ReelViews for R movies

The last time Nicolas Cage bared his fangs – in 1988’s Vampire’s Kiss – his performance was widely criticized (and, in some circles, praised) for being outlandishly campy. Now, some 35 years later, Cage has channeled the same zany zeitgeis...

Reno 911!: Miami represents an argument against taking 22-minute TV comedy shows and expanding them to 80-minute feature films. Something that entertains over a short period when watched from the vantage point of a couch or a recliner does not nece...

Over the years since its March 1984 release, Alex Cox’s debut feature, Repo Man, has developed a reputation as a “cult classic.” Unlike many other films to claim that badge, this one deserves it. Largely dismissed by mainstream audiences dur...

Repo Men feels like it was cobbled together using pieces of other, often better motion pictures. I could provide a list of titles but it would be more comprehensive simply to state that if a movie is set on a less-than-optimistic future Earth, some...

It would be interesting to get a psychologist's perspective about why revenge/vigilante (two sides of the same coin) motion pictures are suddenly so popular. From The Brave One to Death Sentence to Before the Devil Knows You're Dead to Reservation ...

Reservoir Dogs grabs you by the throat and digs its claws in deep. From the moment that the unwitting viewer tumbles into the realm of Lawrence Tierney's gang of eight, they are hopelessly trapped there until the final credits roll. As the first ...

The most interesting aspect of Resurrection comes from guessing how insane the main character is and whether anything she’s seeing is real. Still, those are primarily intellectual curiosities and I’m not sure how well they gel in feature lengt...

When it comes to the annual Liam Neeson cash-grab, I have learned to temper my expectations. A guilty pleasure would seem to be an attainable goal, although those instances have been more the exception than the rule lately. The problem is that Nee...

Sometimes just having a clever idea isn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Take Return to Horror High. If I was being generous, I’d admit there’s something in the premise that could make for an entertaining horror-comedy/parody with a blurring of ...

The Revenant, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Birdman, plays like a cross between Terrence Malick and Sam Peckinpah. As unlikely as such a conflation might seem, the result works - sometimes to stunning effect. In a...