ReelViews for NR movies

There was a time when it was considered "daring" or "risky" to make a comedy-tinged war movie. In the early 1950s, with the scabs from World War II still in evidence and the United States enmeshed in Korea, war didn't seem to be a lighthearte...

It's so easy -- too easy, in fact -- for a war movie to turn into a celebration of blood, death, and mayhem. Exploitation of wars and their dehumanizing affects has become a staple of American action films (First Blood, Missing in Action). Occasi...

There’s little doubt that the films of Andrei Tarkovsky represent an acquired taste. The celebrated Soviet filmmaker’s style is so antithetical to modern cinema that it requires patience and stamina to become involved in any of his picture...

November 17, 1978: A day that will live in infamy, at least for Star Wars fans. The Star Wars Holiday Special, a 2-hour TV show that aired on CBS, was intended to give fans something to bridge the gap between the summer 1977 release of A New Hope ...

Movie-goers and critics alike have come to associate science fiction motion pictures with noisy space battles, grotesque aliens, and budgets that excel the GNP of a small country. Often, these sorts of films are characterized by scripts that could...

Still Walking, the seventh feature from Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, is a sublime experience. By "sublime," I don't mean "boring." Although the events depicted in the film cover the 24-hour span of an ordinary family gathering, there's a ...

Upon its release in 1984, Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense was hailed by many critics as the "greatest concert film of all time." The picture, which captured a live concert performance given by the Talking Heads, used state-of-the-art direct-to-...

Upon its release in 1984, Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense was hailed by many critics as the "greatest concert film of all time." The movie, which captured a live concert performance given by the Talking Heads, used state-of-the-art direct-t...

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum offers proof that a movie doesn’t have to be new to be deeply affecting. A meditation on life, love, and sacrifice, this 1939 film is a true tear-jerker. Heartwarming at times but ultimately heartbreaking,...

Summer Hours is about death, but not death in the way that it is often packaged and sold to us in movies. Defining grief is a difficult thing. Why do we mourn? Do we grieve for the person who has died or for the ones he (or she) has left behind?...