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).

'Experimenter' Revisits A Decades-Old Trial Of Free Will And Compassion

By • Oct 23, 2015

Michael Almereyda's movie, Experimenter, revisits a controversial 1961 social science experiment, which explored whether volunteer subjects would press a button and shock other volunteers if so ordered.

'Room' Transforms A Lurid Crime Story Into A Fairy Tale With A Boy Hero

By • Oct 16, 2015
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'The Martian' Is A Gripping, Out-Of-This World Space Saga

By • Oct 2, 2015
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'99 Homes': A Morality Play Built On Foreclosures And Evictions

By • Sep 25, 2015

The most powerful morality plays work like drama instead of melodrama, so you're not just on the side of the victim, you also see the world through the eyes of the oppressor. Wall Street did that, although Oliver Stone made the devil-mentor of the wide-eyed protagonist, Gordon Gekko, so charismatic that a generation of moneymen adopted him as a role model.

'Sleeping With Other People': A Romantic Comedy That Breaks With Convention

By • Sep 11, 2015

Sleeping With Other People has the arc of a conventional mainstream rom-com, but the beats are scrambled and the movie gets a climactic event out of the way in the prologue. The film actually opens with the male and female protagonists having sex — taking each other's virginity.

Climbing Documentary 'Meru' Is A Hair-Raising 'Peak Experience'

By • Aug 21, 2015

The documentary Meru charts the attempts of a trio of American climbers to be the first to scale Meru Peak, a 21,000-foot Himalayan mountain that begins near the headwaters of the Ganges River in India.

It's the sort of movie that's frequently called "inspiring" for its depiction of humans testing themselves physically, emotionally and perhaps even spiritually against the elements, and I get that. But I wasn't inspired. I was nearly out of my mind with terror.

Family Dysfunction Is Set To A Melancholic Beat In 'Ricki And The Flash'

By • Aug 7, 2015
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'The End of the Tour' Offers A Hint Of David Foster Wallace's Inner Struggle

By • Jul 30, 2015
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A Holocaust Survivor Searches For Her Past In Christian Petzold's 'Phoenix'

By • Jul 24, 2015
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In 'Trainwreck', A Screwball Comedy Fades To Family-Values Formulaic

By • Jul 17, 2015
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