ReelViews for R movies

For a small percentage of people, grief can be a catalyst. For most of us, however, it’s a paralyzing force that threatens to entomb us in a coffin of sorrow and despair. Most movies, in attempting to depict this, fall into an abyss of melodram...

As remakes go, The Manchurian Candidate is better than most. It remains faithful to the premise and themes of the original, but, by avoiding a slavish re-interpretation, it offers some surprises to those who are familiar with the 1962 version. Ye...

Let me start with a few brief editorial comments about Lars von Trier. Key to understanding my views about Manderlay is my disclosure of a belief that in order to be able to criticize something, you have to have first-hand familiarity with it. Vo...

There are three kinds of Woody Allen movies: the comedies, the dramas, and the hybrids. Manhattan, which many critics believe to be Allen's most complete motion picture, belongs solidly in the third category - it has plenty of humorous lines (some...

Mank is David Fincher’s exploration of the trials and tribulations surrounding the writing of Citizen Kane as seen through the eyes of screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman). Filmed in glorious black-and-white with copious postproducti...

Manny & Lo, the debut feature from writer/director Lisa Krueger, is a wonderfully- textured comic fantasy about family life. With only a few missteps along the way, this film takes us on a deceptively complex journey of discovery into a world t...

If nothing else, The Many Saints of Newark recaptures the feel and aesthetic of David Chase’s The Sopranos, the TV series that was frequently cited as the best television had to offer during the eight years when it was on (and off) the air. ...

Apparently, I approached this production with a misapprehension. I was under the impression that Margaret Cho: Assassin was intended to be a filmed comedic performance. What I got instead was an 85-minute political rant from a liberal Asian Ameri...

Long ago, the concept of "money" was devised as a means by which commerce could be simplified - after all, it's easier to carry around some kind of marker than cows or cattle or bags of grain. As society has evolved, however, so has the way in whic...

It's always the case that when a director does something that attracts notice (or, in some cases, notoriety), his or her next project is awaited with a degree of anticipation. This is the case with Noah Baumbach, whose The Squid and the Whale, whi...