ReelViews for PG movies

When it comes to favorite Christmas tales on the screen, there are probably two. There's no confusion about the first, because there is only one It's a Wonderful Life. In fact, Frank Capra's classic is so expertly wrought that no one has even att...

With all apologies to It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is probably the best-loved, most often retold Christmas story of them all. There's something in its message of spiritual rebirth an...

At the tender age of seven, Josh Waitzkin (Max Pomeranc) becomes fascinated by the game of chess. Without giving up little league baseball, he learns how to play, hanging out with Vinnie (Laurence Fishburne) and a group of speed chess hustlers...

To the extent that there’s a difference between “big screen cartoons” and “animated features,” The Secret Life of Pets 2 comes closer to the former than the latter on the spectrum of non-live-action motion picture entertainment. The ...

About 20 minutes into The Secret Life of Pets, an entertaining but inconsequential animated movie, I was struck by a powerful feeling of déjà vu. It didn’t take long for me to ascertain the cause. The Secret of Pets is pretty much...

One could make a compelling argument that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty does what a good remake should do: it takes the essential premise of the original and, while retaining some of the names and touchstones of its predecessor, moves in a new di...

In content, setting, and cast choice, The Secret of Roan Inish is a departure for writer/director John Sayles. The creative force behind such memorable and diverse films as Matewan, City of Hope, Eight Men Out, and Passion Fish, has taken pen and ...

Secretariat joins Disney's pantheon of sports movies about underdogs that defy odds and become champions. Of all the movies in this group (which includes Remember the Titans, The Rookie, Invincible and Miracle), this is the least effective, in lar...

Going into Selena, I didn't know or care much about the life of the late Tex-Mex singer, whose death in 1995 came just as she was attempting to break into the mainstream American pop market. As far as I was aware, Selena's tragic end was just anot...

It's a curious thing that the best 1995 adaptation of a Jane Austen book happens to be of her worst novel. Sense and Sensibility was the author's first published work and, as is often the case with early writing efforts, displays an undeniable shal...