David Edelstein Author Archive
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David Edelstein

Senior Movie Critic
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  1. movie reviews
    Keanu Review: When Key and Peele’s Cat Comedy Is Good, It’s Soooo Good“Help it make some money this weekend so they can all do it again.”
  2. movie reviews
    Emily Blunt Can’t Save The HuntsmanFairy tales, two ways. 
  3. movie review
    Elvis & Nixon Recounts the White House’s Weirdest Meeting EverIt’s only in this movie that the encounter makes psychological — and poetic — sense.
  4. movie reviews
    The Green Room Doesn’t Live Up to Its Powerful Visuals and Performances For all its artiness and Grade-A acting, it’s Grade-B siege-movie schlock.
  5. movie reviews
    The Jungle Book Takes Audiences on a Thrilling JourneyUntethered by reality, its settings are huge, its cliffs and waterfalls like something out of James Cameron’s Avatar.
  6. movie reviews
    Review: Everybody Wants Some!! Is Effortless FunThe movie is heightened in ways you don’t realize.
  7. movie reviews
    Director Joachim Trier Imbues Louder Than Bombs With Uncommon DepthYou might feel as if everyone onscreen is the protagonist of his or her own novel.
  8. movie review
    Don Cheadle Is Electrifying in Miles AheadBut the movie has a power outage. 
  9. movie reviews
    Review: Batman v Superman, a Confused Epic There can be no true endings in this superhero universe.
  10. David Edelstein on Bilge Ebiri’s Move Across TownA farewell.
  11. movie reviews
    Review: Midnight Special’s Supernatural CharmsThe opening is small-scale, which is Nichols’s secret — to move, step by step, from the tightly focused to, in this case, the cosmic.
  12. movie review
    Krisha Is Not Your Ordinary Family-Holiday PsychodramaTrey Edward Shults’s remarkable debut feature is sui generis, its desolation leavened by mercy.
  13. movie reviews
    Do You Laugh at The Brothers Grimsby, or Does It Laugh at You?The question that inspired The Brothers Grimsby is, “What if James Bond had a brother who was the agent’s polar opposite?”
  14. movie reviews
    10 Cloverfield Lane Has Many Mysteries, Not All of Them IntentionalEven so, the movie does what it needs to do.
  15. movie review
    Augmented-Reality Comedy Creative Control Is Virtually PerfectThe most elegant vision imaginable of a world in the process of losing its moorings.
  16. movie reviews
    Zootopia Is an Animated Romp That Spins a Good Yarn, TooIt’s a big-budget cartoon behemoth underpinned by modest, old-fashioned storytelling.
  17. movie review
    Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups Feels Like Self-ParodyThe director’s archetypes have a way of turning into abstractions or, worse, clichés.
  18. movie reviews
    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Plays It Safe and Suffers for ItOdds are the movie will bomb for having no distinct point of view. It’s not so much bad as dismayingly bland.
  19. oscars 2016
    David Edelstein Looks Back on the Uneven But Memorable 2016 OscarsRock often spins out his conceits longer than he needs to, but he delivered formidable blows.
  20. vulture cover story
    Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio Can Relax He just won the Oscar he’s always wanted. Now he can quit trying so hard.
  21. Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio Can RelaxHe just won the Oscar he’s always wanted. Now he can quit trying so hard.
  22. vulture cover story
    Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio Can RelaxHe just won the Oscar he’s always wanted. Now he can quit trying so hard.
  23. oscars 2016
    David Edelstein’s 2016 Oscars PreviewAnd a farewell to an intimidating colleague.
  24. oscars 2016
    Join Vulture’s Oscars Live Blog With Critics David Edelstein and Bilge EbiriStarting at 8 p.m.
  25. movie review
    An Inexplicably Starry Cast Elevates the Potboiler Heist Movie Triple 9A lot of A-list blood gets spilled in what’s basically a B movie.
  26. movie review
    A War Has a Unique View on Responsibility and BlameThe film’s two pieces are not meant to fit together.
