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Looking Closer

Looking Closer is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Jeffrey Overstreet, J. Robert Parks.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
B+
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (2025) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Dec 24, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Boys Go to Jupiter (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Nov 24, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
The Threesome (2025) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Nov 24, 2025  Edit critic review
C+
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Nov 24, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Anemone (2025) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Nov 24, 2025  Edit critic review
C+
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Nov 24, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
Train Dreams (2025) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Nov 24, 2025  Edit critic review
B
The People's Joker (2022) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Jul 04, 2025  Edit critic review
A
Flow (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Jul 04, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
My Old Ass (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Mar 31, 2025  Edit critic review
B
Saturday Night (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Feb 13, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Jan 07, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
Sing Sing (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Jan 07, 2025  Edit critic review
B
Twisters (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Jan 07, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Dìdi (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Jan 07, 2025  Edit critic review
C
A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Dec 29, 2024  Edit critic review
B+
Janet Planet (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Dec 29, 2024  Edit critic review
C-
Daddio (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet I’d rather have watched a movie about Dakota Johnson's Girlie giving up on transit and just walking all the way home.
Posted Dec 29, 2024  Edit critic review
B+
Thelma (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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!
Posted Dec 01, 2024  Edit critic review
B-
Ghostlight (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Oct 23, 2024  Edit critic review
B
Challengers (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Aug 05, 2024  Edit critic review
B+
Riddle Of Fire (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Jul 23, 2024  Edit critic review
B
Problemista (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Jul 03, 2024  Edit critic review
B
Cabrini (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Jul 03, 2024  Edit critic review
B+
Love Lies Bleeding (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet 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.
Posted Jun 23, 2024  Edit critic review
B
Lisa Frankenstein (2024) Jeffrey Overstreet While it’s a shame that none of the cast show the potential to become this generation’s Depp, Ryder, or Slater ... the whole thing feels like joyous cosplay. [It's] enough to make my late-80s high-schooler heart happy for a fleeting 101 minutes.
Posted Jun 06, 2024  Edit critic review
Ferrari (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet As vividly as it portrays the harm done by Ferrari’s arrogance and irresponsibility, I still think that audiences will come away even more enamored of the brand, and that some will likely come away thinking of Enzo as some kind of hero.
Posted Jun 06, 2024  Edit critic review
B
A Thousand and One (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet Every performance in the film feels just right, making this film's time-jumping narrative seem authentic at every turn. And the main event ... is the performance of Teyana Taylor as Inez.
Posted Jun 06, 2024  Edit critic review
A-
The Unknown Country (2022) Jeffrey Overstreet It kindles my curiosity about people I encounter only briefly in seemingly incidental stops along the way. It makes every encounter along the road seem like an opportunity to 'love my neighbor,' establish a new friendship, learn a new story.
Posted Apr 29, 2024  Edit critic review
B
The Eight Mountains (2022) Jeffrey Overstreet I’ll be seeing these mountainscapes when I close my eyes for a long time to come. And ... I’m grateful to have another substantial entry in that neglected genre of films about male friendships.
Posted Apr 29, 2024  Edit critic review
B+
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet For all of the energy [Scorsese] invests in honoring the First Peoples by revealing how they were deceived and slaughtered, his fascination with the depravity of powerful men still seems the subject he’s most excited about dramatizing.
Posted Apr 29, 2024  Edit critic review
B+
Priscilla (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet Spaeny, convincingly playing a 14-year-old dressed up to look 24, and respectfully adored by cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd, is so magnetic in every scene of Priscilla that even Jacob Elordi’s Elvis almost dissolves when she’s onscreen beside her.
Posted Apr 29, 2024  Edit critic review
B+
The Holdovers (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet Unfortunately, The Holdovers really lives up to its name. ... Worth seeing for its playful homage to a very specific slice of cinema history, for its three lead performances, and for a few very good scenes that come before those last, long 30 minutes.
Posted Apr 29, 2024  Edit critic review
B-
Dream Scenario (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet Given the challenge of playing someone who isn’t interesting, Cage does something interesting with every single scene. ... He’s as surprisingly funny in Dream Scenario as he was surprisingly dramatic and endearing in 2021’s Pig.
Posted Apr 29, 2024  Edit critic review
A
May December (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet With May December, Haynes returns to the fully immersive horror of Safe while also braiding paradoxically dramatic and hilarious tones — I believe what I’m seeing even as I’m laughing at the outrageousness of the whole scenario.
