David Ehrlich
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications:
Boxoffice Magazine,
Film.com,
indieWire,
Rolling Stone,
Slate,
Little White Lies,
Complex,
The Dissolve
Movie Reviews Only
| T-Meter | Title | Year | Review | |
|---|---|---|---|
| C- | No Score Yet | The Good House (2021) |
"The Good House" spends so much time trying to flip away from its characters' problems that it becomes hard to notice or care about whatever cracks might be growing in the foundations underneath. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 16, 2021
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| B | 52% | Cry Macho (2021) |
This dusty little fable tells a story that mines a gentle power from its self-evident weakness, and it only works as well as it does because it makes you worry if Eastwood may have waited too long to tell it. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 15, 2021
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| B+ | 100% | Inu-Oh (2021) |
Even if the film sacrifices nuanced character detail and raw emotionality at the altar of its trans-centennial sweep, there's a rare power to the ecstatic way in which Yuasa insists that history can never truly be re-written. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 15, 2021
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| B- | 83% | Earwig (2021) |
A film that doesn't want to lull you to sleep so much as it wants to lure you into a place so dark and dreamy that you can no longer be certain that you're still awake. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 14, 2021
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| B+ | 91% | Benediction (2021) |
Lowden's clenched jaw of a performance is more filter than focal point, but the actor sets the tone for a film that spends most of its time in the no man's land between repartee and revenge, lovers and frenemies. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 14, 2021
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| C | 91% | The Survivor (2021) |
Too much of "The Survivor" is seduced back toward the same atrocities that its protagonist is desperate to escape. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 13, 2021
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| B+ | 83% | The Humans (2021) |
Karam takes to the genre like a serial killer to a summer camp, setting up jump-scares with a precision that could land him a gig directing the next "Insidious"sequel if he's not careful. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 13, 2021
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| C+ | 77% | The Mad Women's Ball (Le bal des folles) (2021) |
Laurent's eagerness to confront the barbarism of Charcot's hospital tends to stifle the finer details of a story that hinges on female empowerment. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 13, 2021
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| B- | No Score Yet | The Same Storm (2021) |
The sum of Hedges' film is greater than any of its parts, even if its parts are not always worthy of the people who have been hired to play them. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 9, 2021
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| B+ | No Score Yet | Procession (2021) |
Greene has assembled one hell of a cast here, and each of the six primary subjects in "Procession" is heard and understood with a measure of the clarity they've been denied for so long. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 8, 2021
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| B- | 91% | C'mon C'mon (2021) |
It's as easy to forgive the sleepy and self-effacing "C'mon C'mon" for its missteps as it is to forgive the film's characters for their own. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 6, 2021
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| B- | 80% | Cyrano (2021) |
Wright sympathizes with Cyrano's boldness and bluster, and wants so badly for this silver-tongued lovefool to risk falling on his face; he knows that the rewards can be worth it. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 4, 2021
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| C- | 88% | Dune (2021) |
Eventually, "Dune" only resembles a dream in that it cuts out on a note so flat and unresolved that you can't believe anyone would have chosen it on purpose. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 3, 2021
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| B | 92% | King Richard (2021) |
The film embodies its namesake's oft-repeated - if increasingly suspect - ethos of making sure that fun comes first. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 3, 2021
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| B- | 87% | Fauci (2021) |
A fittingly sober and unflashy biodoc... - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 3, 2021
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| B+ | 86% | The Card Counter (2021) |
The numb camera movements and the whiskey drone of Robert Levon Been's original soundtrack leave you with a palpable understanding of how someone could get stuck in these places until the end of time. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 2, 2021
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| B+ | 71% | The Hand of God (È stata la mano di Dio) (2021) |
A soberingly autobiographical coming-of-age story about a Neopolitan teenager whose entire world is lost and redeemed in almost the same breath. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 2, 2021
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| A | 91% | The Power of the Dog (2021) |
