David Denby

Tomatometer-approved critic

Publications: New York Magazine/Vulture, The New York Review of Books, New Yorker

Critics' Group: National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle

Movie Reviews Only

Movies
TV

T-Meter	Title \| Year	Review
59%	Deep Blue Sea (1999)	Scary, absurd, inessential. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 11, 2019
43%	Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)	I've grown increasingly restive at such films as Mississippi Burning, A Time to Kill, and Ghosts of Mississippi... All three films celebrate the heroism of white law officers in prosecuting racist killers. - New York Magazine/Vulture EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 5, 2018
No Score Yet	Near Death (1989)	The film grows in power as it goes on and on. - The New York Review of Books EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 13, 2018
No Score Yet	Meat (1976)	Meat is a handsome and scornfully witty film-a sly parody of those celebratory industrial documentaries we were all forced to watch at summer camp on rainy days. - The New York Review of Books EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 13, 2018
No Score Yet	Hospital (1970)	As the hospital workers struggle to cope with the disasters pouring into the emergency room, the viewer begins to realize that he is watching not the dim events of bureaucratic procedure, but large and grave instances of suffering, courage, and endurance. - The New York Review of Books EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 13, 2018
No Score Yet	Law and Order (1969)	Law and Order is moving, finally, as an expression of a flowing and undoctrinaire sense of life that is almost melancholy in its acceptance of confusion and loss. - The New York Review of Books EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 13, 2018
No Score Yet	Welfare (1975)	No one could deny Wiseman's extraordinary sympathy for the insulted and the injured of American society. Yet he doesn't romanticize or politicize the oppressed. - The New York Review of Books EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 13, 2018
No Score Yet	Central Park (1991)	Even if this uncharacteristically sensuous film interests us less than many of Wiseman's more relentless portraits, his structural inventiveness is much in evidence. - The New York Review of Books EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 13, 2018
No Score Yet	High School (1968)	High School is a sinister and very shrewd portrait of the American pursuit of mediocrity, a film of almost Nabokovian wit. - The New York Review of Books EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 13, 2018
46%	Hollywood Ending (2002)	Hollywood Ending has its satirical charms, but it repeats itself remorselessly, and it has no emotional center. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 17, 2015
65%	Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)	Allowing for some dull moments, this movie has considerable visual style. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 16, 2015
44%	Daredevil (2003)	Much of the rest of Daredevil is so dark that you can't see it. I don't think you're missing a great deal. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 14, 2015
72%	Big Eyes (2014)	A feminist psycho-melodrama made without insight or dramatic excitement. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 12, 2015
89%	A Most Violent Year (2015)	Some of the menacing atmosphere, and even a few scenes, descend from the first two "Godfather" movies. But, in fact, Chandor has done something startling: he has made an anti-"Godfather." - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 5, 2015
72%	American Sniper (2015)	Both a devastating war movie and a devastating antiwar movie, a subdued celebration of a warrior's skill and a sorrowful lament over his alienation and misery. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 15, 2014
99%	Selma (2015)	DuVernay has made a very good movie. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 15, 2014
51%	Unbroken (2014)	An interminable, redundant, unnecessary epic devoted to suffering, suffering, suffering. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 15, 2014
97%	Mr. Turner (2014)	"Mr. Turner" is a harsh, strange, but stirring movie, no more a conventional artist's bio-pic than Robert Altman's wonderful, little-seen film about van Gogh and his brother, "Vincent and Theo." - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 1, 2014
89%	Wild (2014)	"Wild" is about the renewal of self, but it's a film made without sanctimony or piety. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 1, 2014
89%	Happy Valley (2014)	"Happy Valley" is a devastating portrait of a community-and, by extension, a nation-put under a spell, even reduced to grateful infantilism, by the game of football. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 17, 2014
77%	Rosewater (2014)	The hard-focus clarity of the images (Bobby Bukowski did the cinematography) leads to an intimacy with anguish that passes into expressionism. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 17, 2014
95%	National Gallery (2014)	The museum's interior is neoclassical, and Wiseman's severely restrained style of filmmaking matches it perfectly. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 10, 2014
