ReelViews for PG-13 movies

The fairest way I can describe Coming 2 America is to say that it’s not as bad as I feared it might be. Damning with faint praise, indeed. My expectations were based on two factors: (1) the original movie, Coming to America, was an amusing-b...

It started ten years ago in 2008. Call it the “Liam Neeson Action Hero First Quarter Movie.” With Taken, Pierre Morel and Luc Besson tried an experiment: put a suave, respected actor in a B-grade action movie and see how audiences reacted....

Regarding a concussion as a serious brain injury is a relatively recent phenomenon. For many years, “getting your bell rung” (as the expression goes) was something people were expected to shrug off. For sports, the fix was to take a coupl...

Since the release of Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton has become a Hollywood staple. Rights to each new novel are quickly optioned, and the resulting film is on the market as soon as ILM can get the special effects done. Congo is the fourth adapta...

Contact is likely to change a lot of perceptions -- not only about the role of humankind in the universe, but about what special effects can do for a movie when they're used in the service of a story, rather than the other way around. Contact...

Contagion is the best movie made to date about an epidemic/pandemic. By making the characters accessories to the story rather than the central focus, the film is able to tell the story of the evolution of the disease without being encumbered by mel...

Cookie's Fortune deserves to be appreciated on its own terms. A less-ambitious outing from veteran director Robert Altman (at least when compared to movies like Nashville, The Player, and Short Cuts), this movie delivers agreeable performances and...

I have nothing against historical fiction: books or movies using real characters in situations that didn't happen. However, one would hope in such cases that the authors would have a story worth telling. That's not the case with Copying Beethoven...

If one was to judge Country Strong based solely on its misleading trailer, one might assume this to be a cliché-riddled Crazy Heart wannabe. And, although I will not argue that the whole cloth from which the story has been cut contains its fair sh...

At the very least, it's necessary to respect what the filmmakers try to do with Couples Retreat, even if the end result isn't fully successful or satisfying. Their goal is to take the basic template for a raunchy sex comedy and change it up by ins...