  27. movie review
    Embrace of the Serpent Wobbles, But Finds Real Stories in Its Detours This Amazon-rain-forest odyssey takes place in two different eras and seems to veer off into a new narrative tributary every 15 or so minutes.
  28. movie review
    Puritan Throwback The Witch Gets Under Your SkinEven when the film is spare, it’s heavy.
  29. movie reviews
    There’s Nothing Model About the Bloated, Buffoonish Zoolander 2Ben Stiller seems to think that every instance of Zoolander’s dimness, every malapropism, is going to bring the house down.
  30. movie reviews
    Review: Deadpool Inverts the Superhero FormulaIt’s a send-up of Marvel movies but in no way a takedown of them.
  31. movie reviews
    Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and MehYou can enjoy the film — well, parts of it — as a middling stock production with flurries of gore to break the monotony.
  32. movie review
    The Coen Brothers’ Star-Packed Hail, Caesar! Feels Overdeliberate This milieu begs for a loose, scattershot tone, one in which every line isn’t archly parodic.
  33. tributes
    David Edelstein on Alan Rickman, an Actor Whose Words Carried Uncommon WeightThe glints — or sudden floods — of vulnerability weren’t the best parts of Rickman’s performances, but they were what most of them built toward.
  34. benghazi
    13 Hours Might Disappoint Hillary HatersI’d like to see a congressional committee grill Bay and screenwriter Chuck Hogan about what’s going on half the time.
  35. movie review
    Movie Review: Son of SaulLike Birdman and other “tour de force” endurance tests, it holds us with its hard-charging technique, its bullying subjectivity.
  36. movie review
    Review: Anomalisa Is Pure, Dark Charlie KaufmanThe most vivid portrait of solipsism this side of Kafka, Strindberg, Camus — name your favorite alienated author.
  37. movie review
    Movie Review: Andrew Haigh’s 45 YearsStarring Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay.
  38. movie reviews
    With The Hateful Eight, Tarantino’s Stylistic Compulsions Lead Him AstrayThe movie furthers Tarantino’s descent into a kind of shock-jock territory that dishonors his early work.
  39. movie reviews
    Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Is New, Old“The Force Awakens gives you the joy of reunions and the tragedy of loss.”
  40. movie review
    The Revenant Is a Brutal Feat of StrengthBut the artistry is finite, a test of will, pyrotechnics, and traditional masculinity instead of a search for what illuminates man’s inhumanity to man.
  41. movie review
    David O. Russell’s Joy Can’t Manage to Keep Its Own RhythmThe director builds a pedestal to his frequent leading lady Jennifer Lawrence. This works well until the pedestal is completed and looks dismayingly like … a pedestal.
  42. year in culture 2015
    The 10 Best Movies of 2015Plus: the ten best acting performances.
  43. movie reviews
    The Lady in the Van Feels Worried to DeathThe film is the final injury to what was once a perfect thing.
  44. movie review
    Chi-Raq Is a Powerful Weapon in Its Own Right“No peace, no pussy.”
  45. movie reviews
    The Latest Macbeth Is Brooding and Bleaker Than Ever, But to What End?Is Michael Fassbender yet another victim of the Macbeth curse?
  46. movie review
    The Big Short Turns the Financial Meltdown Into a Heist ComedyDirector Adam McKay invents his own glorious goofball syntax: part business thriller, part stand-up comedy, with a liberal dash of NPR didacticis.
  47. Two Great News Docs on Tasers and Janis JoplinWhat do Tasers and Janis Joplin have in common? They’re both the subject of two really good new documentaries.
  48. movie reviews
    Review: Creed Excites, While Being True to RockyMovies don’t always have to be “how things are.” When they’re as warm and rousing as Creed, they can be “how we want to make things.”
  49. movie review
    Movie Review: The Danish GirlHooper can’t manage to put us inside his characters’ heads — where we should be in a story that makes every surface suspect.
  50. movie reviews
    Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2I’m not slighting the film when I say that it ends less with a bang than a whimper.
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