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Jeffrey Overstreet

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Jeffrey Overstreet's memoir about moviegoing and film criticism, "Through a Screen Darkly" (Baker Publishing Group), earned a "Starred Review" from Publisher's Weekly. ImageJournal.org has published over one hundred of his film essays, and he served as the Senior Film Critic at Christianity Today. He is an assistant professor of English and writing at Seattle Pacific University, where he also teaches courses on film interpretation and criticism. WaterBrook Multnomah press published his four-volume fantasy series The Auralia Thread, which begins with "Auralia's Colors" (2007). He writes about film at LookingCloser.org.

Favorites:

Three Colors: Blue, The Muppet Movie, Wings of Desire, The Son (Le Fils), Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, The New World, Do the Right Thing, Raising Arizona, My Neighbor Totoro, Babette's Feast, Vertigo, The Secret of Kells

Location:

Shoreline, Washington

Official Website:

http://lookingcloser.org

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (2025) 98% B+ EDIT “As an all-ages adventure in magical realism ... it’s often enchanting, always amusing, occasionally profound. I haven't seen a child this young confronted with such daunting questions about life and death since Ponette back in 1996.” – Looking Closer Dec 24, 2025 Full Review Boys Go to Jupiter (2024) 93% B+ EDIT “When I laughed (and I laughed a lot), it was sometimes at the jokes, sometimes at the architecture, and sometimes at just how starkly Glander highlights the waking-nightmare landscapes so many American children are trying to survive.” – Looking Closer Nov 24, 2025 Full Review The Threesome (2025) 77% B+ EDIT “Avoid the trailer! Hartigan’s films are best enjoyed when you can let him surprise you. ... [This] is one of the more unpredictable and intriguingly complicated stories about young adults in love I’ve seen at the movies.” – Looking Closer Nov 24, 2025 Full Review A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025) 36% C+ EDIT “Counters heavy-handed screenwriting with just enough visual creativity and movie-star charm that I found myself enjoying the movie anyway. ... I can feel Kogonada’s strengths in tension with [this] cheese-fest of a screenplay.” – Looking Closer Nov 24, 2025 Full Review Anemone (2025) 53% B+ EDIT “This has the resonance of a deeply personal work. It’s a testimony in textures of what it feels like to venture willingly into someone else’s trauma, resentment, grief, and shame, and to just be with them there, in that trouble.” – Looking Closer Nov 24, 2025 Full Review If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025) 92% C+ EDIT “There’s a thin line between a work of art that explores anxiety in a way that leads us to some understanding or epiphany and a work of art that just stresses us out for two hours. [This] feels more like the latter.” – Looking Closer Nov 24, 2025 Full Review Train Dreams (2025) 95% A- EDIT “While many historical epics are set against wilderness backdrops, this one immerses us in the wild so effectively, I could swear the theater became as pungent with evergreen as the Christmas tree lots springing up all around town right now.” – Looking Closer Nov 24, 2025 Full Review The People's Joker (2022) 96% B EDIT “I want to live in a world where movies as passionately personal, as relentlessly creative, as exhilarating in their "deal-with-it" truth-telling — movies like this one — aren’t such rare occasions.” – Looking Closer Jul 4, 2025 Full Review Flow (2024) 97% A EDIT “Most storytellers would have turned this story into a quest to save the planet. Here, the immediate goal is to merely survive. ... And the grander priority, the one that feels momentous and dangerous, is to imagine the possibility of conscience.” – Looking Closer Jul 4, 2025 Full Review My Old Ass (2024) 90% B+ EDIT “It’s funny, its efficient without compromising on character, it has a joyful spirit, and it’s remarkably tender in all the right moments. [Director Megan] Park really loves her characters. All of them. And her cast makes me believe in them.” – Looking Closer Mar 31, 2025 Full Review Saturday Night (2024) 77% B EDIT “Like they’ve been asked to play 25 anxious dogs in a doggy