of the Yis’ youngest son, David (Alan S. Kim), who’s fast asleep in the back seat when the family pulls in to their driveway for the first time.

Monica isn’t thrilled by the scene that awaits, which Jacob presents like some kind of castle: It’s a secondhand, shotgun-style mobile home, propped up on cinder blocks. “Look, wheels!” David squeals in delight. The previous owner struck out trying to start a farm on the same property, and now the locals consider the place cursed. Like Sean Durkin’s “The Nest,” which premiered the same day at Sundance, “Minari” examines how, a short generation ago, a father might uproot his family and oblige them to move somewhere only he wants to be — although unlike “The Nest,” there’s nothing sinister underlying Chung’s approach.

Rather, he’s subtly attuned to shifting emotional dynamics between the two parents, who are constantly fighting. The arguments don’t seem so bad by indie-movie standards. In fact, there’s something about Chung’s style that seems almost conflict averse (during one dust-up, the kids make paper airplanes that say “Don’t fight” and launch them into their parents’ midst), so maybe he’s simply choosing not to dwell on the negative. For example, he never accompanies David or his slightly older sister, Anne (Noel Cho), to school, and the closest thing they experience to being bullied are insensitive questions from two ignorant kids they meet at church — which doesn’t mean such teasing won’t scar them. Chung hasn’t forgotten how it feels.

Still, there’s a gentleness to “Minari” that makes the entire film, even the setbacks, feel refreshing, like a catnap taken in full sun. Chung is now older than his parents were at the time, and that gives him a second perspective on things, which can be felt in scenes that David couldn’t possibly have witnessed: loving conversations between the grown-ups, for instance, or interactions with the Pentecostal field hand (Will Patton) whose help Jacob accepts.

When the adults tell David and Anne that their Korean grandmother will be moving in, the kids worry at first. Monica’s mother has been the source of off-screen disagreements, but when Soonja (Youn Yuh Jung) arrives, we instantly love her. David’s not so sure. She’s not at all what he expected, and he makes no effort to hide his disappointment, complaining that she “smells like Korea” and punishing her for the foul-tasting herbal remedy she makes him drink by preparing an even yuckier cocktail for her.

David has a heart murmur (his attentive mom is constantly forbidding him from running), and Soonja is just looking out for him. Obliged to share a room, the two eventually warm to each other, and early laughs blossom into deeper emotions as they grow closer. Given their respective conditions, it’s safe to assume that at least one of them won’t survive this delicate drama, although Chung avoids manipulating audiences on that front. Rather, “Minari” invites us to care about this family, and by the end, we’re so deeply invested, he doesn’t need to embellish. As written — but even more importantly, as performed by an all-around terrific ensemble — the characters are easy to admire, and even easier to love. So, raise a glass of Mountain Dew to Chung’s achievement, and run, don’t walk, to “Minari.”

Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 28, 2020. Running time: 115 MIN.

Production: An A24 release of a Plan B production. Producers: Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Christina Oh. Executive producers: Brad PItt, Steven Yeun.
Crew: Director, writer: Lee Isaac Chung. Camera: Lachlan Milne. Editor: Harry Yoon. Music: Emile Mosseri.
With: Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Youn Yuh Jung, Will Patton , Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Darryl Cox, Esther Moon.

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‘minari’: film review | sundance 2020.

Steven Yeun stars in 'Minari,' Lee Isaac Chung's autobiographical film about a Korean family trying to make it in 1980s Arkansas.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Most immigration stories are similar in a broad sense but distinctive in the details, which is certainly the case with Minari. A rare look at a Korean family trying to adapt and make a go of it in, of all places, 1980s Arkansas, Lee Isaac Chung’s autobiographical feature is warmly observant, gently humorous in the vein of Ozu and not shy about the awful strain the struggle places on the adults in the family. Mostly in English and universally relatable, this unusual Plan B production could enjoy modest success in theatrical release if properly promoted.

After having left Korea and then failing to make it in California, the family of four with mostly Americanized names — father Jacob (rising star Steven Yeun of Burning ), mother Monica (Yeri Han), daughter Soonj (Noel Kate Cho) and little son David (Alan S. Kim) — finds itself in an oversized prefab home in an otherwise seemingly uninhabited rural area. Mom and, briefly, Dad get the most meager jobs imaginable, separating male and female baby chicks in a factory barn (it’s called “chicken sexing”), but they’ve come all this way because Jacob firmly believes he can grow lots of crops on his 50 acres and find success as a farmer. “Korean people use their heads,” Jacob insists, with as much optimism as he can muster.

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Minari review: A beautiful and tender drama that wrestles with America’s folkloric image of itself

Lee isaac chung’s film has the gentle, hazy energy of a memory – set in the eighties, it draws partially from his own childhood experiences, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Lee Isaac Chung . Starring: Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Youn Yuh-jung, Will Patton. 12, 115 mins

This year, the Golden Globes hit a new low when it disqualified the beautiful and tender Minari from the Best Picture (Drama) race. Since its central, immigrant family often converse in Korean , it was treated purely as a foreign language film, despite being directed by an American, Lee Isaac Chung, produced by American companies, and set in the state of Arkansas.

Minari , in fact, is a profoundly American film that wrestles with the country’s folkloric image of itself as a promised land – or, as the film’s patriarch Jacob Yi ( Steven Yeun ) calls it, a “garden of Eden”. Jacob has become possessed by an idea: he’s moved his family from California to the rural south, where he hopes to grow the kinds of vegetables his fellow Korean-Americans have such a hard time getting their hands on. And so the Yis – Jacob, his wife Monica (Han Ye-ri), and their two children – say farewell to relative stability, with its regular work and tight-knit community. They live now in an elongated trailer, parked in a square of farmland that holds promise, but not much else.

Chung’s film has the gentle, hazy energy of a memory – set in the Eighties, it draws partially from his own childhood experiences. Lachlan Milne’s cinematography is drenched in golden rays, Emile Mosseri’s score twinkles like stars, and the narrative often focuses on Jacob and Monica’s endearing but mischievous son David (Alan Kim, who is impossible not to love). When his parents fight, he and his older sister Anne (Noel Kate Cho, who's more passive, but absorbs everything like a sponge) make paper airplanes scribbled with the words “Don’t fight!” and propel them into the air. Their white neighbours are shown in a fairly generous light. Their racism is limited to the odd ignorant comment and intrusive question.

But Minari allows its conflicts to coil up and release in the most surprising and affecting ways. An immigrant’s heart is a battleground between past and present, a home that once was and a home that is now. And Chung’s script allows those ideas to manifest in a world of signs and symbols, the very building blocks of the American myth. Jacob, at first, dismisses the pseudoscience of water divining, since “Korean people use their heads”. He’s baffled by Paul (Will Patton), the local kook who speaks in tongues, is seen dragging a large wooden cross down the road, and performs a banishing spell in their home to rid them of the spirit of a former occupant, who died by suicide after failing to cultivate the soil.

