PETERSON REVIEWS
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Maggie Cheung Gives One of Her Best Performances in ‘Center Stage’
But the movie is made shakier because of its distrait presentation.
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Private Eyes
‘Claire’s Camera’ is an epigrammatic 69 minutes, yet its short running time isn’t synonymous with sketchiness or lazy economy.
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On ‘Amazing Grace’
At the center of this church, Aretha Franklin creates not just a feeling of home and unity but announces herself as the closest thing to a divine being personified in that place and that moment.
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‘Homecoming’ is Overwhelming
‘Homecoming’ is undoubtedly one of the great rock docs, joining the pantheon of genre definitives like ‘Stop Making Sense’ and ‘Sign ‘o’ the Times.’
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Julianne Moore is Sublime in ‘Gloria Bell’
Moore, giving one of the great performances of her great-performance-heavy career, inspires such empathy that there came a point in the movie where I noticed that my facial expressions almost exactly matched the ones she was giving on screen.
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The Leisurely Darkness of ‘The Beach Bum’
Considering everything that happens to Moondog, the protagonist of ‘The Beach Bum,’ over the course of a season, we find it surprising that there never comes a point where we find him sitting down, hunched over with his head in his hands, moaning, ‘the world’s out to get me.’
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‘The Decline of Western Civilization’ Evocatively Captures a Moment
Much would change by the time ‘The Decline of Western Civilization,’ premiered in the summer of 1981.
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‘Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami’ Doesn’t Want to Be Definitive
On Sophie Fiennes’ tessellated documentary.
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‘Three … Extremes’ Lives Up to Its Title
On an inspired horror-anthology movie.
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‘Branded to Kill’ is Thrillingly Unruly
Seijun Suzuki’s 40th film for the Nikkatsu Company was at one time a final straw.
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‘Black Sunday’ is an Early Masterpiece from Mario Bava
‘Black Sunday’ looks so incredible that it immediately becomes a horror masterstroke in a purely aesthetic sense.
APRIL 2026
The Theme is ‘High Anxiety’
ASDFJHGSD
Jean Gillie is the Reason to See ‘Decoy’
Jack Bernhard’s 1946 noir never completely grabs you, but Gillie’s impressively vicious performance almost makes up for it.
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 