The Atlantic's Scores

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For 602 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 4.7 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: 426 out of 602
  2. Mixed: 120 out of 602
  3. Negative: 56 out of 602
602 movie reviews
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  1. Frankie
    All of these actors deliver the kind of subtle work that’s rarely seen in major Hollywood movies. Still, while Sachs is one of the most exciting voices in American indie cinema, his European sojourn is sometimes a little too sleepy for its own good—beautiful in the moment, but too gentle to leave a lasting impression.
  2. Jesus Is King
    It reminded me that religion and pop and fascism each revels in uniforms and shared, shouted praise. But it didn’t make me feel all that much.
  3. The Lighthouse
    It’s funny, high-spirited, and giddily loopy, a descent into madness told with the energy of a sea shanty. But it has that same attention to detail that makes Eggers such an exciting filmmaker.
  4. The King
    To quote another of the Bard’s royal characters, it ends up feeling like a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
  5. Jojo Rabbit
    Jojo Rabbit’s script isn’t emotionally complex enough to address the cruel realism of its world, and as the bleakness continues, the jokes fall flatter and flatter.
  6. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
    This is a movie chock-full of heady imagery that it can’t get a handle on, and so the allegories at work don’t quite connect.
  7. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
    The film is a visceral, ruminative, and emotionally satisfying epilogue in which the broken Jesse reconciles with his past and searches for the hope and humanity he’d lost—or, rather, been denied by Walt.
  8. Parasite
    Few filmmakers can manage such a dizzying blend of tones, but for Bong, one of South Korea’s finest directors, it’s a trademark. With Parasite he’s crafted his best movie yet.
  9. Gemini Man
    Lee is innovating and looking backwards at the same time, and the viewing experience is as bewildering as that sounds.
  10. Dolemite Is My Name
    It’s most exciting to watch as a reminder of just how good Murphy can be when he’s committed to his material.
  11. Joker
    As Joker gets grimmer and descends further into bloody violence, it becomes little more than a horror show, bludgeoning its viewers out of any chance at insight.
  12. Monos
    Monos is an undeniable wonder, but one that enchants the most when its head is in the clouds.
  13. Ad Astra
    The lesson of the film is a straightforward one—that in the future, people will still need to rely on each other—but Ad Astra communicates it with staggering profundity.
  14. The Goldfinch
    The film suffers from both an excessive faithfulness to its source and a general failure to translate that material into anything close to a gripping onscreen narrative.
  15. Hustlers
    Hustlers would work as a goofy comedy; it works even better as a thoughtful one, crammed with killer lines and supporting work from both acting veterans (Julia Stiles) and fresh faces (Cardi B). It’s a salute to extravagance that knows when to cut loose and when to hold on quiet, introspective beats.
  16. It: Chapter Two
    The length of It Chapter Two is matched by the scale of Pennywise’s big scares, assisted by the slickest visual effects money can buy, but it means the story never manages to pick up any speed. This is a lumbering brute of a film, a creaky rollercoaster that inches a little too slowly toward every drop.
  17. Ready or Not
    The real fun in Ready or Not comes from the ways it subverts its time-tested story, balancing wry commentary and straightforward horror in its portrait of fumbling arrogance and curdled privilege.
  18. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
    The cast is stacked, but the story is messy, and the pathos driving Bernadette’s disappearance (which, again, is easily solved) is underwritten.
  19. Blinded by the Light
    Chadha is showing how art, be it familiar or far from one’s comfort zone, can inspire a sense of freedom. Blinded by the Light does that wonderfully, in a jubilant story that’s told with grounded honesty.
  20. Good Boys
    Had the film not taken an introspective turn, I still would have appreciated its skill with generating easy laughs. Happily, Good Boys has a little more to recommend it than gross gags.
  21. The Kitchen
    The Kitchen is an unsalvageable mess.
  22. Luce
    Luce spends too much time presenting a puzzle for viewers to solve and, in doing so, neglects the human drama underneath.
  23. The Nightingale
    The Nightingale isn’t an easy cinematic experience, but if you can handle it, it’s an unforgettable one.
  24. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    This is a film with genuinely compelling leads, each of whom could support a solo movie, and yet they all seem on autopilot here, dispensing swift kicks and crude bon mots with bored efficiency.
  25. Honeyland
    A sensitivity to both petty human concerns and striking natural beauty is what makes Honeyland a particularly enthralling documentary.
  26. Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
    The result is a surprisingly funny and extremely melancholy hangout film, an elegy for a bygone era that reflects on how all art eventually loses its edge.
  27. The Art of Self-Defense
    Eisenberg, Nivola, and a hilariously brusque Imogen Poots (as Sensei’s only female student) are more than up to the task of finding the comedy in scenes of nasty violence or brooding anxiety. Stearns, however, is less interested in balancing those tones than he is in exploiting their uneasy tension.
  28. Stuber
    If you’re looking for a throwback to simpler, sillier times (with a dash of self-awareness about the state of toxic masculinity in 2019), it should just about satisfy.
  29. 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.
  30. Midsommar
    Whether Midsommar works for you depends on whether Dani’s arc lands with the emotional heft Aster desires; certainly do not go into the film expecting any high-octane kills or gorily creative set pieces.
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