ReelViews for PG-13 movies

Perhaps a better title for The Da Vinci Code might be Much Ado about Nothing. When you boil away the hype and hysteria, all that remains is a pedestrian murder mystery that isn't sufficiently challenging or scandalous to raise anyone's hackles. I...

The similarities between Daddy’s Home 2 and last week’s release, A Bad Moms Christmas, are striking. Not only are the two films sequels to successful first installments but they follow the similar template of bringing back the most popular...

Most romantic comedies follow conventional formulas that, when they work, can result in a frothy, enjoyable end product - admittedly, not something to challenge the intellect but enough to cause the heart to skip a beat or two. When those formulas...

In the tired world of genre parodies, where Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have become the "go-to guys," Dance Flick manages the seemingly impossible feat of actually generating some big laughs. It doesn't do much else, but for a movie of this ...

There was a time when the western was one of Hollywood's most popular genres. Whether it was Gary Cooper standing tall in High Noon, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas taking out the Clantons in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, John Wayne fighting the Apa...

Where are the flying cows when you really need them? Dante's Peak is obviously predicated on the dubious idea that bigger is better. 1996's Twister brought in hundreds of millions at the box office by showcasing relatively small (if something s...

In the Pantheon of Marvel Comics superheroes, Daredevil is more of a demi-god than a full-blown deity. He's a notch below Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, and The X-Men. 20th Century Fox has acknowledged this when determining Daredevil's...

For most superhero franchises, the third movie is a trap. It's there that the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher iteration of Batman started its rapid descent. It's there that the Christopher Reeve Superman saga had the wheels come off. It's there that Sam...

Consequences. In real life, these ramifications emanate from every action like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond. Often in movies, especially those that feature characters who don't play by the rules, such penalties are suspended. However,...

For longtime fans of the X-Men comic books, “The Dark Phoenix Saga” has been the Holy Grail. As crafted by Chris Claremont and John Byrne (with an assist from Dave Cockrum), the epic narrative, which was a major element of The Uncanny X-Me...