"The Power of the Dog" sticks its teeth into you so fast and furtively that you may not feel the sting on your skin until after the credits roll, but the delayed bite of the film's ending doesn't stop it from leaving behind a well-earned scar. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 2, 2021
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| C | 71% | Together (2021) |
His evolution from Leaver to "grocery store workers are heroes" is as easy to track as it is hard to believe, though McAvoy's trembling conviction allows you to envision the promised lands of empathy, even if his character takes a few too many shortcuts. - indieWire
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| Posted Sep 1, 2021
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| C- | 16% | Demonic (2021) |
The deeper that Blomkamp digs into his pixel-thin premise, the more glaring it becomes that Demonic lacks the genre fundamentals required to support any sort of broader mythology. - indieWire
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| Posted Aug 19, 2021
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| C- | 61% | The Protégé (2021) |
Campbell is like a master chef trying to make a handful of random ingredients into a five-course feast because he knows this is one of the last meals he'll ever be paid to cook, and all he has to show for his time in the kitchen is a mess. - indieWire
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| Posted Aug 19, 2021
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| C- | 37% | Reminiscence (2021) |
It's an absolute slog to watch Jackman row this way and that in search of something to justify this movie's labored metaphors. - indieWire
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| Posted Aug 18, 2021
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| B- | No Score Yet | Zeros and Ones (2021) |
"Zeros and Ones" isn't much of an entertaining sit... but every frame of this weird soup is suffused with the restless creative spirit of someone who's been waiting for a new world order, and recognizes that we only get so many chances to make it happen. - indieWire
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| Posted Aug 17, 2021
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| A- | 98% | Days (Rizi) (2021) |
"Days" becomes such a resonant addition to Tsai's exhumed body of work because the filmmaker recognizes and embraces that uncharacteristically sentimental undertow. - indieWire
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| Posted Aug 17, 2021
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| B- | 97% | The Lost Leonardo (2021) |
"The Lost Leonardo" crystallizes how remarkable it is that something a random guy found in New Orleans could eventually become a smokescreen for a foreign despot's crimes against humanity. - indieWire
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| Posted Aug 10, 2021
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| C+ | 80% | Free Guy (2021) |
Any film that feels this focus-grouped to death should be legally required to work, and "Free Guy" does. - indieWire
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| Posted Aug 5, 2021
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| C- | 27% | Naked Singularity (2021) |
"Naked Singularity" may be set in that second world of bold choices and revolutionary acts, but it certainly wasn't made in it. - indieWire
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| Posted Aug 4, 2021
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| B- | 46% | Beckett (2021) |
Thin and politically disengaged as this diverting Euro-thriller can be, it never forgets how even the most desperate of people can be left to suffer in plain sight - nothing but figures in a landscape. - indieWire
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| Posted Aug 4, 2021
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| B- | 93% | Val (2021) |
There's so much wishy washy talk about where the actor ends and the character begins, but if "Val" convinces us that Kilmer was able to blur that line... the film only shines flashes of light on who the actor is, and what drew him to the characters. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 30, 2021
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| C | 87% | Vivo (2021) |
The tunes grow less exciting in tandem with the visuals, as "Vivo" runs out of steam as it trades Key West kitsch for swampland wildlife. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 30, 2021
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| B+ | 91% | The Suicide Squad (2021) |
If the movies are killing themselves with superhero overload, at least "The Suicide Squad" suggests the medium will go down laughing. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 28, 2021
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| C | 62% | Jungle Cruise (2021) |
Not since Aguirre has a trek into the Amazon felt quite so hamstrung by delusions of grandeur. Perhaps Disney's remake of "Fitzcarraldo" will fare better. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 27, 2021
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| A- | 88% | The Green Knight (2021) |
Lowery's unforgettable adaptation refuses to do the math for us, but it's all the more thrilling for how it insists that the only true value of a thing in this world is that which we find in it for ourselves. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 26, 2021
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| C+ | 50% | Old (2021) |
