PETERSON REVIEWS
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I’m on Spring Break. Posts will resume on April 20.
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‘It Could Happen to You’ is So Lightweight, It Could Float Away
You watch it the same way you’d read a feel-good story in a small-town newspaper.
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Too High
On ‘The Stunt Man.’
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Horror Movies
On ‘Bergman Island’ and ‘Spencer.’
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The Profound Grief of ‘Fearless’
‘Fearless’ is one of the finest of all movies about grief I’ve seen.
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Overnight Success
‘The Barefoot Contessa’ is among the most pessimistic dramas about film stardom ever made.
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Upheavals
On ‘House of Gucci’ and ‘Belfast.’
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Worms
On ‘Last Night in Soho’ and ‘Dune.’
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‘Dance with the Devil’ Does Too Much
‘Dance with the Devil’ is a busy movie; its narrative poses so many potential problems for the characters they could practically form a line.
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Retrospections
On ‘The French Dispatch,’ ‘The Velvet Underground,’ and ‘The Last Duel.’
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‘Pulse’ Makes Us Take a Silly Premise Seriously
It’s a nightmare-as-movie, where not much makes sense but where the environment in which everything takes place is so creepily immersive, feels true enough, that even when things get a hair tedious you still haven’t gotten rid of the pit that has formed in your gut.
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Sex and Death, Locked in a Tango, in ‘Def by Temptation’
In this atmospheric and sensual (but not humorless) horror movie, Bible-style capital-T temptation is embodied by a blood-thirsty, ostensibly eons-old succubus that disguises itself as a distractingly beautiful woman.
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Bad Ideas
On ‘Halloween Kills’ and ‘Lamb.’
APRIL 2026
The Theme is ‘High Anxiety’
ASDFJHGSD
The Unrelenting Grimness of ‘Frozen River’
Misty Upham and especially Melissa Leo are excellent in this frostbitten drama.
March 27, 2026
February 4, 2026
November 6, 2025
Superheroines
On Julia Loktev’s towering, terrifying ‘My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow.’
March 30, 2026
Everything Everywhere
William Greaves’ ‘Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One’ is almost 60 years old and still feels ahead of the curve.
March 11, 2026
Next Big Things
Gregory La Cava’s ‘Stage Door’ is often at once hysterically funny and brutally pragmatic about the personal toll a career in entertainment can take.
March 4, 2026
Peterson Reviews 