Michael Atkinson

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Mr. Showbiz, Time Out, Village Voice
For 888 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 30% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 67% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 11.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Michael Atkinson's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 54
Highest review score: 100 Under the Sand
Lowest review score: 0 Crush
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 328 out of 888
  2. Mixed: 354 out of 888
  3. Negative: 206 out of 888
888 movie reviews
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    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Atkinson
    South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut
    In terms of raw wit and fearless satire, the South Park kids put Mike Myers and Adam Sandler to shame.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 67 Michael Atkinson
    The Limey
    It's such an accomplished, beguiling film in its details that you almost don't notice that the story is scattershot, arbitrary, and thin -- almost.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Michael Atkinson
    All About Lily Chou-Chou
    It's a uniquely lonely film, and one of the year's most memorable.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Atkinson
    Wordplay
    Another doc sharing some of its cultural DNA, the spelling-bee melodrama Spellbound, had children, families, social conventions--Creadon's film has only words and people with a little time to waste.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Atkinson
    Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo
    There's enough rosy-cheeked drama, triumph, and sacrifice for a ready-made Hollywood remake.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Michael Atkinson
    Madagascar
    Madagascar's relaxed density is a relief given the DreamWorks tendency to overbear, overblast, and overcaricaturize.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Michael Atkinson
    Himalaya
    The cast is largely nonprofessional, and the story has the simplicity of myth.
    • Mr. Showbiz
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Michael Atkinson
    Water Drops on Burning Rocks
    Mild as satire and completely unconvincing as tragicomedy.
    • Mr. Showbiz
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Michael Atkinson
    The Bourne Supremacy
    The loss of the first film's hurtling who-am-I? story engine is keenly felt, and too much time is spent observing the characters get on and off planes, trains, and automobiles.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 73 Michael Atkinson
    Joe the King
    Rarely falters but neither does it ever take flight.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Michael Atkinson
    Arbitrage
    Slick and grown-up as Richard Gere himself, this intricate fiscal thriller takes a dead bead on extreme privilege.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 84 Michael Atkinson
    Black Cat, White Cat
    An explosive experience...and you have to love the movie's rabid energy and lust.
    • Mr. Showbiz
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Michael Atkinson
    Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story
    Hardly the trippy icon the doc’s title suggests, the artist is now more like everyone’s slightly seedy hedonistic granduncle, happiest sketching cartoon pigs and walking the moors of County Cork.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Michael Atkinson
    Queen and Country
    A pleasant old man's movie, in the end, but not one for which Boorman will be remembered.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Michael Atkinson
    Big Animal
    The tale's faux-fable simplicity is cunningly eloquent.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Atkinson
    I'm Not Scared
    The upshot is a general fog of two-dimensional characterization, slowly churning plot gearwork, and an ineffective air of forced lyricism.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Atkinson
    Our Lady of the Assassins
    Far from creating a pungent portrait of a society gone mad with blood and greed, Schroeder's movie strives for political points while it's whiffing on simplicities like character, motivation, and believability.
    • Mr. Showbiz
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Atkinson
    Erin Brockovich
    All of the filmmaker's fine work and good intentions cannot make this repetitive and finally tiresome saga fly.
    • Mr. Showbiz
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Michael Atkinson
    By the Time It Gets Dark
    It's a film, a rather gorgeous one, of glances and ephemera and delicate metaphors.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Atkinson
    The Trench
    The acting, by a large cast of little-known young Brits chewing on South London accents like dog bones, is uniformly splendiferous.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Atkinson
    Layer Cake
    What's abundantly clear is how far this kind of moviemaking has come from any knowledge of real criminal life; it's a geek's ineffectual daydream of mayhem.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Atkinson
    The Company
    Not a farce, or comedy or drama, but essentially a doodle interrupted by nouveau ballet performances, the entire contraption assembled to please the ego of Neve Campbell.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Michael Atkinson
    The Widow of Saint-Pierre
    Accomplished, middlebrow costume-drama entertainment. It's not so simple that it could be mistaken for the work of, say, Lasse Hallström, and yet it's not so sophisticated that audiences of "Chocolat" would be mystified.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 67 Michael Atkinson
    Twin Falls Idaho
    It is only once the movie has exhausted its roster of "weird" notions and contrived images that it finds its emotional footing, leaving you with one half of a lovely, woebegone film.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Atkinson
    Ray
    Hackford's movie falls into a meandering saunter. As the music grows dull, so does the movie.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Atkinson
    Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow
    The Weeping Meadow shares the awed sense of solemn apocalypse with his (Angelopoulos) signature films, but it's lighter, more musical and folktale-ish.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Atkinson
    War of the Worlds
    Although it's thoroughly retooled, H.G. Wells's scenario doesn't allow for many soft landings, and the extreme respect for havoc on view quite properly keeps the Spielbergian cutesies to a minimum.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Atkinson
    15 Minutes
    15 Minutes settles into Richard Donner-style goulash.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Atkinson
    The Fall of Fujimori
    The Fall of Fujimori is more-or less-than the flip side to last week's Film Forum Peru primer "State of Fear": It's a prismatic shudder, a maddening manifestation of historical ambivalence.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Atkinson
    Call Her Applebroog
    The film is a vehicle for Applebroog-appreciation, daughterly and otherwise.
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