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David Edelstein

Senior Movie Critic
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  1. Darren Aronofsky Movies, RankedIn honor of Mother!, we ranked every Darren Aronofsky movie, from The Wrestler to Requiem for a Dream.
  2. movie review
    Mother! Is a Second-Rate, Self-Aggrandizing Tour De ForceDarren Aronofsky’s latest puts Jennifer Lawrence through the mill for no purpose except nurturing a strain of masochism.
  3. Brad’s Status Is a Naked, Grim Exploration of EnvyEven if you relate to Brad, you’ll probably end up wishing he’d save it for his shrink instead of a paying audience.
  4. The Shape of Water Is an Utterly Lovely But Complacent MovieDel Toro’s influences have been distilled and reassembled into a stylized Girl Meets Gill Man fairy tale that shimmers with its filmmaker’s love.
  5. The Unknown Girl Is a Gripping Mystery Solved Too ConvenientlyBut every Dardennes film is worth seeing.
  6. movie review
    Review: Game-Hunting Doc Trophy Refuses to Stoke Easy OutrageIt will leave you angry, sick, and confused — but not smug.
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    Review: I Do … Until I Don’t Is Amusing Until Its Satirical Backbone Gives WayDon’t let the bohemian title fool you: Lake Bell’s I Do … Until I Don’t is the most bougie movie ever made.
  8. Bushwick Is an Alarmingly Timely Thriller With a Shallow PlotThe real threat, it says, is from within, from white men in states like Texas and the Carolinas who view multiculturalism as the enemy.
  9. Jerry Lewis, America’s Polarizing Clown PrinceA look back at the life and work of a man who was monstrous — and brilliant.
  10. Patti Cake$ Is a Gritty Crowd-pleaser That Isn’t a Cliché, Just Cliché-AdjacentThe Sundance hit demonstrates that showbiz go-for-it stories are more alike than unalike, even when they have a vivid countercultural vibe.
  11. Logan Lucky Is a Delightful Trick of a Film That Constantly Flips ExpectationsSteven Soderbergh casts actors in roles that they were not exactly born to play, but do so with relish.
  12. movie review
    The Transcendent Marjorie Prime Is a Reflective Work of Science FictionThe latest from director Michael Almereyda is exquisite — beautiful, intense, shivering with empathy.
  13. The Trip to Spain Offers a Feast of Laughs and IntrospectionThe movie plays like it’s no big deal — a throwaway — but it’s consistently funny.
  14. movie review
    The Dark Tower Is Not That Terrible — But It Does Feel Like a Copy of a CopyThe fantasy epic, a handy target for everything derivative and dull-witted in the sci-fi–fantasy genre, feels wan and bloodless.
  15. movie review
    Wind River Is an Overwritten Mystery-Thriller With a Crazily Powerful EndingLong after the gunshots of Wind River fade, you might think you hear the cries of the dead.
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    Review: In Detroit, the Zero Dark Thirty Team Revisits TortureDirector Kathryn Bigelow induces a feeling of powerlessness in the viewer that’s beyond our capacity to imagine on our own.
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    Atomic Blonde Has an Incomprehensible Plot, But the Action Is SmashingYou don’t see Atomic Blonde for anything but a badass female protagonist crunching bones and pulping faces in gratifyingly long takes.
  18. movie review
    Review: Dunkirk Is a Great War Movie Marred by Christopher Nolan’s Usual TricksSomewhere inside the movie’s muddled timeline is a terrific linear movie.
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    Valerian Is Magical, Even If the Script Isn’tI worry that people will minimize Besson’s achievement because of the herky-jerky plot, but Valerian is more than the sum of its effects.
  20. Remembering George A. Romero, Genre Cinema’s Visionary SatiristRomero was not just a zombie auteur. He was also the filmmaker who captured the dark side of the 1960s the most indelibly.
  21. movie review
    Review: In the Torrid Lady Macbeth, Oppression Flows in All DirectionsIt eats into the mind with its vision of evil as a contagion that transforms victims into oppressors.
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    War for the Planet of the Apes Isn’t the Apocalypse Now Remake It Wants to BeIt’s an awesome, dull movie that manages to be both alienating and sappy.
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    Movie Review: A Ghost Story Has a Ghost, But Maybe Not a StoryStill, even at its most self-conscious, there’s something lovable about A Ghost Story.
