David Edelstein

David Edelstein reviews two movies, Tamara Drewe and It's Kind of a Funny Story, that are both funny and discomfiting. Tamara a Thomas Hardy-inspired romantic comedy, "has the fullness of an 18th century novel," says Edelstein, who also applauds Zach Galifianakis' performance in Funny Story.

Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires painted an unflattering portrait of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg. The film version gets the programmer-nerd details (and Harvard's oak-and-crimson ambiance) right -- but fails to see the upside of a worldwide social network.

Director Oliver Stone turned down several offers to make a sequel to his 1987 hit Wall Street, for which Michael Douglas won an Oscar as hostile-takeover king Gordon Gekko. Then the market collapsed and it seemed a good time to revisit his old antihero.

The documentary Catfish may not be on the up-and-up. But does it matter? David Edelstein says no. Catfish, he says, provides a "true sense of adventure" and conveys emotions that "run the gamut from anxiety to contempt to curiosity to compassion."

A couple of years back, the two-time Oscar nominee announced he was giving up acting to become a rapper. David Edelstein reviews Casey Affleck's film I'm Still Here, which tracks Phoenix's transformation -- and says there may be a real madness in Phoenix's method performance.

Anton Corbijn's paranoid thriller stars George Clooney as an anonymous international assassin constantly on the run. Critic David Edelstein says the spare movie "cast a spell" over the audience -- as they entered the mind of a man with no past or future.

Edgar Wright's adaptation of a cult-favorite comic centers on a regular schmo who fights like a superhero when his new girlfriend's Seven Evil Exes come calling. Critic David Edelstein says the movie has a vintage look all its own -- "part comic-book panel and part arcade video-game screen."

The Adam McKay comedy stars Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as mismatched cops who are suddenly thrust from inside the police precinct out onto the streets. And critic David Edelstein says some scenes had him doubled over with laughter.

Todd Solondz latest deadpan comedy, Life During Wartime, stars Shirley Henderson, Ally Sheedy and Allison Janney as three sisters struggling to find meaning in a bleak world filled with David Lynchian grotesques. Critic David Edelstein says it's the "feel-bad movie of the year.

Christopher Nolan's new sci-fi flick stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a man trying to extract and plant information in people's heads while they dream. Critic David Edelstein says the movie is "lumbering and humorous and pretentious, with a drag of a hero."