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David Edelstein

Senior Movie Critic
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  1. movie review
    Comedies End With Weddings, But After the Wedding Is No ComedyBart Freundlich’s family drama hasn’t been well-received, but tearjerkers rarely have this kind of stuffing.
  2. movie review
    Cold Case Hammarskjöld Presents a Conspiracy You’ll Want to BelieveThis tricked-up documentary about a suspicious 1961 plane crash in Zambia reminds you that conspiracy theories make for great yarns.
  3. movie review
    Brace Yourself for the Devastating Documentary One Child NationNanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s first-person film chronicles China’s one-child policy in infuriating, tragic, grisly detail.
  4. movie review
    Luce Review: Doubt Everything and AnythingJ.C. Lee’s eerie story demands to be discussed, debated, embraced, or (perhaps) rejected.
  5. movie review
    In The Nightingale, There’s No Escaping the Rankness of Male DepravityThe Babadook director returns with a graphically violent, Australian-frontier revenge thriller.
  6. movie review
    The Horror Is Real in the Syrian Doc For SamaThe film doesn’t feel like raw footage — it has been carefully shaped, with a bit of movie-­ish suspense during the final hours.
  7. movie review
    Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Is a Seductive Pipe DreamThe director’s dream world is a sadistic place, but in a way it’s sublime, like heaven nestled inside hell.
  8. vulture lists
    All 10 Quentin Tarantino Movies, RankedOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood is a jubilant, wistful, altogether exhilarating comeback for the director. But where does it fit into this ranking?
  9. review
    In the Surreal Horror Movie Luz, the Devil Is in the 16mmIf Tilman Singer’s low-budget haunt had been a play, I’d probably have walked out, but as a film I found it eerie enough to stay rooted.
  10. movie review
    Practice The Art of Self-Defense Against This MovieRiley Stearns’s anti-macho black comedy is cringeworthy in a good way, and hilarious in a not-good way.
  11. movie review
    Jasmin Mozaffari’s Firecrackers Is a Debut Film to WatchWhat the director does better than almost anyone I can think of is dramatize the illusory nature of control.
  12. movie review
    Marianne & Leonard Tells the Story of the Greatest Breakup Song Ever WrittenLeonard Cohen’s “So Long, Marianne” is the tender heart of Nick Broomfield’s latest documentary.
  13. movie review
    Spider-Man: Far From Home Delivers a Single, Scary, Brilliant Answer to EndgameSay what you will about Marvel, but the people at the top are frighteningly in tune with what its audience wants.
  14. movie review
    Ari Aster’s Midsommar Is an Ambitious, Blurry Horror TripThe Hereditary director seems sure of only one thing: that he wants to make you feel as if your head is being sawed off.
  15. movie review
    Ophelia: The Female Gaze Is Strong in This OneDaisy Ridley makes a fine, modern heroine, but it’s Naomi Watts who goes big and waltzes away with the movie.
  16. movie review
    Yesterday Has a Fun Premise, But Doesn’t Know What to Do With ItOnly the first half of Danny Boyle’s Beatles fantasy-comedy works.
  17. movie review
    Wild Rose Rests on the Extraordinary Performance of Its Country GirlDirected by Tom Harper from a script by Nicole Taylor, Wild Rose has more than three chords, but the impulse is to keep it plain.
  18. movie review
    Shaft Review: Another Lame, Mismatched Buddy Action ComedyIt’s so aggressively puerile and phallocentric (big swinging dicks, big guns) it could be taken as a parody.
  19. movie review
    Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die Is a Heavy-Footed Zombie ComedyIt’s not unenjoyable but not quite enjoyable, either.
  20. remembrances
    “Honey, you shouldn’t be showing that to anyone:” Why Pauline Kael Was My CriticHer writing always seemed like a journey, an elevated form of thinking out loud.
  21. movie review
    Brian De Palma’s Domino Is a Better Thriller Than MostUnderfunded, sketchily written, and heavily cut, the film still puts its contemporaries to shame.
  22. movie review
    Dark Phoenix Takes the X-Men to Space, With Middling ResultsSophie Turner floats above an uninspired Jean Grey saga.
  23. movie review
    Rocketman Tries to Levitate Its Audience, But It Falls Flat InsteadThe Elton John biopic has unusual dramatic heft for a jukebox musical, but that’s a big curve on which to grade.
  24. movie review
    Godzilla Is Back. What an Unholy Mess.Godzilla: King of the Monsters is visual noise. It makes “The Battle of Winterfell” look like a model of clarity.
  25. movie review
    Brightburn Is Gory, Creepy, and ObviousBut Elizabeth Banks is, as usual, very good and un-gimmicky.