A reminder of what Jacob and his family left behind arrives in the form of Monica’s mother, Soon-ja (Korean screen legend Youn Yuh-jung, whose eyes sparkle like morning dew). She bears gifts: gochugaru (Korean chili peppers), anchovies, deer antler broth, and the minari plant. To David, who was born in California and always defaults to English, she’s a mystery – not at all what he believes a grandma should be. She doesn’t bake cookies but plays cards. Eventually, though, a kind of peace and understanding forms between them. Minari is a story of the American Dream. But Chung’s brilliance is in how he adds depth and complexity to those foundational ideas – it’s in the spaces in between that we find love, loss, hope, and regret.

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'Minari' review: Best movie you'll find anywhere about what it means to be a family

Out of the deceptive simplicity of "Minari" emerges a thing of beauty.

Now that "Minari" is heading into theaters and video on demand, you can finally see what all the fuss is about. Is it as good as the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild and the juries at the Sundance Film Festival and all the critics say it is? Nope, it's better. The pandemic has made the Oscars late this year—would you believe April 25? But expect this unassuming, but also unmissable and unforgettable slice of immigrant life to have a major impact when it's time to say, 'The envelope, please."

PHOTO: Steven Yeun in a scene from "Minari."

So what is "Minari" besides the best movie you'll find anywhere about what it means to be a family? If you want to get literal about it, minari is a resilient Korean plant with the strength to grow even in rough soil, even when it's been plowed under. Writer-director Lee Isaac Chung used his own childhood as a jumping-off point for a film about his Korean-American parents and their struggle to create a better life in rural Arkansas in the 1980s.

MORE: 'The White Tiger' review: Director Ramin Bahrani keeps you on the edge of your seat

In a cast that could not be better, Steven Yeun—best known as a zombie hunter on "The Walking Dead" and brilliant as a playboy sociopath in "Burning"—is sheer perfection as Jacob Yi, an American dreamer who has brought his wife Monica (the excellent Yeri Han) and their two children—Anne (Noel Cho) and her younger brother (and Chung stand-in), David (Alan S. Kim)— to pursue his dream of farming his way to financial independence. "Look, wheels," said David, the only one excited at calling home a trailer hoisted up on cinderblocks.

Download the all new "Popcorn With Peter Travers " podcasts on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Tunein , Google Play Music and Stitcher .

The Yi family has had it rough, previously living in Los Angeles where Jacob and Monica earned money at chicken sexing — separating useless males from females, who could be sold for eggs and meat. Yeun is deeply moving as Jacob desperately holds on to the hope that he will be the one to grow crops on land where others have failed catastrophically. The tension between Jacob and Monica escalates so much that the kids fly paper planes at them saying, "Don't fight."

PHOTO: Yeri Han and Steven Yeun in "Minari."

Chung uses jokes to relieve stress when the family drinks Mountain Dew thinking it's healthy water from the mountains. The humor grows deeper with the arrival of Monica's widowed mother, Soonja (Yuh-Jung Youn) is so good the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress seems well within her reach). "Grandma smells like Korea!" gripes David when he's told to share a room with the swearing old woman who'd rather gamble on pro wrestling than spoil the kids.

MORE: 'The Midnight Sky' review: George Clooney's film finds its heart in its actors

It would be wrong to mistake the director's gentle approach to storytelling for softness or fake sentiment. No matter how obliquely Chung renders racist bullying or the attempted assimilation of the Yi family with white outsiders, including an evangelical Christian farmhand (Will Patton), he never shies from the hurt that comes with love, loss and the effort it takes to simply belong. Out of the deceptive simplicity of "Minari," which honestly earns every laugh and tear it delivers, emerges a thing of beauty.

Summary A tender and sweeping story about what roots us, Minari follows a Korean-American family that moves to a tiny Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. The family home changes completely with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed, but incredibly loving grandmother. Amidst the instability and challenges of this new life in the ... Read More

Directed By : Lee Isaac Chung

Written By : Lee Isaac Chung

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‘Minari’ is a movie about the immigrant experience that’s both universal and surprising

To call “Minari” uncannily timely almost does it a disservice. This modestly scaled but enormously heartfelt drama touches on any number of so-called hot buttons, including immigration, assimilation, the American Dream and the fluctuations of identity. But it’s not about those things. Rather, this is the funny, sad, inspiring and ultimately universal story of how one family experiences displacement and belonging, in ways that never quite line up with conventional expectations.

“Minari” opens as a Korean woman named Monica (Yeri Han) drives her two children Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and David (Alan Kim) to their new home, a low-slung, ramshackle farmhouse set in the middle of a field in rural Arkansas. The family’s patriarch, Jacob (Steven Yeun), has picked it out: After trying to make a go of it in California, he has decided that his fortunes lie in growing Korean vegetables in the Ozarks, a dream he is determined to make a reality while he and Monica work at a nearby chicken plant.

Viewers may think that they can predict what comes next: Jacob and his family will encounter nativist hostility from their insular neighbors; Anne and David will endure heartbreak as they try to fit in; Jacob’s aspirations will be dramatically rewarded. Or melodramatically dashed.

Well, yes and no. The great strength of “Minari” is that writer-director Lee Isaac Chung is far too perceptive and confident in his own story to make it conform to predetermined beats. Based on his own childhood in the 1980s, growing up on a small farm in Arkansas, “Minari” possesses the unforced, utterly convincing rhythms of life as it really unfolds: with humor, conflict, disappointment, moments of unexpected grace and perseverance that is no less heroic for being so finely drawn and understated.

It’s difficult to describe what makes “Minari” so appealing without spoiling its myriad surprises — sequences that were no doubt inspired by Chung’s own upbringing that ring with truth and also wacky eccentricity. Things get a lot saltier when Monica’s mother Soonja shows up to help out with the kids; played by Yuh-Jung Youn in a deadpan performance that has already earned its share of critics awards, this flinty character takes the archetype of potty-mouthed granny into territory that is simultaneously warmly familiar and winningly new.

Equally gratifying is the way Chung depicts encounters between Jacob’s family and their Arkansan neighbors, neatly sidestepping glib stereotypes to illuminate more nuanced realities. At first, Will Patton might seem to be going perilously over the top with the man who helps Jacob in the fields, a fundamentalist Christian who is given to speaking in tongues and carrying a giant wooden cross down country roads every Sunday. But as their friendship deepens, what threatened to be a trite culture clash turns into something far more interesting.

The same could be said for the plot of “Minari,” which in some ways follows a tried-and-true formula but, thanks to the filmmaker’s sure hand and the easy chemistry of his cast, never feels predictable or stale. “Minari” is that rarity in a cinematic culture dominated by shallow bombast or pretentious transgression for its own sake: It’s a good movie, executed with affectionate humor, wistful honesty and tender care. You should see it. You won’t be sorry.

PG-13. Available at afisilver.afi.com , themiracletheatre.com and screeningroom.a24films.com ; also at area theaters. Available Feb. 26 on various streaming platforms. Contains some mature thematic elements and a rude gesture. In Korean and English with subtitles. 115 minutes.

