ReelViews for NR movies

At first glance, James Ronald Whitney's Games People Play: New York appears to be what one might call an extreme reality game - a combination of "Fear Factor" and "Candid Camera" with stunts so over-the-top that even an R rating would be unattainab...

Ingrid Bergman won her first Oscar for portraying Paula Alquist, the vulnerable, insecure heroine of George Cukor's diabolical, atmospheric thriller, Gaslight. Bergman, essaying a much different character from either of her last two roles (Maria ...

What movie-goers find funny has changed since the end of the silent era. Many of the pratfalls and hijinks that so delighted audiences in the 1910s and 1920s have long since ceased to provoke anything more full-bodied than a chuckle. Neverthel...

In 2010, anti-Semitism exists (witness Mel Gibson's drunken rant for an overt example), but in 1947, it was ingrained in the bedrock of society. The strides made by American culture during the past 60-plus years have advanced the level of toleranc...

Giant makes for an interesting case study of a "classic" American motion picture. Although it was a huge financial success for Warner Brothers, the prints were allowed to fall into a shocking state of disrepair over the years. And Giant's reputat...

Director Andre Téchiné (My Favorite Season, Wild Reeds, Thieves, Alice and Martin) has never been shy about confronting difficult subjects in his films, as one glance at his loaded résumé will reveal. Téchiné enjoys exploring dark, complex ide...

The original Godzilla (or Gojira, as its die-hard adherents refer to it), released in Japan during 1954, officially ushered in the Japanese movie monster craze that would, in due time, become a subgenre all to itself. When the film reached U.S. shor...

The success of Going My Way, a mediocre, light drama with a few songs, is a testimony to the overall popularity of the musical genre in the '30s, '40s, and '50s. There's nothing special or memorable about this overlong endeavor, the first of two m...

Over the years, the tendency when incorporating Nazis into movies has been to use them as the kind of diabolical villain with whom it's difficult (or at least uncomfortable) to sympathize. The concept that there might have been Nazis in Germany du...

Goodbye Solo is a simple character drama that chronicles the interaction between a man who wants to end his life with dignity on his own terms and the Good Samaritan who believes there must be another way. On the surface, Goodbye Solo might appear...