PETERSON REVIEWS
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The Overpowering Loneliness of ‘Separate Tables’
In ‘Separate Tables,’ carefully tucked-away secrets come to the fore
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Beauty is Pain in ‘Death Becomes Her’
Hawn and Streep are both terrific.
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The Cutthroat Thrills of ‘Murder by Contract’
‘Murder by Contract’ is a lean, no-nonsense movie.
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That Most Important Thing
On ‘Cane River’ and ‘Shirley.’
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‘The Great’ is Great
Though some abbreviation could benefit it.
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‘Brute Force’ is Best At Its Weariest
Which is to say when disgust at the prison-industrial complex is at its barest.
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‘Slums of Beverly Hills’: Family Values
The ensemble pushing it all forward is uniformly excellent, although Lyonne is so exceptional — she turns feigning bewilderment into an art form — that she predominantly is the person who makes the movie worth pursuing.
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The Indelible Paranoia of ‘The Parallax View’
The storyline is so rife with close calls and contrived developments that I ultimately enjoyed ‘The Parallax View’ not as I would, say, ‘All the President’s Men,’ which was as mistrustful as it was plausible-feeling. It’s more like fretful, intelligently designed pulp fiction.
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‘The Kids Are All Right’: Or Maybe Not
Cholodenko has made ‘The Kids Are All Right’ not in the key of an American tragedy but rather in the spirit of a semi-lightweight slice-of-life dramedy.
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‘Being Julia’ is Nothing Without Annette Bening
‘Being Julia’ is a flat imitation of a Hollywood Golden Era melodrama.
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You Can’t Look Away from ‘Color of Night’
I like to think of ‘Color of Night’ not as a mere failure but more a kind of transcendent moment where every one of the erotic thriller’s most tiresome tropes coalesced and then started the process of stupefying genre self-cannibalization.
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‘Cherry Falls’ is a Solid Teen Slasher Movie
‘Cherry Falls’ felt kind of like a balm when I saw it.
MARCH 2026
The Theme is ‘Acting’
ASDFJHGSD
‘Notting Hill’: A Star-Crossed Romance
Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant do wonders to soften — but not completely distract from — the contrivances of Roger Michell’s romantic comedy.
February 4, 2025
November 6, 2025
October 27, 2025
Disobedience
John Sayles’ groundbreaking ‘Lianna’ was a landmark — albeit a criminally underseen one — for lesbian representation in cinema.
February 25, 2026
Trouble in Paradise
On the screwball-comedy perfection of 1937’s ‘The Awful Truth.’
February 23, 2026
The Heart of the Matter
Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Separation’ more than sidesteps divorce-movie expectations.
February 16, 2026
Peterson Reviews 