ReelViews for R movies

It's probably unfair to blame the failure of Carrie on Steven King. While it's true that the script, written by Lawrence D. Cohen and based on King's novel, is a mishmash of clichés and poorly-realized characters, director Brian De Palma des...

Welcome to "Spoilerville." Brian De Palma's 1976 adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie trod a precarious line between exploitative horror and serious social commentary. On the one hand, the movie represented the ultimate revenge fantasy for bullie...

Love comes in many forms -- platonic, romantic, and sexual -- and this is the issue at the heart of Carrington, a cinematic biography of artist Dora Carrington and her near-lover, writer Lytton Strachey. Though Dora, a heterosexual woman who didn'...

Whatever Will Ferrell may or may not be, one can never accuse him of lacking balls. The decision to release Casa de Mi Padre, Ferrell's latest starring vehicle, entirely in Spanish with subtitles, will be an acid test as to whether the actor's popu...

What happens when movie producers cross Three's Company with Masterpiece Theater? The result would be similar to what Touchstone Pictures has provided with Casanova, a farcical romantic comedy period piece. It's worth noting that producing a farc...

The way Cashback gently plays with reality tickles the memory with distant echoes of Big Fish and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. For his feature debut, Sean Ellis has crafted a delightful romantic comedy that provides insight into the hear...

After viewing Casino, you may never look at Las Vegas in quite the same way. While this film, adapted from Nicholas Pileggi's nonfiction book, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas, doesn't offer much in the way of startling revelations, it presents...

Casino Jack (originally called Bagman), George Hickenlooper's dramatization of the rise and fall of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, can be succinctly summarized this way: the straightforward narrative provides a platform for a powerhouse performance by Kev...

Three things occurred to me while watching Caught Stealing. First, it's the best work director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) has done since 2010’s Black Swan. Second, in addition to being set in the late 1990s, it embraces the indie film...

Cedar Rapids is a quirky comedy that crossbreeds two common cinematic staples: the mismatched buddy movie and the fish-out-of-water scenario. With elements culled from the mainstream smash The Hangover and the indie cult favorite Napoleon Dynamite,...