ReelViews for R movies

Years ago, while watching Delicatessen (in 1992) and The City of Lost Children (in 1995), I wondered which of the co-directors, Jean-Pierre Jeunet or Marc Caro, was more responsible for the films' quirky tone and striking visual style. Although Ca...

American Assassin is as generic an espionage thriller as you’re likely to find. Leaving no cliché unturned and offering a roster of predictable “twists” and unsurprising “surprises”, the production seems more like it was assembled f...

Over the years, many films have taken a dark look at the supposedly perfect ideal of a white picket fence, a little house, and a nuclear family. For many, the suburban life is the American dream. For others, however, it can turn into a twisted ni...

It opens with images of a late-night poker game: cards, chips, sweaty palms, concerned faces, and a woman's fingernails. Then, as night turns to day, the camera moves into the streets of New York, and, with the first bit of dialogue, we know we'v...

American Gangster is compelling in the same way that many mob-related motion pictures are compelling, but it fails to achieve the greatness that the best of them attain. The problem with American Gangster may be that it tries to hard to provide bal...

Racism. It's almost impossible to turn on a news program, read a paper or magazine article, or engage in a political discussion without that word coming up at one time or another. White Rage has many forms - from the hoods of the KKK to the shave...

By cannibalizing the casts of his previous two movies, director David O. Russell has come up with his third consecutive winner. American Hustle, very loosely based on late 1970s "ABSCAM" sting, takes its cues from Boogie Nights both in terms of how...

American Made is loosely – very, very loosely – based on true events. Ultimately, however, little of the real Barry Seal’s life has made it into the film, which is used by director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow) and ...

American Pastoral is another in a long line of movie adaptations of revered novels that lose something significant in their translation from page to screen. Although it’s not possible to argue that Philip Roth’s 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winnin...

With American Pie, it's a case of the reality of the situation being dwarfed by the hype. Word of mouth has this pegged this as the most raunchy movie of the summer - a film that embraces taboos and pushes the limits of the MPAA's R rating (indeed...