PETERSON REVIEWS
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‘Resident Evil’ Gets the Job Done
Zach Cregger’s adaptation of the popular Japanese video game — itself already the basis of a lucrative six-part movie franchise that launched in 2002 — is proficient to a fault.
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‘Our Land’ is a Different Kind of Courtroom Drama
Lucrecia Martel’s first foray into documentary filmmaking uses a much-publicized trial as a conduit to examine her native Argentina’s corrosive colonialist history.
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‘Biker Boyz’: When a Miscast Lead Spoils a Great Premise
Reggie Rock Bythewood’s 2003 action movie plops you into an intriguing world about which you immediately want to know everything. But its central performance drags it all down.
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Short Takes: ‘Practical Magic 2,’ ‘Hope,’ and ‘Late Fame’
For South Sound: New movies from Susanne Bier, Na Hong-jin, and Kent Jones, reviewed.
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‘Urban Cowboy’ is a Country-Fried Cash-in
James Bridges’ handsomely shot 1980 drama is fairly openly indebted to 1977’s ‘Saturday Night Fever.’
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Memory and Family Are Not to Be Trusted in ‘Romería’
Now playing on The Criterion Channel, Carla Simón’s elegant new movie fictionalizes her genealogical history with productive reticence.
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The Perennially Relevant ‘Ladybug Ladybug’
The frustrations at the heart of Eleanor and Frank Perry’s 1963 Cold War drama have barely faded.
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Stepping Up
‘American Doctor’ and ‘Mad Bills to Pay,’ reviewed.
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The Meticulous Empathy of ‘Descendant’
In 2019, a sunken slave ship was discovered, after years of speculation, in Alabama’s Mobile River. A great 2022 documentary, ‘Descendant,’ powerfully probes the aftermath.
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‘Sherman’s March’ is Pretty Exhausting
It’s easy to see why Ross McElwee’s 1986 documentary was so influential. It can also be enervating.
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‘The Hamptons’ is a Compulsively Watchable Nightmare
Barbara Kopple’s 2002 documentary saps the mythic vacation destination of any romanticization.
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The Triumph and Tragedy of ‘The Joy Luck Club’
Wayne Wang’s 1993 adaptation of the homonymous Amy Tan novel was a breakthrough that deserved to trigger more of an industry ripple effect than it ultimately did.
SEPTEMBER 2026
The Theme is ‘Based on an Article’
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‘Between the Lines’: For the Love of the Game
In Joan Micklin Silver’s equal parts bighearted and devastating ‘Between the Lines,’ journalists are put on a pedestal — elevated like characters in a soap opera.
August 19, 2026
May 25, 2026
May 13, 2026
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.
August 7, 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
