ReelViews for R movies

It's been more than fifteen years since the release of John Carpenter's Halloween, and ten since Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street. Each, in its own way, was a top-of-the-line horror flick -- a film that relied more on chills and thrills than...

At first glance, it appears that The Whale might represent a “return to form” for Darren Aronofsky, who has been taking a walk on the strange side with his previous two features, Noah and mother! Alas, despite some interesting performances, th...

Few things are more depressing in moviedom than films that squander a great premise. Such is the case with What Happened to Monday, a sci-fi thriller than all-but-abandons its deep philosophical underpinning in order to pursue a straightforward...

What Happens Later represents Meg Ryan’s minimal-fanfare return to the genre that made her a star and that resulted in one of the most fertile female/female writer/actor partnerships in the history of filmmaking. With Nora Ephron providing the w...

Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog was as pointed, funny, and intelligent a political satire as there has been in the last 15 years. Now, with Robert De Niro once again on board, Levinson has turned his camera toward his own backyard. What Just Happene...

Although there are too few movies out there with women of color at the top of the marquee, the way to successfully address this situation isn’t by taking an established concept, applying a gender-reversal, and creating an inferior production...

Ever had the feeling that you're not getting the whole story? That's what it's like to watch What Planet Are You From?, which suffers from the kind of editing job that indicates a cluttered cutting room floor. The product that survived appears to...

The previews for When a Man Loves a Woman do this film an injustice. Heavy on poorly-edited melodramatic sequences, they give little inkling of the level of emotional honesty attained. Luis Mandoki's film succeeds not because it tackles alcoholis...

When Harry Met Sally, probably Rob Reiner's most popular film to date (the other likely candidate for that title would be A Few Good Men), made the studios aware that, even during the cynical '90s, the romantic comedy could be a profitable genre. ...

While We're Young offers two movies for the price of one.  The first, about a married couple in their 40s coping with being rootless and middle-aged while lamenting the loss of their youth, is smartly-observed and relatable.  The second...