'Minari' review: Best movie you'll find anywhere about what it means to be a family

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The 44 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now (April 2024)

Spring is finally in the air, but that doesn't mean you can't still stay in and have a great movie night. As new plants start to grow, so does Netflix's movie selection, from romances like Love & Basketball and Set It Up to recent Oscar contenders like Rustin and Nyad . Whether you're looking for something deep and thought-provoking or light for the whole family, there are a plethora of incredible films on Netflix. With over 40 amazing movies on this list alone, it can be difficult to choose, but our carefully written recommendations will help you find just what you're looking for.

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Rotten tomatoes: 83% | imdb: 8.7/10.

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Written and directed by the Wachowskis , The Matrix is a science fiction film that stars Keanu Reeves as a hacker who discovers that the world he lives in is an illusion crafted by malevolent Artificial Intelligence. The movie also stars Laurence Fishburne , Carrie-Anne Moss , and Hugo Weaving and spawned a franchise that includes three sequels and an animated anthology. The Matrix is an ambitious movie that presents the very best in technical filmmaking, winning the Oscars for Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, and Best Sound Editing. The performances are solid, the action is spectacular, and the plot is intricately crafted. The film’s narrative style feels quite surreal, drawing the audience into its ever-expanding world in a way that feels like a blend of Hong Kong action movies, cyberpunk anime, and 1990s techno-futurism. It’s dystopian, slick, and easily one of the best films ever made in its genre.

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'Molly's Game' (2017)

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Lee Isaac Chung ’s 2020 drama film Minari is a semi-autobiographical story based on Chung's childhood. The movie is set in the 80s and follows a South Korean immigrant family that moves from California to rural Arkansas. Chung wrote and directed the film, which stars Steven Yeun , Han Ye-ri , Alan Kim , Noel Kate Cho , and Youn Yuh-jung , who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.

Minari premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the US Dramatic Audience Award. The film received critical praise for its direction and screenplay, as well as for the performances of its talented cast. Minari expresses its intimate multi-generational story through a beautifully shot narrative, and it’s widely regarded as one of the best films of the 2020s so far.

'Love & Basketball' (2000)

Rotten tomatoes: 85% | imdb: 7.2/10, love & basketball.

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Director Gina Prince-Bythewood

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Rotten tomatoes: 91% | imdb: 7.4/10.

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'Elvis' (2022)

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Read Our Review

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Even if you just watch the trailer for American Symphony, you will be in tears. The documentary tells the story of Grammy winner Jon Batiste and his wife, Suleika Jaouad , as they live a life of drastic contrast. While Batiste continues to take over the music world, Jaouad goes through an intense battle with cancer. Jaouad begins chemotherapy on the same day Batiste is nominated for 11 Grammy Awards – an obviously unplanned detail that sums up the entire message of the film: that a wonderful thing and terrible thing can happen at the same time. Over the course of the documentary, Batiste is writing a composition that he plans to play for one night only at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

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'Nyad' (2023)

Rotten tomatoes: 86% | imdb: 7.1/10.

Release Date November 3, 2023

Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin

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Oscar winners Annette Bening and Jodie Foster dominate in the biographical sports drama Nyad . Directed by documentarians Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin , Nyad is their feature directorial debut, which benefits from their experience capturing authenticity. As expected from most sports dramas and biopics, Nyad shares a story of perseverance, the triumphs of determination, and a message of hope, showcased by the undeniable on-screen power of Bening and Foster.

The actors’ dedication to truth in storytelling, as well as their chemistry, shine alongside the smart script written by Julia Cox . Nyad engages the audience with its solid foundation while entertaining through grounded drama based on reality instead of relying on cheap cliches. - Yael Tygiel

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Rotten tomatoes: 90% | imdb: 7.9/10, society of the snow.

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Runtime 144 minutes

Genres Biography, Drama, Thriller, History, Adventure

In 1972, a Uruguayan flight crashed while carrying a rugby team on their way to Chile, and the survivors of the wreck had to work together to survive in the treacherously cold weather of the Andes. This real-life event is the subject of J.A. Bayona 's film Society of the Snow , which tackles the incredible story of the survivors and their attempts to survive for two months in the mountains. Director Bayona got the idea for the film upon discovering the book The Society of the Snow , which was written by Pablo Vierci , and used the same name for his film. The cast, largely composed of newcomers in the acting world, is completely composed of Uruguayan and Argentinian performers.

The film was nominated for two Oscars, including Best International Feature Film, a Golden Globe for Best Non-English Language Film, and a Critic's Choice Award for the same category. With a budget of 60 million euros, The Society of Snow is the most expensive Spanish film ever made. With music by Michael Giacchino , the film is acclaimed for its emotional undertone and important message. - Emily Cappello

'May December' (2023)

Rotten tomatoes: 90% | imdb: 6.9/10, may december.

Release Date December 1, 2023

Director Todd Haynes

Cast Andrea Frankle, Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Charles Melton

Runtime 117 minutes

While watching May December , I found myself laughing out loud almost as much as I was cringing. I also found myself looking online afterward to see if my reaction was “normal.” This kaleidoscope viewing experience shows the brilliance of May December and how its subject matter — a thirty-six-year-old woman entering into a relationship with a seventh grader and having his three children — will dramatically change depending on the person telling the story. The plot follows actress Elizabeth ( Natalie Portman ) as she shadows Gracie ( Julianne Moore ), the controversial woman (and sex offender) who inspired Elizabeth’s latest film role. Or, depending on your point of view, it’s about Gracie’s experience as Elizabeth enters and disrupts the parts of her she’s been able to keep hidden. Or it’s about Gracie’s much, much younger husband, Joe ( Charles Melton ), as he discovers what Elizabeth’s presence means about his own life.

Written and directed by Todd Haynes , the film was inspired by the real-life relationship between teacher Mary Kay Letourneau and her sixth-grade student, Vili Fualaau. The two had children together and eventually married upon Letourneau’s release from prison, as Gracie and Joe did in May December . While it seems impossible that, given these themes, the film would have any laugh-out-loud moments, Haynes has crafted the story in such a way that it’s aware of its own absurdity. And, perhaps, we would find humor in the smallest moments, like Gracie dramatically revealing they “need more hot dogs” just to forget the insanity of the situation we’ve found ourselves in as an audience. - Emily Cappello

'Maestro' (2023)

Rotten tomatoes: 79% | imdb: 6.7/10.

Release Date December 20, 2023

Director Bradley Cooper

Cast Alexa Swinton, Michael Urie, Gideon Glick, Sarah Silverman, Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Miriam Shor, Maya Hawke, Matt Bomer

Runtime 129 minutes

Genres Biography, Drama, Music

One of the most talked-about films of 2023, Maestro tells the story of American composer Leonard Bernstein ( Bradley Cooper ), his rise to fame, and how that fame affected his relationship with long-time love Felicia Montealegre ( Carey Mulligan ). Directed and co-written by Cooper alongside screenwriter Josh Singer , the film was produced by cinema heavy hitters Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg . The film won the American Film Institute (AFI)’ s “Movie of the Year” and was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, including “Best Motion Picture, Drama,” “Best Director,” and “Best Performance by a Male Actor” for Cooper and “Best Performer by Female Actor” for Mulligan. It co-stars Matt Bomer ( In Time ), Vincent Amato ( Unbroken ), and comedian Sarah Silverman .

