ReelViews for R movies

With Two Lovers, director James Gray has remained geographically within his comfort zone (New York City), but has moved textually away from the crime and corruption-laced stories that have marked his previous efforts. This is strictly a character-...

During the latter years of the 20th century, no sports figure was more compelling and controversial than Mike Tyson, who scaled the heights of unifying boxing's heavyweight championships and descended into the hell of scandal and crime. With Tyson...

Hollywood, it seems, has lost the knack of how to make a good romantic comedy. The best two such films of 2009, Adventureland and (500) Days of Summer, have come down the indie trail. The major studios are unwilling to fund any production that do...

The “hook” intended to lure in viewers to Tom Gormican’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is the marquee-topping selection of Nicolas Cage as “Nick Cage.” The film gets a lot of mileage (perhaps too much) out of this meta casting....

In their follow-up to the underrated Good Time, the Safdie Brothers (Benny and Josh) have shown that the some of the most forceful qualities evident in their previous film were more trademarks than one-off experiments. Uncut Gems, although ver...

A naked woman wearing an owl mask. Sex orgies in buried tombs. Skinny-dipping shoot-outs. A serial killer of dogs. A topless woman with a talkative parrot. A girl with a balloon fetish. An aggressive skunk. Enough conspiracies and secret codes...

Let me begin by stating that I cannot recommend Under the Skin to audiences in search of a mainstream movie experience. This film, a cryptic adaptation of Michel Faber's novel, is all about mood and setting. It's as existential as a sci-fi/horror f...

Welcome to film noir, Soderbergh-style. For his latest effort (and fourth feature), the talented director who made the dialogue-and-character-rich sex, lies, and videotape turns his attention to this talky update of 1949's Criss Cross. Focus...

Watching Undertone, I was often reminded of The Blair Witch Project. Both films involve a strong point-of-view approach, eschew many horror tropes, and conclude without a true ending. Undertone, however, is not a "found footage" film, at least in t...

Vampire movies aren't what they used to be. Gone are the days when a cape, fangs, a cocked eyebrow, and a menacing glare were enough. By today's standards, those things are quaint. Underworld, from first time director Len Wiseman, is an example ...