David Edelstein Movie Reviews & Previews

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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:: 1272

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 51 - 100 of 1272

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T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
75%	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
98%	Brooklyn Castle (2012)	" It's not To Sir, With Love: It's fierce ambition, the channeling of emotion, and hours of drilling." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 14, 2012
67%	Barrymore (2012)	" God, I love Plummer's performance -- the twiddling fingers, the tipsy sway of the head, the reverberating roar, as well as the pathos of a man who can't stop acting long enough to hear the cry of his own soul. " — New York Magazine Posted Nov 12, 2012
98%	Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House Of God (2012)	" No one of true faith will get over Maxima Mea Culpa." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 12, 2012
64%	Anna Karenina (2012)	" As boldly original a miscalculation as any you're likely to see." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 12, 2012
92%	Skyfall (2012)	" This is the movie in which the newest Bond finally eases into the part of the bon vivant for-Queen-and-Country horndog who likes his martinis shaken and not stirred." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 8, 2012
79%	A Late Quartet (2012)	" The movie is haut-bourgeois to the bone, but so am I: Let's hear some chamber music and have a little laugh and a cry!" — New York Magazine Posted Nov 6, 2012
89%	Lincoln (2012)	" By the time the movie ends, you don't feel as if you know Lincoln-few, in his own time, claimed to know him. But you feel as if you know what it was like to be in his presence." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 6, 2012
78%	Flight (2012)	" No actor is as brilliant, or as cunning, as Denzel Washington at portraying superhuman coolness and the scary prospect of its loss." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 29, 2012
51%	The World Is Not Enough (1999)	" The movie is better than you've heard, although that's not saying a lot." — Slate Posted Oct 23, 2012
12%	Alex Cross (2012)	" Alex Cross is coarse, punishing, and, in all the ways that matter, conscienceless ..." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 22, 2012
67%	Cloud Atlas (2012)	" The cast comes off like a third-rate stock company on the matinee after the night on which everyone got bombed on mescal (and possibly mescaline)." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 22, 2012
90%	Holy Motors (2012)	" Typically confounding but on every level that matters a work of unfettered-and liberating-imagination." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 15, 2012
94%	The Sessions (2012)	" It lacks the fullness of the best films of its ilk, chief among them Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot. But Lewin lets his eye wander pleasingly." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 15, 2012
96%	Argo (2012)	" A marvel of cunning, an irresistible blend of cool realism and Hollywood hokum." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 9, 2012
82%	Seven Psychopaths (2012)	" Seven Psychopaths doesn't jell, but it's enough of a crowd-pleaser to make you worried about how pleased the crowd around you is." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 9, 2012
81%	Pitch Perfect (2012)	" Cannon doesn't go in for rococo hipster badinage in the vein of Diablo Cody. She can pare down a joke to its essence ..." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 1, 2012
93%	Looper (2012)	" If high-toned futuristic time-travel pictures with a splash of romance float your boat the way they do mine, you'll have yourself a time." — New York Magazine Posted Sep 24, 2012
85%	The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)	" It's nostalgia with an emphasis on nostos, pain." — New York Magazine Posted Sep 17, 2012
86%	The Master (2012)	" Anderson is a romantic who has earned his nihilism. He clarifies nothing, but leaves us brooding on our own confusion." — New York Magazine Posted Sep 10, 2012
90%	Keep the Lights On (2012)	" Sachs depicts a once-transient culture stumbling toward a design for rooted living." — New York Magazine Posted Sep 4, 2012
56%	For a Good Time, Call... (2012)	" The confusion in For a Good Time, Call... is delightful, the phone-sex talk sweetening the vibe." — New York Magazine Posted Sep 3, 2012
55%	Bachelorette (2012)	" Lovely women doing genuinely ugly things makes for a potent combination." — New York Magazine Posted Sep 3, 2012
87%	Robot & Frank (2012)	" Its irresponsibility redeems it -- it's a raspberry blown against the dying of the light." — New York Magazine Posted Aug 13, 2012
77%	Killer Joe (2012)	" Friedkin make no attempt to soften the characters' monstrousness, and thank hell for that. This is rave and rage and purge acting." — New York Magazine Posted Jul 30, 2012