Leonard Bernstein began his career as an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic and rose to fame when he filled in for the main conductor, who had fallen ill. Maestro follows Bernstein as he meets and marries Felicia Montealegre, who struggles with her new husband’s infidelity. While Bernstein goes on to compose some of the most famous music in American history, including West Side Story , he struggles with alcohol and other substances, causing more issues in his marriage. - Emily Cappello

'Set It Up' (2018)

Rotten tomatoes: 92% | imdb: 6.5/10.

Two corporate executive assistants hatch a plan to match-make their two bosses.

Release Date June 15, 2018

Director Claire Scanlon

Cast Lucy Liu, Zoey Deutch, Taye Diggs, Glen Powell

Runtime 105 minutes

Genres Romance, Comedy

Read Our Review Anyone who knows me knows I’m a rom-com junkie — obsessed to the point of running a podcast on it, actually. So it’s no surprise that Set It Up , Netflix’s 2018 original film starring Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell , is easily my favorite movie the streamer has on offer, even five years after its premiere. While they’ve made plenty of other rom-coms since the film was released, the story of two down-on-their-luck executive assistants who attempt to set their bosses up with each other for a little free time is easily still their best.

While it’s not the first time Powell and Deutch starred together — that award goes to Richard Linklater ’s Everybody Wants Some!! — and both have gone onto much bigger projects, it’s a sweet and heartwarming film that’s easy to get into, even if the comedy’s a bit cringe-worthy. It’s rare to find rom-coms made after 2005 whose leads have such immediate, entertaining, and believable chemistry and even rarer to find a cast filled with heavyweights who are just as much fun — can you believe this film also boasts the likes of Lucy Liu , Taye Diggs , and Pete Davidson ? Not to mention it’s an easy hour and forty-five minutes, perfect for watching (and rewatching, as I do) whenever you want a little fun in your life. — Maggie Boccella, News Editor

'It Follows' (2015)

Rotten tomatoes: 95% | imdb: 6.8/10.

Release Date March 15, 2015

Director David Robert Mitchell

Cast Loren Bass, Carollette Phillips, Bailey Spry, Lili Sepe, Keir Gilchrist, Maika Monroe

Runtime 100 minutes

Genres Thriller, Horror

Read Our Review In a world filled with remakes and reboots, It Follows defied the norm by finding an original way to tell a mysterious horror story. The story follows Jay ( Maika Monroe ), a teenager who has sex with a guy named Hugh ( Jake Weary ), whom she doesn’t know very well. Afterward, Hugh tells her that she’s inherited a curse that he's now free of. Jay starts to be followed by a phantom who wishes her dead, and the only way Jay can get rid of the curse is if she sleeps with someone else, passing it along to them.

It Follows premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, where it was then a part of a limited theatrical release before moving to a nationwide release in 2015. Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell ( Under the Silver Lake ), audiences raved about the movie not just for its originality but also for their different interpretations of the meaning behind the plot. Throughout its time in theaters, the film continually received great reviews for its terrifying scares and for its deeper meaning. As of October 2023, a sequel is in the works entitled They Follow . - Emily Cappello

'Burning' (2018)

Rotten tomatoes: 95% | imdb: 7.5/10.

Release Date May 17, 2018

Director Chang-dong Lee

Cast Seong-kun Mun, Seung-ho Choi, Soo-Kyung Kim, Jong-seo Jeon, Ah In Yoo, Steven Yeun

Runtime 148 minutes

Genres Drama, Mystery

Based on the short story “Barn Burning” by Haruki Murakami , Burning is a South Korean-Japanese thriller written and directed by Lee Chang-dong in his first film after an eight-year hiatus. The film focuses on Lee Jong-su ( Yoo Ah-in ) after he runs into an old classmate named Shin Hae-mi ( Jeon Jong-seo ), who asks him to feed her cat while she’s away. Jong-su obliges, but upon Hae-mi’s return with a mysterious man named Ben ( Steven Yeun ), things take an odd turn. When Ben admits his illegal and dangerous hobby to Jong-su, Jong-su becomes worried for Hae-mi’s safety. It's a story that knows how to heighten the tension little by little and, by the end, has viewers' hearts racing.

Burning premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, where it won the International Critics’ Prize and was then released in South Korea and later in the United States. Perhaps more impressive, the film was voted as the best Korean film of all time on Korean Screen. Burning appeared on many critics’ “Top 10” lists for 2018, with critics at The A.V. Club and The Los Angeles Times rating it number one. The film also made some “Best Films of the Decade” Lists, proving the power of the writing, directing, and the three lead actors’ performances. - Emily Cappello

'Mobile Suit Gundam I' (1981)

Imdb: 7.9/10, mobile suit gundam i.

Release Date January 1, 1981

Runtime 2 hr 17 min

Genres Animation, Action, Adventure

In outer space, an interplanetary war is raging. This is the story of Mobile Suit Gundam I , a Japanese animated action and adventure movie based on an animated series of the same name. While the battle rages on in the Solar System, there is hope in the form of a mobile battle suit named the “Gundam,” but there’s one problem: the only person able to pilot the massive machinery is a boy named Amuro Ray ( Toru Furuya ). Now, Amuro must fight alongside other kids to save themselves and their families as the war rages on. The film also stars Hirotaka Suzuoki , Toshio Furukawa , Kiyonobu Suzuki , and Shôzô îzuka .

The film, directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Ryoji Fujiwara , premiered in Japan in 1981 and acted as a compilation of episodes 1-13 of the popular Animated series Mobile Suit Gundam . Later dubbed in English and released on VHS tape in the United States in 1999, both the film and its original show material were suddenly popular worldwide, finding a completely new fanbase with English-speaking audiences. - Emily Cappello

'Miss Juneteenth' (2020)

Rotten tomatoes: 99% | imdb: 6.6/10, miss juneteenth.

Release Date June 19, 2020

Cast Kendrick Sampson, Nichole Beharie

Runtime 1 hr 43 min

Miss Juneteenth follows the story of single mother Turquoise ( Nicole Beharie , who won a Gotham award for Best Actress for the role) as she enters her fifteen-year-old daughter Kai ( Alexis Chikaeze ) into the Miss Juneteenth Pageant. Kai is rebellious and doesn’t follow the path her mother has laid out for her willingly, but she ends up making Turquoise proud nonetheless.

When Miss Juneteenth premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020, it received critical praise and a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize in the “Dramatic” category. The film continued its victory lap with wins at the SXSW Film Festival, where it won the Louis Black/Lone Star Award, as well as numerous other honors from different festivals across the US. The film had a prominent release date to video-on-demand: June 19, 2020: the 155th anniversary of the holiday Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. The film tackles the significance of the holiday while also bringing in other themes within the characters’ lives. In January 2021, it was announced that Miss Juneteenth would be adapted into a television series with NBCUniversal, but it is still listed as “in development.” - Emily Cappello

'Paddington' (2014)

Rotten tomatoes: 97% | imdb: 7.3/10.

