David Edelstein

Critic David Edelstein reviews a film that may sound a lot like a campus-bound version of Glee, but has more to it than that label might suggest.

Rian Johnson's action-thriller can't dodge the frustrating elements of most time-travel tales, but the film's characters, performances and stylization add up to an experience that critic David Edelstein believes is the right amount of happy and tragic.

Writer-director Stephen Chbosky brings his 1999 young adult novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower to the screen. Critic David Edelstein says the result may be better than the book -- a project that communicates the trials of high school in a way that is both painful and elating.

Many comparisons have been made between Paul Thomas Anderson's film The Master and the history of Scientology. But, as David Edelstein explains, the challenge of balancing the search for surrogate family with American individualism dominates the film. (Recommended)

Leslye Headland makes her directorial debut with this adaptation of her own play about three bridesmaids whose bad habits and emotional issues threaten to undermine their friend's impending wedding. It's tonally uneven but engrossing, says critic David Edelstein.

In Hope Springs, Kay (Meryl Streep) and Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) seek out a couples therapist (Steve Carell) to try to rekindle the spark in their marriage. Critic David Edelstein says it's a post-reproductive chick flick for audiences who are no longer spring chickens.

Ruby Sparks and Killer Joe tell of an author who conjures a woman from his typewriter and a corrupt detective hired to kill an aging mother, respectively. But Fresh Air's David Edelstein says the films share a common trait: both take their stories beyond common reality to more fascinating parts of the psyche.

David Edelstein says the extended cut of Kenneth Lonergan's second film is "as close to a masterpiece as any American film in a decade." Never widely screened, the film, starring Anna Paquin, is out now on DVD. (Recommended)

Oliver Stone's new film Savages is a violent thriller starring Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Johnson as pot growers caught up in a Mexican drug war. Critic David Edelstein says the movie is deeper and more complicated than Stone's famously bloody Natural Born Killers.

Beasts of the Southern Wild came out of nowhere to win the Camera d'Or at Cannes and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. The fable-like film, starring 6-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis, takes place after a storm ravages Louisiana. (Recommended)