Lee Isaac Chung has made a film that will endure.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 23, 2024

Chung and his cinematographer Lachlan Milne photograph the landscape beautifully, and you see how both Jacob and David can be entranced by its vastness, even for all the trouble it causes.

Full Review | Jul 29, 2021

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 4, 2021

A rare film about assimilation that can be equally cherished by both poles of the American political landscape. And everybody in between.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 2, 2021

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 2, 2021

Though two last-act sequences dovetail a little too neatly, the word that covers this cinematic experience is "raw".

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 2, 2021

It briefly drags before the closing act, but that's hardly a complaint.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 2, 2021

It is a work of extraordinary delicacy, poignancy and tenderness. Whatever else, teaching's loss is entirely our gain.

Full Review | Apr 2, 2021

Sensitively written, sparse and gorgeously acted.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 1, 2021

It is a film in which the details, the child's-eye-view episodes, the calamities, the tenderly remembered touches, all sing together like a choir.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 1, 2021

Its neatness may tempt you to dismiss its heartwarming quality as the packet kind. I don't think so.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 31, 2021

A profound, detail-perfect and soulful slice of American family life, with some of the year's most sincere performances to date.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 31, 2021

A moving portrayal of the pains of assimilation, bolstered by Chung's writing and direction.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 30, 2021

The beauty of Minari is in its consideration of what we choose to love, and what we choose to leave behind.

Full Review | Mar 21, 2021

Chung and his talented cast of actors refuse to reduce any of Minari's characters to mere caricatures.

Full Review | Mar 18, 2021

The picture's chief contribution, alongside some extremely subtle and acutely observed performances, is the consoling message that everyone is the same underneath. Films with that sort of one-size-fits-all sentiment tend not to linger.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2021

There is such depth, truth, and warmth to all of these people... Every choice here is beautiful and perfect.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2021

I love this beautiful movie.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2021

Weeks, maybe even months later, you'll still be thinking about it.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 28, 2021

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.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2021