ReelViews for PG-13 movies

I'm not sure whose idea it was to turn Red into a movie franchise. The first film, based on the DC Comics graphic novel, was an enjoyable throw-away, but there was nothing about the movie or its modest box office success that cried out for a second...

John Milius' 1984 action/adventure film, Red Dawn, has long faded from the memories of all but a small group of intense devotees. It is perhaps best remembered, to the extent that it's remembered at all, as the answer to a number of trivia question...

Red Eye belongs to the genre in which a director attempts to sustain a heightened level of suspense for long enough that the audience will not notice how incredibly stupid the screenplay is. Alfred Hitchcock was a master at this - although some of...

Before being dazzled by the high profile cast of Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot, perhaps I should have looked a little more closely at the filmography of writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber. The filmmaker has to his credit su...

Some Christmas films are designed as family-friendly romps that can be enjoyed by all as a holiday confection. (Perfect example: A Christmas Story.) Others are adult-oriented fare that might make the Grinch blush. (Perfect example: Bad Santa.) Then...

At least the werewolves in Red Riding Hood have teeth and, when in human form, they don't parade around shirtless. Alas, wearing the PG-13 like a Scarlet Letter, the movie advertises an absence of true horror. Even Lon Cheney Jr.'s Wolfman was scar...

I wanted to like Red Tails. I really did. Largely financed by George Lucas (whose fingerprints are all over the final cut), this movie tells a story - that of the 332nd Fighter Group (a.k.a. "The Tuskegee Airmen") - that could combine dramatic powe...

Spoiler Alert: This movie contains spoilers about the time frame during which the movie's ending transpires. One suspects Remember Me would earn the official Nicholas Sparks Seal of Approval, if there was such a thing. This movie is the kind of...

For her feature-film debut, Lisa Joy (Jonathan Nolan’s partner-in-crime on the HBO Westworld series) has attempted to graft futuristic elements onto an old-fashioned noir detective story. The result is disappointingly drab with contrived act...

Memo to director Chris Columbus: In most cases, it's a bad idea for a movie to be a direct representation of a play. "Opening up" the setting is sometimes not all that's necessary to make a stage production into something cinematic. In a theater...