ReelViews for R movies

When it was released in 1982, John Carpenter's remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 science fiction classic The Thing from Another World spurred much debate about not only which film was more effective but whether Carpenter's version fit better into the sc...

Things We Lost in the Fire represents Danish-born Susanne Bier's first foray into studio-funded American cinema. The transition is seamless - Bier's signature style of simple shots and frequent close-ups remains intact and her choice of material f...

Sometimes, I wonder how the human races survives it. By "it," I am referring to that seemingly insurmountable time of life when body chemistry and societal pressures conspire to make every day seem like a titanic struggle - the teenage years. Eve...

This Boy's Life is based on the autobiographical book by Syracuse University professor Tobias Wolff. It tells of his early life in Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Concrete, Washington. Tobias (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his mother, Caroline (Ellen Barki...

This is 40 has the feel of one of those French "family comedies" - sort of like the kind of thing brought to the screen by Cedric Klapisch, except with more profanity and vulgarity. There's not much in the way of a conventional narrative. This is 4...

This Is England, the semi-autobiographical tale of writer/director Shaun Meadows, turns back the clock a quarter century and looks at the slow progression of a boy from a lonely outsider to a member of a racist gang. Despite a somewhat rushed endi...

For first-time filmmaker Paul Quinn, This Is My Father is clearly a family affair in more than one sense of the term. Not only does the plot deal with an aging man coming to grips with truths about the father he never knew and the mother he though...

Good comedy stands the test of time. Two of the funniest movies I recall seeing arrived in theaters during the early 1980s. One, Airplane, a spoof of the Airport series (and disaster movies in general), has withered on the vine of changing times....

By the time September arrives, This is the End will probably be in the running for "funniest comedy of the 2013 summer." The end-of-the-world comedy packs more humor into its 107 minutes than many other contenders (Hangover III and The Internship, ...

This Is Where I Leave You is a card-carrying member of the "family reunion" category of motion pictures wherein circumstances bring together characters whose once-close relationships have grown distant over the years. The mechanism by which this ha...