PETERSON REVIEWS
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‘Harlan County USA’ Still Feels Urgent
Revisiting Barbara Kopple’s excellent documentary about unionization efforts in Southeast Kentucky in the summer of 1973.
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A Filmmaker’s Festival: The Gig Harbor Film Festival’s Executive Director on This Year’s Event
Pam Holt on what’s different for 2023, why it’s so hard for her to pick favorites, and a top-secret movie she can’t talk too much about.
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What’s Great About ‘Carmen Jones’ Cuts Through What Isn’t
Dorothy Dandridge is the best thing about a movie whose historical significance does not shield it from perpetuating the ills of 1950s Hollywood’s complicated relationship with Black actors.
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Charming Coming-of-Age Comedy ‘You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah’ Keeps It All in the Family
Plus: Cory Finley dips into science fiction with ‘Landscape with Invisible Hand.’
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Barbara Stanwyck Elevates ‘Stella Dallas’
Stanwyck has a way of making this treacly, broad-stroked motherly-sacrifice soap opera seem better than it is.
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A Love Triangle Among the Ruins in ‘A Foreign Affair’
Billy Wilder’s 1948 romantic comedy has much more than love on the brain.
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Anna May Wong is Hypnotic in ‘Piccadilly’
Celebrated as the first Chinese-American movie star, Wong gets a rare vehicle worthy of her time and talent with this 1929 romantic drama.
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Cobwebs: On ‘The Landlord’ and ‘Georgia, Georgia’
Two with Diana Sands.
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Lily Gladstone is the Best Thing About ‘The Unknown Country’
Though she can only do so much for this dramatically underbaked, formally fussy drama from Morrisa Maltz.
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Sex is Power: On ‘Baby Face’
The movie, all about a woman’s quest to fuck her way to the top, is notorious. But it isn’t overly reliant on shock value.
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The Startling Empathy of ‘The Accused’
Loretta Young is tremendous in an unexpectedly progressive movie about the nightmares of rape culture.
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The Illicit Affairs of ‘Passages’ and ‘The Innocent’
New movies from Ira Sachs and Louis Garrel, reviewed.
JANUARY 2026
The Theme is ‘Endings’
ASDFJHGSD
‘In the Bedroom’ is a Powerful Meditation on Grief
On actor turned director Todd Field’s first effort as a filmmaker.
November 6, 2025
October 27, 2025
September 17, 2025
The Hunger
Antonio Pietrangeli’s 1965 black comedy ‘I Knew Her Well’ is one of its decade’s most undersung works.
December 18, 2025
Parallel Lines
Zeinabu irene Davis’ one and only feature-length movie, 1999’s ‘Compensation,’ has gotten a well-deserved second life this year.
December 3, 2025
Do the Right Thing
Abbas Kiarostami’s Koker trilogy-commencing ‘Where is the Friend’s House?’ empathetically sees the world through a particularly well-meaning child’s eyes.
November 12, 2025
Peterson Reviews 