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David Edelstein

Tomatometer-approved critic
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.

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
The Princess Bride (1987) 93% EDIT “It's never outright parody, but it's rarely as exhilarating as a full-bodied swashbuckler. It perks along, disarming as it goes. ” – Village Voice Jan 7, 2026 Full Review The Running Man (1987) 59% EDIT “As an actor, Schwarzenegger makes Stallone look profound. He's pretty hilarious cast as someone called "the running man"; he's so muscle-bound he can hardly walk.” – Village Voice Nov 7, 2025 Full Review Re-Animator (1985) 88% EDIT “This is just good, evil fun.” – New York Magazine/Vulture Oct 16, 2025 Full Review This Is Spinal Tap (1984) 98% EDIT “When we watch these wonderful comedians—Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer—we can taste how much they love embodying their roles.” – Slate Sep 4, 2025 Full Review Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) 78% EDIT “Pee-wee's Big Adventure is spun out of childish delight and childish malice.” – Village Voice Jul 30, 2025 Full Review Superman III (1983) 31% EDIT “Movies that start in the muck and end in the muck don’t leave you feeling this lost. ” – Boston Phoenix Jul 7, 2025 Full Review Mission: Impossible II (2000) 58% EDIT “So is the movie a tacky hoot? Yes, but until the godawful last half-hour it's a surprisingly fun tacky hoot. ” – Slate May 8, 2025 Full Review The Legend of Billie Jean (1985) 39% EDIT “[A] cretinous bit of bubble-gum mythmaking -- so dumb that you want to know, ''Who do they think they're kidding?" after every scene.” – Village Voice Nov 17, 2023 Full Review Y tu mamá también (2001) 90% EDIT “It’s an exhilarating trip.” – Slate Sep 9, 2023 Full Review Traffic (2000) 93% EDIT “Traffic has three overlapping narratives, none terribly novel, but the shivery camerawork and odd juxtapositions keep you off-balance.” – Slate Sep 6, 2023 Full Review Godzilla (1998) 20% EDIT “What the new, monstrously budgeted Godzilla brings home is that size doesn’t matter -- that tacky crudeness harnessed to a real vision can have more brute power than all the state-of-the-art computer wizardry that Hollywood’s money can buy. ” – Slate Feb 15, 2023 Full Review Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) 95% EDIT “The rigid structure is meant to echo the character’s neuroses, but the woman is such a voidoid and her universe is so constricted that Akerman’s accomplishment feels minimal: the film is a miniature bloated to 196 minutes.” – Boston Phoenix Dec 6, 2022 Full Review Creepshow (1982) 66% EDIT “Romero is -- on paper, anyway -- an ideal director for a comic-book movie... [But] the mechanics of storytelling bog him down, and most of the time the formal style of Creepshow has him in a straitjacket.” – Boston Phoenix Aug 9, 2022 Full Review The Secret of NIMH (1982) 93% EDIT “Aurora apparently doesn't see the irony in championing the progressives in the movie while in real life touting its own efforts to refuel a Cadillac, a reactionary cinematic gas guzzler. But the company's done a terrific job of old-fashioned storytelling.” – Boston Phoenix Nov 9, 2021 Full Review Girlfight (2000) 87% EDIT “Diana's fighting isn't about delivering knockout blows; it's about staying alert and winning on points. It's a means of self-control and of acquiring the self-knowledge on which self-control depends.” – Slate Mar 24, 2021 Full Review An Honest Liar (2014) 98% EDIT “Whatever his foibles, An Honest Liar depicts a great American original...” – New York Magazine/Vulture Nov 3, 2020 Full Review Mother (1996) 87% EDIT “Brooks' minimalism can be amazingly jampacked, but Mother is perilously slack.” – Slate Jun 5, 2020 Full Review Spaceship Earth (2020) 87% EDIT “I was reminded of everything I'd been missing in a culture that ridicules "crunchiness" more than amoral consumption and greed.” – New York Magazine/Vulture May 8, 2020 Full Review Bull (2019) 89% EDIT “It's a stoic work, but its stoicism looks, in the end, like mercy.” – New York Magazine/Vulture May 1, 2020 Full Review The Other Lamb (2019) 74% EDIT “Although The Other Lamb is heavy-handed in every conceivable way and a few ways you'd never have conceived of, it has a special resonance in the spring of 2020.” – New York Magazine/Vulture Apr 3, 2020 Full Review Crip Camp (2020) 100% EDIT “[It] sounds as if it's going to be Good for You rather than good, but it actually turns out to be both - as well as surprising, which is surprising in itself, given that inspirational civil rights documentaries tend to be more alike than unalike.” – New York Magazine/Vulture Mar 27, 2020 Full Review Lost Girls (2020) 72% EDIT “Garbus brings off something extraordinary in a film that sets out to leave us sad, enraged, and profoundly unsatisfied. Lost Girls makes us want to rethink our need for a certain kind of closure in a world that has so little of it.” – New York Magazine/Vulture Mar 13, 2020 Full Review First Cow (2019) 96% EDIT “This haunting movie transports you to another world - and redefines home.” – New York Magazine/Vulture Mar 7, 2020 Full Review Wendy (2020) 42% EDIT “The style is immersive, meant to envelop us and bring us into the story, but it ends up making the movie feel abstract and distant. And there's a void at the center.” – New York Magazine/Vulture Feb 27, 2020 Full Review Little Women (2019) 95% EDIT “That Gerwig in only her second feature film manages to meet the likes of Alcott partway is a blooming miracle.” – New York Magazine/Vulture Dec 25, 2019 Full Review
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