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David Edelstein

Senior Movie Critic
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  1. oscars 2019
    Judging the Oscar Shorts: The Good, the Grisly, and Our Picks to WinThere’s at least one genuine masterpiece in the 15 nominated films, and … a lot of child murder.
  2. movie review
    Cancer Drama Paddleton Is Embarrassingly Bad — Until the Stunning EndingIt’s a pity the first hour needs to be endured.
  3. movie review
    Greta Is a Rare Miss From Neil JordanThis rote psycho-horror flick has zero subtext and twists you can see limping toward you like the zombie tropes they are.
  4. movie review
    Christian Petzold’s Transit Is Confounding, But CompellingOnce the bitterly ironic vision of this slow-motion mistaken-identity farce takes hold, it eats into the mind.
  5. movie review
    Birds of Passage Is a KnockoutIt’s part ethnographic documentary, part The Godfather.
  6. movie review
    Happy Death Day 2 U Is a Madcap Sequel That Goes to Unexpected PlacesStalk-and-kill movies bear some resemblance to classic farces, but none have taken the similarities as far as Happy Death Day and its sequel.
  7. movie review
    The Prodigy Is a Cruelly Well-Made Bad-Seed Horror MovieThe Prodigy works in a low key that still somehow scrapes your nerves, so when the nasty stuff arrives, you’ve been softened up for the kill.
  8. movie review
    To Dust Is a Good, Slightly Cringeworthy Comedy About a Decomposing CorpseIt has a sicko premise, but scrupulously sicko.
  9. movies
    The Matrix’s Bullet Time Made 3-D RedundantThe last time I saw “classic” bullet time, it was used on the E! Network’s Golden Globes red-carpet show.
  10. movie review
    Steven Soderbergh’s High Flying Bird Is Compelling Despite Its Narrative FlawsThe storytelling is unshapely — there are plot gaps and it never locks into a rhythm — but the film has a sense of mournfulness that seeps into you.
  11. movie review
    Look Away From Never Look AwayIt’s objectively unfair to be harder on a clunky film that has been nominated for an Oscar than one that few will see, but objectivity is overvalued.
  12. movie review
    Arctic Is Grim, But Worth WatchingJoe Penna’s film made me feel less prone to complain about the polar vortex.
  13. review
    Miss Bala Isn’t Quite the Clunker It’s Been Made Out to BeThe souped-up plot is certainly indigestible, and there’s a steady stream of bad laughs, but something genuinely frightening comes through.
  14. movie review
    Godard’s Film Collage The Image Book Is Like a Window Into His Bitter SoulIf this turns out to be his final statement (he’s 87), it’s an appropriately ragged one, half-formed but gesturing toward meaning. Every edge bleeds.
  15. movie review
    Serenity Is Bad — But There’s Some Method to Its BadnessWriter-director Steven Knight has set himself a very weird task and held firm.
  16. movie review
    An Acceptable Loss Is a So-so Thriller, But Jamie Lee Curtis Is FascinatingIt has its moments.
  17. movie review
    M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass Congeals on the ScreenOh, these poor actors.
  18. buffalo boys
    Buffalo Boys Is a Spaghetti-Western Revenge Story With a Good Bloody PayoffThis is one of those vengeance movies where the audience waits impatiently for the bad guys to get it so it really, really, really hurts. And they do.
  19. movie review
    Perfect Strangers Is a Comedy About Cell Phone Secrets That Mostly WorksAt a dinner party for old friends, the guests decide on a dumb whim to place their cell phones on the table and share every text or call.
  20. movie review
    The Vanishing Is a Phenomenally Well-Made ThrillerYou’ll never want to go in a lighthouse again.
  21. movie review
    State Like Sleep Starts Strong, But the Payoff Is Criminally UnsatisfyingIt’s good enough to make you wish it were better, less slack, more resolved.
  22. movie review
    Rust Creek Is a Thriller With a Surprising Streak of HumanismFrom the start, it’s clear director Jen McGowan will be putting her heroine through hell while protecting her from degradation.
  23. movie review
    Holmes & Watson Doesn’t Make It Easy, But There’s Fun to Be HadThe movie’s climactic musical number is positively award-worthy. It alone is worth enduring the opening slog.
  24. movie review
    On the Basis of Sex Plays Like a Rocky Movie, But It WorksThe Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic hits its marks with the subtlety of a legal brief. But that’s not fatal.
