ReelViews for R movies

The generic cop movie has become such a tedious bore that when something like The Departed comes along, it injects energy into a genre that, over time, has lost momentum to a dried-up wellspring of creativity. Even as recently as the '80s, when Di...

The Catholic community's outcry against Priest has already begun, and it will doubtlessly become more intense before it abates. One of the most disturbing elements of any organized protest of this sort is that most of those involved will not have ...

One of the most unfortunate aspects of a courtroom thriller is the tendency to degenerate into preposterous melodrama. It's as if the basic situation of having a person on trial for their life isn't inherently powerful enough. As a result, cheap...

It would be possible to write pages and pages comparing and contrasting the reality of Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign with the fictional one of Jack Stanton, the candidate in Primary Colors. Likewise, it would be equally possible to dev...

Every horror fan deserves the occasional (decent) fix, and in the midst of one of the bleakest movie months of the year, Primate delivers. There’s nothing terribly original about Johannes Roberts’ rabid chimpanzee tale, but that’s kind o...

When evaluating a movie like Primetime, one must consider two separate issues: whether it works as a film and whether it commits a degree of fictionalization that raises ethical questions about the filmmakers' intentions. That TV personality Chris...

What a croc! Unsolicited advice to filmmakers: When making a monster movie, do not attempt to sell said film as a picture about a serial killer. Second piece of unsolicited advice to filmmakers: When making a monster movie, keep the focus on the...

German filmmaker Tom Tykwer first gained a measure of international recognition in 1997, when his second feature, Winter Sleepers received attention outside of his native Germany. Then came the 1998 Toronto Film Festival and the debut of Run Lola ...

To date, the various motion pictures presenting the story of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu’s love story have done so with a slant toward Elvis’ point-of-view. With Priscilla, writer/director Sofia Coppola has sought to flip the narrativ...

Whodunits are rarely a good playground for Hollywood films. The average mystery, whether a stripped-down Agatha Christie-esque tale or a more complex endeavor, is too demanding for the structural constraints of a motion picture. As a result, when o...