ReelViews for R movies

SPOILERS ahead…David Gordon Green got Halloween. When the celebrated indie director embarked on the project of creating a trilogy of disconnected direct sequels to the original 1978 film, he displayed a sure-handedness that surprised many people...

It's difficult to explain the full range of emotional impact caused by Exotica. The latest offering from Canadian film maker Atom Egoyan (Family Viewing, The Adjuster) is as beguiling as it is baffling. Not until the final scene does everything f...

If Expend4bles was simply hampered by lazy writing and indifferent acting, it might not matter. After all, to be fair, those descriptors fit the earlier installments of the series – The Expendables, The Expendables 2, and The Expendables 3 – an...

The Expendables 2 does not defy expectations; it defines them. If you think you know what the movie will deliver, you're probably right. No surprises, no twists. Even more than the original The Expendables, this feels like an homage to the '80s, al...

For those weaned on action films from the '80s and '90s, The Expendables might seem like a dream come true. Sylvester Stallone, who is credited as both director and co-screenwriter (in addition to being the star), has assembled a dream team: himse...

After the indignity visited upon his previous feature, Idiocracy, one can forgive writer/director Mike Judge's a certain mistrust of distributors. However, while the dump-and-run approach utilized by 20th Century Fox in 2006 is not in evidence her...

If you’re looking for a strong narrative to go along with kick-ass action, you’re not going to find it in Extraction, a direct-to-Netflix thriller that offers plenty of the latter but not a lot of the former. The movie provides little more...

Eye in the Sky provides a comprehensive cross-section of the logistics, procedures, and tolls associated with something that’s now taken for granted in modern warfare: a drone attack. For the average citizen, this seems to be a relatively straightf...

Several years ago, I recall reading an interview with British novelist P.D. James (the author of the Adam Dalgliesh mystery series) in which she was asked why it took her an average of three to four years to write a new book when other writers work...

Face/Off, the third English-language feature from acclaimed Hong Kong director John Woo, isn't the best movie of the summer, but it certainly features some of the best action. Woo, who is known and appreciated for his unique stylistic approach to ...