ReelViews for NR movies

There are times when a performance can carry an entire motion picture, and Under the Skin is an example. The subject matter, while not inherently uninteresting, doesn't break barriers or attempt anything radical. The script is solid and effective...

Slowly, the camera pans across the brick facade of a New York City apartment building, pausing only when it comes to a window. Inside, a nearly-nude couple is snuggling together, not yet awake to the new day. The camera moves on implacably, s...

"Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man." Michael Apted's The Up Series is not only documentary filmmaking at its finest, but it is an important sociological study. How many movies can make that claim? Starting in 1964,...

Writer/director Javier Fuentes-Leon’s The Vanished Elephant is a moody, atmospheric neo-noir crime story that starts in traditional territory before taking the viewer on a trippy, mind-bending journey where the reliability of the narrator com...

Spoiler warning: The movie is based on real people and events so I am less constrained about revealing certain historical facts than I might be with a fictional account. The story told in Vincere, despite being as faithful to history as one can ...

When it was released in 1961, Viridiana was seen as shocking by some, blasphemous by others, and even deemed controversial by those accustomed to European filmmakers coloring outside the lines. Today, the “edgy” and “envelope-pushing” ...

Often, one of the most overlooked elements of a film is its cinematography. Paradoxically, it is also the most important, whether specifically noticed or not. Movies are a visual medium where the pictures shoulder the lion's share of the bu...

If you turn on the evening news these days, one of the first images you're likely to see will originate from the devastated former Yugoslavia, where centuries-old hatreds have boiled over to ignite a scenario of unspeakable horror. Yet the sights ...

Legendary filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot has often been referred to as the "French Hitchcock." Indeed, Clouzot is best known for his 1955 movie, Diabolique, which is widely regarded as one of the most surprising and disturbing psychological thril...

Originally distributed in 1971, Walkabout has become director Nicolas Roeg's "lost work". The film, which had five minutes of Jenny Agutter's frontal nudity cut from its original U.S. release, was never transferred to video. As a result, this i...