Category: Rics Reviews

Rambo: First Blood Part 2 A film so expressly in touch with 80s conservatism that seemingly Ronald Reagan himself could have written the screenplay, this second entry in the Rambo saga, while not quite as fun to watch as the superior Rocky 4 (which came out around the same time), is still a good hearty […]

Ransom It’s always interesting to take note of in this world those who are the type to always want to have full CONTROL of everything and of every situation in their lives, even if it means bending and / or breaking the rules once in a while. It’s even more interesting when you witness a […]

Ray In the rash of recent biopics of well known and beloved pop culture celebrities over the past twenty years, this certainly has to be considered one of the best, a celebration of the life and times of one Ray Charles and his influence on music while still not being afraid at various times of […]

Real Genius So called 80s movies are great to so many simply because their appeal is almost indefinable although it could just be the general lack of “political correctness”, a known relaxing of the rules of the time when it came to humor and content that in and of itself reflected the more relaxed social […]

ReAnimator Horror movies in the 80s was a grand time, as we saw one classic film (and franchise) after another, with the irony being that many of these “classics” of the era were actually quite derivative of prior classics that had come before them, yet still had enough squeamish verve and insanity to satisfy audiences […]

Rebel Without A Cause Thought of by many for being a film where all three of its lead actors, James Dean (car accident), Natalie Wood (drowning), and Sal Mineo (stabbed to death) came to tragic early ends, Nicholas Ray’s most famous work marked new territory for truly examining the ins and outs of teen culture […]

Red Spy spoofs are among the toughest type of movies to pull off, as in the right hands with good writing, they can be nothing short of brilliant (the first Austin Powers) or they can turn out to be cornball displays of excess (the Matt Helm films). This one falls somewhere in the middle. Bruce […]

Red Dawn Released in 1984 at the height of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, this film by conservative writer / director John Milius certainly depicted the worst case paranoia nightmare felt by Americans at the time: That Russian forces (combined with Cubans and Nicaraguans) would launch a ground invasion of the United States, aided by strategic […]

Red Heat Action movies with a pseudo political vibe are actually pretty rare, moreso when they mix in a healthy dose of comedy as well, but in 1988 Walter Hill managed to make one of the better and more well regarded ones with this entry that in many ways recycled direct elements from his earlier […]

Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins Many people have tried to replicate the same formula so they can try and recreate the magic of The James Bond Franchise into their own “superspy” type of character. Steven Spielberg (who in the 1970s campaigned to be in the director’s chair for a legitimate Bond movie) has openly admitted […]