Release Date November 24, 2014

Director Paul King

Cast Theresa Watson, Geoffrey Palmer, Lottie Steer, Madeleine Worrall, Tim Downie, Imelda Staunton

Genres Family, Animation, Comedy, Adventure

The filmmakers of 2014’s Paddington had big, fuzzy shoes to fill. Based on the beloved children’s books by Michael Bond that premiered in 1958, Paddington Bear was already known worldwide when he hit the big screen, putting a lot of pressure on the film’s creators to get him right. The story follows a computer-animated Paddington, voiced by Ben Whishaw , as he travels from Peru to London to find a home under the advice of his uncle (the late, great Michael Gambon ) and aunt ( Imelda Staunton , another Harry Potter alum). There, Paddington meets the Brown family, played by Hugh Bonneville ( Notting Hill ), Sally Hawkins ( The Shape of Water ), Madeleine Harris ( Man Down ), and Samuel Joslin ( The Impossible ), who take Paddington home with them. All is going swell until Paddington catches the interest of a taxidermist.

The film was widely critically praised, earning $282 million at the box office and generating a sequel that is regarded by some to be one of the best films ever made. The film is fun and light and also has a surprising amount of depth for what might be viewed as a “kid’s movie.” It contains an all-star cast, with additional stars like Julie Walters ( Billy Elliot ), Nicole Kidman ( The Hours ), and Matt Lucas ( Bridesmaids ), and an excellent score by Nick Urata . The film won awards from the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and a British Screenwriters’ Award for Best Screenplay by Paul King. It was also nominated for two BAFTA Awards. No matter your age, Paddington is sure to put a smile on your face. - Emily Cappello

'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' (1975)

Rotten tomatoes: 96% | imdb: 8.2/10, monty python and the holy grail.

Release Date May 25, 1975

Director Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

Cast Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, John Cleese, Eric Idle

Runtime 91 minutes

Genres Comedy, Adventure, Fantasy

Monty Python and the Holy Grail follows the exploits of King Arthur of the Britains ( Graham Chapman ) as he tries to recruit knights to join his court at Camelot. He faces many obstacles in this journey, such as anarcho-syndicalist peasants and a stubborn Black Knight, but eventually, he recruits Sir Bedevere ( Terry Jones ), Sir Lancelot ( John Cleese ), Sir Robin ( Eric Idle ), Sir Galahad ( Michael Palin ) and Sir Not Appearing In This Film. They are then tasked by God (Graham Chapman) with retrieving the Holy Grail, an arduous task filled with perils they cannot imagine.

Though incredibly stressful on the cast and crew due to behind-the-scenes troubles, Holy Grail has become one of the most beloved comedies of all time. The Pythons already enjoyed a lot of success thanks to their unique brand of surrealism mixed with biting British whit, but Holy Grail adds a dash of antiquity by using Arthurian legend as its setting. In fact, there’s little action in the film: everything is carried by the camaraderie of the Pythons and the hilarity of their situations. Many of its jokes have become cemented in popular culture, ensuring that, even if audiences haven’t experienced Monty Python before, they'll be familiar with its comedy. - Tyler B. Searle

'Phantom Thread' (2017)

Phantom thread.

Director Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast Harriet Leitch, Joan Brown, Sue Clark, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville, Daniel Day-Lewis

Genres Drama, Romance, Psychological

In the 1950s setting of Phantom Thread , Daniel Day Lewis ’s character, Reynolds, does everything by the book. He lives his life as structured and measured as he tailors clothing with great care and concentration. That is, until he meets Alma ( Vicky Krieps ), a woman who completely disrupts the order of his life. Complicating matters is Reynolds’s sister, Cyril ( Lesley Manville ), who runs the business side of Reynolds’s life. The introduction of Alma creates a ripple effect as Reynolds hires her to be his assistant while also making her his lover and muse. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson ( There Will Be Blood ), Phantom Thread explores both familial and romantic relationships while delivering powerhouse acting performances from its leading trio of actors .

The film opened in 2018 to rave reviews despite its lackluster box office performance. It received five Oscar nominations and secured one win for Best Achievement in Costume Design by Mark Bridges . Bridges won this same award at the BAFTA Awards as well as the Critics’ Choice Awards . Also highlighted was the film’s hauntingly beautiful score by Jonny Greenwood , whose previous work with writer-director Anderson has proven they are a winning pair. - Emily Cappello

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CinemaCon 2024: Day 3 - Disney Previews Deadpool & Wolverine , Moana 2 , Alien: Romulus , and More

We break down all the biggest news coming out of las vegas' cinemacon 2024, where studios and their theatrical partners present a look at the year ahead..

TAGGED AS: movies , news

Wednesday, April 10

Universal studios and focus features electrify cinemacon with nosferatu , twisters , wicked , and more.

Universal Studios ended the Wednesday presentations at CinemaCon with a look ahead to their upcoming slate and preview glimpses of some of their most anticipated titles, ranging from family fare to terrifying horror.

(Photo by Focus Features)

We’ve gotten a few images from Robert Eggers’ upcoming horror remake Nosferatu , but Focus Features shared the very first trailer with audiences today at CinemaCon. The film, a long-gestating passion project for Eggers, stars Lily-Rose Depp as a young woman who becomes the object of desire for a terrifying vampire played by Bill Skarsgård , with a supporting cast that includes Nicholas Hoult , Willem Dafoe , Aaron Taylor-Johnson , and Emma Corrin . In the trailer, we see Depp’s character praying by candlelight before the camera makes ominous, sweeping movements to showcase the setting of the film. Later Depp asks, “Professor, does evil come from within us or beyond?” and we see images of fire, blood, and a stake in the heart. In other words, good times all around.

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo present Wicked (2024) at CinemaCon 2024

(Photo by David Becker/WireImage)

One of the larger presentations from Universal was the one that ended the event, and what a fantastic ending it was. Producer Mark Platt, director Jon M. Chu , and stars Jeff Goldblum , Michelle Yeoh , Jonathan Bailey , and of course Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande took the stage to talk about their experiences making Wicked , with Chu in particular getting emotional as he sang the praises of Erivo and Grande: “Boy, did they blow the roof off this thing.” The audience was also treated to an exclusive look at the upcoming film, due out on November 27, 2024, which showcased the relationship between the two main characters, the practical sets, and rich costuming, as well as a hint of the conflict at the center of the film.

Anthony Ramos and Glen Powell speak onstage during the Universal Pictures and Focus Features Presentation during CinemaCon 2024

Wicked wasn’t the only tornado-related title to grace the stage at CinemaCon today, as director Lee Isaac Chung presented his upcoming film Twisters with some help from his stars Glen Powell , Daisy Edgar-Jones , and Anthony Ramos . Chung, who makes the leap to blockbuster spectacle after his decidedly smaller-scale Oscar-winning 2020 drama Minari , explained how the process was just as frightening for him as facing a tornado and talked about making the film “as immersive and real as possible.” After a fun bit when Edgar-Jones brought large fans onto the stage to blow water, leaves, and an inflatable cow at Powell and Ramos, the group shared a reel of new work-in-progress footage, depicting the formation of the storm-chasing team and the destructive power of a mega tornado formed from two smaller ones.

