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Peter Canavese

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Since 1987, Peter "Groucho" Canavese has been writing film reviews and articles in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is a member of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle. Peter authors and maintains an exhaustive website called GrouchoReviews and is the chief film critic for monthly ON Magazine (since 1995), and Celluloid Dreams, a weekly radio show devoted to film (Celluloid Dreams runs on KSJS?90.5 FM?every Monday at 5pm). Since 2009, he has regularly contributed film reviews to Palo Alto Weekly. His reviews have also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News (1991-1994), in Bay Area weekly Alternate101 (2007-2008), and on Portland's 1190 KEX drive-time show Mark & Dave (2008).

Favorites:

Citizen Kane, Brazil, Duck Soup, Ikiru, North by Northwest, 8 1/2

Location:

San Jose, CA

Official Website:

http://www.grouchoreviews.com

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Griffin in Summer (2024) 94% 3/4 EDIT “A funny, heartbreaking, true-to-life indie comedy...willing to go into usually unexplored areas about our social behavior while retaining a deadpan wit.” – Celluloid Dreams Sep 29, 2025 Full Review Boys Go to Jupiter (2024) 93% 3/4 EDIT “A home-grown, quirky, deadpan absurdist alt-animation feature directorial debut...colorful, weird and wonderful.” – Celluloid Dreams Aug 18, 2025 Full Review Coup! (2023) 81% 2.5/4 EDIT “Pleasantly grandiose, but deeply cynical social satire, ultimately redeemed by its two lead performances.” – Celluloid Dreams Nov 19, 2024 Full Review Panda Plan (2024) 43% 1.5/4 EDIT “At 70, Chan remains spry and in great shape, but there’s no denying that awkward framing and Cuisinart editing and speed ramping and body doubles and painted-out wire work do serious heavy lifting...” – Groucho Reviews Oct 21, 2024 Full Review I'll Be Right There (2024) 86% 3/4 EDIT “A charming character study about a mother's bottomless love, which is both beautiful and pathological...a fantastic showcase for Falco.” – Celluloid Dreams Oct 7, 2024 Full Review Hundreds of Beavers (2022) 97% EDIT “The director needed to kill his darlings. It's a little too long, but by the end it has justified feature length, and it's funny and fun.” – Celluloid Dreams May 22, 2024 Full Review The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (2023) 87% 3/4 EDIT “Plays like a Daniel Clowes graphic novel come to life. Odd and a little difficult, but it demystifies sexual kink and its strength as a comedy is that it's willing to go there.” – Celluloid Dreams May 14, 2024 Full Review Aisha (2022) 98% 3/4 EDIT “A humble, well-made movie about immigrant refugees. ” – Celluloid Dreams May 11, 2024 Full Review Música (2024) 96% 2.5/4 EDIT “It brims with creativity...[but] if you get past its explosion of style...it starts to diminish rapidly.” – Celluloid Dreams Apr 24, 2024 Full Review The People's Joker (2022) 96% 3.5/4 EDIT “She ostensibly plays a cinematic supervillain in The People’s Joker, but as the story of the film—and, finally, the film itself—reaches ever-wider audiences, Vera Drew has come into focus as a cinematic superhero...” – Groucho Reviews Apr 8, 2024 Full Review Home (2008) 93% 3.5/4 EDIT “Darkly funny, haunting, and perhaps hopeful...there's a keen sense of absurdism (and in Agns Godard's brilliant photography a sort of surrealist realism, if there is such a thing) in the circumstances. [Blu-ray]” – Groucho Reviews Mar 29, 2024 Full Review Oppenheimer (2023) 93% 3.5/4 EDIT “Despite his film having prestige written all over it, Nolan the theoretical cineaste has rewritten the rules of the prestige picture...[with] his epic reconstruction and deconstruction of the Manhattan Project and the man who organized it.” – Groucho Reviews Jul 19, 2023 Full Review Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) 96% 3/4 EDIT “It comes down to the extended climax to make or break Dead Reckoning...and happily, the finale delivers with what could be the most impressive train shenanigans since Buster Keaton's The General.” – Groucho Reviews Jul 5, 2023 Full Review The House That Screamed (1970) 3/4 EDIT “This early slasher movie and somewhat Psycho rip-off is also an artful and unnerving gothic horror picture in its own right. [Blu-ray]” – Groucho Reviews Jun 20, 2023 Full Review Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) 71% 4/4 EDIT “[Spoiler-free review:] Mangold has practically worked a miracle: an experience that delivers everything a fan should want from an Indiana Jones movie... Congratulations, Disney. I can't wait to get on this ride again.” – Groucho Reviews Jun 16, 2023 Full Review The Flash (2023) 63% 3/4 EDIT “For all its flaws, The Flash proves strong on character where it counts as it serves up its MCU-style comedy, tragedy, and wow-factor visuals...In the final equation, the Scarlet Speedster gives us a largely enjoyable run for our summer-movie money.” – Groucho Reviews Jun 8, 2023 Full Review Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (2023) 46% 2.5/4 EDIT “Offers too much sensational spectacle, melodrama, and high-stakes sci-fi adventure ever to bore its audience, but its echoes of exhausted blockbuster tropes ring hollow.” – Groucho Reviews Feb 14, 2023 Full Review You People (2023) 39% 2.5/4 EDIT “A tightrope act to have a conversation about race when your priority is to get laughs. Great cast, but by its climax you feel like the movie's the hammer and you're the nail.” – Groucho Reviews Feb 3, 2023 Full Review Cairo Conspiracy (2022) 85% 3/4 EDIT “A political movie of religious intrigue, well-acted and directed with a good script and great visual appeal.” – Groucho Reviews Feb 3, 2023 Full Review Retrograde (2022) 93% 3.5/4 EDIT “History on film. Well edited, bleak...vital journalism.” – Groucho Reviews Nov 18, 2022 Full Review My Best Friend's Exorcism (2022) 50% 3/4 EDIT “Charmingly and frighteningly nostalgic, touching on feminist social satire.” – Groucho Reviews Oct 13, 2022 Full Review The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022) 43% 2.5/4 EDIT “Tonally shifty, overlong, repetitive and as history simplistic, but well-made and an interesting effort to reach across the aisle from the socially liberal to the socially conservative.” – Groucho Reviews Oct 13, 2022 Full Review God's Creatures (2022) 90% 2.5/4 EDIT “A deliberately paced, bleak, and unsettling morality play that never really gets much traction, spins its heels, and ultimately fails to find a way to make its material interesting.” – Groucho Reviews Oct 12, 2022 Full Review Hellraiser (2022) 68% 3/4 EDIT “Not as hardcore as the in-your-face, bloody, gory, sweaty, dirty, puss-y, oozing, festering, nightmarish 1987 original, but still honors Clive Barker's concept with a stronger, more-interested-in-world-building narrative.” – Groucho Reviews Oct 12, 2022 Full Review Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) 51% 3/4 EDIT “The most ambitious of all the Star Trek films—philosophical and metaphysical on a grand scale.” – Groucho Reviews Oct 9, 2022 Full Review
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