David Denby, The New Yorker
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For 552 reviews, this critic has graded:
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46% higher than the average critic
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1% same as the average critic
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53% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.7 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
David Denby's Scores
- Movies
| Average review score: | 65 |
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| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
100
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| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
10
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 319 out of 552
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Mixed: 187 out of 552
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Negative: 46 out of 552
552
movie reviews
- By critic score
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David Denby 90
Milk is a rowdy anthem of triumph, brought to an abrupt halt by Milk's personal tragedies and the unfathomable moral chaos of Dan White. -
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David Denby 90
This tenacious artist has now given his father a proper memorial and has reasserted, with power and grace, the history and identity of his nearly effaced country. -
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David Denby 90
An exhausting, morbidly fascinating, and finally thrilling experience. -
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David Denby 90
This Franco-Italian-Scottish co-production, directed by Damian Pettigrew, is an extraordinarily controlled piece of film. [14 April 2003, p.88] -
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David Denby 90
At its best, the movie is an exhilarating, surf-topping ride. With Minnie Driver providing the voice of a deliciously flirtatious Jane. -
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David Denby 90
The movie comes closer to pure happiness than anything else in the theatres at the moment, and it has an intriguing and moving subtext: the Cubans' buried but irrepressible love of things American. -
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David Denby 90
A new kind of affectionate satire which is all but indistinguishable from an embrace. [5 May 2003, p. 104] -
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David Denby 90
If the notoriously squeamish and slumberous members of the Academy can pull themselves together and face Monster, they should know whom to vote for as the best actress of the year. [26 January 2004, p. 84] -
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David Denby 90
The movie turns into a serious and rather audacious study in the sexiness of a nonsexual relationship, though by the end the audience may be rooting for the two to quit risking life and limb and just go to bed together. [15 July 2002. p. 90] -
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David Denby 90
It captures the city's bitter, wire-taut mood after September 11th, and I hope that Disney -- finds some way to bring this acrid and brilliant little picture to the large audience it deserves. [13 January 2003, p. 90] -
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David Denby 90
A blood-soaked, hellish experience -- a midnight special for lovers of a violent genre -- yet it has been made with a mixture of ferocity and sweetness which leaves one exhausted but at peace. [27 January 2003, p. 94] -
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David Denby 90
In this handsomely traditional movie, Kevin Costner has tried to fix the Western myth for all time in the stern contours of Duvall’s face and the guttural beauty of his voice. [1 September 2003, p. 130] -
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David Denby 90
Trashy and opportunistic as some of it is, Training Day is the most vital police drama since "The French Connection" or "Serpico." -
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David Denby 90
All in all, Pirates of the Caribbean is the best spectacle of the summer: the absence of pomp is a relief, the warmth of the comedy a pleasure. [28 July 2003, p.94] -
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David Denby 90
A much better movie about the South during the Civil War than “Gone with the Wind”--visionary, erotic, and tragic where the older movie is flossy, merely ambitious and self-important. [22 & 29 December 2003, p. 166] -
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David Denby 90
The movie is an O. Henry-like conceit--the slenderness of the initial premise is part of the charm--but the anecdote becomes almost momentous as it goes on. -
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David Denby 90
Playful and happy and even naughty. It's partly a scientific brief, partly a song of sex, and it's enormously enjoyable. -
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David Denby 90
This movie is an emotionally coherent work--a burning experience of desperation and fleeting exhilaration. [1 September 2003, p. 130] -
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David Denby 90
Complex and devious beyond easy recounting, Bad Education is about the fallout from the ending of a "pure" love between boys, consecrated in an Almodóvaran temple--a movie theatre. -
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David Denby 90
Consistently beautiful and often exciting -- despite some dead passages here and there, it's surely the best big-budget fantasy movie in years. [24 & 31 Dec 2001, p. 126] -
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David Denby 90
The film turns into a triumph for Don Cheadle, who never steps outside the character for emotional grandstanding or easy moralism. -
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David Denby 90
An extraordinarily precise and well-made political thriller--the best thing Polanski has done since the seventies, when he brought out the incomparable “Chinatown” and the very fine “Tess.” -
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David Denby 90
When The Company Men stays with its real business -- the calamity of joblessness -- it is first rate. [20 & 27 Dec. 2010, p.145]Posted Dec 13, 2010 -
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David Denby 90
For the Coens, the plot elements are a given; the telling is all. [20 & 27 Dec. 2010, p. 144]Posted Dec 13, 2010 -
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David Denby 90
This is a bleak but mesmerizing piece of filmmaking; it offers a glancing, chilled view of a world in which brief moments of loyalty flicker between repeated acts of betrayal.- Posted Dec 5, 2011
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David Denby 90
Life of Pi, at its best, celebrates the idiosyncratic wonders and dangers of raw, ravaging nature, and Lee wrings more than enough meaning from the excitement of that spectacle; we need nothing higher. [26 Nov.2012, p.86]Posted Nov 26, 2012 -
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David Denby 90
The virtue of Zero Dark Thirty, however, is that it pays close attention to the way life does work; it combines ruthlessness and humanity in a manner that is paradoxical and disconcerting yet satisfying as art.- Posted Dec 17, 2012
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