PETERSON REVIEWS
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Vincent Price Makes ‘Theatre of Blood’ Seem Better Than It Is
The horror icon’s performance makes you go a lot easier on a movie that’s much less sharp and suspenseful than it ought to be.
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Everything Everywhere
William Greaves’ ‘Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One’ is almost 60 years old and still feels ahead of the curve.
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‘A Poet’ is No Redemption Story
Simón Mesa Soto’s tragicomedy, about a failed poet who finds something to live for in a talented young student, seems poised to be conventionally uplifting before taking some knottier turns.
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The Calculated Cruelty of ‘Salaam Cinema’
Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s not-quite-documentary is revelatory — and gets its hands a little dirty in the process.
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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.
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Arrangements
‘Pillion’ and ‘Mistress Dispeller,’ reviewed.
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Disobedience
John Sayles’ groundbreaking ‘Lianna’ was a landmark — albeit a criminally underseen one — for lesbian representation in cinema.
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Trouble in Paradise
On the screwball-comedy perfection of 1937’s ‘The Awful Truth.’
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‘Shoot the Moon’: An Underrated Reminder of Diane Keaton’s Generational Genius
Alan Parker’s 1982 divorce drama is among the genre’s most emotionally evocative works.
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Short Takes: ‘Wuthering Heights,’ ‘My Father’s Shadow,’ and ‘Nirvanna’
For South Sound: New movies from Emerald Fennell, Akinola Davies Jr., and Matt Johnson, reviewed.
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The Heart of the Matter
Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Separation’ more than sidesteps divorce-movie expectations.
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Recent History
‘The Moment’ and ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab,’ reviewed.
OCTOBER 2026
The Theme is ‘Thrills and Chills’
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The Surprising Sensitivity of ‘The Leopard Man’
This proto-slasher from 1943 takes pains to show that its victims are more than their fates.
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
