ReelViews for R movies

It's not necessary to look at the color of the leaves to determine the season of the year when movies of this power come along. Little Children, the second feature from director Todd Field (In the Bedroom), is the rarest of movies - a literary mul...

It takes a deft hand to fashion a feel-good movie with plenty of laughs and an upbeat ending out of a story that includes drug addiction, a suicide attempt, a death, Nietzsche, and Proust. Despite treading through a minefield of tone shifts, co-di...

The biggest thing The Little Things has going for it is that it’s not a run-of-the-mill mystery/thriller. The most significant potential problem, especially with respect to mainstream acceptance, is the ambiguity of the resolution. Some view...

The connection between actor/director/writer Ben Affleck and author Dennis Lehane goes back nearly a decade. In 2007, Affleck made his directorial debut by adapting Lehane’s Gone Baby Gone for the screen. It was a high-water mark in both of the...

Almodovar. To those familiar with his body of work, that name is more than just a way to identify one of today's premiere directors -- it offers valuable insight into the scope and intent of a movie. Since his debut in 1980 with Pepi, Luci, Bom, ...

It would be impossible to write a review of this film without discussing the title. How many viewers will see Julianna Lavin's feature debut because it's called Live Nude Girls? And how many will avoid it for the same reason? There's little doub...

It's no secret that some of the most powerful dramas are those that depict character transformations. Such is the case with The Lives of Others, the stirring and affecting feature debut of German filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. With a ...

Over the past few years, there have been a number of "behind the scenes" movies about the film making world -- enough, in fact, that this category almost deserves to be considered as a genre in its own right. Most of these films, like Mistress, a...

The tale of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is the most improbable of success stories. After having difficulty securing a financial backer, Guy Ritchie's debut feature became one of the biggest home-grown successes in the U.K. last year. Now...

This may not sound like a recipe for cinematic success: a man, alone in a car as he makes a 90-minute trip to London, connects with the voices of the outside world via his mobile phone. Yet, with tremendous work by actor Tom Hardy anchoring a film ...