ROTTEN TOMATOES: David Edelstein

DAVID EDELSTEIN

Agrees with the Tomatometer 74% of the time.

Biography: I started way back at the Harvard Crimson, then moved on to the Boston Phoenix, then the Village Voice, then the New York Post, then oblivion, then Slate and Fresh Air. I also wrote a book with Christine Vachon called Shooting to Kill and a couple of plays, chiefly Blaming Mom (a comedy).

Favorites: The Lady Eve, The General, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Shop Around the Corner, The Godfather, Smiles of a Summer Night, Rules of the Game, Jaws, Ride the High Country, His Girl Friday, Bride of Frankenstein, Seven Samurai, Ashes and Diamonds, Touch of Evil, Singing in the Rain, Night of the Living Dead, and about 100 others.

Publications: New York Magazine, NPR's Fresh Air, Slate

Critics' Group: National Society of Film Critics

Total Reviews: 905

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date (default)

Fresh	Fresh 70%	Bruno (2009)	" Baron Cohen is a genuine comic guerrilla, charging right to the front lines of the war against prejudice and sanctimony." — New York Magazine Posted Jul 6, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 81%	Humpday (2009)	" *Lynn Shelton�s marvelous chamber comedy Humpday* butts up against the same sort of taboos as Br�no, and in its fumbling, semi-improvised way, it�s equally hilarious and even more subversive.*" — New York Magazine* Posted Jul 6, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 19%	Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)	" Much of the movie is computer-generated hash, weightless even with nonstop BOOMS and METAL GROANS and THUDS." — New York Magazine Posted Jul 6, 2009
Rotten	Fresh 66%	Public Enemies (2009)	" The best rejoinder to Public Enemies is Michael Jackson�s Smooth Criminal video... It�s a tommy-gun gangster fantasia with a touch of Guys and Dolls, and it�s everything Public Enemies isn�t." — New York Magazine Posted Jul 2, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 51%	Cheri (2009)	" It�s not a good sign when you have to take the movie�s word for it that the lovers at its center are really, really into each other." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 22, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 96%	The Beaches of Agnes (2009)	" Agn�s Varda manages to be full of herself without seeming � full of herself. Perhaps that�s because her self is full of so much other stuff: friends, photos, films, buildings, and beaches." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 22, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 97%	The Hurt Locker (2009)	" The Hurt Locker might be the first Iraq-set film to break through to a mass audience because it doesn�t lead with the paralysis of the guilt-ridden Yank. The horror is there, but under the rush." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 22, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 74%	Betty Blue (1986)	" The movie was colorful and swirling and oppressive all at once, and in 1991, Beineix recut it not to slim it down but to add a florid third hour." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 8, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 97%	Food, Inc. (2009)	" It�s the documentary equivalent of The Matrix: It shows us how we�re living in a simulacrum, fed by machines run by larger machines with names like Monsanto, Perdue, Tyson, and the handful of other corporations that make everything." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 8, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 46%	Whatever Works (2009)	" In small doses, [David] turns the narcissistic jerk into a hipster. But as an actor he has no equipment for suggesting a conflicted inner life: It�s all just straight to the camera, uninflected bombast." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 8, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 50%	The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)	" Travolta�s high-tech 21st-century scheme turns out to be not just preposterous but superfluous, demented." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 8, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 93%	Drag Me To Hell (2009)	" Truly, this is manna from hell." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 1, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 92%	S�raphine (2008)	" S�raphine is one of the most evocative films about an artist I�ve ever seen -- and in its treatment of madness one of the least condescending." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 1, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 82%	Pontypool (2009)	" Pontypool is, in all senses, brain food -- and juicy." — New York Magazine Posted May 26, 2009
Rotten	Fresh 73%	Departures (2009)	" Departures needed a little more work in the morgue -- like cutting to the bone." — New York Magazine Posted May 26, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 97%	Up (2009)	" The look of Up is a world away from Pixar�s usual CGI intricacies -- simple in a way that only artists with a genius for complexity can achieve." — New York Magazine Posted May 26, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 58%	The Girlfriend Experience (2009)	" Most of the dialogue is listless, and no matter how much Soderbergh snips and stitches, the movie is a corpse with twitching limbs." — New York Magazine Posted May 18, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 32%	Terminator Salvation (2009)	" This isn�t storytelling, it�s programming -- inorganic matter passing for life." — New York Magazine Posted May 18, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 37%	Angels & Demons (2009)	" The streets of Rome haven�t run this red since the Inquisition." — New York Magazine Posted May 11, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 93%	Summer Hours (2009)	" *Hats off to Olivier Assayas�s plain yet hauntingly beautiful Summer Hours, a true -- albeit nonsecular -- meditation on art and eternal life." — New York Magazine* Posted May 11, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 33%	The Limits of Control (2009)	" *It�s unfair to call Jim Jarmusch�s The Limits of Control* the emptiest movie ever made, but I wrote that in my notebook as I struggled to stay awake.*" — New York Magazine* Posted May 4, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 70%	Rudo and Cursi (2009)	" Luna and Garc�a Bernal gamely reunite for this occasionally entertaining film about two rival soccer-playing brothers, but the paint-by-numbers story line and overzealous direction do them few favors." — New York Magazine Posted May 4, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 95%	Star Trek (2009)	" If you care about this universe (and I do, damn it), you won�t sit passively through J.J. Abrams�s restart Trek. You�ll marvel at the smarts and wince at the senselessness. You�ll nitpick it to death and thrill to it anyway." — New York Magazine Posted May 4, 2009