87%	The Dark Knight Rises (2012)	" The canvas is epic, the themes are profound, the execution is ... clunky." — NPR Posted Jul 19, 2012
95%	The Queen of Versailles (2012)	" For Greenfield, the Siegels are a brilliant metaphor for everything farkakte about the U.S. economy and the culture that shaped it." — New York Magazine Posted Jul 8, 2012
51%	Savages (2012)	" The film is impressive." — New York Magazine Posted Jul 6, 2012
51%	Savages (2012)	" Stone has evolved in the past decade and a half, and the new film has a deeper, more complicated perspective. The violence isn't a kick. It's horrifying, senseless." — NPR Posted Jul 6, 2012
73%	The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)	" For all its underlying cynicism, the new Spidey picture is pretty damn good." — New York Magazine Posted Jul 1, 2012
43%	To Rome with Love (2012)	" I was blissed out during much of To Rome With Love, but I have to acknowledge its creepy side." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 18, 2012
78%	Brave (2012)	" In addition to being fast, funny, and unpretentious, Brave is a happy antidote to all the recent films in which women triumph by besting men at their own macho games..." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 18, 2012
73%	Dark Horse (2012)	" It's tough to get on Todd Solondz's wavelength, but boy is it worth the emotional gyrations." — NPR Posted Jun 8, 2012
74%	Prometheus (2012)	" Prometheus tells a much bigger story and does it well, but it's missing what matters most. It's inorganic." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 8, 2012
77%	The Color Wheel (2012)	" The most entertaining unpleasant film I've seen in years." — New York Magazine Posted Jun 7, 2012
48%	Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)	" The movie's revisionist tone is startlingly enough to carry you along." — New York Magazine Posted May 28, 2012
98%	Oslo, August 31st (2012)	" [It] crosses the blood-brain barrier like ... like ... whatever the drug is, I haven't tried it, thank God." — New York Magazine Posted May 21, 2012
94%	Moonrise Kingdom (2012)	" It left me bemused instead of moved, but true Andersonites will likely float away in a state of nirvana." — New York Magazine Posted May 21, 2012
58%	The Dictator (2012)	" The Dictator is loose and slap-happy and full of sharp political barbs and has funny actors moving in and out - and at a lickety-split 83 minutes, it doesn't wear out its welcome." — NPR Posted May 16, 2012
38%	Dark Shadows (2012)	" The script by Seth Grahame-Smith is witless and meandering - and I wouldn't mind the witless so much if it moved, or the meandering if it were droll." — NPR Posted May 10, 2012
94%	First Position (2012)	" This is yet another competition doc in the unending legacy of Spellbound, but Kargman is light on her feet, and she has chosen to follow a fascinating group of kids preparing for the 2010 Youth America Grand Prix." — New York Magazine Posted May 7, 2012
50%	Small, Beautifully Moving Parts (2012)	" The film would be better if it were gentler. It's broadly written and played, the actors too busy telegraphing their characters' emotions to let us contemplate their faces in peace." — New York Magazine Posted May 7, 2012
29%	Girl In Progress (2012)	" The movie goes soft. But it has the unpretentious energy and charm of a good YA girls' novel." — New York Magazine Posted May 7, 2012
94%	I Wish (2012)	" You can contemplate the wonder in these glowing young faces without feeling as if you're on an intravenous drip of corn syrup." — New York Magazine Posted May 7, 2012
64%	The Five-Year Engagement (2012)	" A charming, funny, reactionary mating comedy from the Judd Apatow factory..." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 30, 2012
93%	Marvel's The Avengers (2012)	" Comic-Con nerds will have multiple orgasms. I had a blast." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 30, 2012
75%	Sound of My Voice (2012)	" Batmanglij keeps the movie even-keeled, full of medium close-ups, underscored by ambient plinks and shimmers, with nothing to break the trance until a last scene that upends everything we thought we knew." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 23, 2012
92%	Headhunters (2012)	" The compact Hennie is a wonderful actor, smoothly congenial when confident, uproarious when rattled. And he will be rattled-as well as stabbed, shorn, bitten, mangled, and worse." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 23, 2012
22%	Darling Companion (2012)	" It has the shapeless spread of nonfiction, of a home movie with a hint of that newfangled mumblecore thing the kids these days are into." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 15, 2012
80%	Goodbye First Love (2012)	" There's nothing like a film about wayward passions to remind you how differently people feel things." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 15, 2012
