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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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Movie Reviews
10:54 am
Thu May 3, 2012

'The Avengers': A Marvel-ous Whedonesque Ride

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Credit Walt Disney Pictures
Thor (Chris Hemsworth, left) and Captain America (Chris Evans) join up with Iron Man and the Hulk to save the Earth in The Avengers.
Credit Walt Disney Pictures
Mark Ruffalo (left) and Robert Downey Jr. are both helped by ample amounts of CGI to transform into the Hulk and Iron Man, respectively.
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Originally published on Thu May 3, 2012 5:29 pm

Two spheres merge in The Avengers: the Marvel Comics universe and the Whedonverse, fans' name for the nerdy wisecracking existentialist superhero world of writer-director Joss Whedon.

The Whedon cult is smaller but maybe more fervent, inspiring academic conferences on such subjects as free will vs. determinism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I find a lot of Whedon's banter self-consciously smart-alecky, but I love how he can spoof his subjects without robbing them of stature.

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Movie Reviews
4:03 pm
Thu April 26, 2012

A 'Five-Year Engagement' Leaves A Bitter Taste

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Credit Universal Pictures
Tom (Jason Segel) and Violet (Emily Blunt) celebrate their impending nuptials with their families before Violet drops a bomb: She's been accepted at a program at the University of Michigan, and wants to move there and postpone their wedding day.
Credit Universal Pictures
Tom, ever the devoted fiance, agrees to postpone the wedding day as life continues to throw obstacles in the couple's way.
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Originally published on Fri April 27, 2012 8:38 am

There are many dramas and comedies in which career trajectories take couples to different corners of the country, complicating or ending romantic relationships. There will be many more, at least until someone invents a teleportation machine. What's different about each work is how the problem gets interpreted.

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Movie Reviews
11:29 am
Wed April 18, 2012

In 'Monsieur Lazhar,' Grief Lingers In The Classroom

Credit Music Box Films
Fellag, an Algerian comedian, plays the title character in the Oscar-nominated Monsieur Lazhar, who steps in to teach a class of middle school students after tragedy has struck their classroom.
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Originally published on Wed April 18, 2012 11:36 am

Teacher movies tend to be more alike than unalike, but Monsieur Lazhar makes the familiar unusually strange. The note on which it opens is shocking, tragic: A Montreal middle school student, Simon, enters his classroom ahead of the other kids and finds his teacher hanging from a pipe, dead by her own hand.

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Movie Reviews
10:14 am
Fri April 6, 2012

A Sublime, Impressionistic 'Deep Blue Sea'

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Credit / Music Box Films
Rachel Weisz plays the adulterous Lady Hester Collyer in The Deep Blue Sea, turning in a performance as luminous as a Pre-Raphaelite portrait.
Credit Music Box Films
After she leaves her husband and a respectable life for the charismatic but immature Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston), Hester finds her new situation filled with more passion — and more instability.
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Terence Davies' films aim for and often achieve a state of music, the camerawork in harmony with the soundtrack, the images connected by emotion rather than narrative.

Adapting Terence Rattigan's 1952 play The Deep Blue Sea, he throws out the drama's tidy structure and much of the dialogue, and shows the events through the eyes of the adulterous Lady Hester Collyer, played by Rachel Weisz.

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Movie Reviews
10:35 am
Thu March 22, 2012

Acting Trumps Action In A 'Games' Without Horror

Credit Lionsgate
In The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteers to take her little sister's place in a killing ritual televised to the masses.
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Suzanne Collins' novel The Hunger Games and its two sequels are smashingly well written and morally problematic. They're set in the future, in which a country — presumably the former United States — is divided into 12 fenced-off districts many miles apart.

Each year, to remind people of its limitless power, a totalitarian government holds a lottery, selecting two children per district to participate in a killing ritual — the Hunger Games of the title — that will be televised to the masses, complete with opening ceremonies and beauty-pageant-style interviews.

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