ReelViews for NR movies

The trajectories traversed by the careers of certain directors can be strange and unfathomable things. Take Blake Edwards, for example. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Edwards was an A-list filmmaker with a string of impressive titles on his ...

Warning: This review contains spoilers.The word “epic” is thrown around carelessly when discussing motion pictures. With its sprawling tapestry and mini-series length, Edward Yang’s obscure (at least in the West) 1991 gangster drama, A Br...

To the degree that "sophistication" would become one of the characteristics defining Academy Award Best Picture winners, that criterion was not yet in place when The Broadway Melody received its citation in 1930. One part air and one part cheese, ...

Columbine has never been a mystery to me. A tragedy, yes, but not mystery. The most surprising thing about Columbine is that it took so long for something like that to happen. Anyone who has been bullied probably understands this, and there's litt...

Bushwick is Night of the Living Dead without the zombies. It’s about survival in an urban war-zone, a post-apocalyptic nightmare where the familiar has become unreal and life is cheap. Or at least that’s what the creative team – director...

Spoilers! (Is that relevant for a film that’s 100 years old??)In no way does any aspect of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari resemble what we today would identify as “film.” With its bizarre set design, over-the-top acting, and operatic style, ...

Call Camera Buff a case of art imitating life. Although director Krzysztof Kieslowski admitted that this film doesn't tell his own story ("I made films because that was my profession, and I was too lazy or too stupid or both to change..."), it wi...

There are times when the reputation of a film outstrips the movie itself. Cannibal Holocaust is an example. To some, this is the most disgusting, offensive motion picture ever given an international release. To others, it is a brilliant example of...

The Canyons opens with still photographs of crumbling, disused movie theaters - multiplexes that, as recently as a decade ago, might have been bustling sites of human congress on weekends and holidays. These images have little to do with the story ...

Various articles have labeled Capturing the Friedmans as a narrative documentary, a crime investigation, a meditation upon the nature of truth, and an expose of the failings of the United States judicial system. First and foremost, however, it is ...