92%	The Cabin in the Woods (2012)	" Is it scary? Not especially. But there are enough gory surprises around every bend to keep you laughing/screaming/cringing." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 9, 2012
97%	Monsieur Lazhar (2012)	" Ineffably sad-yet there's almost no loitering. The film is crisp, evenly paced, its colors bright, as sharp as the winter cold." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 9, 2012
79%	The Deep Blue Sea (2012)	" This is Rachel Weisz's movie. She's as luminous as a Pre-Raphaelite portrait, yet she brings to Hester a high-wire, modern tremulousness..." — NPR Posted Apr 6, 2012
75%	Damsels in Distress (2012)	" Damsels in Distress is wobbly and borderline twee, but it deepens as it goes along and becomes rich." — New York Magazine Posted Apr 2, 2012
87%	Bully (2012)	" Bully is repetitive and not especially artful, but children who allow themselves to see the world through the eyes of the film's victims will never be the same." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 26, 2012
85%	The Hunger Games (2012)	" Watching The Hunger Games, I was struck both by how slickly Ross hit his marks and how many opportunities he was missing to take the film to the next level -- to make it more shocking, lyrical, crazy, daring." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 22, 2012
85%	21 Jump Street (2012)	" It has a bad, slapstick first act but by midpoint becomes strangely compelling, tapping into the fantasy of reliving one's high-school years (which did a number on us all) and getting it right." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 5, 2012
96%	The Kid with a Bike (2012)	" The film is not just in the tradition of Pinocchio and A.I.: It is a worthy successor." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 5, 2012
67%	Friends With Kids (2012)	" Westfeldt, now 42, belongs to a generation (and class) of people for whom nothing about having kids is easy. Her intensity feels just right -- better than in any film I've seen in years -- for How We Breed Now." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 5, 2012
54%	Dr Seuss' The Lorax (2012)	" The badness of the picture is a shock." — New York Magazine Posted Mar 2, 2012
99%	This Is Not a Film (2012)	" An extraordinary film, and one of the few in which boredom in the face of static camerawork and lack of narrative adds to the emotional wallop." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 27, 2012
59%	Wanderlust (2012)	" Rudd might not be the subtlest straight man in movies, but, as of this moment, he's the best." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 27, 2012
59%	Wanderlust (2012)	" It takes guts to do a comedy this big without gross-out slapstick, and the writers and the actors are all in." — NPR Posted Feb 24, 2012
26%	This Means War (2012)	" Not a distinguished addition to director McG's oeuvre." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 13, 2012
86%	The Forgiveness of Blood (2012)	" [A] compelling film touching on the perils of being young-that's it, merely young-in a culture without justice." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 13, 2012
82%	Return (2012)	" This quiet, naturalistic film has a classical arc and a lingering sting." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 13, 2012
74%	Rampart (2012)	" Bad Lieutenant made by a tediously finger-wagging Jew instead of a tediously desecrating Catholic." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 6, 2012
89%	In Darkness (2012)	" In outline, In Darkness is a standard conversion melodrama, but little within those parameters is easy. The darkness lingers into the light." — New York Magazine Posted Feb 6, 2012
52%	Perfect Sense (2012)	" You've got to make room in your heart for a film in which the world ends with neither a bang nor a whimper but a cuddle." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 30, 2012
76%	Kill List (2012)	" The final twist is both baffling and repulsive, but as an evocation of the triumph of evil, it's peerless." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 30, 2012
79%	The Innkeepers (2012)	" A poky but blood-freezing throwback to the gothic horror films of the seventies, when ingénues moved tremulously down dark corridors without holding digital video cameras." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 30, 2012
79%	The Grey (2012)	" The Grey, despite moments of sublimity, is as predictable as a funeral. When Ottway angrily calls out to God, the nonanswer is sadly redundant." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 30, 2012
56%	Albert Nobbs (2012)	" Close resembles no man I've ever seen, or woman either. She's the personification of fear-the fear of being seen through, seen for what she is." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 23, 2012
34%	Joyful Noise (2012)	" You'll find yourself rolling your eyes, but you'll have more fun if you try to roll them in time with the rollicking numbers." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 15, 2012
