Jeffrey Overstreet
Tomatometer-approved critic
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.
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
Shoreline, Washington
http://lookingcloser.org
Movies reviews only
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The Quiet Girl (2022) |
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. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Apr 11, 2023
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My Father's Dragon (2022) |
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. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Nov 30, 2022
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Nothing Compares (2022) |
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. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Nov 24, 2022
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Tár (2022) |
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. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Nov 24, 2022
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All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) |
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. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Nov 24, 2022
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The Duke (2020) |
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. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Aug 20, 2022
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Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022) |
This movie practically dares you to scoff at it; it feels like a judge is watching you watch the movie, poised to find you guilty of cynicism if you flinch. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Aug 20, 2022
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Shadow in the Cloud (2020) |
What makes this film unusually compelling is how Moretz brings such conviction to her performance that we want to see how she comes out of this — even as the world around her poses greater and greater threats to our suspension of disbelief. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Aug 20, 2022
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Hit the Road (2021) |
The director’s style carries his father’s comical take on realism forward with such confidence; I was never expecting special effects, images that play like waking dreams, or musical numbers sung to the audience. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Aug 20, 2022
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Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) |
Collaborating with a small team of visual effects artists working in practical media, [Daniels] have achieved a joyous spectacle as exhausting as it is constantly surprising. ... For all of its imagination, this movie's finale feels overlong and preachy. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jul 20, 2022
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Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021) |
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. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jul 11, 2022
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Identifying Features (2020) |
A nerve-wracking journey reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's ventures into blood-soaked wildernesses, where what you imagine ... will only teach you that your imagination is not large enough to fathom the wickedness wreaking havoc in the world. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 30, 2022
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Spencer (2021) |
The film’s intriguing tone, which involves metaphors so heavy-handed that [the writer] couldn’t possibly expect us to take them seriously, feels less like a biopic and more like a campy psychological horror movie. ... And Stewart plays it perfectly. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 30, 2022
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The Power of the Dog (2021) |
A parable about how illusory civilizations really are ... while we are wilder and more mysterious than we want to believe. It’s also about how that wildness, when suppressed, leads to distortions more threatening than insufficient architectures of order. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 30, 2022
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The Worst Person in the World (2021) |
It’s one of the most thoughtful movies about human nature — and one of the most thoughtful about a woman — that I’ve seen since the peak of Kieslowski. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 30, 2022
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C'mon C'mon (2021) |
What kind of art do I believe can make a significant difference? ... Art that loves the world. I want to see art that invites us to see human beings through eyes of love. ... In 2021, C’mon C’mon was the film that best fulfilled this description for me. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 30, 2022
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Top Gun: Maverick (2022) |
As much fun as it is when a familiar formula is well-executed, this movie is also an altar to America's obsession with youthfulness, its exaltation of white super-men, its worship of heavy artillery ... and (sigh) its objectification of women as trophies. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 28, 2022
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The Northman (2022) |
Hopefully it will be received by audiences for what I believe it is: a memorable, harrowing, cautionary nightmare. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 28, 2022
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Petite Maman (2021) |
I was vividly reminded of two very special films: Doillon’s Ponette and Sayles’s The Secret of Roan Inish. The films share some unusual strengths: In all three, we follow observant and intelligent children through territory scarred with loss and sadness. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 28, 2022
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Crimes of the Future (2022) |
It investigates the mysterious and personal nature of art: where it comes from, how it asks artists to expose themselves in costly ways, how commercial and corporate interests corrupt it, and how crowd-pleasing can run counter to an artist’s own visions. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 28, 2022
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Emergency (2022) |
Williams and Dávila cook up engaging chemistry between colorful characters, zigzagging between plot threads efficiently; every character matters, every twist makes pretty good sense. ... There’s a current of truth and sincerity running through it. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 28, 2022
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Memoria (2021) |
Quite unlike any theatrical experience Ive had before. Its meant to surround you with shifting soundscapes of weather, radio signals, far more mysterious noises, and silences that seem more like living presences than quiet. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Apr 15, 2022
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The French Dispatch (2021) |
Anderson's devoting every resource at his disposal to realizing grander visions. The results are more like museums than paintings, more like restaurants than mere meals. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Nov 10, 2021
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Mass (2021) |
I'm hard-pressed to think of a more difficult conversation I've seen at the movies. ... Some will discover it, look up the 2021 Oscars, and wonder: Why was this overlooked? - Looking Closer
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| Posted Nov 05, 2021
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Pig (2021) |
