Michael Atkinson

Select another critic »
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
view
per page
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Atkinson
    On a Clear Day
    Gaby Dellal's cynically mushy film, like "The Full Monty" and its ilk, is best savored only by its target demo: middle-classers who see one imported film a year, the selection in question requiring working-stiff melodrama and leprechaun burrs gently and lovably mangling the English dialogue.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Michael Atkinson
    Stuck on You
    Damon and Kinnear are both pitch-perfect, inhabiting their ingenuous, codependent little universe together with the commitment of eight-year-old best friends. True to form, the Farrellys toss sophomoric spitballs at us, but nothing stems the rise of big-hearted generosity.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 90 Michael Atkinson
    Fanny and Alexander (re-release)
    Bergman locates a generosity and élan that make F&A feel like his youngest film.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Michael Atkinson
    Lost and Delirious
    Never takes off, and much of the time Pool seems lost herself, resorting to clichés, redundancy, and dead-end allegory.
    • Mr. Showbiz
    • 72 Metascore
    • 76 Michael Atkinson
    Aimee & Jaguar
    One of the year's best imports and one of the very few queer movies that transcends its sexual orientation.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Michael Atkinson
    Goya in Bordeaux
    What can a movie tell us about the painter that the paintings do not? The effort has done no favors for Picasso or Rivera or Bacon.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Atkinson
    Mongolian Ping Pong
    Much more so than any movie actually about spiritual discipline, the new Chinese film Mongolian Ping Pong could be a meditational object-- if, perhaps, it wasn't a sneaky comedy and, to boot, one of the most breathtaking cinematic records of landscape and sky ever filmed.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Atkinson
    Changing Times
    If the title, knee-jerk cast, pop-song intro, and schmaltzy plotline of his new film Changing Times is any indication, he's (André Téchiné) now the French mainstream, the premier Gallic pilot of high-toned soap opera.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Atkinson
    Clockstoppers
    If I were 13, I might be sufficiently entranced by the movie's bicycle stunts (down stairs! across countertops!) and wouldn't be wondering why ideas for science fiction films haven't progressed very far from "Star Trek's" first seasons all those decades ago.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 10 Michael Atkinson
    Prince of Central Park
    A stinky dumpster for sentimental dung about homelessness and the magical mecca that isn't Manhattan.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Michael Atkinson
    The Producers
    However familiar, it delivers like a shorted slot machine.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Atkinson
    Carnage
    Dead flesh is a ruling motif, but Gleize's airy, observant personality makes even the graphic dismemberment of the bull, scored with flamenco stomps, buoyant and fascinating.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 48 Michael Atkinson
    Girl, Interrupted
    Mangold ultimately delivers the same film any number of other Hollywood journeyman could've made from this material, and the results are predictable and stale.
    • Mr. Showbiz
    • 42 Metascore
    • 13 Michael Atkinson
    Psycho Beach Party
    Struggles like a fat kid on the gym rope to conjure up even a single decent laugh.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 26 Michael Atkinson
    Dudley Do-Right
    You'd think creating confusion during something as woodenly simpleminded as Dudley Do-Right is no easy task, but you'd be wrong.
    • Mr. Showbiz
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Michael Atkinson
    The Grandfather
    Not only is the dialogue endless...it's like driving behind a 15 mph geezer on a one-way street.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 84 Michael Atkinson
    Humanité
    Dumont's movie has virtually nothing wrong with it -- aside from the fact that it drives people crazy. Take the leap, but expect no answers. Just like life, as they say.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Michael Atkinson
    The Devil's Miner
    Perhaps little more than an object lesson in the end, the movie's nevertheless a sobering day trip, more for its hints of a forgotten history of culture collision than its sensible but rote socioeconomic sympathies.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Michael Atkinson
    Workingman's Death
    Michael Glawogger's rather majestic Workingman's Death takes a symphonic structure to document some of the ugliest and most dangerous shit work on the globe.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Atkinson
    The Recruit
    Cliché-density aside, Roger Donaldson's perfectly rote movie is childishly naive about the reality of the CIA as it stands in the official record and in the public mindset.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Michael Atkinson
    Waking Life
    Like being jacked directly into Linklater's alpha waves, and the experience is bracingly new to movies.
    • Mr. Showbiz
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Atkinson
    Princess Mononoke
    Wacky, vividly conceived but mundanely executed cartoon fantasy.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 20 Michael Atkinson
    The Girl
    The dialogue is trite and tinnily recorded, and the actresses have the chops of high-school drama students.
    • Mr. Showbiz
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Michael Atkinson
    Land of Plenty
    Land of Plenty is a woozy fantasia on California dreaming, all agog at urban strife and blabby with redundant voiceover.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Michael Atkinson
    Osmosis Jones
    Resuscitates the filmgoing summer with a vital jolt of pure piss and vinegar.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Michael Atkinson
    What Lies Beneath
    Suggest a Clintons-at-home scenario for 2001 -- haunted by the ghosts of dalliances past.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 73 Michael Atkinson
    Theeviravaathi: The Terrorist
    A remarkable debut, and its first half is a genuine jolt.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 67 Michael Atkinson
    The Suburbans
    A fresh and beautifully timed, if slight, romantic comedy.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Michael Atkinson
    To Be and to Have
    Full of observed life, the movie is also a bit of a vacuum, and once we register our admiration for Lopez, we can hardly help contemplating the cold equations of the students' futures, their uneducated families, and the rapturously desolate farmland around them.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Michael Atkinson
    Liberty Heights
    Buoyant with quiet smiles and unpretentious fondness.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »