ReelViews for PG-13 movies

When The Meg was released in 2018, it did strong enough international business to warrant a sequel. Although not entering blockbuster territory, it crossed the $100M mark in both the United States and China, reassuring producers that the multinati...

In a way, I feel like the victim of a bait-and-switch scheme.  The movie I saw isn’t the one advertised in the trailers. As marketed, The Meg looks like a breezy, campy monster movie that supersizes Jaws with an infusion of Jurassic Park. I...

Figuring out where Woody Allen's career began its downward spiral requires little more than a glance at his filmography: 1992, with Shadows and Fog. It may be coincidental that his ugly breakup with Mia Farrow occurred shortly thereafter, but Allen ...

It's a recognized fact that many epic love stories of literature and cinema transpire around or during a war. Consider, for example, Casablanca (World War II), Gone with the Wind (the American Civil War), Dr. Zhivago (the Russian Revolution), and ...

Have you ever seen a tabloid headline like this: "Woman gives birth to son of six-headed alien"? Men in Black, the new science fiction comedy from cinematographer-turned-director Barry Sonnenfeld (Get Shorty), postulates that such stories are not...

Men in Black II would be a thoroughly entertaining affair if it wasn't for one thing: the plot. The annoying and pointless storyline is a constant irritant because it diverts our attention from the real reason to see this movie - the easygoing ch...

The problem with some franchises is that the studios don't know when it's time to quit. The lackluster nature of Men in Black II should have been a hint to Sony that the Men in Black series had run its course. Now, at least ten years beyond the "s...

If I used words like “tiresome” and “lazy” to describe this pointless remake/reboot, it wouldn’t be sufficient to express the apathy I feel for Columbia Pictures’ sad attempt to exhume a franchise that was pronounced dead by the ti...

You know the old saying about putting lipstick on a pig? Well, that's pretty much what's happening with Timur Bekmambetov's Mercy, a tedious and preposterous whodunnit. It is so poorly scripted and negligently paced that the distributor (Amazon MG...

For anyone who wept hopelessly at the tragic romance of The English Patient, Message in a Bottle is the movie you have been waiting for. In addition to being a beautifully-photographed motion picture with a solid (albeit melodramatic) storyline an...