ReelViews for PG-13 movies

In the Name of the King is a second-rate regurgitation of The Lord of the Rings. Everything about it, down to the set and costume design, apes Peter Jackson's epic trilogy. However, while The Lord of the Rings was a grand story of scope and power,...

In This Corner of the World is as atypical an animated feature as one is likely to find washing ashore in the United States. Although fare of this sort – hand-drawn, serious-minded, narrative-based – is common in Japan, where Studio Ghibli...

Andrew Niccol is fascinated by the impact of futuristic technologies on society. His gripping feature debut, 1997's Gattaca, explored a civilization in which genetic tinkering rendered natural reproduction obsolete. With In Time, he is again looki...

Undoubtedly, some reviews are going to describe Inception as confusing. Such a description confounds me, and may be more indicative of how accepting people have become of screenplays that allow for no ambiguity and traverse plotlines by blazing tr...

When I watch a comedy like The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, I find myself wondering whether plot and character development should be considered in an evaluation of the production. After all, the movie has been made with the intention of making peop...

Possible Spoilers: This review reveals some of the cameos in The Incredible Hulk. Those who wish to be surprised by these appearances would do well to stop reading now. For five years, Marvel has been trying to figure out what to do with one of ...

Credit the marketing masters at Twentieth Century Fox -- they've managed to make Independence Day the most eagerly-anticipated motion picture of a potentially record- breaking summer. Tantalizing shots of the White House and Empire State Buildi...

The temptation is there to say that Independence Day: Resurgence tarnishes the image of its predecessor but the original Independence Day wasn’t all that good to begin with. It’s probably better in our memories than it ever was on cellulo...

Raiders of the Lost Ark was a nearly perfect action movie – upon its release in the early 1980s, it redefined the genre for decades to come. It also provided a trap for co-creators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, forcing them to repeatedly tr...

Nineteen years is a long time to wait, a long time in which expectations can be fertilized and grow. The biggest challenges faced by Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull have less to do with entertaining an audience than competing wit...