PETERSON REVIEWS
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Love Letters
‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,’ ‘A Sad and Beautiful World,’ and ‘Cactus Pears,’ reviewed.
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Strong, Stoic Types
Director-star Paul Newman’s 1971 treatment of Ken Kesey’s ‘Sometimes a Great Notion’ perceptively observes the corrosiveness of toxic masculinity.
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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)
AUGUST 2026
The Theme is ‘Personal History’
ASDFJHGSD
‘The Straight Story’ is a Surprisingly Sweet Effort from David Lynch
‘The Straight Story’ has a kind of rarified optimism and compassion that, if they were to confront you in real life, might spark suspicion.
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 