383 Best Releases Rated R (Page 5)

When The Purge film series began, it attempted to create a heightened, ultraviolent version of the future that was both laughably over-the-top and an accurate reflection of the current political climes. They created a dystopia that was vaguely familiar but could still leave you rolling your eyes at its implausibility. For those unfamiliar with the franchise, the concept is as follows: On one night each year, the US government legalizes all crime, including murder, in the hopes of providing an outlet for Americans’ rage. It ultimately leads to an overall decrease in crime and an (ostensibly) utopian society. Continue Reading →

Gerard Butler's CIA-agent-on-the-run thriller aims to be more than a power fantasy, but for all its virtues, it doesn't stick that landing. There's an expected cognitive dissonance that comes with watching a man-on-a-mission genre piece set in the Middle East. Whether it's a glorified shooting gallery or a power fantasy where the hero stops just short of bleeding red, white, and blue - one needs to practice a mental limbo to either ignore or maybe be pleasantly surprised with the bare minimum concessions to showing the opposite side's perspectives.  Ric Roman Waugh's expertly mounted, ambitiously scattered Kandahar is, at its core, a Stagecoach riff. One where our leading man, career CIA operative Tom Harris (Gerard Butler leveraging his soulful full-time divorced dad essence), has 30 hours to make a mad 400-mile dash across an Afghanistan desert from an impossibly large group of following forces. It's a foolproof premise, yet intriguingly, Kandahar refuses to embrace its conceptual neatness.  Continue Reading →

The white lie at the center of You Hurt My Feelings isn’t harmless, nor does it spiral out to reveal lie upon lie, turning a marriage into a house of cards. Instead, it lies somewhere less explored: a trivial thing whose impact is understandably real. It’s a fine line to walk, but Nicole Holofcener does just that, and with a razor-sharp wit to boot. Continue Reading →

Folks, maybe I’m wrong, but I just don’t think we’re ready for Nazi redemption stories yet. Granted, there have already been a few, but those were from a time when the threat was neutralized. Now, in our current upside down world, they’re being normalized by both the media and Republican politicians, some of whom, like Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, would rather pretend they don’t know what “white nationalism” is than denounce it. We really don’t need a “but what if they can change?” story right now. But Paul Schrader is doing it anyway with Master Gardener, a movie that is surely well-intentioned, but ill-timed at best, and clumsy and borderline offensive at worst. Continue Reading →

There's at once too much, and somehow not enough, of the whimsical DIY spirit of writer-director Robert Rodriguez in his latest film, the shaky B-thriller Hypnotic. The Austin native made his name in the halcyon days of '90s indie filmmaking, shooting his first feature (El Mariachi) for a mere $7,000 at the tender age of 23. Since then, he's leveraged that inventiveness into a cottage industry of his own based out of his hometown of Austin, Texas, whether it's kid-friendly fare (Spy Kids), big-budget CGI blockbusters (Alita: Battle Angel), moody noirs (Sin City) or grindhouse splatterfests (Planet Terror, From Dusk Till Dawn). Hypnotic is all and none of those things, a chintzy lo-fi Christopher Nolan riff that doesn't have nearly enough life to work. And yet, there are just enough charming elements to save it from outright dismissal. Continue Reading →

Jem Starling’s (Eliza Scanlen) wardrobe is too much for the Kentucky heat. Yet others say her bra is still too visible. She tries to praise the Lord through dance with attempts progressive yet accessible to her church. Still, her peers claim the music she picks is too aggressive. Her instructor, Misty (Jessamine Burgum), gently scolds her individuality in class. Meanwhile, at home, her family warns against not just sex but intimacy of any sort. Such is standard for a 17-year-old girl growing up a fundamentalist Christian. Body and soul are omnipresent in The Starling Girl, as much as they are mutually exclusive.  Continue Reading →

“Just brang ma baby girl back alive!” Continue Reading →

From Rosemary's Baby in 1968 to 2021's False Positive, Hollywood has long been interested in women's bodies and reproductive systems as a setpiece for horror: and writer-director Alexis Jacknow's Clock is no exception. From its humble beginnings as a short film, Jacknow's freshman feature has blossomed into a chilly, paranoia-ridden horror flick commanded by a captivating lead in Diana Agron. Though Clock's script is sometimes inelegant and clunky, it boasts enough personality, perspective, and ferocity to stand an exciting feature debut in the world of horror.   Continue Reading →

Throughout Argentine director Damián Szifron’s To Catch a Killer, nothing seems new. A serial killer procedural featuring a young cop and an older FBI agent, Szifron’s first English-language film attempts to derive success from previous entries in the genre. Audiences and critics alike will almost certainly compare it to more original efforts. Unfortunately, Szifron’s unable to put personality, verve, or distinction into To Catch a Killer.   Continue Reading →

Folks, I simply would not open that book. Continue Reading →

If there’s anything Ari Aster wants you to understand after watching his newest film, it’s that he’s funny. With just three feature films under his belt, Beau Is Afraid marks both a massive departure from his previous films and a solidifying of his style. It’s a movie about terror, without a ton of interest in being terrifying. More specifically, it’s a movie about the absurdity of fear and the ridiculousness of human nature. And yeah, it’s definitely about moms, too. Continue Reading →

