David Edelstein

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New York Magazine (Vulture), Slate
For 2,169 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

David Edelstein's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 First Cow
Lowest review score: 0 Funny Games (2008)
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,257 out of 2169
  2. Mixed: 709 out of 2169
  3. Negative: 203 out of 2169
2169 movie reviews
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    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Robert the Bruce
    If I’ve made Robert the Bruce sound laughable, I’ve misrepresented it. It’s not bad at all. Though he is unusually uncharismatic, Macfadyen (who co-wrote the script) is an excellent actor, and Richard Gray directs ably. But that word — “ably.” I never used it before. It’s the bottom of the neutral zone, before you dip into negative territory.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    The Other Lamb
    The idea is that vulnerable women will give up their autonomy — their very identities — to such an entitled being, which I found a stretch but which certainly has historical precedents. It’s best to view The Other Lamb as a rite-of-passage fantasia with a gossamer heroine.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    Hope Gap
    A brief, sad little piece that doesn’t quite hurdle the blood-brain barrier and rattle you to the core, but it does achieve a half-sublimity, thanks to coastal settings with white cliffs that inspire both awe and thoughts of flinging oneself off, and also thanks to poetry.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Wendy
    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.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    Under J.J. Abrams, The Rise of Skywalker hits its marks and bashes ahead, so speedy that no emotion sinks in too deeply.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Knives Out
    A production designed to within an inch of its life, Knives Out always seems on the brink of being cleverer than it is, never quite shaking off its cobwebs and entering the present tense.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    The Current War
    Apart from those nutty camera angles and lenses, which throw you out of the action, The Current War is absorbing.... It never quite snaps into focus, though.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Terminator: Dark Fate
    These are Doritos movies, indeed: a lot of crunching, a lot of empty calories.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    Jojo Rabbit
    Let me add something in the movie’s favor. Although I don’t love Jojo Rabbit, I love that it exists.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    The King
    The King has enough in its coffers to keep you moderately engaged.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    Lucy in the Sky
    I have to tip my cap to such a bold attempt to induce in the audience his heroine’s inner flux and fragmentation. The double-entendre title tells you to expect a trip, and you get one.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    Rambo: Last Blood
    Quick as it is, though, you have time to wonder how these Mexican assassins can watch their comrades getting skewered, dismembered, and eviscerated by Rambo’s traps and not think, Maybe we should pull out and rethink this assault.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    The Goldfinch
    The Goldfinch is too artful to deserve that kind of rejection, but too arty to keep you from saying, “What did I just see?”
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    Where'd You Go, Bernadette
    He’s a deceptively crafty director (he fakes naturalism beautifully in movies like "Dazed and Confused," "Before Sunrise," and "Boyhood"), but he can’t find a suitable form for Maria Semple’s patchwork best seller about a misanthropic, malcontented ex-architect named Bernadette.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    After the Wedding
    None of the characters has a true home. Comedies end with weddings, with order replacing chaos, but After the Wedding is not a comedy and weddings don’t fool anyone.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    Luce
    In the end, you’re left with a movie that doesn’t quite jell but expands in the mind. It’s an excellent Book Club movie — it demands to be discussed, debated, embraced, or (perhaps) rejected.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    The Nightingale
    It’s constructed like a meathead melodrama — though with odd, last-act dissonances that might reflect Kent’s ambivalence.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Luz
    If Luz had been a play, I’d probably have walked out halfway through, but as a film I found it eerie enough to stay rooted.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    The Art of Self-Defense
    The only surprise is the level of violence — not just beyond "The Karate Kid" but beyond "Fight Club." The problem with that strategy is that unless you’re knocked out, you’re just grossed out and eager to go. You practice the art of self-defense against the movie.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Yesterday
    Curtis isn’t the director of Yesterday; Danny Boyle has been brought in to lend his shallow virtuosity. But fluid transitions don’t make the movie less clunky. Patel has an appealing presence and a lovely, McCartney-­like tenor, but the musical numbers leave an odd taste.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    Midsommar
    The most ambitious horror blurs the line between the psychological and the mythic, between ordinary human emotions and symbol-laden Blakean nightmares, and Aster is very ambitious and very blurry.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    The Dead Don't Die
    It’s painful to report that Jarmusch’s deadpan is in the rigor mortis stage in The Dead Don’t Die. His own creative ferment isn’t happening this time — the acid cynicism has killed the yeast — and the actors seem unsure whether to commit to the material when their director plainly hasn’t.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    Dark Phoenix
    Like most good superhero movies, Dark Phoenix operates on two levels, comic-book fantastical and psychological. Like most not-so-good ones, it doesn’t do justice to either aspect. The results here are middling, but the director, Simon Kinberg, throws a lot of ideas at you. It’s not boring.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    Rocketman
    In common with most recovery stories, Rocketman boils down to a fat lump of self-pity, but the music does leaven things.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Brightburn
    Most of Brightburn belabors the obvious.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    Aladdin
    This Aladdin’s sole innovation is a feminist Jasmine who refuses to be controlled, but the song is so saccharine and the vistas are so synthetic that it doesn’t feel as if she’s being liberated. It feels as if yet another man is trying to engineer her responses. Aladdin might as well have put a VR headset on her.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
    The movie should by rights be a “Wow!” But it feels bloated, self-conscious, and pretentious, with long waits between its few dazzling fights. Evidently, it’s hard to build on a premise that’s basically so vacuous and dumb.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    Charlie Says
    A social worker’s take on a lost soul can be valuable, but in a drama it’s too orienting. You want to see how a person could surrender herself — her self — to something so diabolical, which demands a higher level of insanity than the filmmakers can muster.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Long Shot
    I generally like Rogen a lot but this performance is bad — worse than it even seems because of the drain it is on the movie.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    J.T. Leroy
    JT LeRoy isn’t a bad movie, and with these actresses it’s certainly worth seeing. It’s a passion project for Knoop, who co-wrote the script (songs by her brother, long divorced from Albert, all over the soundtrack) and has been promoting the film.
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