David Edelstein
David Edelstein is a film critic for New York magazine and for NPR's Fresh Air, and an occasional commentator on film for CBS Sunday Morning. He has also written film criticism for the Village Voice, The New York Post, and Rolling Stone, and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times' Arts & Leisure section.
A member of the National Society of Film Critics, he is the author of the play Blaming Mom, and the co-author of Shooting to Kill (with producer Christine Vachon).
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Lars von Trier's Melancholia stars Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg as sisters who undergo a psychological transformation as disaster approaches. Critic David Edelstein says the film is a sublime fusion of form and content with a truly Wagnerian climax. (Recommended) -
In Drake Doremus' drama Like Crazy, a young couple is forced to separate when one of them violates the terms of her student visa. Movie critic David Edelstein says the movie is painful and compelling — and reminds him of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise. -
The lives of writers drive two films opening this week: The Rum Diary, starring Johnny Depp, dramatizes a Hunter S. Thompson novel. Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, meanwhile, examines who wrote Shakespeare's plays. Critic David Edelstein says both films show how hard it is to write about writers. -
This fiscal thriller, starring Kevin Spacey, Zachary Quinto and Demi Moore, is set during one day in 2008, as a group of brokers try to prevent their firm from going belly up. David Edelstein says that given the headlines, the film's timing couldn't be better. (Recommended) -
Pedro Almodovar's film The Skin I Live In reunites him with actor Antonio Banderas, who first came to international attention as an obsessive lover in the director's 1987 film Law of Desire. This time, Banderas plays a scientist driven to replace his dead wife with a carbon-based copy. -
Moneyball stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the Oakland A's general manager who used analytics and statistics to stay competitive against other teams with much larger payrolls. Critic David Edelstein says the film, based on the 2003 Michael Lewis book, is "entertaining as a sports-underdog story." -
Drive is what Driver does, and driven is how audiences will feel after a screening of Nicholas Winding Refn's brutally moving thriller, which stars Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston and Albert Brooks. (Recommended) -
Stephenie Meyers' four-novel Twilight saga set off a rage for lovelorn teen vampires ---one that only escalated after the release of the first hit movie. The second film, New Moon, set box-office records for advance sales, but critic David Edelstein says it's too turgid for the excitement to last.
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A Serious Man is the Coen Brothers latest (and most specifically Jewish) take on the question of cosmic injustice.
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Seth Rogen stars as an eager mall cop in the new comedy Observe and Report. Film critic David Edelstein has a review.