  25. movie review
    Vice Is Gimmicky, But Christian Bale’s Dick Cheney Impersonation Is Spot-onAdam McKay has devised a rollicking comic style for what amounts to an anti-hagiography, a scabrous portrait of Dick Cheney the Unholy One.
  26. movie review
    If Beale Street Could Talk Is Romance on Top, Despair Beneath the SurfaceIn Barry Jenkins’s work, loss is a given. He lyricizes it and sometimes seems to wallow in it.
  27. year in culture 2018
    The 10 Best Performances of 2018Including Bradley Cooper, Zoe Kazan, and Rachel Weisz.
  28. movie review
    The Mule Is a Modest Twist on the Clint Eastwood MythWithout many advance screenings or the usual ballyhoo for a Clint Eastwood film.
  29. movie review
    Mary Poppins Returns, Without the MagicIt’s a work of painstaking re-creation, and it’s full of nice touches. But it’s a bit of a dud.
  30. movie review
    The Brilliant Doc Divide and Conquer Tells Roger Ailes’s Origin StoryNo matter how far back it reaches, Divide and Conquer always feels as if it’s in the present tense.
  31. movie review
    Ben Is Back Is Superbly EffectiveI can’t remember ever having seen Julia Roberts work this hard.
  32. best of 2018
    David Edelstein’s 10 Best Movies of 2018Including a few directorial debuts — and some incredible new works from old favorites.
  33. movie review
    Happy As Lazzaro Is a Barbed-Wire SatirePart of the movie’s fun is how it forces you to share Lazarro’s go-along-to-get-along ebullience.
  34. movie review
    The Favourite Is Wonderful, Nasty FunThough mostly twaddle as history, it’s the machinations of the movie’s characters that will sweep you up.
  35. movie review
    At Eternity’s Gate Puts You Inside Vincent van Gogh’s HeadAs an act of sympathetic imagination, the movie is only partly successful, but that part can take your breath away. The images vibrate with emotion.
  36. movie review
    Green Book Spoon-feeds You, But It Goes Down EasyOn paper it sounds cringeworthy, but it’s a lot of fun.
  37. movie review
    Widows Is a Thoroughly Entertaining CaperMcQueen wouldn’t do a mere genre movie, of course.
  38. movie review
    Outlaw King Is a Lot Better Than You’ve HeardAnd it’s too bad you can’t see it on a big screen.
  39. movies
    The Front Runner Review Gives Gary Hart Some Dignity. The Press, Not So MuchHugh Jackman plays Hart as an excruciatingly limited man, unable to rise to the occasion when his infidelities are exposed.
  40. movie review
    Lucas Hedges Is Remarkable in Boy ErasedHe has a difficult job — to portray a teenager whose best option is to reveal nothing of himself.
  41. movie review
    In The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coens Take Old Westerns to a New FrontierThis might be their bleakest work of all, and one of their richest.
  42. movie review
    Bad Mistakes, It Makes a Few — But Bohemian Rhapsody Comes ThroughIf you’re immune to this music, I don’t want to know you. If you’re immune to Rami Malek, there’s no hope for you.
  43. best of 2018
    The Best Movies of 2018 (So Far)Including Annihilation, Black Panther, The Rider, and The Death of Stalin.
  44. movie review
    Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind Is a Meta-MasterpieceIt’s a gas.
  45. movie review
    Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria Remake Casts No SpellIt takes everything deliriously surreal in the original and lumbers it with German history, gender studies, and cloddish dance/performance art
  46. movie review
    Beautiful Boy Proves That Timothée Chalamet Is the Real DealCall Me By Your Name wasn’t a fluke.
  47. movies
    Wildlife Is Superb — and a Major Moment for Carey MulliganZoe Kazan co-wrote the adaptation of Richard Ford’s novel with Paul Dano, and it’s brilliant.
  48. movies
    The New Halloween Evokes the Genius and Dumbness of the OriginalDavid Gordon Green and Jamie Lee Curtis take memorable images from Carpenter’s Halloween and turns them on their heads.
  49. movies
    What They Had: An Alzheimer’s Story That’s Both Heartbreaking and … FunnyMichael Shannon and Hilary Swank are superb in Elizabeth Chomko’s debut feature film as stressed-out siblings watching their mother’s memory dissolve.
  50. movie review
    Bad Times at the El Royale Is Long, Labored, and Synthetic — But Not BoringWhat’s missing from Bad Times at the El Royale is a sense of urgency. Is this a story that needs to be told or a self-conscious and labored exercise?
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