ReelViews for R movies

Take Mad Max, add elements of Escape from New York and I am Legend, insert a kick-ass heroine to rival Sigourney Weaver or Linda Hamilton, and employ strobe-like editing for the action sequences, and you have a fair approximation of Doomsday. Deri...

As a character study that examines a pair of reprehensible individuals, The Door in the Floor does an excellent job. The problem with the film is simple: how many people want to spend nearly two hours in the company of such characters. The viewe...

Dope, an unconventional coming-of-age story from writer/director Rick Famuyiwa (Our Family Wedding), posits the unlikely proposition of a straight-A student with nearly perfect SAT scores who builds a mini-drug empire as a stepping stone to get into ...

Oliver Parker has made a career out of adapting Oscar Wilde, with versions of An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest already on video store shelves. For his latest, Parker has turned his attention to what may be Wilde's most famous no...

Towards the end of Double Jeopardy, one individual threatens another, "I'm gonna have you arrested for stupidity." I wish someone had made a similar pronouncement to director Bruce Beresford and writers David Weisberg & Douglas Cook. In most case...

This review contains spoilers. I try to be discreet about them but they are there.No one can dance through genres as blithely as Francois Ozon. From the comedic drama of Water Drops on Burning Rocks to the mystery of Under the Sand to the ecce...

Downfall is the third major filmed account of Hitler's final ten days, following in the distant wake of 1973's Hitler: The Last Ten Days and 1981's The Bunker. A superior production to both of the earlier movies, Downfall is a windfall for anyone w...

For a movie about small people, Downsizing certainly thinks big…too big, perhaps. Director/co-writer Alexander Payne has done such a good job of world-building that there are far too many ideas, subplots, and opportunities for one two-hour f...

Few will deny that Robert Altman is among the greatest working American directors. His best films - M*A*S*H, Nashville, The Player, and Short Cuts - occupy unassailable perches of artistic and creative achievement. With a filmmaker of Altman's ta...

Having watched Luc Besson’s Dracula as a companion piece to Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, I have reached a grim conclusion: it is time to let these two iconic monsters sleep forever. No matter how "unique" a director’s vision may be, or...