Steven Rea

Steven Rea has been an Inquirer reporter since 1982, writing about film and filmmakers, books, pop music and popular culture. He has been a movie critic since 1992.

He was born in London and raised in New York City, where he graduated from Stuyvesant High School. He graduated from San Francisco State University with a major in English and Creative Writing and attended the Writers Workshop graduate program at the University of Iowa.

His work has appeared in Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, Family Fun and other publications. He also writes fiction and poetry.

His column, "On Movies," appears Sundays in Arts & Entertainment, and his reviews normally run in the Weekend section on Fridays.

Read Steven's blog On Movies Online
Latest post: Where the Wild Things... Sing - 10/28/2009
Email Steven at srea@phillynews.com

On Movies:

By Steven Rea, Inquirer Columnist

Posted 11/06/2009

"On Movies" by Steven Rea does not appear this week.

Where the Wild Things... Sing

Our critics' selections - 11/07/2009: An Education Carey Mulligan shines as a suburban British teen, circa 1962, who falls for an older man (Peter Sarsgaard) in this beautifully turned coming-of-age tale, adapted from journalist Lynn Barber's memoir by writer Nick Hornby and director Lone Scherfig. Funny, sad, subtle, real. R
Town's alien visit mildly scary - 11/05/2009: By Steven Rea, Inquirer Movie Critic

'There's something going on in this town that we don't know about." "They're not from here." "Do you honestly believe that you were forcibly removed from your bedroom by a member of an alien race?"
Glorious satire of far-out military tactics - 11/05/2009: By Steven Rea, Inquirer Movie Critic

As goofy as the glint in George Clooney's eye, The Men Who Stare at Goats offers a terrific adaptation of the nonfiction book of the same name, one that chronicles U.S. "alternative warfare" programs. That is, military operations that explore ps
Tender and suspenseful study in love - 11/05/2009: By Steven Rea, Inquirer Movie Critic

A 2009 foreign-language Oscar nominee, the Austrian thriller Revanche ("revenge") is a slow-burning, character-rich study in desperation, grief, vengeance, loyalty, and love. It's the sort of arthouse entry - in German, mostly - that gets you thinking about an English-language remake. But really, why should there be one? Hollywood has a sorry history of messing these things up, and writer/director Götz Spielmann's movie - beautifully shot, beautifully acted - is just about perfect as is.
On Movies: Jeff Bridges abides, and works like crazy - 10/30/2009: By Steven Rea, Inquirer Columnist

TORONTO - In The Men Who Stare at Goats, Jeff Bridges plays Bill Django, a military man who returns from Vietnam to embrace the '60s counterculture headlong - the whole Aquarian Age, flower power, altered states of consciousness thing.
Our critics' selections - 10/31/2009: An Education Carey Mulligan shines as a suburban British teen, circa 1962, who falls for an older man (Peter Sarsgaard) in this beautifully turned coming-of-age tale, adapted from journalist Lynn Barber's memoir by writer Nick Hornby and director Lone Scherfig. Funny, sad, subtle, real. R
Message in such a brutal nightmare? - 10/29/2009: By Steven Rea, Inquirer Movie Critic

I'm ripping up my Lars Von Trier fan club card. With the brutal, and brutally pretentious, Antichrist, the Danish provocateur and founder of the Dogma school (rules to make your movie by) has finally gone too far. Fusing the carnal intensity of Breaking the Waves (I was with it) with the horror-movie s
A family tragedy set in South Philly - 10/29/2009: By Steven Rea, Inquirer Movie Critic

A version of this review was published during the 2008 Philadelphia Film Festival. There's a scene in Tom Quinn's very fine The New Year Parade in which the musical director of the South Philadelphia String Band, at the outset of the group's rehearsal, reminds the guys with their saxes and banjos that the silence between the notes is as key as the notes themselves.
On Movies: Writer calls 'Education' star a revelation - 10/23/2009: By Steven Rea, Inquirer Columnist

If Carey Mulligan, the 24-year-old star of An Education, doesn't nab an Oscar nomination come January, Nick Hornby, for one, is going to be sorely shocked.
Our critics' selections - 10/24/2009: Black Dynamite Smart, funny send-up of blaxploitation pics from cowriter and star Michael Jai White. Even if you don't know Shaft from a mineshaft, it's worth checking out this ingeniously plotted, over-the-top spoomage, with its kickboxing lady-killer hero, pimps and pushers, and an evil plot that leads from Watts to the White House. R