ReelViews for NR movies

Ironically, I’m sure, the title of this movie identifies the single most obvious problem. Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with how it begins. In fact, the first 20 minutes or so of How It Ends are solid, filled as they are with mystery and...

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Disney was undergoing the resurgence that would transform it from a sputtering bastion of family entertainment into the juggernaut is has since become, there was arguably no more important creative v...

Robert Downey, Sr. is an original American independent film maker. He has been at his craft for more than 30 years now -- his debut, Chafed Elbows, came out in 1965. His best known work, the trilogy of Putney Swope, Pound, and Greaser's Palace, w...

There are some who wrongfully assume that The Hustler is about pool. It is a natural assumption: much of the action takes place in billiards rooms and pool halls, but this movie is no more about pool than Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull is about bo...

With a title like I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, one might be forgiven expecting an exploitation flick, but this relic from the pre-Code era is actually a damning indictment of the American justice system during the interwar period. Although fi...

The concept of a child creating an imaginary world as a retreat from reality isn’t new to either movies or literature. In fact, one of the most beloved of all family films, The Wizard of Oz, employs this conceit. More recent endeavors like Pa...

Those who know Akira Kurosawa only for his samurai movies (a genre that includes his most famous titles) may be surprised when exposed to the “other side” of his work – less ostentatious films like Red Beard, High and Low, and (most nota...

In the Heat of the Night was the first film – and not the last – to capture the Academy’s attention with its clear-eyed but hopeful examination of race relations in the South during the 1960s. Based on John Ball’s 1965 novel of the sam...

Since one of the duties of a film critic is to provide readers with enough ammunition for them to make an informed decision about whether a movie is likely to match their tastes, I must begin with a stern warning. Irreversible is the kind of film ...

Frank Capra's It Happened One Night represents one of the great romantic comedy "templates." Although the film has officially been remade a handful of times (most not in English), its opposites-attract melding of screwball comedy and the road trip...