ReelViews for PG-13 movies

I once wrote that the only thing as necessary to a superhero movie as a nasty villain is a love interest. With My Super Ex-Girlfriend, director Ivan Reitman has shifted the focus away from the former and onto the latter. The twist here is that th...

The Namesake is an affecting drama spanning two generations of an Indian American family and exploring the generational and cultural conflicts that arise as a result of their assimilation into society. By carefully developing her characters and al...

Tone is the most noteworthy aspect of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's The Nanny Diaries. In adapting the best-selling 2002 novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, the husband-and-wife team behind American Splendor have tried to keep ...

Napoleon Dynamite should be required therapy for anyone with a self-image problem. No matter how much of a loser a person believes himself to be, he couldn't possibly be in worse shape than the protagonist of Jared Hess' wickedly funny high school...

Guilty pleasure (n): a film that a critic shamefacedly admits to liking even though the prevailing opinion, as put forth by serious members of the profession, is that the movie is a piece of crap. Christmas Vacation is considered by many film ...

Okay, no one anticipated that Need for Speed, the motion picture interpretation of the popular (and addictive) series of video games, would resemble Shakespeare. There was, however, a reasonable expectation that some of the adrenaline would transfe...

Nell, Jodie Foster's return to dramatic acting following a flirtation with Maverick's action-comedy, is an entirely human movie. In this lush, green world of rolling hills and crystal pools, technology is an unwelcome intruder; civilization, a thr...

Considering how ubiquitous social media has become in the early 21st century, it’s surprising how few films have used this cultural element as the foundation for a movie plot (rather than just window dressing). Nerve seeks to rectify this overs...

Welcome to cyberspace, the newest locale for the action-adventure film. Borrowing heavily from Alfred Hitchcock and John Grisham, director Irwin Winkler reduces a potentially-fascinating premise to the spearhead of a routine thriller. The Net sta...

Strictly speaking, Never Back Down is not a remake, but it might as well be. The premise is familiar: underdog achieves self respect through training with a master then puts it all together for the big fight. Like a pop song suffering from overpl...