Movie Reviews (Chronological)
Overstreet Archives: Séraphine (2008)
I’m delighted to publish, for the first time at Looking Closer, a piece I wrote for Image about Martin Provost’s extraordinary film Séraphine, which I rated my favorite film of 2008. (Since then, I’ve come to favor Olivier Assayas’s Summer...
Overstreet Archives: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)
Who would have guessed that the person in the Pirates of the Caribbean credits who would eventually come to mean the most to me would be … Mackenzie Crook? But it’s true. In recent years, I have watched the TV series Detectorists again and again, delighted...
Overstreet Archives: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
In 2003, I approached Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl with trepidation. The movie caught me by surprise. Below, I’ll restore my original Looking Closer review to this site — it’s been missing for many years. At the time, I was...
At long last — a substantial documentary on Flannery O’Connor
How I wish this film had been available last winter when my Seattle Pacific University students and I were politely arguing about Flannery O’Connor. From January to March, I taught a course at Seattle Pacific University on literature and faith, and an...
In Bacarau, a town fights back against gunslinging predators
As he raged through the Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men, playing the murderous devil called Chigurh, was actor Javier Bardem taking inspiration from singularly menacing screen presence of Udo Kier? That question crosses my mind as I watch the...
Overstreet Archives: Days of Heaven (1978)
In September 2018, I launched a short-lived film website for Seattle Pacific University and began to write about films that have risen to a sort of legendary status that I call “sacred cinema” — films that routinely inspire spiritual reflection in dialogue...
Hamilton (2020)
Having never listened to the soundtrack album, and having never attended a performance of the play, I was introduced to Hamilton through the Disney+ movie of the original production. Instead of posting a review here, I am saving my response for the Looking Closer...
Overstreet Archives: A Very Long Engagement (2004)
A blast from the past: Here’s my original review of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s World War One epic.
The Quarry: murder, scripture, and Southern Gothic style
Set in a world rich with echoes of Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy, The Quarry‘s story of a fake preacher and a violent sheriff raises hard questions about the possibility of redemption in a world as ruined as this one.
It’s Groundhog Day in Palm Springs
Palm Springs plays with a familiar formula, and its innovations are diminished by its crassness and the flimsiness of its “insights.”