PETERSON REVIEWS
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‘Trees Lounge’ is Great at Being a Bad Time
What’s most evocative about ‘Trees Lounge’ is that there are no obvious arcs, no excuses for the character, no bouts of for-the-sake-of-misery misery — it has an alive, slice-of-life quality about it that haunts.
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‘Thriller — A Cruel Picture’ Doesn’t Know What It Wants to Accomplish
Notes on a big inspiration on ‘Kill Bill.’
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The Growing Pains of ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’
Todd Solondz has fashioned a great cinematic Bildungsroman.
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‘The Wicker Man’ is a Nightmare You Can’t Wait to Revisit
Unlike in the movie, where an “appointment” with the eponymous structure is, spoiler alert, unappealing, any appointment with any copy of ‘The Wicker Man’ sounds conversely appealing
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The Subjects of ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ Deserve Better
This well-intentioned biopic is bristled with distortion and damaging excision.
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On ‘Naked Lunch’
Not uncommon for Cronenberg, who often makes apolcalyptic-feeling movies in which sense is never among the top priorities, ‘Naked Lunch’ is never rational.
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Forces of Personality
On ‘Boudu Saved from Drowning’ and ‘Elena and Her Men.’
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On ‘Mikey and Nicky’
Notes on Elaine May’s unconventional buddy comedy.
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A New Kind of Rock Doc
On ‘Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,’ ‘Katy Perry: Part of Me,’ and ‘One Direction: This is Us.’
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On ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’
Notes on Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 epic.
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‘The Dead Don’t Die’ is Minor Jim Jarmusch
The film, by its end, makes for a collection of exceptional performances and jokes strung together by an allegory whose center doesn’t hold.
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