Other Items

Illumination debuted a new sequence from Despicable Me 4 (7/3/24) featuring new characters and Steve Carell’ s Gru dealing with fatherhood
Universal highlighted its horror offerings, including an emphasis on Jordan Peele projects, and announced a sequel to video game adaptation Five Nights at Freddy’s
Leigh Whannell’ s new version of Wolf Man , which stars Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner and just kicked off production, presented some early footage
James Watkins’ English-language remake of the 2022 Danish thriller Speak No Evil , starring James McAvoy , debuted its first trailer
Director Chris Sanders and star Lupita Nyong’o presented unfinished footage of their upcoming animated film The Wild Robot for DreamWorks
Focus Features also screened teasers for titles like Back to Black , The Bikeriders , and Conclave

Lionsgate Previews John Wick Spin-Off Ballerina , Michael Jackson Biopic Michael , and More

Day 2 of CinemaCon began with Lionsgate previewing over a dozen titles at The Colosseum Theater at Caesar’s Palace.

John Wick Presents: Ballerina

(Photo by Gabe Ginsberg, Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images)

Baba Yaga is back! As revealed in first-look footage shown at the presentation, Keanu Reeves will reprise his role as John Wick in the new spin-off movie Ballerina . The film, which has been officially retitled John Wick Presents: Ballerina , will be set between John Wick: Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 and will follow Ana De Armas’ title character on her journey to become a legendary assassin. At one point in the sneak peek, she asks Wick, “How do I start doing what you do?” to which he replies, “Looks like you already have.” Expect De Armas and Ballerina to deliver on another exciting installment in the franchise as the film matches John Wick’ s slick visuals and over-the-top action sequences. Keanu isn’t the only returning face for the film, though, as both Anjelica Huston and Ian McShane briefly appeared in the footage. Walking Dead alumnus Norman Reedus was also featured, teasing a villainous turn.

Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in Michael (2025)

(Photo by Kevin Mazur/Lionsgate)

Producer Graham King took the stage to introduce the world to Michael , coming to theaters in April of 2025. The Michael Jackson biopic looks to follow in the footsteps of his previous hit Bohemian Rhapsody . He revealed the film will feature over 30 songs from Jackson’s career as the story unfolds over the course of the singer’s life. First-look footage showed Jaafar Jackson, Michael’s real-life nephew, stepping into MJ’s shoes and hitting his signature dance moves on a concert stage. The event film, directed by Antoine Fuqua , hopes to match the words uttered by Jackson in the footage: “It’s just not a sound. It moves through your body, transports your entire being. That is what I want the world to feel — magic.”

Good Fortune

Ballerina wasn’t the only time we saw Keanu this morning. In an extended first look at Aziz Ansari’ s Good Fortune , it was revealed the star will play an angel in the upcoming comedy. Reeves’ Gabriel looks to change the life of Ansari’s down-on-his-luck character by allowing him to switch places with a wealthy man played by Seth Rogen . When the situation doesn’t work out quite as expected, Gabriel loses his wings, making him human and leading him to become Rogen’s roommate. The always hilarious Ansari came on stage to thank exhibitors who “left the strip club this morning to come to the presentation” and say that he doesn’t buy into the idea that theatrical comedies aren’t a thing. “People do want to come to the theater and laugh together. I think we can do it. I don’t think we can say this genre doesn’t work.”

Henry Cavill hits the stage to talk Highlander , In the Grey , and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

Henry Cavill at the Lionsgate presentation at CinemaCon 2024

(Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images)

Henry Cavill joined the CinemaCon fun to discuss three upcoming titles he’s working on with Lionsgate. Coming to theaters next week, he reunites with Guy Ritchie on The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare . The actor/director pair will team up again next year when In The Grey hits theaters in January. In a first look at the film’s trailer, Cavill is joined by Jake Gyllenhaal and Eiza Gonzalez as a team that sets out to recover billions of dollars in stolen money. Marked by big explosions, action scenes, and comedy, the movie aims to be another huge blockbuster from Ritchie. Most notably, Cavill also discussed his revival of the Highlander franchise, promising a film deep in lore and action, saying, “If you thought you saw me do sword work before, you haven’t seen anything yet.” The new film, dubbed The Highlander , is set to open next year.

Never Let Go

Halle Berry at the Lionsgate red carpet at CinemaCon 2024

(Photo by Brenton Ho/Variety via Getty Images)

Halle Berry is set to star in her first horror film in over 20 years in Never Let Go . In an exclusive look at the first trailer, Berry plays a single mother protecting her twin sons as terrifying creatures lurk outside their home in a post-apocalyptic world. “It’s like a dark, beautiful nightmare,” says Berry. On why she’s returning to the genre: “I’m a bona fide adrenaline junkie… I’ve always liked these type of movies. As a child, The Shining was one of my favorites.” Directed by The Hills Have Eyes and Crawl’ s Alexandre Aja , Never Let Go is scheduled to open in theaters on September 27.

Borderlands

Eli Roth and Ariana Greenblatt attend Lionsgate's presentation at CinemaCon 2024

(Photo by Greg Doherty/Getty Images for Lionsgate)

The CinemaCon crowd was treated to a first look at the new trailer for Borderlands . The footage previewed even more action, explosions, sarcasm, and Jack Blackin ‘ than the first trailer, channeling major Guardians of the Galaxy vibes for this video game adaptation. Director Eli Roth and star Ariana Greenblatt joined the presentation and shared just how much fun they had with their “dysfunctional, functional family.” Roth revealed he made Greenblatt watch My Dinner with Andre and Andy Warhol’s Empire as a way to prep for her role — and mess with her a little bit.

A quick intro to the presentation spotlighted The Highlander , Destin Daniel Cretton’s live-action Naruto adaptation, and Now You See Me 3 from Venom director Ruben Fleischer
Blumhouse will be producing a new Blair Witch movie
Working in partnership with Hasbro, Margot Robbie’ s production company LuckyChap will bring a Monopoly movie to the big screen
Upcoming horror film The Strangers: Chapter 1 presented a special look at the film, with the three masked characters showing up on stage
The reboot of The Crow , starring Bill Skarsgård , also debuted gruesome new footage in a sneak peek of the film
Audiences got their first glimpses of the Dave Bautista action comedy The Killer’s Game , Mel Gibson’s Mark Wahlberg thriller Flight Risk , and Joe Carnahan’s action film Shadow Force

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By Stephen Aspeling 15 April 2024

10 Rotten Tomatoes-approved movies on Showmax: ranked

It may be a strange name for a movie review aggregator website, but Rotten Tomatoes speaks to the practice of throwing rotten tomatoes at poor stage performances and was derived by Senh Duong while watching French-Canadian comedy drama, Léolo. A die-hard fan of Jackie Chan, it was Rush Hour that prompted him to start Rotten Tomatoes in order to chart the critical reception of Chan’s first Hollywood crossover in the United States.