Rotten	Fresh 83%	Treeless Mountain (2009)	" Is it fair for the director to strip away so much and leave us feeling so helpless? I�m still in pain; I don�t know." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 20, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 55%	The Soloist (2009)	" The movie is a noble enterprise, and Downey is stupendous as usual, but Joe Wright�s direction is too slick to elicit much feeling." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 20, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 86%	Tyson (2009)	" An 88-minute stream-of-consciousness monologue that has you by turns sym�pathetic, perplexed, appalled, and enthralled." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 20, 2009
Rotten	Fresh 85%	State of Play (2009)	" It�s like a time bomb that�s never dismantled but never explodes. The movie is good enough that the ending leaves you � not angry, exactly. Unfulfilled." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 13, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 71%	American Violet (2009)	" *You can laugh at American Violet, but most defendants are scared into pleading guilty and need all the poster girls they can get." — New York Magazine* Posted Apr 13, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 56%	17 Again (2009)	" *Even with actors who echoed each other�s mannerisms, 17 Again* would still be lame.*" — New York Magazine* Posted Apr 13, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 98%	Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2009)	" *If you can forget Spinal Tap* (hard), it�s rather touching the way these 50-year-olds still have the forged-in-fire fortitude.*" — New York Magazine* Posted Apr 6, 2009
Fresh	Rotten 51%	Observe and Report (2009)	" Observe and Report is the rare 'action-comedy' (almost always a muddled hybrid) that earns its cathartic climax. The blood is real because the psychosis is real. But somehow -- the magic of comedy -- it�s also uproarious." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 6, 2009
Rotten	Fresh 68%	Guest of Cindy Sherman (2009)	" Remove the boldface names and there�s no movie; that center does not hold." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 30, 2009
Fresh	Rotten 58%	Paris 36 (2008)	" My tolerance for French kitsch is low and French accordion music lower, so that I stayed in my seat bodes well for the film�s commercial prospects." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 30, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 88%	Adventureland (2009)	" What makes the movie such an unexpectedly potent little number is that Adventureland comes to stand for Stagnationland; the real roller coaster (i.e., life) is just outside the park." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 30, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 90%	Hunger (2008)	" It�s rigorous, evocative, and, in spite of its grisly imagery, elegant. It�s a triumph -- of masochistic literal-mindedness." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 23, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 94%	Goodbye Solo (2009)	" [Writer-director] has made a true drama, a tug-of-war between hope and resignation in which neither player openly speaks to what�s coming." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 23, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 66%	Duplicity (2009)	" It�s a passably amusing brainteaser." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 23, 2009
Fresh	Rotten 42%	The Last House on the Left (2009)	" Extremely entertaining if you don�t mind being morally corrupted at every juncture." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 16, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 89%	Everlasting Moments (2009)	" *Period movies with lots of sepia are usually soft in the head, but the nostalgic glow of Jan Troell�s Everlasting Moments* only adds to the clarity -- and wonder -- of its vision.*" — New York Magazine* Posted Mar 16, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 82%	I Love You, Man (2009)	" I Love You, Man is totally formulaic, but the formula is unnervingly (and hilariously) inside out." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 16, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 89%	Z (1969)	" Fascism has been driven underground, but a dose of Costa-Gavra's electrifyingly brutal 1969 political thriller Z will rattle you all the same." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 11, 2009
Rotten	Fresh 64%	Watchmen (2009)	" They�ve made the most reverent adaptation of a graphic novel ever. But this kind of reverence kills what it seeks to preserve. The movie is embalmed." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 2, 2009
Fresh	Rotten 18%	An American Affair (2009)	" *The reason to see An American Affair* is Gretchen Mol.*" — New York Magazine* Posted Feb 23, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 12%	Crossing Over (2009)	" Crossing Over crosses into the mythic realm of camp. What a waste. I still say it�s better than Crash, though." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 23, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 26%	Friday the 13th (2009)	" You really have to screw it up to dishonor the memory of a movie as s*y as the original Friday the 13th. Heads should roll." — New York Magazine* Posted Feb 17, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 58%	The International (2009)	" *A slow road to nowhere, less clunky than The Interpreter* but bogged down by its own cynicism.*" — New York Magazine* Posted Feb 17, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 90%	Katyn (2007)	" It is filmed with simplicity, a purity of intent." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 17, 2009
—	Fresh 100%	Gomorra (2008)	Click here to read article — New York Magazine Posted Feb 11, 2009
Fresh	Fresh 84%	Two Lovers (2009)	" Although Paltrow is radiant (and she nails the character�s ditzy sense of entitlement), it�s Phoenix�s movie. He is, once again, stupendous, and stupendous in a way he has never been before." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 9, 2009
Rotten	Rotten 23%	Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)	" *If the movie didn�t pander so madly to the audience for Sex and the City* and Legally Blonde, it might have been a comedy touchstone instead of a cringeworthy footnote.*" — New York Magazine* Posted Feb 9, 2009

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DAVID EDELSTEIN

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