99%	A Separation (2011)	" What makes it so good is that no one is bad. These humans, desperate to do right, are caught up in a perfect storm of inhumanity. The evil is in the ecosystem." — New York Magazine Posted Jan 9, 2012
67%	We Bought a Zoo (2011)	" Damon and Colin Ford as his teen son have an affecting hesitancy, their hearts hovering between the living and the dead." — New York Magazine Posted Dec 30, 2011
46%	Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2012)	" Homes in on a middle ground between jumpy postmodernism and Oscar-bait uplift." — New York Magazine Posted Dec 30, 2011
77%	War Horse (2011)	" Amid the incomprehensible slaughter, it's a horse that reminds these warriors of their humanity." — New York Magazine Posted Dec 30, 2011
52%	The Iron Lady (2012)	" The Iron Lady is shallow but satisfying, largely because of Meryl Streep and her big fake English teeth and gift for using mimicry as a means of achieving empathy." — New York Magazine Posted Dec 29, 2011
83%	Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)	" It's a treat to be back in Le Carré's world, where amid the tangle of plots and counterplots there are moments of lucidity when you sit up and say, "I've got it now!"" — New York Magazine Posted Dec 12, 2011
94%	Hugo (2011)	" For all the wizardry on display, Hugo often feels like a film about magic instead of a magical film..." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 28, 2011
94%	Coriolanus (2011)	" Fiennes and Logan haven't made a definitive Coriolanus, but they've made a sensationally gripping one. They have the pulse of the play, its firm martial beats and its messy political clatter. They tell a damn good story." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 28, 2011
94%	Hugo (2011)	" For all my cavils, this is one of those wonders of the world you need to see." — Vulture Posted Nov 23, 2011
24%	Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011)	" The last twenty minutes of Breaking Dawn are so harrowing that it's possible to forget that most of the acting is soap-operatic (the guy who plays Carlisle is aging to look like Liberace) and the dialogue from hunger." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 20, 2011
89%	The Descendants (2011)	" Mockery and empathy seesaw, the balance precarious -- and thrillingly so. It's the noblest kind of satire: cruel and yet, in the end, lacking the killing blow." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 14, 2011
44%	J. Edgar (2011)	" It's too bad J. Edgar is so shapeless and turgid and ham-handed, so rich in bad lines and worse readings." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 6, 2011
77%	Melancholia (2011)	" The vision is as hateful as it is hate-filled, but the fusion of form and content is so perfect that it borders on the sublime." — New York Magazine Posted Nov 6, 2011
69%	Tower Heist (2011)	" A shameless but exuberantly well-done caper comedy..." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 31, 2011
50%	The Rum Diary (2011)	" The Rum Diary has no mighty gonzo wind. Even with a push from its Thompson-worshipping star, Johnny Depp, it leaves our freak flag limp." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 31, 2011
47%	Anonymous (2011)	" A well-polished cowpat that will confuse and bore those who know nothing about Shakespeare and incense those who know almost anything." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 24, 2011
73%	Like Crazy (2011)	" Like Crazy has a lively syntax and could, in an ungrateful mood, be tagged as slick. But Doremus gets the tempos right." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 24, 2011
90%	Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)	" The non-ending turns the whole movie into an elaborate tease, too creepy to dismiss, too shallow to justify its "ambiguities."" — New York Magazine Posted Oct 17, 2011
88%	Margin Call (2011)	" A hell of a picture. And shrewd." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 17, 2011
81%	The Skin I Live In (2011)	" It's the only Almodóvar movie in which feeling, emotional or sexual, doesn't suffuse the imagery and hold the ramshackle melodrama together." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 10, 2011
29%	The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011)	" The movie is a reductio ad absurdum, a sick joke taken to extremes, beginning with a goof on the notion that horror movies inspire copycats and ending with a test to determine whether some people will watch anything." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 3, 2011
85%	The Ides of March (2011)	" It's tempting to praise The Ides of March as a realistic depiction of how low we've sunk. But that would mean accepting the second-rate writing and third-rate melodrama and incredible shrinking characters." — New York Magazine Posted Oct 3, 2011
71%	Margaret (2011)	" This is the first bad movie that has ever made me call for a sequel -- to get it all right." — New York Magazine Posted Sep 26, 2011

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