The emotional undertow of Shyamalan's story feels grafted onto a film that scurries from one supernatural nightmare to the next so fast that none of them feel rooted in a place of shared reality. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 22, 2021
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| B+ | 100% | Drive My Car (2021) |
Hamaguchi might come at this idea from the opposite direction of his source material, but that disconnect is exactly what allows "Drive My Car" to reach its destination with such integrity. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 22, 2021
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| A- | 78% | Bergman Island (2021) |
"Bergman Island" is a heart-stoppingly poignant stunner. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 22, 2021
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| B+ | 95% | Lingui: The Sacred Bonds (2021) |
Lingui can only exist in the face of great hardship, and Haroun's surprisingly cathartic film honors the tradition by celebrating the fact that it still does. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 22, 2021
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| B+ | 100% | A Hero (2022) |
Farhadi might not be a filmmaker you expect to tackle the emotional ramifications of social media, but in his low-key way, he manages to spin Rahim's diffidence into a shrewd portrait of how random faces in the crowd can sow doubt. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 22, 2021
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| C | 37% | Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins (2021) |
The action scenes are so inexplicably painful - and the character work in "Snake Eyes" is so unexpectedly strong - that your heart sinks whenever the swords come out. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 22, 2021
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| A- | 92% | Titane (2021) |
The magic of "Titane" is also owed to the grace with which Ducournau threads the needle between clarity and madness, shock and recognition, throttle and clutch. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 21, 2021
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| C+ | 64% | Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades) (2021) |
Beth adds some outsider energy spice to the group - but the characters themselves often bump into each other in needlessly contrived ways that fail to tease new details out of them. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 20, 2021
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| B | 100% | Belle: Ryu to Sobakasu no Hime (2021) |
If the moral of this story is ultimately a simple one, at least Suzu learns it in a way too novel to forget: The internet can give anyone a voice, but it's only a beautiful place when people actually hear each other. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 20, 2021
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| C+ | 76% | Blue Bayou (2021) |
Schmaltzy and improbable as this fictional story gets, Chon's leading turn never allows you to fully disengage from the fact that actual stories like it are happening every day of the week for no other reason than because we allow them to. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 20, 2021
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| C- | 80% | Blood Red Sky (2021) |
It's an intriguing dilemma - one that a better film would have done more to contrast against the hijackers' craven inhumanity - but "Blood Red Sky" fails to coagulate that conflict into action. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 20, 2021
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| A- | 96% | Red Rocket (2021) |
"Red Rocket" remains such a blisteringly raw and febrile character study because of how things fluctuate along the fixed orbit of its star. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 14, 2021
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| B+ | 69% | Where Is Anne Frank (Où est Anne Frank !) (2021) |
Conscious of his intended audience and careful not to traumatize them more than necessary, Folman makes a concerted effort to filter Anne's final days through the kind of mythic imagination that she might have appreciated... - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 10, 2021
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| C+ | 85% | Benedetta (2021) |
By the time "Benedetta" fades to a close, Verhoeven's gleefully impertinent tale of pleasure and pain has grown numb to God's touch. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 9, 2021
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| B | 100% | The Worst Person In The World (Verdens Verste Menneske) (2021) |
Quick, vibrant, pulsing with all sorts of crossover appeal until a slightly moribund energy takes hold toward the end, Trier's film is never more fun than when Julie is second-guessing herself... - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 9, 2021
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| B- | 75% | Stillwater (2021) |
Of course, no matter how beguilingly entertaining it is to watch "Stillwater" drift away from the movie you thought it would be, you know that it's only a matter of time before the devil gets his due. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 8, 2021
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| A- | 81% | After Yang (2021) |
It's tempting to wish that it were longer, or that it ever returned to the bombastic high of its opening minutes, but it's in the space between that blast of noise and the numbness that follows where the movie finds its power. - indieWire
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| Posted Jul 8, 2021
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