217 Best Releases Rated PG-13 (Page 5)

Sébastien Lifshitz directs a tender but incomplete documentary about a New York State sanctuary for trans people seeking safety & understanding. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival) Nestled in the arbors of the Catskills sits an ordinary house. Next to it is a brown box barn.  Dilapidated cabins dot the rest of the land. Driving by, you’d never know that over 60 years ago, this mundane property was a sanctuary for ‘trans-’ folks. Continue Reading →

When James Caan passed away back in July, most of the celebrations of his life and career focused on the tough guy persona that he developed via such classic films as The Godfather (1972), The Gambler (1974), and Thief (1981), to name just a few. All of those are undeniably worthy of tribute, of course. However, many remembrances failed to note his adeptness in comedies, especially those that allowed him to have fun with his macho screen image. Continue Reading →

The new horror film The Invitation opts to take a cue from Smash Mouth’s “All-Star” and hit the ground running. The very first scene of Jessica M. Thompson’s latest directorial effort depicts a woman deciding to escape a lavish home by way of suicide. With the help of a piano string and a medium-sized statue, she’s soon a corpse dangling in the living room of this mansion. Accompanied by pronounced cues on Dara Taylor’s score and claps of thunder, this demise is a striking way to kick off a movie. It’s also, unfortunately, emblematic of a critical narrative misstep from which The Invitation never quite recovers.  Continue Reading →

Alright, there's only one way to start this off, so best to do it well. Continue Reading →

Many of us have been called “old souls.” We are the people who feel out of step with our times. Director Katie Aselton’s Mack & Rita is a charming new comedy for us old gals that provides a refreshing update to the magical comedies of yesteryear. Continue Reading →

Ladies, sometimes life deals you a rough hand. Sometimes, in the blink of an eye, you can lose someone or something infinitely precious to you. Grief is so easy to slip into, it’s hard to pull yourself out of that darkness, but you know what will help? Spelunking. Or maybe ocean kayaking. Or, in the case of director Scott Mann’s Fall, climbing a 2000+ foot tv tower in the hopes that doing so will help to push through the horrifying memory of your husband’s death in a climbing accident.   Continue Reading →

Like many movies about people who use their phones and social media in excess, each viewer's individual enjoyment of director Halina Reijn's Bodies, Bodies, Bodies may hinge on their tolerance for Twitter jargon. Newcomer Sarah DeLappe's horror comedy screenplay is sharp and funny when it's not bogged down by an excess of 2020s slang. The heavy use of internet-speak isn't a problem for the first two acts. By the third act, though, it feels glaring.  Continue Reading →

It's no understatement to say that Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok was a welcome shot in the arm for both the titular God of Thunder (Chris Hemsworth) and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole. There's something to be said for cutting out the creaky Shakespearean grandeur of the first two Thors in favor of whiz-bang sitcom theatrics, with a dash of Guardians of the Galaxy's signature irreverence thrown in, all leather and ironic needle-drops and "well that happened"s. The result was a whiz-bang sci-fi action comedy that made a buttload of cash, extended Thor's lease on cinematic life, and catapulted Waititi into Hollywood's A-list. Continue Reading →

Apples opens with a series of thuds. With each one, we move in until we’re close-up on details. These are little seeds of a world. Such is the process through which director Christos Nikou peels back the skin of his story. He repeatedly plants tiny granular clues that one would be tempted to spit out and dismiss, but which make all the difference to the growth of the narrative. Continue Reading →

In the opening seconds of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, viewers are blasted with the sight of the Warner Bros. logo – a variant glowing in gold and crimson, practically exploding with flair and moving parts – accompanied on the soundtrack by a remix of “Suspicious Minds.” Within the first few minutes, sweeping shots of Las Vegas clash with Ocean’s 11-style split screens, and the editing juggles between slowmo and cranked-up fast motion, in classic Luhrmann fashion. Continue Reading →

