PETERSON REVIEWS
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‘Cover Girl’ Doesn’t Quite Know What to Do with Its Stars
There are a handful of moments in this hit 1944 musical where Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly remind you of their greatness, but they’re largely underserved by Charles Vidor’s static direction.
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The Cautious Optimism of ‘The Big City’
‘The Big City’ is blunt about the professional and personal difficulties that come with shifting tides.
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Overnight Successes and Falls from Grace in ‘Babylon’
‘Babylon’ intoxicatingly — if exaggeratedly and not always accurately — evokes the sugar-rush quality of silent moviemaking and the behind-the-scenes dramas surrounding them.
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The Best Movies of 2022
Looking back at a great year for cinema.
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‘Secret Defense’ is a Spellbinding Revenge Drama
Jacques Rivette takes a revenge plot and, subversively, is most interested in the mundane everyday details that would in most other movies be incidental.
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‘Outlaws’ is a Bad-Wig Crime Thriller
This Spanish drama has all the charge of a crime-doesn’t-pay TV movie.
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‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is a Stunning Achievement — and a Bit of a Bore
James Cameron’s long-delayed follow-up to 2009’s ‘Avatar’ doubles down on visual spectacle and inert drama.
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‘À Nos Amours’ is One of the Great Coming-of-Age Movies
Where other directors might moralize or condescendingly diagnose, Maurice Pialat delicately and sensitively handles the emotional complications of a teenage girl’s budding sex life.
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Sally Field and Burt Reynolds Are Dynamite Together in ‘Smokey and the Bandit’
Jackie Gleason’s cigarette-voiced villain performance is a highlight, too.
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‘Hanna’ Should Have Stayed a Pitch
Joe Wright’s pivot to action filmmaking has flashes of intrigue but is mostly a slog.
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The Quiet Menace of ‘La Cérémonie’
Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert make for an unsettling pair in Claude Chabrol’s excellent psychological thriller.
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The Creeping Dread of ‘White Noise’ and ‘The Eternal Daughter’
Noah Baumbach tries his hand at adaptation, and Joanna Hogg expands her cinematic universe.
NOVEMBER 2026
The Theme is ‘Sibling Bonds’
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‘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
