David Edelstein

Select another critic »
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
view
per page
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 David Edelstein
    Blackfish
    It’s true that the number of whales in captivity isn’t huge. But they’ve now become the mightiest symbols of our cultural hubris — of our inability to manage creatures we have the power to capture and imprison. It’s a metaphor for the ages.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    Corpse Bride
    The movie is so Burtonesque that it verges on self-parody--but it's fun and stunningly beautiful anyway.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    Project Nim
    You get a bad feeling early in Project Nim, the brilliant, traumatizing documentary by James Marsh (Man on Wire).
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    Spider-Man 2
    It's the tone of the picture that's most striking. This is nothing less than a superhero's lament--Spidey Agonistes, a comic-book spectacle in which the primary struggles are behind the mask.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    20 Feet from Stardom
    You gasp at the ecstatic convergence of lung power and spirit.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 David Edelstein
    Avatar
    Pantheism, Cameronism: In Avatar, what's the diff? Now he's king of a world he made from scratch.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    20th Century Women
    20th Century Women is irreducible, too, although certain adjectives and adverbs do leap to mind: generous, reflective, absolutely delightful.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    Animal Kingdom
    Early on, writer-director David Michôd serves up "Trainspotting"-like tricks and narration that is beguiling, if rarely apropos. But the actors are something.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    Hugo
    For all the wizardry on display, Hugo often feels like a film about magic instead of a magical film.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    Gloria
    Gloria doesn’t lie about a woman’s dwindling options. It’s rife with disappointment and humiliation. But bleakness does not preclude buoyancy. It still manages to leave you with the urge to dance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    Drag Me to Hell
    Truly, this is manna from hell.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
    Very entertaining (and doesn’t overstay its welcome) but it’s a little depressing to contemplate.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    Quills
    What the film does have is coruscating anger, impish wit, and a breathtaking style.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    Spider
    The inner life of the young Spider is just screaming to be taken to the next level--but Cronenberg mulishly won't go there. What goes wrong with Spider is pretty basic: The audience has no idea why it was made.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    Seymour: An Introduction
    Buoyed by Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, and more, Seymour: An Introduction is lyrical without getting fancy, its director plainly rapt.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    Up in the Air
    Up in the Air is poised to be a smash, and Clooney--slim, dark, perfectly tailored--glamorizes insincerity in a way that makes you want to go out and lie.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    Milk
    Milk is one of the most heartfelt portraits of a politician ever made--the man himself remains just out of reach.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    Kill Bill: Vol. 2
    For all its relative subtlety, Kill Bill, Vol. 2 remains a cartoon: Its wit is broadsword rather than rapier, and its motives are elemental. The banter is second-tier Tarantino: a cut above his imitators, but below the standard set by "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown."
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Vera Drake
    Marathon of misery.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 David Edelstein
    Private Life
    Jenkins’ writing underlines the fundamental instability at the heart of all our lives, while proposing that most universal of remedies: empathy, love.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    BlacKkKlansman
    Lee doesn’t do subtlety. But the movie is very entertaining and comes with a stupendous, lushly melodic score by Terence Blanchard.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    Lake of Fire
    Lake of Fire centers on abortion, but Kaye understands that while dead fetuses are the hook, the agenda covers the whole life cycle.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    Under the Skin
    At times the film is right on the border between mesmerizing and narcotizing, but it casts an otherworldly spell.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    The Post
    The Post is a good enough “procedural” to keep you hooked.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    The Magdalene Sisters
    Both a masterpiece and a holy hell: Watching it, you feel you're being punished for a crime you didn't commit. Which puts you, come to think of it, in the same frame of mind as those poor Magdalene girls.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    Tyson
    No filmmaker I know has gotten as close to a professional athlete as James Toback gets to Mike Tyson in his new documentary.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Godzilla 2000
    It's fun to see.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    Eastern Promises
    It’s engrossing, and Mueller-Stahl’s mix of Old World chivalry and murderousness is scarier than Jason and Freddy combined.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    Trouble the Water
    You can't make this stuff up. You can, however, capture it on film for all time. Trouble the Water is ineradicably moving.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 David Edelstein
    Don't Think Twice
    It’s funny and inspiring and harsh and depressing. It’s steeped in existential dread. I don’t know how Birbiglia pulled it off, but he gets the minutiae of an improv-comedy show thrillingly right while using the form to build a kind of allegory of the corrosive effects of capitalism.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »