Middle of Nowhere (2012)
Average Rating: 7.7/10
Reviews Counted: 39
Fresh: 34 | Rotten: 5
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.7/10
Critic Reviews: 21
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 5
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.6/5
User Ratings: 956
My Rating
Movie Info
Winner of the Best Director Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, Middle of Nowhere follows Ruby, a bright medical student who sets aside her dreams and suspends her career when her husband is incarcerated. As the committed couple stares into the hollow end of an eight-year prison sentence, Ruby must learn to live another life, one marked by shame and separation. But through a chance encounter and a stunning betrayal that shakes her to her core, this steadfast wife is soon propelled in new
Cast
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David Oyelowo
Brian -
Omari Hardwick
Derek -
Lorraine Toussaint
Ruth -
Edwina Findley
Rosie -
Sharon Lawrence
Fraine -
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Middle of Nowhere Trailer & Photos
All Critics (39) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (34) | Rotten (5)
A film remarkably true to life's haphazard rhythms.
Top CriticMade by a black American woman, about a black American woman, it's a study of a culture where the matriarchs are strong by necessity and trapped by circumstance - adrift in the middle of nowhere.
[A] hushed, tenderly observant drama about a young woman trying to do right by herself and her marriage while her husband is in prison.
This is a tough-minded story of change that happens in almost imperceptibly tiny increments - as true growth so often does in reality.
This film is about a particular African-American experience, true, but it's also about the human experience. It will haunt you. It should.
A sluggish enterprise, not measured or languorous or full of detail, but plodding, with scenes that run too long and others that are unnecessary.
An intimate, confidently directed and superbly acted humanistic drama utterly at home in the subtle push-and-pull of long-standing family tensions and arguments.
The title Middle of Nowhere refers to Ruby's state of being as well as the location of the prison where Derek is incarcerated.
This is a very effective and moving film, which is remarkable given the film's microscopic budget and 20-day shooting schedule.
The fine acting between the two leads is filled with determination and passion for their characters.
It's so real we can't help but smile.
A simple but affecting slice-of-life drama.
Its unadorned simplicity belies the exquisite thought, craft, and heart that only could have made such an accomplishment possible.
There's also a fine line between meditative and just plain pokey ... It's only the charisma and passion of the film's performers that carries us to the end.
Ava DuVernay won a best director's award at Sundance for Middle of Nowhere, a prize that seems fitting for the sort of film that has the kind of gravity and authority that sneaks up on the viewer.
A heartbreaking but teachable story about love and the morbid sacrifices we make to find it.
Tells a relatively simple story but does so with enough artistic intent and truth of character that the common story that it tells becomes uncommonly good in its telling.
Audience Reviews for Middle of Nowhere
Super Reviewer
And it's key that the director is the first African Am. female to have won Best Director at Sundance--she deserved it, for sure, and we even got to hear from her when she spoke via Skype on the big screen after the film. She apparently interviewed over 100 Afr. Am. females with boyfriends/spouses in prison to help make the story as authentic as possible. So good.
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- Ruby: You're coming home.
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Latest News on Middle of Nowhere
October 12, 2012:
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"Middle of Nowhere" is a well-acted, modest and understated movie. So much so, that even the grandstanding comes off as subtle. As the movie drops pieces of information throughout, some may find Ruby more than a little naive when in fact she had been dropped into an unfamiliar world where so many women have to regularly endure the emotional and economic hardships that she now lives with. In any case, how could you not like a character who likes foreign films?(In this case, "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.") And, yes, people do ride the bus in Los Angeles.