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David Walsh

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Born in New York City, David Walsh has written on film and other artistic matters for the World Socialist Web Site and its print predecessor since 1991.

Publications:
Official Website:

http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/arts/films.shtml

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Jay Kelly (2025) 75% 2/4 EDIT “All in all, wouldn’t it have been more interesting if the filmmakers had concretely examined the movie business during the years in which Clooney has been a leading figure, with its various strengths and weaknesses?” – World Socialist Web Site Jan 19, 2026 Full Review The Mastermind (2025) 90% 2/4 EDIT “Is such a "subversion" of this type of misogyny truly important, or, frankly, even necessary? Don’t we have bigger fish to fry? The end result of this misplaced concern with the secondary and even tertiary is a rather drab and even dull film.” – World Socialist Web Site Jan 6, 2026 Full Review After the Hunt (2025) 37% 2/4 EDIT “It sets out the various sides in an episode where a sexual assault has been alleged with such even-handedness that drawing larger conclusions is challenging. The various ambiguities remain largely that, ambiguities.” – World Socialist Web Site Jan 6, 2026 Full Review Anniversary (2025) 66% 2/4 EDIT “Why has "The Change" emerged in the form it does? Why does it gain mass traction? What are the conditions under which the erstwhile "democratic" state turns toward dictatorship? What are the social and economic forces propelling this repressive movement?” – World Socialist Web Site Dec 12, 2025 Full Review Bugonia (2025) 88% 2/4 EDIT “As a partial portrait of a damaged, half-crazed victim of "the world," Bugonia has its merits. But its "unexpected" and shocking final portion ... is largely an evasion.” – World Socialist Web Site Dec 12, 2025 Full Review Suspended Time (2024) 66% 2/4 EDIT “Unfortunately, however, to repeat, Suspended Time alternates between middle class obliviousness and awareness of graver, widespread difficulties. ” – World Socialist Web Site Dec 12, 2025 Full Review Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 (2025) 82% 1/4 EDIT “One feels that one has crawled in the mind of a discontented, overwhelmed semi-left artist or intellectual, one without an informed perspective on any of the events he introduces, and the results are not happy, to say the least” – World Socialist Web Site Dec 12, 2025 Full Review One Battle After Another (2025) 94% 2.5/4 EDIT “The brutality and fascistic character of the anti-immigrant hysteria and ICE raids in particular receives convincing expression in the film ... The film movingly makes no bones about siding with the persecuted immigrants and those assisting them.” – World Socialist Web Site Oct 7, 2025 Full Review Black Bag (2025) 96% EDIT “The film doesn’t ...make any effort to connect the generally deplorable behavior on show with these individuals’ social function as defenders of British imperialism...currently helping to coordinate the mass murder of Palestinians” – World Socialist Web Site Oct 7, 2025 Full Review Honey Don't! (2025) 45% 1/4 EDIT “The attitudes of the creators ... are terribly smug and supercilious. This is the complacent upper middle class portraying itself as tolerant and liberated and everyone else in America as backward and perpetually led by the nose.” – World Socialist Web Site Sep 21, 2025 Full Review My Dead Friend Zoe (2024) 94% EDIT “My Dead Friend Zoe, as it unfolds, gradually drops its anti-establishment pretenses and becomes an uncritical and unhealthy endorsement of the US armed forces, the principal source of violence and terror on the planet for decades.” – World Socialist Web Site Sep 21, 2025 Full Review Cloud (2024) 93% EDIT “The biggest difficulty is the general political and cultural stagnation in which Kurosawa developed. In the end, despite their sometimes gruesome “sound and fury,” his films, like many by his global contemporaries, are essentially passive, non-committal” – World Socialist Web Site Jul 28, 2025 Full Review F1 The Movie (2025) 82% EDIT “A project like this, with its gigantic budget and myriad corporate connections, is unlikely to deviate from ... from cliches and formulas. It can’t afford to, as far as its producers are concerned. Too much is at stake to let art and complexity interfere.” – World Socialist Web Site Jul 28, 2025 Full Review Mountainhead (2025) 74% 2/4 EDIT “At a certain point, the four characters consider using their military and technological powers to overthrow the US government, which is not doubt actively considered among these fascistic layers in real life.” – World Socialist Web Site Jul 18, 2025 Full Review Superman (2025) 83% 2/4 EDIT “The film has come under concerted right-wing attack for its sympathetic attitude toward immigration and related matters, and its creator has been denounced for suggesting that “basic human kindness is a value and … something we have lost.”” – World Socialist Web Site Jul 18, 2025 Full Review Beloved Tropic (2024) 2/4 EDIT “Other than establishing that there are many lonely, even desperate people in Panama City & that individuals from different social backgrounds, under certain conditions, can form a meaningful bond, it is not clear how much new ground Beloved Tropic breaks.” – World Socialist Web Site May 23, 2025 Full Review The Brink of Dreams (2024) 2/4 EDIT “No doubt it is very difficult under the present circumstances of intense repression to offer a more searing and deep-going indictment of Egyptian society, but this is pretty tepid stuff.” – World Socialist Web Site May 23, 2025 Full Review The Wolves Always Come at Night (2024) 2/4 EDIT “Brady is able and hard-working and sympathetic, she is evidently genuinely concerned with the fate of her protagonists ... But the passivity of The Wolves Always Come at Night is a problem, along with its immersion in the immediate details of life.” – World Socialist Web Site May 23, 2025 Full Review Where the Wind Comes From (2025) 100% EDIT “The greatest strength here is Eya Bellagha’s breathtaking performance. She has so much personality, energy, disobedience and resilience in her.” – World Socialist Web Site May 9, 2025 Full Review Xoftex (2024) EDIT “It goes some distance in representing the psychological trauma and disorientation resulting from the current displacement of refugees from the Middle East and other regions and the condition of mass “statelessness.”” – World Socialist Web Site May 9, 2025 Full Review Souleymane's Story (2024) 100% 4/4 EDIT “Souleymane’s Story is very strong, sympathetic. It cuts through a lot of rubbish and sets out the nightmarish, exhausting, debilitating circumstances undergone by the undocumented, friendless, isolated immigrant” – World Socialist Web Site May 9, 2025 Full Review It Ends With Us (2024) 55% EDIT “The vacuous character of the Lively-Baldoni warfare speaks to the largely barren state of mainstream filmmaking, dominated by conglomerates, billionaire CEOs and a handful of enormously wealthy performers.” – World Socialist Web Site Apr 21, 2025 Full Review Anora (2024) 93% 2/4 EDIT “Baker’s watchword, as it were, is no indictment, no condemnation. When it comes to Ani, that’s fine. When it comes to the social order, that turns into artistic and social negligence.” – World Socialist Web Site Apr 21, 2025 Full Review The Brutalist (2024) 93% EDIT “The Brutalist is a historical film with almost no concrete history or historical reference points, taking place during a period...of explosive developments...; a film about artists and intellectuals who barely discuss art and intellectual problems.” – World Socialist Web Site Apr 21, 2025 Full Review The Mother of All Lies (2023) 100% EDIT “The filmmaker’s approach is unusual, to a certain extent perhaps forced upon her by circumstances. For political reasons, it remains difficult to confront the crimes committed by Hassan II (whose son, Mohammed VI, is the nation’s present ruler).” – World Socialist Web Site Jan 13, 2025 Full Review
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