Rush Hour holds a 62% score with Léolo listed at 90% on the Tomatometer, making both movies fresh. A common misconception, a movie with a 90% rating isn’t a 9/10 but rather a film where 90% of Rotten Tomatoes critics thought it was good enough to be rated fresh. There are only about 100 Certified Fresh films that have managed to crack the perfect 100% Score Club. In this spirit of aspiring to a 100% Tomatometer rating, we’ve ranked the top-rated films now streaming on Showmax.

1. Kanarie (100%)

Set in 1984, this fiercely original coming-of-age musical war drama comes from visionary writer-director Christiaan Olwagen. Kanarie tracks the sexual awakening of a small town boy who’s conscripted into the South African Defence Force concert choir, better known as the “Canaries”. This powerful and provocative fish-out-of-water drama could be described as a compelling blend of Full Metal Jacket and Sing Street.

Featuring a strong cast, timely themes and bold direction, Kanarie is shot in a series of continuous single shots, making the film play out like a stage production. Schalk Bezuidenhout is almost unrecognisable in the lead as Johan, dropping the prolific stand up comic’s trademark bouncy hair, moustache and out-of-season jerseys for an inspired and memorable performance.

2. Get Out (98%)

Get Out is one of the best horror thrillers because it offers tightly wound suspense and serves as a deep-rooted social commentary on race relations in America. The chilling film is taken from the perspective of Chris, who stumbles through a series of unsettling events while visiting his girlfriend’s family estate on an awkward weekend getaway.

The film catapulted the careers of its star and director. Daniel Kaluuya’s breakthrough performance in Get Out set the platform for the British actor to become one of Hollywood’s finest. Then, while best known for his comedy, Jordan Peele’s hauntingly reflective directorial debut established him as a filmmaker and prompted him to echo Get Out’s critical acclaim with Us and Nope.

3. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (98%)

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is on Showmax

If you’ve seen Honey, I Shrunk the Kids… you’ll have a good idea of what makes Marcel the Shell with Shoes On alienating, magical and utterly delightful. This charming stop-motion mockumentary follows a one-inch tall mollusk seashell on his quest to find his family with the help of a down-on-his-luck documentary filmmaker.

Dean Fleischer Camp’s beautiful and thought-provoking standalone feature film adopts the same whimsy, warmth and fantastical nature of the short films it’s based on. Filled with heart and humour, this gentle and endearing tale has surprising emotional depth in its rich exploration of loss, hope and community. A fun and family-friendly movie, Marcel also helps us see the world with a fresh sense of wonder.

4. Minari (98%)

It doesn’t get much more tender than Lee Isaac Chung’s slice-of-life drama, Minari. A nuanced family portrait of the immigrant experience, this beautifully photographed film captures the growing pains of a Korean family when they start to farm in 1980s Arkansas. Nominated for six Oscars, Minari balances kitchen sink realism against the ideals of the American dream.

A gentle and quietly powerful drama about marriage and childminding, this timely film’s deft touch enables it to offset heavier themes with surprising levity. Led by Steven Yeun and Youn Yuh-jung, compelling and earnest performances entice you into the day-in-the-life details of this artful, vivid yet delicate character study about perseverance, tolerance and tenderness.

5. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (97%)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is on Showmax

There are enough Spider-Man reboots to make your head spin off. This time it’s not Peter Parker but Miles Morales who finds himself at the centre of the hypnotic, irreverent and spunky Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Our young hero encounters the classic superhero persona across dimensions to create a team of Spider-Beings to rescue reality.

Much like The Lego Movie, it takes a few minutes to acclimatise to the euphoric creativity, graphic swagger and pure splendour of this wild thrill ride. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a comic book on Spidey steroids, as the artful and dynamic visuals explode off the screen. The sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (95%) picks up on the same intoxicating blend of heartfelt drama, wacky comedy and eye-popping visuals. If you need a bit more non-stop entertainment in your life, swing into Spider-Man: Homecoming (92%).

6. Jaws (97%)

Sharks have never been man’s best friend but Jaws may have made them count among man’s worst enemies. A masterpiece that put Steven Spielberg on the map, this influential and pulse-pounding adventure thriller follows a sheriff, marine biologist and fisherman in their attempt to hunt down a massive great white shark.

A masterclass in mystery, suspense and terror, Spielberg uses the power of suggestion, a sharp script and captivating performances to keep you on the edge of your seat. From iconic moments to classic quotes, the special effects may seem dated but were groundbreaking almost 50 years ago. Watch Jaws for its compelling character study and thrilling spectacle as it taps into our fear of what lies in wait beneath the murky waters.

7. Knives Out (97%)

Murder mysteries or whodunits are full of slow-burning intrigue and suspense. It’s why Agatha Christie, Cluedo, Murder She Wrote and Inspector Morse have endured in pop culture and our collective memories, and it’s why Knives Out deserves a place among them. Rian Johnson’s stylish throwback centres on a viper’s nest of a family after the patriarch, a well-known crime novelist, is found dead after his 85th birthday celebration.

A stellar ensemble led by Daniel Craig, Ana de Armas and Christopher Plummer, the suspect list also includes: Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette and Michael Shannon. Craig shines in a charming and flamboyant performance as detective Benoit Blanc. While sinister dysfunctional family politics are enhanced by witty dialogue and many twists and turns in this biting, engaging and funny murder mystery.

8. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (97%)

It’s incredible to think Tom Cruise is reaching new career heights in his 60s. Now competing with Bond for espionage franchise world domination, Mission: Impossible has mirrored its action star by just getting better and better. The sixth instalment, this explosive and high-flying sequel is jam-packed with espionage action as Ethan Hunt leads the IMF on a mission to stop a world-ending nuclear event.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout represents the most critic-pleasing entry to the breathless series, as Christopher McQuarrie delivers impressive action sequences and striking visuals without skimping on character or story. Spurred by Rebecca Ferguson and Henry Cavill, it’s so much more than just an actioner, echoing the equally exciting and stylish Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (93%) and Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (94%).

9. Top Gun: Maverick (96%)

Top Gun looked set to be a one-hit wonder but who would’ve guessed Tom Cruise would be a headline act almost 40 years later. Reprising his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the long-awaited sequel, the rogue pilot is compelled to lead a high stakes mission involving a group of elite Top Gun graduates.

The Cruise missile continues his winning action streak with more determined bravado and high-octane stunts to land a sequel that elicits an air punch and packs an emotional gut punch too. Top Gun: Maverick channels crowd-pleasing nostalgia, hooks into the original’s verve and finds a sweet spot when it comes to blockbuster entertainment value – firing on all cylinders to deliver breathtaking action and a gripping story.

10. Booksmart (96%)

Best known for her roles in Tron: Legacy, Vigilante and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Olivia Wilde has added direction to her skill set with Don’t Worry Darling and breakthrough directorial debut, Booksmart. Wilde upends genre expectations with her energetic and fresh take on teen coming-of-age comedy dramas, making Booksmart charming, hilarious and heartfelt.