The less you know about the plot, the better. ... It's a film of imagination, honesty, and grace, one that has reached the big screen in a time when such occasions are rare. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jul 19, 2021
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A Quiet Place Part II (2021) |
It's the most overtly Spielberg-ian exercise to hit the big screen since Super 8. ... Krasinksi proves he's learned a lot from the master of adventure and suspense. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 25, 2021
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In the Heights (2021) |
This never feels like a stage show adapted for the screen; it's a thrillingly imagined motion picture. If you haven't seen it on the big screen, you haven't really seen it. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 19, 2021
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The Truffle Hunters (2020) |
These hunters, while entertaining at first in their eccentricity, ultimately remain stubbornly and annoyingly opaque. - Looking Closer
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| Posted May 04, 2021
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Together Together (2021) |
I love it when screenwriters cultivate characters and relationships so unique that I can't think of relevant comparisons from other films. - Looking Closer
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| Posted May 03, 2021
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Tenet (2020) |
Exhausted and disoriented by Nolan's curlicue-rollercoasters, we end up fooled into thinking we've been stirred when, in fact, we've mostly been shaken. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Apr 04, 2021
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Nomadland (2020) |
On the map of cinema, I never expected to find an intersection joining the corners of Varda, Malick, and Sayles. Zhao strikes me as an artist who finds her films by listening. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Apr 03, 2021
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Abigail Harm (2012) |
It's committed to a strangeness I feel when reading foreign folktales -- more a cautionary tale than an inspirational story of what happens when we wish upon a star. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Feb 27, 2021
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Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) |
Impressive in its cinematographic finesse, obvious in its allusions, familiar in its form, and painful in its truth-telling, [this film] is a necessary testimony. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Feb 27, 2021
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Mank (2020) |
Every scene offers up cleverness in everything from lighting to writing. But I doubt that [it] will inspire many love letters. ... I was surprised by how disappointed I felt. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Dec 10, 2020
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Flannery (2019) |
The film's greatest gift is its gallery of insight from experts as diverse as Sally Fitzgerald, Tommy Lee Jones, Conan O'Brien, Mary Karr, Richard Rodriguez, and Alice Walker. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Sep 01, 2020
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The Quarry (2020) |
The film's weighty spiritual inquiries may suggest we're on a narrative arc toward a heart-warming redemption. But Teems and Brotzman are braver storytellers than that. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jul 20, 2020
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Palm Springs (2020) |
These two appallingly irresponsible characters ... have a lot to learn. [The movie] wears itself out trying to figure out what some of those things might be. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jul 15, 2020
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Da 5 Bloods (2020) |
[Its] strength is also its weakness: It is trying to be at least three kinds of movie at once. ... But few of my 2020 moviegoing experiences will remain as vivid in my memory. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jul 15, 2020
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The Vast of Night (2019) |
Its strongest thread [is] the idea that we cannot hope to arrive at truth unless we open the lines to all callers and listen in particular to voices that have been silenced. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 26, 2020
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Shirley (2020) |
Decker and her collaborators have achieved something meaningful and compelling here. [Shirley's] a tragic, fascinating figure, and I'll come back to learn from her sadness again. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jun 09, 2020
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Onward (2020) |
There's something about the character design, the voices, and the personality here that feels ... Dreamworks-y. That isn't a compliment. It feels sub-Shrek-ian. - Looking Closer
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| Posted May 09, 2020
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Strange Negotiations (2019) |
Bazan finds the vocabulary of America's churches too toxic to accept. But in his honesty and sacrifice, he reveals what a life touched by a true Gospel might look like. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Feb 08, 2020
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A Hidden Life (2019) |
Malick knows the power of nature's beauty as a language that transcends our spoken and written texts. [But his] visual poetry ... is becoming increasingly predictable. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jan 22, 2020
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1917 (2019) |
Even if we grant it the distinction of being the first war film to play as one unbroken scene, we may also conclude that it's ultimately less than the sum of ... its part. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Jan 19, 2020
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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) |
It's a Star Wars jukebox that generates remixes and medleys of the Top 250 moments from earlier installments. But at no point do we hear anything resembling a new melody sung. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Dec 21, 2019
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Light From Light (2019) |
Very little else in my year at the movies has stayed so vividly on my mind as Light from Light. It's haunting me. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Dec 10, 2019
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A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) |
Few women [get] to direct pop culture events as significant as this one. And Heller isn't content to give the people what they want: She takes risks from the opening scene. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Nov 24, 2019
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Ford v Ferrari (2019) |
Sure, it's a 'true story,' but everything is so streamlined and polished for a mass audience that I don't believe a minute of it. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Nov 24, 2019
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Wild Rose (2018) |
It demonstrates wisdom far deeper than almost any road-to-stardom story I can think of. It's more about how a soul is saved than how a star is born. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Aug 11, 2019
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The Farewell (2019) |
I recommend it, [but] ... it unfolded for me as a progression of obvious chords, played repetitively and softly. ... There's a difference between artful subtlety and dullness. - Looking Closer
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| Posted Aug 09, 2019
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