79%	The Theory of Everything (2014)	Redmayne uses his eyebrows, his mouth, a few facial muscles, and the fingers of one hand to suggest not only Hawking's intellect and his humor but also the calculating vanity of a great man entirely conscious of his effect on the world. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 5, 2014
72%	Interstellar (2014)	"Interstellar," a spectacular, redundant puzzle, a hundred and sixty-seven minutes long, makes you feel virtuous for having sat through it rather than happy that you saw it. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 3, 2014
94%	Diplomacy (2014)	The principal suspense in this fascinating movie is generated by the polite, and then not so polite, ferocity of the arguments between the two men. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 20, 2014
77%	Fury (2014)	"Fury" is literally visceral-a kind of war horror film, which is, of course, what good combat films should be. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 20, 2014
77%	Kill the Messenger (2014)	Jeremy Renner is the main reason to see "Kill the Messenger." - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 6, 2014
32%	Men, Women & Children (2014)	Reitman and Wilson have many good ideas, but "Men, Women & Children" has too many men, women, and children. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 6, 2014
60%	The Equalizer (2014)	The director, Antoine Fuqua, relies on small details, which anchor the vigilante-as-saint myth in at least a minimal degree of reality. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 29, 2014
18%	Ride Along (2014)	Nothing in the movie makes sense, but I prefer to think that "Ride Along" is just a badly told joke, rather than an insult to its audience. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 22, 2014
52%	Jimmy P. (2014)	This intelligent movie becomes a gentle reproof of prejudice and ignorance, and I wish I could find some excitement in it. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 22, 2014
51%	Magic in the Moonlight (2014)	It's an accomplished, stately movie -- unimpassioned but pleasing. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 22, 2014
86%	A Most Wanted Man (2014)	It was shot in dark, lurid, vital Hamburg; Hoffman is the star; and I was completely held. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 22, 2014
30%	The Monuments Men (2014)	We may have gained something in humor by not taking the saviors in the art-rescue story very seriously, but we've lost just about all of the romantic pleasures of heroism. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 22, 2014
85%	The Immigrant (2014)	The physical look of the movie is a revelation of a lost past. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 22, 2014
55%	Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)	"Shadow Recruit" is fun in a minor, winter-season way. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 22, 2014
83%	Tracks (2014)	The memoir is strongly written, and I wish that the movie, directed by John Curran (Marion Nelson did the adaptation), had more excitement to it. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 22, 2014
91%	Pride (2014)	Warchus has directed many successful theatrical productions, including musicals, and in this, his first movie in more than a decade, he appears to have an instinctive grasp of film tempo and mood. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 22, 2014
99%	Starred Up (2014)	[An] unusually cohesive and exciting prison drama ... - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 22, 2014
95%	Last Days in Vietnam (2014)	As a portrait of America in a moment both of idealism and betrayal, the movie is heartbreaking as well as inspiring. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 15, 2014
64%	The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them (2014)	What remains is knowing and allusive, but muffled-the earnestness is stalled by pauses and misgivings and occasionally made handsome with long tracking shots. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 15, 2014
59%	Bird People (2014)	An artful experiment that only half works. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 15, 2014
86%	The Trip To Italy (2014)	This hedonistic japery is shot through with middle-aged melancholy and the fear of death. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 5, 2014
73%	The Congress (2014)	The anger drains out of the picture, and we watch in a state of passive appreciation and indifference. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 5, 2014
80%	Get On Up (2014)	Chadwick Boseman gives a startling and galvanic performance. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 5, 2014
82%	Begin Again (2014)	Another sappy but engaging musical fable from the Irish writer and director John Carney, who made "Once." - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 14, 2014
82%	Land Ho! (2014)	A well-meaning, good-souled, essentially naïve dud. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 14, 2014
95%	Snowpiercer (2014)	Violent, often absurd, but full of brilliant surprises. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 14, 2014
79%	Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger (2014)	Complicated beyond imagining, and, in the end, a genuine shocker. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 30, 2014
84%	22 Jump Street (2014)	22 Jump Street is hardly fresh, but the picture has enough energy to get by. - New Yorker EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 18, 2014