David Edelstein

The top movies of 2008 — and the larger cultural trends reflected in those films. Fresh Air movie critic David Edelstein talks with Terry Gross about his Ten Best List for 2008.

The Wrestler is predictable, corny and heavy-handed, says critic David Edelstein, but with Mickey Rourke acting his heart out, the sheer adrenaline-pumping violence of the film gets into your bloodstream.

The film version of John Patrick Shanley play is a heavy slab of dramaturgy: It's dark, somber, yet unbelievably intense. Even on screen, it has the compressed quality of great theater.

In the film of his play Frost/Nixon, screenwriter Peter Morgan elevates the televised 1977 interviews that Richard Nixon did with British host David Frost into a momentous event.

Film critic David Edelstein says the Harvey Milk biopic, starring Sean Penn, is one of the most heartfelt portraits of a politician ever made. "The personal and the political aren't just hand-in-hand," he says: "They dance."

A vampire love story set in high school has Fresh Air's critic feeling like he's 17 again. David Edelstein says "the biochemistry angle" could make Twilight the occasion for mass public swoon-a-thons.

The latest film from Trainspotting director Danny Boyle follows an uneducated Indian youth who hits the jackpot on the Hindi version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Critic David Edelstein says the new Bond film makes plenty of noise — just not the seductive kind. Actor Daniel Craig, though, holds things together nicely enough.

Clint Eastwood's film recounts the based-on-a-true-story tale of a Los Angeles woman's struggle to find her missing son — after police return the wrong child to her. David Edelstein has a review.

In Mike Leigh's marvelous comedy Happy-Go-Lucky, a London schoolteacher tackles life's everyday travails with a good dose of the giggles. Film critic David Edelstein reviews.