Film Reviews Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning (2023) Here's a preview of Overstreet's thoughts on the latest Mission: Impossible movie.
Film Reviews The Balcony Movie (2022) Pawel Łoziński offers us the privilege of meeting his neighbors in a documentary full of chance encounters and surprises.
Film Reviews How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023) Daniel Goldhaber's film about desperate measures for desperate times is one of the year's most critically acclaimed films, and it's now available for rental on AppleTV+ and other streaming platforms.
Film Reviews Return to Seoul (2023) If we don't know the context we came from, or the biology from which we were born, we might face particular challenges in figuring out who we are. That's the idea that drives Freddie on an erratic journey of self-discovery and reinvention in this riveting film.
Film Reviews All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2023) This Oscar-nominated documentary exposes corporate cruelty from a voice of experience and a heart of compassion.
Film Reviews Overstreet Archives: Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (2002) A flashback to a curious moment at the crossroads of Christianity and the big screen: a VeggieTales movie that actually scored "fresh" on... wait for it... Rotten Tomatoes.
Film Reviews The Quiet Girl (2023) No, this isn't about a girl who doesn't speak. Cáit has plenty to say throughout. This is, instead, a movie about the extraordinary power of people who have the patience and generosity to listen — to the soft-spoken, the uncertain, and the insecure.
Film Reviews Is this the "best first film" for very young children? This Oscar-nominated animated short is a rare wonder that will likely become an early-childhood treasure for young viewers and families.
Film Reviews Living (2023) The great Bill Nighy is masterful in a strangely simplified adaptation of "Ikiru."
Film Reviews Twas the season of "comfort food" movies... A flashback to the '80s: Here's a new reflection on a "comfort food" movie worth revisiting during the holidays.
Film Reviews Overstreet Archives: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) Ten years ago, I wrote about The Muppet Christmas Carol for another website, marking the film's 20th anniversary. Here, at the film's 30th anniversary, I'm bringing that review to Looking Closer.
Film Reviews The Wonder (2022) On the week that I watched The Wonder , I had a challenging encounter with a stranger that brought the movie's central tension vividly to mind. It seems that the best way I can highlight my admiration for the movie is to share my experience alongside my review.
Film Reviews My Father's Dragon (2022) The source material, a 1948 children's book by Ruth Stiles Gannett, is whimsical and funny, and has clearly influenced storytellers for generations, but it's a meandering and episodic tale that lacks a certain gravity. Can Cartoon Saloon storytellers revise it into something resonant?
Film Reviews All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) Do we need another epic war movie in 2022? Yes, if it serves to strip away any sense that battlefields are about heroes or glory. All Quiet has always been about telling the truth, and this new German-made adaptation on Netflix is no exception.
Film Reviews Tár (2022) Director Todd Field's return to the big screen is an unforgettable spectacle. And it is, almost inarguably, the greatest performance of Cate Blanchett's remarkable career. Some will call it a masterpiece. I'm not so sure.
Film Reviews Nothing Compares (2022) It has taken three decades — 30 years to the month! — for the truth to come into focus. In the early '90s, Sinead O'Connor risked her career to speak truth to power. She was condemned by Christians, by pop culture, by almost everyone. And now we've seen her laments justified, her prophecies coming t
Film Reviews The Duke (2022) Roger Michell's final film* is an endearing epilogue to an impressive career, but even the headliners Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren can't make this one memorable.
Film Reviews Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022) The great Leslie Manville proves that she can make even a cloying crowdpleaser like this worth watching. You might find this "power of positive thinking" fairy tale a blessed relief it is from the punishing darkness and violence of almost everything else this summer. (Or, if you're like me, you migh
Film Reviews Shadow in the Cloud (2021) This isn't a one-woman show, but it's close: Chloë Grace Moretz gives this cartoonish action film a far stronger central performance than it needs, and that turns an otherwise forgettable action thriller into surprisingly compelling experience.
Film Reviews Hit the Road (2022) The son of the great Jafar Panahi has become a promising filmmaker himself. Panah Panahi's first movie takes backroads that lead to laughs, surprises, and troubling revelations.
Film Reviews Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) A conversation between moviegoers Cravis Frankly and Jeffrey Overstreet about the most complicated and most exciting multi-verse movie of the year.
Film Reviews Marcel the Shell With Shoes On (2022) Marcel is the kind of film that I suspect Jim Henson would have loved: It's childlike, playful, hopeful and wise — and all of this without ever stooping to sentimentality. Its characters seem to have been brought to life with patience, attention, and love. Just as I have learned more from Kermit the
Film Reviews Emergency (2022) Can this friendship survive the worst night ever? Kunle and Sean — and, to a degree, the cannabis-clouded Carlos — are spiraling down into crisis as they try to save a stranger in this funny but sobering "calamity comedy."
Film Reviews Crimes of the Future (2022) In Cronenberg's latest sci-fi nightmare, human bodies are evolving and surgeons are bringing brand new organs out into the spotlight... in public, as performance art. It's unsettling. It's meaningful. And it's hilarious.
Film Reviews Maverick (2022) (Part Two) As an action movie, Top Gun: Maverick is compelling entertainment. As art, it exists more as a celebration of Tom Cruise, exalting a version of reckless masculinity and whiteness that I might have hoped we'd left behind.
