FargoReviews.com

Ever since my youth when I spent a summer in Las Cruces, New Mexico, I have been a lover of Mexican food.  In those days there few Mexican restaurants, even in Minneapolis.  Not that I don't like The Mexican Village or Paradiso, it's just not what I understand Mexican food to be.  Juanos is, I believe a more upscale type of Mexican food, sort of a Mexican fine dining.  But ther is another style, one with which I have been very familiar ... Read More

It's been a few decades since I'd been to a stock car race.  They're not foreign to me, having grown up on "Thunder Road" where the likes of Junior Johnson and Richard Petty got their training running moonshine before moving on to what eventually became NASCAR, they're just a ways down my list of priorities. Through a friend, however, I know of the races at the Norman County Racetrack in Ada, MN, held on most thursday nights during the summer.  A NASCAR ... Read More

Now playing at the Fargo Theatre's Off Broadway venue, the critically acclaimed Sundance film festival entry "Moon,"  starring Sam Rockwell(and only Sam Rockwell).  The hype on this movie  says that it's about a man stationed on the far side of the moon to manage a mining facility.  He's there for three years all by himself, which would drive anyone mad.  The movie does a good job of this.  He meets a clone of himself, and purportedly the movie is about their relationship ... Read More

The sixth installment of the Harry Potter series, "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" is now showing at major theaters.  Locally, it's at the West Acres Marcus theater.  I saw it on the Ultra screen, and would recommend seeing it on such a screen.  I don't notice a huge difference in the visual part of the movie, but the sound is out of this world. I haven't seen all of the Harry Potter movies, but I've seen enough so that most of ... Read More

The films at the 2009 Solstice Film Festival were divided into four groups: the opening night feature film "Don McKay shown on Thursday night, June 18.  On Friday, there were two documentaries followed by  the feature film, "Dawning," shown in the evening  Late Saturday morning and all afternoon the Festival was in session, beginning with the documentary "Bicycle Dreams" followed by the first gallery of short films, then the feature film "The Last Passport," followed by another short film gallery.  The Festival closed Saturday night with the ... Read More

2009 Solstice Film Festival "The Last Passport" is a movie about an old man that sits in a passport office, dispensing sound homespun advice to what apparently are disgruntled patrons tired of waiting in line, first to have their picture taken and then to get their passport.  Now, getting a passport is not that tough, so that should have been my first clue that all is not as it seems.  In fact, at the risk of giving away too much, nothing is as it ... Read More

The third feature length film I saw was "Our Time," a film about 4 college graduates that tour all lower 48 states to talk with their contemporaries(mostly) about how they felt about the way the world, country, society, etc was headed. Yes, their is a North Dakota segment, filmed in a typical small town of a few more than a houndred people.  We are all familiar with many such towns, unless we have esconced ourselves in Fargo or Grand Forks for all ourlives.  ... Read More

Reviewing 18 short films would be a daunting task.  But I would like to mention a few.  Even though I'm not an animation buff, I thoroughly enjoyed Bill Plympton's "Horndog."  I thought it hilarious. The irony in "The Little Acorn+ was cute. "Chuck Murray Knows" is a product of the 48 hour film festival. I must say that it had a far more professional feel than any of the entriries I've ever seen at the Fargo version.  "A Peacock Feathered Blue" by Jenna ... Read More

Recently, on more than one occasion, I have heard about the small town of Dorset, in the Minnesota Lakes country, as being a restaurant mecca.  In an earlier life when I had a more active -er-uh social life I used to hand out in the Dorseet area with my significant(?) other.  Dorset, by the way, is five miles east of Park Rapids on Minnesota Highway 34.  It was a stop on the rail line from Park Rapids to Walker.  I'm told that ... Read More

This year's Classic Film Festival at the Fargo Theatre featured three romantic comedies.  The first, shown monday night, featured Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in "Swing time."  The shown tuesday night, was "The Philadelphia Story," starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart(Jimmy top most of us) and Ruth Hussy.  The third, the more modern "The Way Were," starring Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand, showed thursday night.  The rest of this review will be concerned with "The Philadelphia Story." The movie was produced in ... Read More