The Atlantic's Scores

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For 593 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.6 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Clouds of Sils Maria
Lowest review score: 0 Melania
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 420 out of 593
  2. Mixed: 117 out of 593
  3. Negative: 56 out of 593
593 movie reviews
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  1. Oppenheimer
    Nolan is best known for spectacle, and some viewers will be able to see Oppenheimer in bone-rattling IMAX, projected on a skyscraper-size screen. But it’s more impressive for how the director has made such a personal narrative feel epic, not just in visual breadth but in dramatic sweep, presenting a story from the past that feels knotted to so many present anxieties about nuclear annihilation.
  2. The Tale
    The Tale is above all a work of profound empathy, as a look inside someone’s psyche would have to be. Fox isn’t just excavating the abuse she suffered as a girl; she’s also engaging with and forgiving herself, reconciling with the damage that she had convinced herself to ignore for years.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fat City
    It is the script that made the difference here and that allowed Huston to make a better film than he had made in many years.
  4. Minding the Gap
    Liu’s intimacy with his subjects becomes contagious, to the point where their small victories are thrilling and their failures feel devastating.
  5. Killers of the Flower Moon
    A tremendous but chilling achievement from one of America’s great storytellers.
  6. Minari
    Minari is a tale that will feel familiar to many, but Chung grounds it in brilliant specificity.
  7. Barry Lyndon
    It’s a movie that actually makes the past look otherworldly, unlike many period pieces, which strive to make history seem easy to slip into.
  8. The Farewell
    Wang, who has made only one prior feature (the little-seen 2014 comedy Posthumous), distinguishes herself as a thrilling new voice in filmmaking by crafting one of the most sensitively told stories of the year.
  9. Marty Supreme
    Marty is vivacious, and the film around him is buzzing at the same frequency: itchy, anxious, yet unbearably exciting throughout, each minute defined by some hairpin plot turn.
  10. The Power of the Dog
    Campion never takes a side in the ongoing conflict between George and Phil, instead brilliantly capturing the purpose, and the futility, in each brother’s approach, making The Power of the Dog an inimitable viewing experience.
  11. Zama
    There’s absolutely nothing else like it in theaters this year, which I mean as both a hearty endorsement and a necessary forewarning. Zama is a viewing experience that can be frustratingly inaccessible at first, but it blooms in bold, surprising directions.
  12. Dick Johnson Is Dead
    For all its eerie focus on the end of our lives, that’s what Johnson’s movie is about: celebrating the people we love.
  13. Long Day's Journey Into Night
    A gorgeous and impossible puzzle of a movie.
  14. Paddington 2
    Paddington 2 is gorgeous to look at, smartly written, and gleefully funny, boasting a fierce ensemble of estimable British thespians. For those looking specifically for excellent family entertainment, it’s a must-see; but even other viewers will find this movie well worth their time.
  15. The Death of Stalin
    The result is a comedy so black that it recalls the words of the immortal Nigel Tufnel: It could be “none more black.”
  16. Hard Truths
    Hard Truths itself is astonishingly sensitive for a portrait of someone who often behaves monstrously.
  17. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
    It is a film that continually complicates and recomplicates itself, denying viewers the comfort of easy moral footing. It is by turns heartbreaking, harrowing in its violence, and very, very funny, and it features Oscar-level performances by Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, and Sam Rockwell.
  18. A Star Is Born
    Cooper’s biggest innovation in this remake, which he wrote with Eric Roth and Will Fetters, is his emphasis on partnership. He interweaves Jackson and Ally’s relationship with the music they create together, so the audience’s investment in both is palpable.
  19. Foxtrot
    In depicting the out-of-sight, out-of-mind bubble mentality of Israel’s civilian citizens (and how easily that bubble can burst), Foxtrot is a uniquely powerful work.
  20. Leave No Trace
    Granik’s ability to convey so much about how a community works without didacticism is part of what made Winter’s Bone (which was set in the Ozarks) such a thrill to watch. While Leave No Trace is a more muted drama, it has a similarly firm grasp on its characters and the places they comes across.
  21. Black Panther
    The arguments Black Panther undertakes with itself are central to its architecture, a narrative spine that runs from the first scene to the last.
  22. If Beale Street Could Talk
    If Beale Street Could Talk is an impressive, mature, and determined work that ably reaches the great heights it sets for itself.
  23. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
    Birdman—I should probably note here that the full title is the punctuationally ridiculous Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)—is a giddy fantasia of themes and genres, and if not all of them fully cohere, then so be it. As the Birdman voice inside Riggan’s head reminds us, sometimes viewers crave pure entertainment, not just “talky, pretentious, philosophical bullshit.”
  24. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
    Can You Ever Forgive Me? may be a muted story, but it is a profoundly memorable one.
  25. Return to Seoul
    With its ever-evolving protagonist, Return to Seoul defies neat categorization. It’s a low-budget character drama with the twists and turns of a high-octane thriller. It’s also a consistently satisfying watch that honors the difficulty of wanting to be understood—and the relief of finally releasing that desire.
  26. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
    As these films have gone on, they’ve become more and more fascinated with Hunt’s essential ludicrousness. Mission: Impossible – Fallout decrees him elemental—a crucial, indefinable component keeping the very fabric of humanity knitted together. The film is so dizzyingly fun that, at least while you’re watching, it seems like a sound conclusion.
  27. Nomadland
    Nomadland is a work of exploration, and not just across the sprawling American West. Fern is exorcising her darkest demons, which spring from the systemic neglect that has been visited on so many Americans in recent years. The odyssey makes Zhao’s film a transfixing mix of reckoning and catharsis.
  28. The Banshees of Inisherin
    It’s bleak and brutal—and deeply affecting.
  29. Hereditary
    Hereditary is a great scare-fest and a middling domestic saga, one that probably needed to be either 90 minutes long and brimming with terror, or three hours long and suffused with glacial, Bergman-esque dread. Aster has charted a middle path, and for a first film, it’s hard to fault the skill he’s shown in doing it.
  30. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
    The world doesn’t really need another Spider-Man movie, which is exactly what makes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse such an unexpected delight: Here’s the latest entry in a fully saturated genre that somehow, through sheer creative gumption, does something new.
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