Arts & Entertainment

Movie Reviews: The Purge, The Internship, After Earth

Find movie reviews and showtimes for theaters in St. Louis Park.

Editor's Note: All reviews and information aggregated from Moviefone and RottenTomatoes.

Want to catch a movie this weekend? Here's Patch's roundup of movies playing at the Mann St. Louis Park Cinema 6 and Kerasotes Showplace Icon Theatre at West End:

New Releases:

The Internship

One sentence plot: Billy (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson)—salesmen whose careers have been torpedoed by the digital world—are trying to prove they are not obsolete, defying the odds by talking their way into a coveted internship at Google, along with a battalion of brilliant college students. 

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 74

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 33

Reviews:

"Today's weather forecast in Mountain View? Giddy with a chance of delirious." Denver Post Full Review

"The Internship is a big wet kiss to Google wrapped in a buddy comedy that asks us to believe that nobody over 40 knows anything about computers or the online universe." Toronto Star Full Review

"The fact that this overlong, often preposterous comedy succeeds at all (which it does, only occasionally) proves that the Vaughn/Wilson charm can still work a measure of magic." Washington Post Full Review

The Purge

One sentence plot: In The Purge, a speculative thriller that follows one family over the course of a single night, four people will be tested to see how far they will go to protect themselves when the vicious outside world breaks into their home.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 59

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 41

Reviews:

"In its own clumsy, exaggerated way, The Purge takes a strong stand against our cultural obsession with violence and our tendency to conflate justice with vengeance." Philadelphia Inquirer Full Review

"It's cultural commentary as blunt instrument - and as blunt instruments are wont to do, it achieves an end while making a bloody mess." Toronto Star Full Review

"Too bad the film devolves into a series of home-invasion clichés. The Purge was almost on to something." Rolling Stone Full Review

Also in Theaters:

Fast & Furious 6

One sentence plot: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Dwayne Johnson lead the returning cast of all-stars as the global blockbuster franchise built on speed races to its next continent in Fast & Furious 6.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 95

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 73

Reviews:

"Some of the action sequences are insane. No, really. Absurd, impossible, physics defying, triage-required stuff. No matter. That's the foolish rush of a franchise that must go faster and faster and furiouser and furiouser." Denver Post Full Review

"Ludicrous, but undeniably fun and surprisingly affectionate, this is really all you could ask of a car crash movie, and more." CNN Full Review

"[The action is] glorious while it lasts, but then the film goes back to figuring out how to keep its oversized vessel from taking on water. And that's more hard work than it's worth." NPR Full Review

The Hangover Part III

One sentence plot: The Hangover Part III is the third and final film in director Todd Phillips' record-shattering comedy franchise.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score:
 88

Rotten Tomatoes critic score:
 21

Reviews:

"This final installment in the party-boy franchise... wisely drops the narrative gimmick of alcohol-induced amnesia that made the first movie so unusual and the second its pallid copy." Chicago Reader Full Review

"This odious, mean-spirited movie appropriates the title and the characters from the previous pictures and sends them on a would-be adventure involving gangsters, gold bars and that pinnacle of hilarity, decapitated giraffes." Miami Herald Full Review

"The first Hangover was good dirty fun; the second was dirtier, and less fun. But the third? It's just a chore - and no hair of the dog is going to make it any easier to bear." Newark Star-Ledger Full Review

Epic

One sentence plot: When a teenage girl finds herself magically transported into this secret universe, she teams up with an elite band of warriors and a crew of comical, larger-than-life figures, to save their world...and ours.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 73

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 63

Reviews:

"[It] is certainly very pretty to look at, and has a general agreeability about it. But the movie would need to engage us far more powerfully for that hyperbolic title to fit." Boston Globe Full Review

"'Epic' may be the thinking family's best Saturday matinee of the summer. And the date movie of the season." Minneapolis Star Tribune Full Review

"Even young would-be botanists will find this charmless animated adventure as exciting as watching grass grow." New York Daily News Full Review

Star Trek Into Darkness

One sentence plot: The crew of the Enterprise engages in an epic battle of good versus evil after being summoned home, only to discover Starfleet in ruins, and they venture into a war zone to find the powerful villain (Sherlock's Benedict Cumberbatch) responsible for the devastation.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 89

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 86

Reviews:

"For all its chasing and falling and fighting—and the movie supplies a great deal of each—Star Trek Into Darkness is at its best when the Enterprise crew are merely bickering and bantering among themselves: less space opera than soap opera." The Atlantic Full Review

"The conceptual sci-fi of the original series is nowhere to be found, though you might enjoy watching the skinny young actors approximate their counterparts from the 60s; Chris Pine is especially good as Captain Kirk." Chicago Reader Full Review

"Abrams boldly goes into Star Trek Into Darkness, and crushes it again. It's more fun and more intense, without giving less to the characters." Rolling Stone Full Review

The Great Gatsby

One sentence plot: Based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, this drama focuses on mysterious man of wealth Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his love for the beautiful—and married—Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan).

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 84

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 48

Reviews:

"The Great Gatsby is a cool movie, in both the positive and negative sense. You may certainly be impressed, but you may not be moved." Detroit News Full Review

"The best thing about Baz Luhrmann's much-anticipated/much-dreaded The Great Gatsby is that, for all its computer-generated whoosh and overbroad acting, it is unmistakably F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. That is no small deal." New York Magazine Full Review

"The central problem with Luhrmann's film is that when it's entertaining it's not Gatsby, and when it's Gatsby it's not entertaining." The Atlantic Full Review

Iron Man 3

One sentence plot: When brash-but-brilliant industrialist Tony Stark finds his personal world destroyed at his enemy's hands, he embarks on a harrowing quest to find those responsible.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 83

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 78

Reviews:

"But for all the clanking armies of iron knights on display to dazzle the eager kid in each of us, this summer epic rings hollow. There's no one home inside the suit." Rolling Stone Full Review

"Just like he does with those crummy Sherlock Holmes movies, Downey elevates this rather flimsy material with his sheer presence." Miami Herald Full Review

"Shane Black excels at writing witty, self-referential, pop-infused banter, and there is no actor working today who is better suited to delivering it than Robert Downey Jr." The Atlantic Full Review

Mud

One sentence plot: Mud is an adventure about two boys, Ellis and his friend Neckbone, who find a man named Mud hiding out on an island in the Mississippi.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 85

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 98

Reviews:

"The film is drenched in the humidity and salty air of a Delta summer, often recalling the musical, aphoristic cadences of Sam Shepard, who happens to appear in a supporting role." Washington Post Full Review

"One of the most creatively rich and emotionally rewarding movies to come along this year." Los Angeles Times Full Review

"Jeff Nichols' script for Mud is a lot like the Mississippi River that serves as a backdrop for the tale of unrequited love. There are times it is big and powerful and other times when it becomes so serene it's easy to forget the depths that hide below." Fresno Bee Full Review

Do you plan on seeing any of these movies? Have you seen them already? Leave a review of the films with a comment below.


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