>
David Denby
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Alien (1979) |
Alien, like the Exorcist, works on your nerves and emotions with the practiced hand of a torturer extracting a confession. The movie is terrifying, but not in a way that is remotely enjoyable. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Nov 16, 2023
|
|
|
|
Little Big Man (1970) |
Leaving aside the question of Penn's altering the tone of the movie according to who is being slaughtered, I question the artistic and political ethics of building up the desire for revenge in the audience. - The Atlantic
Read More
| Posted Nov 10, 2023
|
|
|
|
Goodfellas (1990) |
GoodFellas, written by Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese, and directed by Scorsese, is the greatest film ever made about the sensual and monetary lure of crime, and the whole perversely brilliant movie comes into focus in a single, staggering shot. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Oct 18, 2023
|
|
|
|
Lone Star (1996) |
Lone Star is haunted by a sense of America as a peculiar destiny -- uprootedness as a common fate. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Sep 06, 2023
|
|
|
|
Traffic (2000) |
The most exciting and complexly imagined American movie of the year. - New Yorker
Read More
| Posted Sep 06, 2023
|
|
|
|
When a Man Loves a Woman (1994) |
When a Man Loves a Woman turns into an earnest and highly. prolonged counseling appointment... But it collapses as art. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Sep 01, 2023
|
|
|
|
Moulin Rouge (2001) |
Luhrmann has too many ideas, too many ambitions to make either a good love story or a good musical. He has become an irrepressible technologist of romance -- an editing-machine genius who crushes music and dance at will. - New Yorker
Read More
| Posted Aug 30, 2023
|
|
|
|
Moscow on the Hudson (1984) |
Though some of the movie may strike us as naïve or false, we're pulled along by the sweet dreams of a director with so broad and instinctive a sense of human solidarity. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Aug 22, 2023
|
|
|
|
La Haine (1995) |
The movie is powerful but irritatingly vague and fatalistic. One gets the impression that for Kassovitz, hopelessness is somehow more pure and beautiful than ambition or even the desire to survive. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jul 20, 2023
|
|
|
|
Patriot Games (1992) |
Despite a few oddities, Patriot Games is well done, but you can't figure out why it was done... The filmmakers and actors are pros, but this is the original thing they have to say: "A man whose family is in danger will take strong steps to protect it." - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jun 06, 2023
|
|
|
|
The Color Purple (1985) |
The brutal scenes may mislead some people into thinking they are getting the real thing, the true grit, but actually The Color Purple is inauthentic and unconvincing. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted May 25, 2023
|
|
|
|
The Mosquito Coast (1986) |
I'm afraid that this ambitious movie is a complete disaster -- monomaniacal, tiresome, pointless, and, for all its devotion to the great outdoors, surprisingly claustrophobic. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted May 18, 2023
|
|
|
|
An American Tail (1986) |
It's a sweet, tame movie. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted May 18, 2023
|
|
|
|
Crossing Delancey (1988) |
Crossing Delancey is a fake, but some of the small social details are nicely observed, and the movie has some charm. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted May 16, 2023
|
|
|
|
Yentl (1983) |
Some of Yentl is moist cliché -- no better than expressive commercial gush with a softer touch than usual. But long stretches of it are extraordinarily fine -- shrewd, funny, and emotionally charged, like the best of [Barbra Streisand's] singing. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted May 12, 2023
|
|
|
|
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) |
Despite the zippy visual thrills, the cumulative effect of Indiana Jones is heavy-spirited and grating. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Apr 18, 2023
|
|
|
|
Come and See (1985) |
The movie is a succession of brutally sincere "art" assaults, jammed together like the poorly articulated cars of an old freight train. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Mar 14, 2023
|
|
|
|
Thelma & Louise (1991) |
Thelma & Louise is wonderfully acted from top to bottom, and it's full of life and jokes and offbeat perceptions. Ridley Scott has rid himself of the alien gnawing at his insides. People, it turns out, are far more interesting in the long run. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Mar 02, 2023
|
|
|
|
The Big Lebowski (1998) |
Jeff Bridges has so much dedication as an actor that he sacrifices himself to the Coen brothers’ self-defeating conception. Even Bridges can’t open up a character who remains unconscious. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jan 21, 2023
|
|
|
|
Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992) |
There isn't a thought that's worked out, a dramatic situation perceived clearly and told truly... Harris short-circuits her own movie. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jan 10, 2023
|
|
|
|
A Dry White Season (1989) |
Unbearably stiff. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jan 03, 2023
|
|
|
|
Strictly Ballroom (1992) |
This Australian production requires extreme indulgence -- and not the pleasant kind of indulgence, either, the kind in which you feel yourself to be a capital fellow; in this case, you feel that someone has made a fool of you. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Dec 21, 2022
|
|
|
|
Groundhog Day (1993) |
Groundhog Day might have been a mere gimmick movie, but it isn't; it's something better -- a gentle fantasy of both paralysis and liberation. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Dec 21, 2022
|
|
|
|
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) |
There's subversive black humor and violence lurking in Jeanne Dielman's implacable calm. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Dec 07, 2022
|
|
|
|
Braveheart (1995) |
Gibson puts us in the peculiar position of longing for him to die. Braveheart overstays its welcome. It's an epic looking not only for a point but an exit line. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Nov 18, 2022
|
|
|
|
Dances With Wolves (1990) |
Even if the camera technique is occasionally laughable, this is also an enjoyable, stirring, and extremely conscientious old-fashioned movie, with some essential things done right. It's the best movie Robert Redford never made. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Nov 02, 2022
