ReelViews for R movies

The usual function of the "revenge flick" is to allow the viewer to vicariously experience the brutal pleasure of executing that "dish best served cold." It's a basic case of good versus evil, with the former striking back against the latter. The...

The crown jewel of 1995's summer blockbusters appears to have arrived early. It's hard to imagine any motion picture released between now and August matching Mel Gibson's Braveheart for spectacle. With its clashing armies, heartstopping action, a...

At first glance, it appears that Braven might be more than what it turns out to be. The opening credits feature a montage of shots of the wilds of Newfoundland – images so stunningly beautiful that they would be at home in a nature documentar...

Terry Gilliam's Brazil is one of those films whose enduring reputation is based at least in part on events surrounding its stormy distribution history. Taken at face value, Brazil is a stinging, Strangelovian satire of the power of the bureaucracy...

When it comes to movies, there are two things that the early-to-mid-1980s are best known for: slasher films and teen comedies. While the former category was hard-pressed to give birth to a vaguely watchable entry, quality was widely variable in...

Perhaps the kindest way to describe Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering is to say it's evident as being broken fairly early during the proceedings. There's no shortage of candidates for the fatal flaw: the artificial storyline; the presence o...

According to writer/director Lars von Trier, Breaking the Waves is "a simple love story", but "simple" hardly begins to describe this deeply disturbing, multi-layered drama. In fact, nowhere is the picture's complexity more evident than in it...

One of the positive qualities often attributed to movies in which Judd Apatow claims involvement (here, he's listed as a producer) is that, beneath all the raunchiness and profanity, lies a core of sweetness. It's the Tootsie Pop philosophy of R-ra...

Bridget Jones's Diary is, quite simply, the finest motion picture released by Miramax Films since 1999's The Cider House Rules. Based on the novel by Helen Fielding, the screenplay for Bridget Jones's Diary (written by Four Weddings and a Funeral ...

It would be fair to characterize Bridget Jones’s Baby as a huge step up from the previous Bridget Jones outing, 2004’s The Edge of Reason, although it’s not quite in the same league as 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. Why w...