PETERSON REVIEWS
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‘Special Effects’ is a Plasticky Hitchcock Homage
‘Special Effects’ brims with good ideas, but a surplus of good but iffily executed ideas do not a good movie make.
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‘Angst’ is Relentless
In its commitment to uglifying the psychology and very nature of the mass murderer, ‘Angst’ arguably becomes subversively vital.
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Strange Days
On ‘Host’ and ‘She Dies Tomorrow.’
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‘Mississippi Masala’: A ‘Romeo and Juliet’-Style Rom-Com with a Much Happier Ending
At the end of ‘Mississippi Masala,’ we don’t get an end-all, be-all resolution. Instead we stumble into a temporary clearing.
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Nicole Beharie is Sublime in ‘Miss Juneteenth’
‘Miss Juneteenth’ is an intimate, lived-in drama.
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In ‘The Might Quinn,’ the Central Mystery Almost Feels Besides the Point
This is a film that so expressively creates a milieu, and so observantly cultivates its character dynamics, it could contain no police procedural narrativizing and still make for solid entertainment.
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No Business Like Show Business
On ‘On the Record’ and Showbiz Kids,’ both on HBO Max.
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The Startling, Subversive Voyeurism of ‘Variety’
‘Variety,’ so wound up and tormented without a singular release, haunts.
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Doing Too Much
On Ken Russell’s ‘The Boy Friend,’ ‘Lisztomania,’ and ‘Gothic.’
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Bifurcated Romantic Drama ‘Paris Blues’ is More Interested in the Less-Interesting Couple
‘Paris Blues’ has gusto musically and visually; the performances frequently spark. But this is a film whose boldness only comes in glimmers.
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A Star is Not Born in ‘Smithereens’
On Susan Seidelman’s devastating 1982 comedy.
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‘Thirteen’: Rebel Girls
‘Thirteen’ is ultimately about as thick-stroked and (perhaps inadvertently) fear-stoking as an after-school special, just better-acted and more idiosyncratically made.
OCTOBER 2026
The Theme is ‘Thrills and Chills’
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Sin and Vice
On ‘The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh,’ ‘Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key,’ and ‘All the Colors of the Dark,’ an informal trilogy from Sergio Martino starring Edwige Fenech.
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