day care pen, these young actors are all kinds of fun as they careen, clash, and collaborate. ... And some of them are doing brilliant impersonations.” – Looking Closer Feb 13, 2025 Full Review Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) 90% B+ EDIT “Organizing the chaos of the wasteland’s warring gangs around the exploitation of water and gas and bullets, Miller gives us an easy-to-read allegory about the inevitable destruction brought on by capitalism that is unchecked by conscience.” – Looking Closer Jan 7, 2025 Full Review Sing Sing (2023) 97% A- EDIT “This is not a squishy, sentimental, bring-the-tissues tear-jerker. ... This movie gives us a good sense of what it actually feels like to live in these rigid cells and corridors, and to crave freedom and beauty and nature and family.” – Looking Closer Jan 7, 2025 Full Review Twisters (2024) 75% B EDIT “Twisters is an engaging, amusing allegory for how we need to “tame” America’s storms. Its heroes are seeking ways to quell surges of “wrath,” and they are prioritizing care for those in danger’s path.” – Looking Closer Jan 7, 2025 Full Review Dìdi (2024) 96% B+ EDIT “It’s rare that a film like this sticks so resolutely to honesty in its storytelling, with such a willingness to leave conflicts unresolved, at the risk of frustrating those who want a fairytale ending.” – Looking Closer Jan 7, 2025 Full Review A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) 86% C EDIT “Sarnoski makes the scenes of human intimacy as substantial as anything I’ve yet seen in this series. But just as I did with the first two, I staggered out of the theater glad the movie hadn’t run longer, and suffering from another concussion headache.” – Looking Closer Dec 29, 2024 Full Review Janet Planet (2023) 85% B+ EDIT “Baker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, is impressive in this debut. The movie doesn’t feel like “filmed theater” — it’s patient, quiet, observant cinema.” – Looking Closer Dec 29, 2024 Full Review Daddio (2023) 75% C- EDIT “I’d rather have watched a movie about Dakota Johnson's Girlie giving up on transit and just walking all the way home. ” – Looking Closer Dec 29, 2024 Full Review Thelma (2024) 98% B+ EDIT “The characters are endearing, the cast is a pleasure to watch, the jokes are strong, and the narrative arc has enough surprises and delights to send everybody home happy. ... Here’s hoping that Thelma inspires more movies about geriatric heroes!” – Looking Closer Dec 1, 2024 Full Review Ghostlight (2024) 99% B- EDIT “If [it] were filmed with greater visual imagination ... and a more subtle and creative approach to entangling Dan’s tragedy with the text of Romeo and Juliet, I'd probably find a place for it in my 2024 top five list.” – Looking Closer Oct 23, 2024 Full Review Challengers (2024) 88% B EDIT “It’s likely to frustrate a lot of viewers with its seeming lack of closure. And I’m going to stubbornly claim that the film’s furious conclusion is, in fact, perfect closure if you’re tracking what the movie is really about, what it values most.” – Looking Closer Aug 5, 2024 Full Review Riddle Of Fire (2023) 79% B+ EDIT “I haven’t had more fun at the movies in 2024. ... If you are old enough to remember using shoulder-mount video cameras or primitive handicams to make shaky fake action movies with your friends, you’ll probably love this.” – Looking Closer Jul 23, 2024 Full Review Problemista (2023) 85% B EDIT “Problemista is never less than amusing.... We should appreciate that Torres gets from the great Tilda Swinton one of the most ferocious performances of her extraordinary career.” – Looking Closer Jul 3, 2024 Full Review Cabrini (2024) 90% B EDIT “Gómez Andreu’s camera is in love with the clenched jaw and burning eyes of [Cristiana Dell’Anna's Mother Cabrini, who] stares directly into the camera, seemingly incensed with all of us for allowing anti-immigrant agendas to advance in 2024.” – Looking Closer Jul 3, 2024 Full Review Love Lies Bleeding (2024) 94% B+ EDIT “In a season when theaters are saturated with formulaic media, it’s a rare thing to have an experience where you believe in something this bonkers... where you’re leaning forward moment to moment with no idea what will happen next.” – Looking Closer Jun 23, 2024 Full Review
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