ReelViews for R movies

Watching a movie like Act of Valor, it becomes clear how much synergy currently exists between film and video games. As the latter becomes increasingly more "cinematic" in the way action is depicted, there are times when the former adopts the style...

A few years ago, a screenwriter named Charlie Kaufman was given the job of adapting Susan Orlean's non-fiction book, "The Orchid Thief," into a motion picture script. Although Kaufman found the principal character of the book, John Laroche, to hav...

The Adjuster starts out with a relatively normal premise, but that's the only thing about this film that can be classified as "normal". Director Atom Egoyan is not a traditional director, and his aim is not to satisfy mainstream audiences. Unfortun...

More than 30 years ago, the template established by Animal House for college age comedies became a recognized standard. However, although the Animal House approach is a good way to get cheap laughs, it falls apart when anything more substantive is...

"What this film does for the drag scene is what Sean Connery did for the secret service. It glamorizes it." - Michael Hamlyn, producer of Priscilla The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is about the most fun you can have with...

"A few years ago, a friend sent me a book about the prosecution of animals in the Middle Ages... These trials read like modern courtroom dramas. Since the animals were given a full defense counsel and were prosecuted with the whole rigor of the la...

Writer/director Paul Schrader has always been fascinated by the line between sanity and madness, and what it takes to push a man over the edge. This theme stands out in two of Schrader's best known scripts, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, both of whi...

Over the past 15 years with Lars von Trier as its poster boy, Danish cinema has gained an international reputation as cynical and severe. The humor is grim, the drama is grimmer, and the production values are ascetic. So After the Wedding is a fr...

I admire filmmakers who take chances and defy expectations. Admittedly, that sort of thing doesn't always work, and there are flaws aplenty in After.Life, but the criss-crossing between drama, thriller, and horror is nothing if not arresting. It ...

Although it’s being marketed as a love story, The Aftermath is more about grief and recovery than romance. In fact, the film’s illicit relationship is a cold, passionless affair that generates as much heat as a dying ember in a snowstorm. ...