ReelViews for R movies

Winner of the Camera d'Or at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, Love Serenade, the feature debut of Australian director Shirley Barrett, has the kind of nasty, biting wit that juries at film festivals seem to appreciate. For the most part, movies ...

Love Actually doesn't have a cynical frame in its celluloid. It's for all those romantics who think there aren't enough happy endings. Richard Curtis' movie dips so deep into the well of feel-good sentiment that it will threaten to send some audi...

It’s one of the oldest stories in the book – a mismatched pair, thrown together out of necessity, fight their way through a series of complications to find redemption and discover that their experiences have created a powerful bond between...

Creating a bio-pic of Linda Lovelace (nee Boreman) comes with its own series of challenges. The chief of these is that no one, not even Lovelace (who died in 2002), has a consistent view of the salient facts of her life. So, basing a movie on her s...

Lucky Number Slevin is a fascinating case study of what might result if Quentin Tarantino directed a script written for Alfred Hitchcock. From a screenwriting perspective, this is pure suspense, with twists that would appeal to The Master, includi...

If one was to apply loose definitions, The Lucky Ones could be considered a "war movie." In reality, however, this is less about how the characters react under fire than how they react when removed from it. The Lucky Ones is a road movie and, in ...

Expectations for Lucy based on television commercials and theatrical trailers will result in a skewed and inaccurate representation of the film. This is not, as the marketing department of Universal Pictures would have one believe, a kick-ass supe...

On the surface, Ma is seemingly just another entry into the generic horror/thriller category about a seemingly good-hearted stranger who worms her way into the bosom of a group before showing her true (psychopathic) tendencies. Although these ...

With a standout final performance by Chadwick Boseman and equally arresting work by Viola Davis in the title role, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom gets the year’s award for least-likely title to vie for a ton of Oscar attention. Adapted from the ...

In 1954 Queens, New York, three brothers -- Mac (John Turturro), Vico (Michael Badalucco), and Bruno (Carl Capotorto) -- after having a few bad experiences working for others, decide to band together and create their own construction business. The...