PETERSON REVIEWS
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Coming-of-Age Drama ‘Sugar Cane Alley’ Doesn’t Sugarcoat Things
Euzhan Palcy’s excellent debut feature set the stage for a career making social issue-forward movies that managed to be both hopeful and unsentimental.
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‘My Mom Jayne’ is a Moving Act of Familial Investigation
Mariska Hargitay’s 2025 voyage into her iconic mother’s past abounds in tenderness and hard truths.
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‘Dark Star’ Hinted at What Was to Come
Serving as the feature-length debuts of both John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon, the 1974 space comedy has several of the traits for which both filmmakers would come to be recognized.
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For ‘Belly,’ Looking Amazing is Nearly Enough
Music-video extraordinaire Hype Williams’ one and only feature film has long had a negative reputation for preferring style over substance. That’s not a bad thing.
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‘Her Private Hell’ is a Provocative Bore
Nicolas Winding Refn’s first feature-length project since 2016’s ‘The Neon Demon’ is too uninteresting to make you want to give too much air to the outrage it seems to half-anticipate.
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‘Hell’s Kitchen’ Makes You Appreciate Alicia Keys More
For 425: Inspired by the singer-songwriter’s early life, the Tony-winning play is doing a multi-day stint at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre this week.
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The Romanticized Alienation of ‘Fallen Angels’
Wong Kar-wai’s 1995 drama makes loneliness look improbably cool.
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‘The Odyssey’ is Christopher Nolan’s Best Movie in Years
Plus: The dreamy, hard-to-pin-down quality of Avalon Fast’s ‘Camp’ is a feature, not a bug. (For South Sound)
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‘Thief’ Nails Its Set Pieces
The 1981 drama’s rather elegiac narrative isn’t nearly as affecting as it should be, though.
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‘The Invite’ is a Riotous Marriage Comedy
Plus: ‘Maddie’s Secret,’ John Early’s homage to the 1980s’ TV movies of the week, pulls off the unexpected. (For 425)
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Working Girls
‘Broken Mirrors,’ Marleen Gorris’ 1984 follow-up to her still-transcendent feminist drama ‘A Question of Silence,’ expands on its predecessor’s themes while dramatically improving on its writer-director’s aesthetic command.
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‘Night Nurse’: Georgia Bernstein’s Atmospheric, Opaque Feature Debut
The filmmaker’s audacious, narratively undernourished new feature has, above all else, great style.
AUGUST 2026
The Theme is ‘Personal History’
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‘Love at Large’ is a Seductive, Off-Kilter Noir
Alan Rudolph’s stylish neo-noir has one foot in the past and the other in the present.
May 25, 2026
May 13. 2026
March 27, 2026
Working Girls
‘Broken Mirrors,’ Marleen Gorris’ 1984 follow-up to her still-transcendent feminist drama ‘A Question of Silence,’ expands on its predecessor’s themes while dramatically improving on its writer-director’s aesthetic command.
July 9, 2026
Found Connections
Donna Deitch’s ‘Desert Hearts’ was a breakthrough for lesbian representation in cinema. It also achieves another rarified thing: Characters who feel like they exist outside a screenplay’s bounds.
June 30, 2026
Average Joes
Greg Berlanti’s ‘The Broken Hearts Club’ feels like a classic hidden in plain sight.
June 19, 2026
Peterson Reviews 