The story journeys with Amy and Molly, overachiever high schoolers who cut loose and make up for lost time before college and the dreaded onset of adulthood. Booksmart stars Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever, whose infectious chemistry, good timing and witty dialogue compel this fast-paced jaunt. The stellar ensemble features Jason Sudeikis, Jessica Williams, Will Forte and Lisa Kudrow, who echoes Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.

Here are a few more high-ranking films that you may want to add to your watch list: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (95%), The Woman King (94%) and The Lost Daughter (94%), Back to the Future (93%) and Wonder Woman (93%).

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‘Minari’ Director Lee Isaac Chung, Steven Yeun, and Co-Stars: “The
Minari movie review & film summary (2021)
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Minari movie review: An unforgettable story about belonging

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Minari
Movie Info. A tender and sweeping story about what roots us, Minari follows a Korean-American family that moves to a tiny Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. The family home ...
Minari movie review & film summary (2021)
Lee Isaac Chung 's "Minari" casts a spell from its opening moments, a Terrence Malick-like evocation of human beings trying to stay in harmony with the natural world. As a family car travels through a green American landscape, the earth itself seems to be speaking to the characters, and through them, to us. It is a classic immigrant story ...
"Minari," Reviewed: A Strangely Impersonal Tale of a Korean-American
Richard Brody reviews the film "Minari," directed by Lee Isaac Chung and starring Steven Yeun and Yuh-jung Youn, about a Korean-American family's move to Arkansas.
Minari review
T he title of writer-director Lee Isaac Chung 's enchanting film about a Korean family making a new start in rural 80s Arkansas refers to the tenacious edible plant that we see taking root and ...
Minari (film)
Minari (Korean: 미나리; lit. water celery; ) is a 2020 American drama film written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung.It stars Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Youn Yuh-jung, and Will Patton.A semi-autobiographical take on Chung's upbringing, the plot follows a family of South Korean immigrants who move to rural Arkansas during the 1980s.
Review: 'Minari,' An American Story Of Uncommon Warmth And Grace
It is not the life they hoped for when they emigrated from Korea. And now that they have two small kids, Jacob's promised his wife a fresh start. As the film begins, Monica is getting her first ...
Minari (2020) Movie Review
Minari Review: Steven Yeun Leads This Wonderfully Authentic Family Drama. Anchored by a poignant story and wonderful performances from the ensemble cast, Minari is an excellent addition to the domestic drama genre. The best movies are ones that feel lived-in; the characters feel real, their experiences authentic.
Minari Is a Gentle Film About Finding Home in the Heartland
Read more reviews by Stephanie Zacharek. Minari debuted at Sundance in 2020 and has since gathered steam as an awards contender. It's a Golden Globe nominee in what the awarding group, the ...
Review: 'Minari' Is the Best American Movie of the Year
Watch this movie and it'll be clear how American it really is. Thankfully, "Minari" is still getting a lot of awards attention including three bids from SAG, 10 from the Critics Choice Awards, and ...
'Minari' Review: Sinking Korean Roots in the Arkansas Soil
In Lee Isaac Chung 's lovely new film, it flourishes in an Arkansas creek bed, supplying a title, a precise bit of detail, and maybe also a metaphor. Like the minari, Jacob and Monica Yi and ...
'Minari' review: The movie we need after an exhausting 2020
Review: After an exhausting 2020, the gentle 'Minari' is the movie we need right now. Alan S. Kim, left, Steven Yeun, Noel Kate Cho and Yeri Han star in "Minari.". The Times is committed ...
'Minari' Review: Growing Up Korean Outside Little Rock, Arkansas
Crew: Director, writer: Lee Isaac Chung. Camera: Lachlan Milne. Editor: Harry Yoon. Music: Emile Mosseri. With: Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Youn Yuh Jung, Will Patton , Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Darryl ...
'Minari' Review
Minari is a modest pic but very human and accessible, and quite distinctively so in comparison to the vast majority of high-concept and/or violent movies rolling out today. Steven Yeun stars in ...
Minari review: A beautiful and tender drama that wrestles with America
Minari, in fact, is a profoundly American film that wrestles with the country's folkloric image of itself as a promised land - or, as the film's patriarch Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) calls it, a ...
'Minari' review: Best movie you'll find anywhere about what it means to
If you want to get literal about it, minari is a resilient Korean plant with the strength to grow even in rough soil, even when it's been plowed under. Writer-director Lee Isaac Chung used his own ...
'Minari' review: Steven Yeun stars in a movie that explores ...
A24. CNN —. "Minari" is a deeply personal film, and quality that's evident in writer-director Lee Isaac Chung's reminiscence about his childhood. Focusing on a Korean immigrant family ...
Minari
A tender and sweeping story about what roots us, Minari follows a Korean-American family that moves to a tiny Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. The family home changes completely with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed, but incredibly loving grandmother. Amidst the instability and challenges of this new life in the rugged Ozarks, Minari shows the undeniable resilience of ...
'Minari' Is a Must-Watch American Epic
Youn, a renowned actress in Korean making her American debut, is gruff and wily, showering David with her own coarse brand of affection, which he eventually reluctantly accepts. Their bond is ...
Review
"Minari" opens as a Korean woman named Monica (Yeri Han) drives her two children Anne (Noel Kate Cho) and David (Alan Kim) to their new home, a low-slung, ramshackle farmhouse set in the ...
'Minari' review: Best movie you'll find anywhere about what it means to
If you want to get literal about it, minari is a resilient Korean plant with the strength to grow even in rough soil, even when it's been plowed under. Writer-director Lee Isaac Chung used his own childhood as a jumping-off point for a film about his Korean-American parents and their struggle to create a better life in rural Arkansas in the 1980s.
Minari Movie Review And Film Summary
On a Review aggregator, website Rotten Tomatoes, the movie holds an approval rating of 90% based on 272 critic reviews, with an average rating of 8.70/10. The overall review on site is good since the reviews are positive. The Movie Culture Synopsis. Minari is smooth and easygoing with life lessons and metaphors scattered throughout the runtime.
The 44 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now (April 2024)
Lee Isaac Chung's 2020 drama film Minari is a semi-autobiographical story based on Chung's childhood. The movie is set in the 80s and follows a South Korean immigrant family that moves from ...
CinemaCon 2024: Day 3
Twisters (Photo by David Becker/WireImage) Wicked wasn't the only tornado-related title to grace the stage at CinemaCon today, as director Lee Isaac Chung presented his upcoming film Twisters with some help from his stars Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Anthony Ramos.Chung, who makes the leap to blockbuster spectacle after his decidedly smaller-scale Oscar-winning 2020 drama Minari ...
10 Rotten Tomatoes-approved movies on Showmax: ranked
A common misconception, a movie with a 90% rating isn't a 9/10 but rather a film where 90% of Rotten Tomatoes critics thought it was good enough to be rated fresh. There are only about 100 Certified Fresh films that have managed to crack the perfect 100% Score Club.

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