  24. Movie Review: Spider-Man: Homecoming Is a Breezy DelightIt’s the most convivial Marvel movie in ages.
  25. Movie Review: Nowhere to Hide Is a First-Person View of a Disintegrating IraqThe new documentary will shock you into confoundment, demonstrating, moment by moment, how irrational the world really is.
  26. Review: The Little Hours Is the Best 14th-Century Sex Farce You’ll See This YearDave Franco, Aubrey Plaza, and Alison Brie star in this adaptation of two stories from Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
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    Movie Review: Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver Is a Cinematic JoyrideThis is the first thriller I’ve seen in a long time that feels handmade.
  28. movie review
    Review: Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled Is a Remake With a New PerspectiveCoppola’s Civil War drama has a probing and powerful “female gaze.”
  29. Movie Review: Sally Hawkins Stars in the Colorful MaudieHawkins’s facial features are big and clear, at times suggesting the radiant plainness of Maude Lewis’s art.
  30. Review: It Comes at Night Is a Slow-burning, Nerve-racking Horror FilmThe atmosphere is so thick with dread that nothing much needs to happen to make you sweat.
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    Review: Rachel Weisz Keeps You Guessing in My Cousin RachelBecause Weisz is one of the least artificial actresses alive, you find yourself asking: She can’t be as evil as the movie is suggesting, can she?
  32. movie review
    Review: The Mummy Resurrects a Franchise That Should Have Stayed DeadYou can practically hear the executive pounding the table and yelling, “Make this my next tent pole!”
  33. A Word About My Wonder Woman ReviewLast Thursday, my review was received with outrage and ridicule.
  34. movie review
    Movie Review: Wonder Woman Is a Star Turn for Gal GadotBut the rest is pretty clunky.
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    Review: Christopher Plummer Is Glorious in The ExceptionAs he proves yet again as the aged Kaiser Wilhelm II, Plummer can put more shading into fewer syllables than any actor alive.
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    Movie Review: Baywatch Has Ironic Jiggles, a Few GigglesDwayne Johnson and Zac Efron make a fine pair of chiseled clowns.
  37. movie review
    Review: The Fifth Pirates of the Caribbean Movie Is a Sorry SpectacleDo movies this loud and hectic really entertain anyone?
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    Review: Alien: Covenant Is an Origin Story We Might Not Have WantedThe dialogue is often clunky and the plot repetitious. But it’s scary and splatterful, which is all it really needs to be.
  39. Movie Review: Bette Gordon’s The Drowning Is a Misandrist StunnerGordon has found her theme: how men are helpless before their basic and base urges.
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    Review: Snatched Doesn’t Know What to Do With Its Premise or Its StarsI don’t fault Amy Schumer for pushing the lines of taste and correctness. I do fault director Jonathan Levine for his whack-you-over-the-head pacing.
  41. The Lovers Is a Very Smart Movie About a Very Dumb IdeaAnd it’s fun watching Debra Winger and Tracy Letts gaze helplessly at each other.
  42. Movie Review: You Can’t Look Away From Last Men in AleppoYou should see this movie to witness an ongoing tragedy. But you should also see it to learn humility.
  43. remembrances
    Remembering Jonathan Demme, One of Cinema’s Most Contagious EnthusiastsIt’s hard to imagine movies without Demme in the house. How do you eulogize someone whose overriding aspect is aliveness?
  44. movie review
    Movie Review: As a Tech Thriller, The Circle Is Pretty SquareThe Dave Eggers adaptation pales beside the paranoid thrills of Black Mirror.
  45. movie review
    One Week and a Day Is an Unusual Comedy About GrievingThe loss of one’s child — the most devastating event in this world — has rarely been depicted as strangely as in this Israeli film.
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    Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy 2 Is the Movie Version of Fast FoodThere are moments of fun, but the vibe is mostly corporate.
  47. Review: The Promise Makes Simpleminded Melodrama Out of the Armenian GenocideBut it’s for a good cause.
  48. movie review
    Free Fire Doesn’t Live Up to Its SetupBen Wheatley’s black comedy is reasonably entertaining and totally disposable.
  49. tribeca film festival 2017
    17 Movies to See at the Tribeca Film Festival This YearIncluding A Suitable Girl, Flower, Dabka, and My Friend Dahmer.
  50. movie review
    Emily Dickinson Biopic A Quiet Passion Is Overly Mannered, But Saved by Its EndSome of the film fulfills the promise of director Terence Davies, but much of it is cringeworthy.
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