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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:: 1268

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 1268

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T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
78%	Iron Man 3 (2013)	" Black is good at giving his heroes a morbid, self-hating edge and even better at coming up with hateable villains." — Vulture Posted May 3, 2013
46%	Pain & Gain (2013)	" I strongly recommend [it] if you don't overvalue taste, subtlety, and moral decency. I liked it." — Vulture Posted Apr 29, 2013
94%	Stories We Tell (2013)	" Polley has gone meta-exuberantly, entertainingly, with all her heart." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 29, 2013
46%	Pain & Gain (2013)	" Now [Bay] hits new levels of both artistry and sleaziness in the black comedy Pain & Gain, which I strongly recommend if you don't overvalue taste, subtlety, and moral decency. I liked it." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 26, 2013
56%	Oblivion (2013)	" Was Cruise trying to beat out fellow Scientologist John Travolta for the honor of starring in the dumbest sci-fi epic ever?" — Vulture Posted Apr 22, 2013
98%	Mud (2013)	" It's hard to believe Nichols thinks he can get away with all this and harder still to believe he does." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 22, 2013
75%	The Adventures of Tintin (2011)	" There are so many variables moving so fast that it's a wonder Spielberg didn't have someone onboard from Princeton's department of Higher Math to help keep track. But his crack team here is enough." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 12, 2013
62%	Evil Dead (2013)	" Five years from now, will you want to watch this bloody $14 million extravaganza or Raimi's shoestring original, which was Amateur Hour elevated to pop art? Evil Dead just bleeds money." — Vulture Posted Apr 8, 2013
42%	To The Wonder (2013)	" To the Wonder feels like generalized woo-woo -- and self-parody." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 8, 2013
94%	Room 237 (2013)	" As amusing as the movie is, I think in the end that Ascher misses the labyrinth for the trees." — Vulture Posted Apr 1, 2013
87%	Upstream Color (2013)	" I've seen Upstream Color twice and liked it enormously while never being certain of anything." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 1, 2013
48%	Olympus Has Fallen (2013)	" Olympus Has Fallen is a disgusting piece of work, but it certainly hits its marks - it makes you sick with suspense." — Vulture Posted Mar 24, 2013
81%	The Place Beyond The Pines (2013)	" The segments are essentially monodramas, so sketchily written that the big moments feel less like recognizable human behavior than recognizable screenwriter overreaching." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 24, 2013
48%	Olympus Has Fallen (2013)	" The carnage is cruel and crude." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 22, 2013
93%	Sugar (2008)	" The camera is on Sugar the whole time, but the faux-documentary approach keeps him out of reach in all the ways that really matter." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 20, 2013
66%	Spring Breakers (2013)	" Spring Breakers strikes me as another of Korine's calculated punk outrages, a sploog in Disney's direction." — Vulture Posted Mar 18, 2013
43%	Admission (2013)	" Fey has the Sandra Bullock role -- exactly the kind of part that she has spent the last decade transcending. She's not bad in it, though." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 18, 2013
60%	Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)	" Aside from a trio of witches that can hold its own with Eastwick's in the dishiness department, Oz the Great and Powerful is a peculiarly joyless occasion. " — New York Magazine Posted Mar 8, 2013
52%	Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)	" It's fast, rousing, and blessedly brief - under two hours instead of, say, nine in three bladder-straining installments." — Vulture Posted Mar 4, 2013
67%	Stoker (2013)	" The problem with Park Chan-Wook is that there's no real drama in his worldview. The drive toward cruelty is absolute -- and in this case, absolutely boring." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 25, 2013
91%	Million Dollar Baby (2004)	" It's impressive, in the sense that a sucker-punch impresses itself on your skull." — Slate Posted Feb 24, 2013
77%	Gladiator (2000)	" Gladiator's combination of grim sanctimony and drenching, Dolby-ized dismemberings left me appalled." — Slate Posted Feb 24, 2013
82%	Like Someone in Love (2013)	" Like Someone in Love has rather simple, sentimental, melodramatic underpinnings, but the vantage changes everything. It opens up this world - and the next. It's an enthralling journey." — Vulture Posted Feb 18, 2013
