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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    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    Being John Malkovich
    Everything I've ever dreamed of in a crazy comedy. It's close to pure farce, yet its laughs are grounded in loneliness, impotence, self-loathing, and that most discomfiting of vices to dramatize: envy. The action is surreal, the emotions are violently real.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 20 David Edelstein
    Terminal
    What’s Terminal about? It’s about 90 minutes. That’s a cheap shot, but since the film doesn’t establish a baseline of reality, it’s hard to pick out a premise. It’s a series of playlets stitched together with the seams hanging out.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 20 David Edelstein
    Twisted
    Kaufman proves again how miraculously in synch with his material he can be. Directing a fourth-rate, maladroit, derivative mystery, he becomes a fourth-rate, maladroit, derivative director--worse even than a TV-movie hack.
    • 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.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 20 David Edelstein
    Drowning Mona
    The script plays goofy games, stopping the action for Tarantino-style small talk; piling on alternate, "Rashomon"-style flashbacks; and divulging its characters' secrets in no particular order.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 20 David Edelstein
    Dragonfly
    Linda Hunt's spooky nun speaks of "a hundred levels of consciousness" between death and full, earthbound awareness: Where on that continuum do the executives who green-lighted Dragonfly reside?
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    The Mexican
    A passably diverting entry in the Tarantino genre of splatter and yuks and soulfully bumbling hit men.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 10 David Edelstein
    Apollo 18
    Apollo 18, isn't egregiously inept. It just never lives. It's 80 minutes of dead air.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 10 David Edelstein
    Mr. Deeds
    This is another of those post-Saturday Night Live vehicles in which ineptitude and laziness are supposed to be taken as irony: It's not bad, it's "bad." Actually, it's "terrible":
    • 24 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    Holmes & Watson
    As a director, Coen commits comedy’s most cardinal sin: He gets between us and the performers.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 10 David Edelstein
    Godsend
    Turns into a pea-brained hodgepodge of "The Omen" (1976), "The Sixth Sense" (1999), and about 30 Grade-Z Bela Lugosi mad-scientist movies.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 10 David Edelstein
    Hollow Man
    Turns into a moronic, psycho-on-the-loose picture pretty quickly.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 10 David Edelstein
    The Snowman
    I figured the film would have an off-the-charts creepy quotient (the novel is chilling) and gobs of atmosphere. I could never have predicted it would turn out to be such a shambles.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
    One of the deadliest things I've ever sat through and which doesn't display someone's strange mind--only someone's predilection for sniggery camp.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    Say It Isn't So
    I must admit that I find those motifs -- and the Farrellys' universe in general -- more sweet than offensive, and I liked Say It Isn't So just so. So there.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    8MM
    The moral contortions of 8MM seem especially bogus, a sadomasochistic peep show booth pretending to be a confessional.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 30 David Edelstein
    Marci X
    At least Kudrow won't get the blame for Marci X: What really sinks the movie is Wayans.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 10 David Edelstein
    The Cat in the Hat
    Like being run over by a garbage truck that backs up and dumps its load on top of you. It's a sloppy and vulgar burlesque, one of the most repulsive kiddie movies ever made.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 20 David Edelstein
    Gigli
    The movie is bafflingly boring and ridiculous. Its loginess is exacerbated by the pacing of the writer-director, Martin Brest.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 30 David Edelstein
    The Devil Inside
    It has been a long time since I've heard people - many people - distinctly yell, "Boo!" Usually they just growl or moan or hiss. They don't bother actually to articulate the word "Boo!" I second their statement. The ending reeks.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 0 David Edelstein
    Movie 43
    It's rare to see a piece of sh** that actually looks and sounds like a piece of sh**. It's kind of exciting!
    • 18 Metascore
    • 10 David Edelstein
    The Nutcracker
    Even if the film were well done, it would still be a travesty.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 30 David Edelstein
    88 Minutes
    Forget Pacino; it’s all those red herrings that reek.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 0 David Edelstein
    The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)
    The movie is a reductio ad absurdum, a sick joke taken to extremes, beginning with a goof on the notion that horror movies inspire copycats and ending with a test to determine whether some people will watch anything.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 10 David Edelstein
    Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
    Lordy, what a stinker.
    • 13 Metascore
    • 0 David Edelstein
    Freddy Got Fingered
    The most appalling comedy of the millennium after "Joe Dirt," which is so supernaturally terrible that it levitated me out of the theater after 40 minutes.
    • 12 Metascore
    • 10 David Edelstein
    The Avengers
    There's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.
    • 9 Metascore
    • 0 David Edelstein
    Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000
    A picture that will be hailed without controversy as the worst of its kind ever made.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    Take My Nose... Please!
    Early in the film, Margaret Cho nails both sides of the issue in her stand-up act, decrying plastic surgery as “brainwashing, mutilation, and manipulation of women.
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