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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
Hamlet (2025) 71% B EDIT “The choice to film so much in discomforting close-up only accentuates how lost Hamlet is becoming in his own head, and ... how rarely he is thinking through the potential consequences of his decisions.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) Apr 26, 2026 Full Review Project Hail Mary (2026) 94% B EDIT “An all-to-rare occasion for the whole family to go out and enjoy an adventure movie that makes spectacular use of its massive canvas. ... [And I applaud its] rather simplistic lessons about the importance of cross-cultural connections and empathy.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) Apr 26, 2026 Full Review The Christophers (2025) 96% A- EDIT “Solomon and Soderbergh have given McKellen what may be the best exhibition of his talents we’ve seen on a big screen. ... And I doubt I’ll be more excited about another actor at the end of 2026 than I am right now about Michaela Coel.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) Apr 26, 2026 Full Review The Drama (2026) 76% B- EDIT “I’m recommending this movie — begrudgingly — so that you can see Zendaya and Pattinson prove that they really are two of the most gifted actors of their generation, giving what may be remembered as their peak performances.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) Apr 9, 2026 Full Review 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) Dec 24, 2025 Full Review Boys Go to Jupiter (2024) 92% 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) Nov 24, 2025 Full Review A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025) 37% 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) Nov 24, 2025 Full Review Anemone (2025) 52% 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) Nov 24, 2025 Full Review Train Dreams (2025) 94% 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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. ” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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!” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) 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.” – JeffreyOverstreet.com (Ghost.io) Aug 5, 2024 Full Review
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