15%	A Good Day To Die Hard (2013)	" I didn't think it was physically possible to doze off at a movie as loud as A Good Day to Die Hard, but for a few moments my mind found some distant, peaceful refuge." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 15, 2013
45%	Beautiful Creatures (2013)	" Beautiful Creatures isn't pure camp -- there's some real emotion in there. But not enough to hit you on a primal level." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 11, 2013
90%	Caesar Must Die (2013)	" In a scant hour and a quarter it enlarges your notion of what theater and cinema, what art itself, can do -- it dissolves every boundary it meets." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 4, 2013
85%	Side Effects (2013)	" Side Effects is a smooth, shapely suspense picture." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 4, 2013
47%	Bullet to the Head (2013)	" On its own degenerate terms, the movie works." — Vulture Posted Feb 4, 2013
89%	Koch (2013)	" The film is a canny balancing act, making Koch's arrogance so plain that you quickly move past it and concede that he accomplished remarkable things for a city that was broke and in chaos and with much of its housing stock in ruins." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 28, 2013
92%	The Gatekeepers (2013)	" The Gatekeepers doesn't play like agitprop. The storytelling is strong, the images stark." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 28, 2013
4%	Movie 43 (2013)	" Farrelly and his brother are two of my low-comedy heroes, but Movie 43 is amateur hour." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 25, 2013
65%	Mama (2013)	" I was guessing right till the bitter, scary, transcendent end." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 21, 2013
80%	Haywire (2012)	" Steven Soderbergh continues his occasional practice of using actors as found objects in his perfectly enjoyable formula action-thriller Haywire." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 8, 2013
76%	Premium Rush (2012)	" Premium Rush is that rare bird: a chase picture that's just a chase picture - and a dandy one." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 8, 2013
70%	Men in Black III (2012)	" The script was enough of a mess to stop the shooting for high-priced rewrites, but you know what they say about washing garbage." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 8, 2013
74%	Hope Springs (2012)	" All that's missing are commercials for estrogen cream and erectile-dysfunction meds." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 8, 2013
79%	Ruby Sparks (2012)	" Ruby Sparks might have been more fun if Cal were written to be expansive instead of a worrywart in the middle-aged Matthew Broderick mode." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 8, 2013
85%	Sleepwalk With Me (2012)	" From start to finish, his character, called Matt Pandamiglio, is all by his lonesome -- reaching out of the fog. He's a funny fog person." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 8, 2013
100%	The Invisible War (2012)	" I can hardly wait to see which closet Dick will throw open next." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 7, 2013
69%	Not Fade Away (2012)	" Chase has captured this one for all time. He delivers on the movie's title." — Vulture Posted Dec 24, 2012
93%	Amour (2012)	" It is a stunning film." — Vulture Posted Dec 24, 2012
61%	Jack Reacher (2012)	" Jack Reacher already feels as if it belongs to another era." — Vulture Posted Dec 24, 2012
88%	Django Unchained (2012)	" Django Unchained doesn't merely hit its marks; it blows them to bloody chunks." — New York Magazine Posted Dec 24, 2012
70%	Les Misérables (2012)	" The tasteless bombardment that is Les Misérables would, under most circumstances, send audiences screaming from the theater, but the film is going to be a monster hit and award winner, and not entirely unjustly." — New York Magazine Posted Dec 10, 2012
93%	Zero Dark Thirty (2013)	" In its narrative arc, it is barely distinct from a boneheaded right-wing revenge picture, but the vibe is cool, brisk, grown-up, packed with impressively real-sounding intel jargon. And the hero is no gun-toting macho man." — New York Magazine Posted Dec 10, 2012
66%	The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)	" The Lord of the Rings trilogy [has] been replaced by something that resembles tatty summer-stock theater." — New York Magazine Posted Dec 10, 2012
76%	Killing Them Softly (2012)	" Grimly amusing then shockingly brutal." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 26, 2012
88%	Life of Pi (2012)	" The film is transcendent." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 19, 2012
92%	Silver Linings Playbook (2012)	" It's Lawrence who knocked me sideways. I loved her in Winter's Bone and The Hunger Games but she's very young - I didn't think she had this kind of deep-toned, layered weirdness in her." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 16, 2012

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