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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per page
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    All the Money in the World
    It’s a real transformation. I’ve never heard this diction from her (Michelle Williams) before — sharp, with a hint of North Shore (i.e., old money) Long Island and perhaps a Kennedy or two. (The real Gail grew up in San Francisco but was well acquainted with the cadences of the East Coast rich.) Through the tension in her body and intensity of her voice, Williams conveys not just the terror of losing a son but the tragic absurdity of bearing the illustrious name Getty when family ties confer zero power.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi
    The new Star Wars, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi is shockingly good.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    Thelma
    Thelma is both more mysterious and more accessible than his other films. The spell it casts transcends the silly plotting. It puts you in a zone all its own.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    Phantom Thread
    We’re not so much watching Woodcock the rarefied designer as Day-Lewis the rarefied actor, his immersion so uncanny that he can illuminate a soul at once titanic and stunted.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    The Post
    The Post is a good enough “procedural” to keep you hooked.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    The Other Side of Hope
    The Other Side of Hope — which is tragic, funny, depressing, and inspiring — shows that a truly imaginative artist has resources unavailable to journalists and nonfiction filmmakers. In Kaurismaki’s work, it’s as if the masks of comedy and tragedy don’t — as usual — face away from each other, but stare each other in the face, as if they were saying, “You and me, we’re in this together.”
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    The Disaster Artist
    The Disaster Artist is primarily a pedestal for the ultimate James Franco performance — it’s his "Lincoln." Whatever my queasiness about laughing at a head case, I couldn’t help myself from thrilling to Franco’s timing, his relish, his swan dive into an egotism that has no bottom.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 David Edelstein
    Call Me by Your Name
    Chalamet gives the performance of the year. By any name, this is a masterpiece.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond — Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton
    You come away from Jim & Andy wondering — not for the first time — about the cost to great artists of what they do, envious of their talent and thinking, “I’m glad that’s not me.”
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    Wonder
    Wonder has an overflowing humanism that extends to less-sympathetic characters.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 David Edelstein
    Justice League
    Like most “universe” movies, this one has about five beginnings and then segues into a round-up-the-team section that ought to have been sure-fire. But the banter has a droopy, depressed air, as if the actors know they’re coming from behind.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Murder on the Orient Express
    To return to why Murder on the Orient Express was remade: Beats me. Maybe it’s someone’s idea of counterprogramming when every other film in the multiplex is for kids or yahoos. Maybe it’s a tax shelter.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    One of Us
    Grady and Ewing use music as scary as in any horror film. They had no interest in making an “objective documentary,” although I doubt the Hasidim would have made themselves available to two women with a camera and their own hair. In such cases, they usually say, “If you want to understand us, read the Torah.”
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
    I confess that I had a hard time reconciling McDonagh’s madcap incongruities with the horror of the original crime and the grief of a mother struggling to cope with so primal an injury. Are the people who love the movie less rigid in their tastes? Or has McDonagh succeeded in so thoroughly psyching them out that they’re afraid to call foul?
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    My Friend Dahmer
    It would be misleading to call My Friend Dahmer “entertaining,” but I got off on its fuzzy sense of dread, its poker-faced ghoulishness.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    Lady Bird
    It’s a flittery movie, too, but with soul: Gerwig has a gift for skipping along the surface of her teenage alter ego’s life and then going deep — quickly, without fuss — before skipping forward again.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    Novitiate
    Betts has succeeded in capturing a watershed moment in the life of the Catholic Church — a push to adapt that is, in important ways, at odds with its very origins. Her irresolution makes for excellent drama.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 David Edelstein
    Thor: Ragnarok
    This one is probably my favorite, being the most unlike the others.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    Jane
    Morgen gets a little Terrence Malick-y for my taste, too, as he revs up for the big finish.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 David Edelstein
    BPM (Beats Per Minute)
    BPM is vital for the history it depicts, but it’s also important in the here and now, as a testament to public action — even messy, not-always-effective public action.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 David Edelstein
    Wonder Wheel
    Watching the rest of the movie, I wondered if Allen had discovered the script in an old file cabinet (maybe meant as a play?) and appended that meta intro to account for how obvious and old-hat the rest of it is. Probably a good strategy.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    Happy Death Day
    It’s a fun little movie, more of a giddy rom-com than a splatter-y slasher.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    The Foreigner
    That makes Brosnan the more interesting protagonist, Chan the wild card — and changes The Foreigner from a standard revenge melodrama into something weightier and less predictable. It’s an awkward weave, but it has gravitas.
    • 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.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    The Mountain Between Us
    It’s said you have a choice at a movie like The Mountain Between Us: Laugh at it or go with it. I don’t see those two things as mutually exclusive. I laughed at it and enjoyed the hell out of it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 David Edelstein
    The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson
    I hope the film inspires a new generation of amateur sleuths. Maybe — thanks to movies like The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson — a wish-fulfilling fictional scenario will come to pass in the real world, and the injustices of history will stand plainly in the living present.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 10 David Edelstein
    Flatliners
    I wish I could tell you they made a mistake and it’s not so bad, but, as Andy Kaufman’s Foreign Man would put it, “Ees so bad, ees terrible.”
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    Our Souls at Night
    The last act of Our Souls at Night is rushed and the ending truncated. But the good vibes linger. Netflix is putting the film in a few theaters but it’s online now to watch. You should. It’s a nice little movie.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 David Edelstein
    Blade Runner 2049
    There’s nothing close to the shock of seeing Blade Runner’s Tokyo-influenced futuristic dystopia — a dismal mix of high-tech and corrosion — for the first time. I thought it was okay.
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