In the video game version of the original Jurassic Park for the Sega Genesis, you can choose to play the side scroller as either Dr. Grant or a Velociraptor. Of course, you choose the raptor almost every time because dinosaurs are cooler than humans. It’s a great lesson for making a fun video game, but not for making a successful movie franchise.  Continue Reading →

In 1974, a crane operator named Maurice Flitcroft watched the Piccadilly World Match Play Championship (a golf tournament) and decided that he would take up the game. Not as a fun new hobby, though. No, he intended to play at the British Open. Supported by his wife Jean, Maurice did indeed enter and play in the qualifying round of the Open after fibbing on his paperwork that he was a professional. He scored 121 and ended up summarily banned. Over the years, Flitcroft would attempt to re-enter the Open, using costumes and pseudonyms. If this all sounds handcrafted for immortalization on film, then you’re in luck.   Continue Reading →

Navy Captain Peter "Pete" Mitchell, callsign "Maverick" (Tom Cruise) is a living legend. He is the only man to have shot down multiple enemy planes in the modern era of combat aviation. From the F-14 Tomcat to bleeding-edge skunkworks stealth plane prototypes, there is nothing he cannot fly, nothing he cannot (or more accurately will not) push past the fabled Danger Zone. Continue Reading →

Expanding a television show that usually runs for twenty-five minutes into a full-length feature film can be patty hard. Sorry, I mean pretty hard. After spending so much time in director Loren Bouchard’s colorful, sardonic world filled with enough burger puns to fill a McDonald’s ball pit, it’s hard to resist that sort of thing.  Continue Reading →

Eugenio Derbez has followed all the proper steps for any comedic leading man, including breaking out with a movie whose success nobody saw coming (Instructions Not Included) to side roles in long-forgotten blockbusters (Geostorm). Now he's taken a cue from many other modern stars of the genre like Adam Sandler or Melissa McCarthy and moved to 'streaming service A-lister' with Hulu's latest, The Valet. Continue Reading →

With perhaps the single exception of Heaven’s Gate, perhaps no American film produced in the 1980s received more bad press, critical hostility and commercial indifference than Elaine May’s Ishtar. Scathing press coverage revolved around its enormous budget—which extended to the reviews, many of which felt as if they were written by investors rather than critics—and studio machinations pretty much ensured that it would fail. Audiences stayed away in droves; as May herself once quipped, “If all the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.” Continue Reading →

If the new Mark Wahlberg movie Father Stu were a person, it would have to stay in a confessional for a whole year to list its endless shortcomings. Continue Reading →

A woman wanders a vast and empty house. Her eyes well with confusion as she seems to disappear through walls. She’s a specter in her own home, unfamiliar amongst what should be the most familiar. But she’s not a ghost. She’s just lost.  Continue Reading →

Sandra Oh has always had range, and her demonstration of it for viewers has always been spectacular. However, the feat she’s pulled this month will be tough to trounce. Oh has folks turning red one Friday and blanch white the next. And she pulls off the jaw-dropping swing in an on-screen mold as traditionally restrictive as “mother to a teenage daughter.” That said, whereas Mrs. Lee in Turning Red strives to adapt whenever possible, Amanda (Oh) in Umma refuses to. Continue Reading →

Campion followed The Piano with a Henry James adaptation dedicated to the magnificently fraught question of desire or duty. Artwork: Felipe Sobreiro In the wake of the critical success of The Piano, Jane Campion’s 1996 adaptation of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady barely made a splash at the box office, grossing only a fraction of The Piano’s $140 million US earnings. It too seemed to puzzle critics. Some called it  “claustrophobic” and “stifling,” and to be fair–they’re not wrong. The world that James creates in his masterful 600-page novel is at once lush and chilling, thrillingly intimate and so frustratingly tragic that as a whole it’s nearly impossible to quantify. James’s Portrait is not necessarily Campion’s, and vice versa. But few authors have had such a clear-eyed view of the inner lives of women, so it’s fitting that Campion–a director who has always portrayed women as they are, without pretense or romanticization–should be the one to adapt James’s greatest work.   Continue Reading →

(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 South by Southwest Festival) Continue Reading →