PETERSON REVIEWS
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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.
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Snow White, Remixed, in ‘Ball of Fire’
In which Barbara Stanwyck stands in for the princess as a fast-talking lounge singer named Sugarpuss and seven stuffy professors do the dwarves.
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‘Fuego’ Lives Up to Its Title
Isabel Sarli has genuine star power.
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Sex with a Smile
On the two truest distillations of Mae West’s screen image.
NOVEMBER 2026
The Theme is ‘Sibling Bonds’
ASDFJHGSD
‘Visible Secret’ is a Low-Key, Surprisingly Spooky Romantic Comedy
Ann Hui’s 2001 movie posits what a rom-com might look like with a ‘Sixth Sense’-esque underlay.
October 16, 2026
August 19, 2026
May 25, 2026
Smoke and Mirrors
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s inventive documentary isn’t just about the disgraced entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes.
October 19, 2026
Ghost World
Kaneto Shindō’s ‘Kuroneko’ is still forward-looking in its contempt for patriarchal devastation.
October 15, 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
