PETERSON REVIEWS
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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.
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‘The Lodger’ is Feature-Length Foreshadowing
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 movie thrillingly offers ideas and themes that would later be more deeply explored at their most fetal.
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Everyone is on Their A-Game in ‘Some Like It Hot’
The movie, aside from 1953’s ‘Niagara,’ is also the one, I think, which best showcases Monroe’s preternatural relationship with the camera.
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Presumed Guilty
On ‘Suspect,’ ‘Reversal of Fortune,’ and ‘Guilty as Sin.’
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‘The American President’: An Appetizer for ‘The West Wing’
It’s a broad-stroked, entertaining admixture of love and politics.
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In a Lonely Place
On ‘Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool’ and ‘The Report.’
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‘The Daytrippers’: High Stress on the Road
Is Eliza being cheated on? In ‘The Daytrippers,’ a great quasi-road comedy movie from Greg Mottola, the question, posed at the beginning of the film, will be answered at the end of a long, messy day.
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School Daze
On ‘Selah and the Spades,’ ‘The Half of It,’ and ‘Bad Education.’
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 