Posted Apr 29, 2024  Edit critic review
B
Godzilla Minus One (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet Remarkable in how it preserves what has always been the sturdiest elements of the franchise. ... In doing so, it leans heavily on Steven Spielberg’s Jaws for inspiration, and a pivotal sequence riffs on Nolan’s Dunkirk without apology.
Posted Apr 29, 2024  Edit critic review
A-
Monster (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet Here’s to Kore-eda, the master of filmmaking about children. I don’t know that any of his films since Nobody Knows twenty years ago have inspired in me such deep empathy for the children we see onscreen.
Posted Apr 29, 2024  Edit critic review
B+
Showing Up (2022) Jeffrey Overstreet Here's a movie by a singular artist about a singular artist that is so full of truths known only by artists who have lived them that it is going to be beloved by those artists. ... I laughed out loud at its wit and wisdom even as I felt like crying.
Posted Aug 16, 2023  Edit critic review
B+
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022) Jeffrey Overstreet While I highly recommend this film as one of 2023’s most impressive, I also think it’s imperative that we follow it with rigorous conversations, exercising conviction and conscience. Is a violent rebellion against a wicked empire the only way forward?
Posted Aug 07, 2023  Edit critic review
A-
Return to Seoul (2022) Jeffrey Overstreet My favorite films are those in which I can sense the filmmakers’ excitement at possibilities that they are discovering. That’s true here — it's as if the storytellers are inspired by the gambles their own protagonist is taking.
Posted Aug 07, 2023  Edit critic review
B+
Rye Lane (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet The most inspiring love story here is the one between director Raine Allen-Miller and South London, which is so alive with bold colors, lived-in textures, international flavors, and spicy aromas.
Posted Aug 07, 2023  Edit critic review
B+
Film balkonowy (2021) Jeffrey Overstreet It seems like such an ordinary stoop on which a filmmaker might set up shop, but what transpires is remarkable. ... If we learned to look through lenses of possibility and generosity, we might find friends in neighbors from here and faraway.
Posted Aug 07, 2023  Edit critic review
A-
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet McAdams's performance as Barbara Simon is exceptional; she plays it without a hint of condescension or pandering for younger viewers. She helps make this as great a movie about parenting as it is a great movie about being a kid.
Posted Aug 07, 2023  Edit critic review
B-
Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) Jeffrey Overstreet While Lowery’s Neverland is an enchanting destination ... his idiosyncratic storytelling style seems stifled, as if the studio had promised him a puffy-sleeved pirate shirt and instead strapped him up in a straitjacket.
Posted Aug 07, 2023  Edit critic review
B+
The Quiet Girl (2022) Jeffrey Overstreet I'd assumed this was a story about a girl who doesn’t speak. ... That isn’t, thank goodness, the case! This is a movie about the extraordinary power of people who have the patience and generosity to listen to the soft-spoken, the uncertain, the insecure.
Posted Apr 11, 2023  Edit critic review
B
My Father's Dragon (2022) Jeffrey Overstreet LeFauve's screenplay ... feels far closer to the perpetual-motion entertainment of B-grade Pixar than the four masterful tapestries that Cartoon Saloon has woven for us before.
Posted Nov 30, 2022  Edit critic review
B+
Nothing Compares (2022) Jeffrey Overstreet Never mind the familiar documentary techniques. ... This film is an argument: a case for the defense. And the argument is a good one. ... Love wins — and love is, to all appearances, all that has ever been on [O'Connor's] mind and heart.
Posted Nov 24, 2022  Edit critic review
A-
Tár (2022) Jeffrey Overstreet I find Blanchett compelling. I find Field’s directorial strategies exciting and sometimes virtuosic. What I enjoy most, though, is Nina Hoss’s heartfelt performance.
Posted Nov 24, 2022  Edit critic review
A-
All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) Jeffrey Overstreet Berger never gives us the luxury of a hero fantasy, a quest formula, or a sentimental turn. Every time we think we might find our way to some note of relief or inspiration, we are denied that comfort.
Posted Nov 24, 2022  Edit critic review
B-
The Duke (2020) Jeffrey Overstreet It just doesn’t feel like anybody is on their A-game. ... It's not a grand finale to [Michell's] career; it's like an encore where he plays an endearing crowdpleaser with a simple chorus about making the world a better place, one we can sing along to.
Posted Aug 20, 2022  Edit critic review
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