|
|
|
|
Addams Family Values (1993) |
Addams Family Values is a rare comedy sequel that actually improves on the original, and the reason, I suspect, is that Rudnick, who wrote the screenplay, has been allowed to run wild. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Sep 22, 2022
|
|
|
|
Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) |
Much of it feels synthetic and crude, more the result of engineering than inspiration. The [filmmakers] put a commercial glaze on everything, as if a future TV series were taking over the movie even as it was unreeling in the projector. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Sep 22, 2022
|
|
|
|
The Deer Hunter (1978) |
This movie has qualities that we almost never see any more -- range and power and breadth of experience, all fully sustained throughout three hours of film that leave us exhausted and satisfied by the end. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Aug 30, 2022
|
|
|
|
Annie Hall (1977) |
Annie Hall is the best movie we've had about the painful difficulty of love in the sexually polarized '70s. Beyond that, it's a sorrowful reflection on the tension between identity and love in any time or place. - Boston Phoenix
Read More
| Posted Aug 26, 2022
|
|
|
|
Platoon (1986) |
This is a great American movie -- easily the most powerful film of the year. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Aug 23, 2022
|
|
|
|
Working Girl (1988) |
Just as most of us would agree that it's better to be the boss than a secretary, it's also better to be slick than dull. Shallow at it is, Working Girl is the most entertaining American comedy of 1988. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Aug 04, 2022
|
|
|
|
Rain Man (1988) |
The rigidity of Raymond's mind is Hoffman's opening to actor's poetry... He has created an image of disconnection and bafflement almost as memorable as Beckett's. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Aug 04, 2022
|
|
|
|
The Last Emperor (1987) |
The end of this near-masterpiece leaves one uneasy. It's hard to accept that Bertolucci, with his exhilarated sense of beauty, his love of pleasure, could accept the graying of China for any reason. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Aug 02, 2022
|
|
|
|
Driving Miss Daisy (1989) |
Mild but pleasing... The movie, passing in time from the fifties through the civil-rights period, lovingly measures the precise shadings of irritation, affection, and dependence that flow back and forth between two characters. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jul 26, 2022
|
|
|
|
Gandhi (1982) |
The 38-year-old Anglo-Indian stage actor Ben Kingsley pulls off one of the most astounding impersonations in movie history. In its physical power, its essential, transfiguring gaiety, Kingsley's performance rivals Olivier's as Henry V. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jul 19, 2022
|
|
|
|
Chariots of Fire (1981) |
A handsome, well-acted, frequently charming film that would not be out of place on Masterpiece Theater. In other words, it is precisely what art-house audiences want at the moment -- a cautious, "distinguished," slightly boring good movie. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jul 18, 2022
|
|
|
|
Ordinary People (1980) |
Putting it crudely, I don't think a first-time director should make such a display of his own sensitivity. What Redford reveals of the Jarretts just isn't surprising or complex enough to justify all this gravity. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jul 15, 2022
|
|
|
|
Amadeus (1984) |
Some of this exuberant, large-scale movie is charming and inventive, and some of it is pitifully trashy... The last third of Amadeus is a disaster. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jul 11, 2022
|
|
|
|
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) |
Bunuel’s art is as insolent as ever. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is a deeply funny movie, as a viewing experience it’s like walking across a perilous, sway little bridge whose guide rails periodically snatched away. - The Atlantic
Read More
| Posted Jun 21, 2022
|
|
|
|
Two English Girls (1971) |
[Léaud] has the gentleness which is characteristic of Truffaut’s work, but in this case it's unimpressive. - The Atlantic
Read More
| Posted Jun 21, 2022
|
|
|
|
Fellini's Roma (1972) |
[Fellini] has totally liberated his obsessions from the discipline of telling a story or developing a character or even maintaining a comprehensible point of view. - The Atlantic
Read More
| Posted Jun 21, 2022
|
|
|
|
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) |
[Spielberg] has produced a work that is like a thirties serial, only grander, funnier, and blessedly free of interruptions. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jun 17, 2022
|
|
|
|
The Shining (1980) |
There are a few terrific thrills, and some eerie moments of dislocation that only Kubrick could achieve, but most of the movie is unfelt, unscary, and bizarrely heavy-handed. It's the first pompous haunted-house movie. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jun 17, 2022
|
|
|
|
Thief (1981) |
Thief achieves formal neatness at the expense of complexity, humor, and even minimal plausibility, but the very eccentricity of the movie makes it intriguing, and I love the look of it. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jun 17, 2022
|
|
|
|
Tess (1979) |
[Tess] is extraordinarily well crafted but a little too placid for the true Hardy spirit. Polanski gets Hardy's feeling for the Dorset countryside and the passing of traditional rural customs, but misses the anguish seething under the surface. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jun 17, 2022
|
|
|
|
Excalibur (1981) |
Excalibur is full of visual fustian -- flames in the night, mist rising ominously from the ground, bits of klutzy magic. Yet, despite all the rhetoric, the movie never takes off. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Jun 17, 2022
|
|
|
|
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) |
The movie is generally powerful and fresh. It's fiercely, dauntingly exotic, yet familiar at the same time, and the Crucifixion, experienced by a man who suffers as we do, is terrifying. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted May 04, 2022
|
|
|
|
Mishima (1985) |
A sterile and disagreeable folly... Open any novel of Mishima's and you will be struck by the sensuousness of the writing -- but Schrader's film is the least sensuous imaginable. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Apr 05, 2022
|
|
|
|
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) |
A shockingly powerful thriller. - New York Magazine/Vulture
Read More
| Posted Mar 23, 2022
|