  26. movie review
    A Movie like Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin Isn’t Shot — It’s GeneratedIt’s set inside a matrix where the real and digital worlds are indistinguishable.
  27. movie review
    Trial by Fire Is Painstakingly Well Made and Murderously Hard to Sit ThroughLaura Dern stars as Elizabeth Gilbert, one of the few people who questioned Cameron Todd Willingham’s death sentence in Texas.
  28. movie review
    John Wick 3 Is Bloated, Pretentious, and Too Stylish for Its Own GoodThe movie should by rights be a “Wow!” But it feels self-conscious, with long waits between its few dazzling fights.
  29. movie review
    The Souvenir Is Sometimes Formless, But Always FascinatingAt her best, writer-director Joanna Hogg convinces you that incoherence is the only honest way to tell a story with any emotional complexity.
  30. movie review
    Charlie Says Is a Wobbly Look at the Manson FamilyYou want to see how a person could surrender herself to something so diabolical, which demands a higher level of insanity than the filmmakers muster.
  31. movie review
    Long Shot Is a Rom-Com That Doesn’t Make Much SenseI generally like Seth Rogen a lot but this performance is bad.
  32. movie review
    JT Leroy Is Full of Great Actresses — But It’s Told From the Wrong PerspectiveThe title of JT Leroy is off the mark by only a couple of steps, but they’re gigantic ones.
  33. film festival
    19 Films You Should See at This Year’s Tribeca Film FestivalRom-coms. Midnight horror. A documentary about Showgirls. Margo Martindale. Here’s what you need to catch at this year’s festival.
  34. movie review
    Avengers: Endgame Is More Clever Than It Needed to BeIt’s better than Avengers: Infinity War, which was better than Avengers: Age of Ultron; and it is, for a change, conclusive.
  35. theater
    The Annette Bening MethodOn Broadway in a new production of All My Sons, she’ll overprepare — and then wing it.
  36. movie review
    Dogman Roughs You Up in a Good WayDirector Matteo Garrone views Italy as a dog-eat-dog universe in which every dog does not have his day.
  37. movie review
    Shazam!: Blessedly Old-fashioned, But Not Very GoodIts genial sloppiness might remind you of when the fates of studios didn’t rest on one or two B movies with men in goofy suits generating billions.
  38. movie review
    The Beach Bum Is Part Tragedy, Part ProvocationI can’t tell if Korine is a true dramatist or a simpleminded provocateur who lives to mess with our heads. Both, probably.
  39. movie review
    Kent Jones’s Diane Is the Most Exhilarating Depressive Movie I’ve Ever SeenBut I admit that the exhilaration is hard-won and slightly perverse.
  40. movie review
    You Need to See the Steve Bannon Doc The BrinkIt’s the year’s most urgent documentary.
  41. movie review
    Dragged Across Concrete Is Your Basic, Boneheaded Right-Wing Action MovieAnd nearly three hours long.
  42. movie review
    Us Doesn’t Live Up to Get Out, But It Shows the Promise of Jordan PeeleThe director’s second feature isn’t as trim or impish in its satire as his marvelous debut, but it’s the most inspiring kind of miss.
  43. movie review
    The Hummingbird Project Is Just Passable, But See It for Alexander SkarsgårdMost of The Hummingbird Project is Jesse Eisenberg grimacing over his stomach and talking very fast.
  44. movie review
    The Mustang: A Slightly Formulaic Horse Drama With Great Human PerformancesThe phrase “I have to see a man about a horse” takes on new and inspirational meaning here.
  45. movie review
    Captain Marvel Is Spotty, But See It for Brie LarsonHer Captain Marvel is a goddess emitting her own light — an astral version of Liberty at the battlements, sublime and terrifying.
  46. movie review
    Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria Bell Remake Works Best When It’s a Little MessyThe movie is most successful when it’s least definite, when the conversations are full of awkward holes and the relationships are in flux.
  47. movie review
    Mapplethorpe Is, Somehow, a Shock-Free BiopicAfter the rousing but sanitized-for-PG-13 Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, get ready for a PG-13-at-heart portrait of Robert Mapplethorpe.
  48. movie review
    Woman at War Is an Offbeat Dramedy About an Environmental ActivistBenedikt Erlingsson could have told this tale grimly — it’s grim stuff. But he has a wild card.
  49. the razzies
    John C. Reilly Deserved Better Than a RazzieThis should have been the happiest professional year of Reilly’s life.
  50. oscars 2019
    David Edelstein on the 2019 Oscar WinnersSpike Lee has seen another Driving Miss Daisy drive off with an Oscar but at least he has one of his own now.
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