There's always been something of the vampiric in the acting style of Nicolas Cage; his dark, intense eyes, his hunched gaze, his predilection for sinking his teeth into the scenery as vociferously as he might an unsuspecting jugular. And yet, it's wild to think he's never played a gen-you-wine bloodsucker before now. Sure, there's Vampire's Kiss, the great 1988 dark comedy in which he played a manic '80s business guy who imagines himself to be one -- but those were more the panicked neuroses of your typical self-destructive Cage protagonist. But in Chris McKay's action-horror-comedy Renfield, he's the real pale deal: Count Dracula himself, complete with velvet capes, a mouth full of fangs, and an unquenchable thirst for hemoglobin. Continue Reading →

Forty years on, Adrian Lyne's tale of welding, dancing, dreaming, and cold-shoulder sweaters still leaves us all feeling like maniacs. Personally, the notion of referring to films as "guilty pleasures" has always struck me as slightly absurd—if a movie can touch, thrill, amuse, arouse or otherwise entertain you in some way, don't feel guilty about it.  So when I say that I've been a huge fan of Flashdance since its original release in 1983 (and can confirm, via the new 40th anniversary 4K UHD release from Paramount Home Video, that I still adore it), I feel absolutely no guilt or shame. Sure, the film is as preposterous a concoction as has ever been placed before a camera, assembled in such a calculating manner that you practically hear the gears grinding away in the background. But every time I've watched it over the years—and that's a lot—I find myself falling under its goofy spell once more. Continue Reading →

What makes an object meaningful? The plans its creators had for it? The image that its consumers build into it? The purpose it serves? The one who wields it? Continue Reading →

There’s been no shortage of pieces lately decrying the state of the romcom—is it on life support? Dead? In danger? If you’ve been lamenting the dearth of gems like You’ve Got Mail and Bridget Jones’s Diary, then Hulu has good news for you with its release of director Raine Allen-Miller’s feature debut: Rye Lane. It’s a quick and quippy romp through London’s Peckham neighborhood as two heartbroken twentysomethings bond over breakups and, far more deliciously, how to get back at their rotten exes. It’s a return to form that doesn’t feel stuck in the past. Rather, it’s a joyful reminder of why everyone loves a rom-com to begin with.  Continue Reading →

Just as no one ever claims that Millard Fillmore was our greatest President, or that Atlantic City is superior to Las Vegas, you’re not likely to ever encounter anyone who names Children of the Corn as the best horror franchise. Yet, an astonishing 11 movies, most of them barely connected to the 20 page Stephen King short story of the same name, have been released (the majority direct to video or streaming), each one cheaper and duller than the last. As opposed to Halloween or Friday the 13th, it can’t even be said that the original is good. At best, it has its moments, thanks entirely to teen antagonists Isaac and Malachi, who at least give it some creepy juice. Even then, Isaac returning in the sixth movie (creatively titled Isaac’s Return) couldn’t save this series from being dead in the water from nearly the beginning. Continue Reading →

The John Wick films are, simply put, the standard-bearer for American action in the 21st century. When the first came out in 2014, it shook the foundations of what we felt was possible in a Hollywood action landscape predominantly concerned with CGI energy blasts: It put stuntwork front and center, crafted labyrinthine mythology as dense and unnecessary as it was innately compelling in its flavor, and -- most importantly -- brought Keanu Reeves back to the public consciousness in a big way. Basically, it's some of the few times American action movies can even hope to compete with what comes out of Eastern Europe and Asia. And now, that saga comes to a close with John Wick: Chapter 4, a film that took two years after completion to come out, and feels like a final exhale of relief after hours of unrelenting, inventive action. Continue Reading →

Considering the lurid details of it (let alone that it was never solved), it’s curious that Netflix, America’s number one source for grisly true crime documentaries, has yet to cover the Boston Strangler. It’s a fascinating story largely because the man who was long believed to be the Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, almost certainly didn’t act alone, and may not have even killed all of the thirteen women whose deaths were originally attributed to him. DNA evidence years after the fact conclusively linked DeSalvo, convicted of rape and later murdered in prison, to just one victim. At the time of his arrest, both police and the media were so eager to bring the city-wide hysteria to an end that they pointed at him for all the murders, only quietly conceding after DeSalvo was in jail that there was likely more than one strangler, and that the case was still open. Nearly sixty years later, the other twelve murders remain unsolved. Continue Reading →

Director Alberto Vazquez has said his latest work of animated annihilation, Unicorn Wars, is inspired by three tentpole texts: Apocalypse Now, Bambi, and the Bible. We rarely see a film that’s such a clear summation of its sources. Vazquez has taken these familiar stories and ran them through an organ grinder made of rainbow-colored steel. Continue Reading →

The Scream franchise's strength has always been in its self-awareness. Initially, it turned the camera towards the audience, demanding that they ask themselves why it's so entertaining to see other people being made to suffer, and what happens if, as the tagline went, someone took their love of scary movies too far. Then it mocked the inevitability of sequels, then the movie industry in general, then how the media treats trauma victims like celebrities, with varying levels of success. The 2022 reboot, directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, sought to address all of it in some fashion, with toxic fandom on top of that. It was mostly successful, despite being at times aggressively meta. Scream VI does much of the same, although this time the knowing winks and nods are starting to feel a little tired. Continue Reading →

Idris Elba has been playing DCI John Luther for over a decade. A mixture of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, he’s a violent, angry, dedicated detective, doing whatever necessary to catch the grisliest criminals. Finally, after six seasons, Luther finds himself in a feature film, Luther: The Fallen Sun, with many of the trappings of his British series. A horrific serial killer is on the loose. The anti-hero detective must stop him, but there’s a major obstacle in his way. Specifically, he’s staring out at the world through the bars of a jail cell. Continue Reading →