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David Rooney
Chief Film Critic
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As Chief Film Critic, David Rooney reviews the latest releases and premieres from major festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice and Toronto. He was formerly THR’s Chief Theater Critic and continues to review Broadway when time permits. Based in New York City, he is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, National Society of Film Critics and New York Drama Critics Circle. Prior to joining THR, he was Chief Italian Correspondent for Variety before moving to New York, where he became Chief Theater Critic. Rooney's work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone. He has served on the nominating panel for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and multiple times for the Gotham Awards. David’s writing for THR has won three Southern California Journalism Awards and a National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award.
More from David Rooney
The Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 15 Best Films of Sundance 2024
Steven Soderbergh’s haunted-house movie, new films starring Kieran Culkin and Aubrey Plaza, and docs about Christopher Reeve, unionizing Amazon workers, and Argentinian cowboys are among THR critics’ favorites from the festival.
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‘It’s What’s Inside’ Review: A High-Concept Mind-Bender With Style to Burn, if Not Substance
Netflix made the largest acquisition out of Sundance 2024, paying $17 million for Greg Jardin’s psychological thriller about a reunited group of college friends and a party game gone wrong.
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‘Devo’ Review: New Wave Radicals Get the Smart, Freewheeling Appreciation They Deserve
Chris Smith offers a welcome corrective to the misconception that the band from industrial Ohio were one-hit wonders or that their eccentricities didn’t have philosophical foundations.
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‘Suncoast’ Review: Laura Linney and Nico Parker in Contrived but Affecting Tearjerker About Grief and Compassion
Woody Harrelson also stars in Laura Chinn’s first feature as writer-director, inspired by her own family’s painful personal history.
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‘My Old Ass’ Review: Aubrey Plaza in a Sweet Shot of Nostalgia Mixing Romance, Comedy and a Sprinkling of Fantasy
Exciting discovery Maisy Stella stars in writer-director Megan Park’s second feature, a poignant coming-of-age tale in which an 18-year-old meets herself, two decades her senior.
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‘The Moogai’ Review: Indigenous Australian Trauma Feeds Supernatural Horror in Mixed-Bag Expansion of Potent Short
Writer-director Jon Bell’s debut feature uses a predatory monster as an allegory for the Stolen Generations, Aboriginal children taken from their parents in white assimilation programs.
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‘Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story’ Review: An Emotional Tribute to a Big-Screen Hero Who Became a Real-Life Inspiration
Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui trace their subject’s Hollywood and personal history alongside the tireless activism for disability awareness that followed his paralysis.
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‘Good One’ Review: Lily Collias is a Luminous Discovery in Affecting Micro-Portrait of Late-Adolescence
James Le Gros and Danny McCarthy also star in writer-director India Donaldson's emotional character study of a young queer woman in a transitional moment, unfolding during a weekend camping trip.
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‘Love Lies Bleeding’ Review: Kristen Stewart Is Pure Magnetism in Ultra-Violent Neo-Noir Romance
Rose Glass follows her horror freakout, ‘Saint Maud,’ with a swerve into raw sex, bloody crime and messy cleanup, also starring newcomer Katy O’Brian and Ed Harris.
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‘A Real Pain’ Review: Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin in a Film That Flows From Humor to Unexpectedly Affecting Places
Will Sharpe and Jennifer Grey also appear in Eisenberg’s very personal second feature as director, about cousins visiting their ancestral home in Poland to honor their grandmother.
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‘Handling the Undead’ Review: Renate Reinsve in an Unsettling Arthouse Zombie Movie From Norway
The ‘Worst Person in the World’ discovery is joined by another standout from that cast, Anders Danielsen Lie, in this adaptation of the novel by ‘Let the Right One In’ author John Ajvide Lindqvist.
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‘Presence’ Review: Steven Soderbergh Spins a Nail-Biting Ghost Story, Working Magic in a Single Setting
Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan and newcomer Callina Liang star in this haunted house chiller about a family that appears on the brink of falling apart.
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