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 4.8 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. 1917
    There is no sense of real danger, because the mission has to continue, if only to keep this impressive long shot going. Any time there’s a larger, more cataclysmic set piece, our heroes look like tiny chess pieces on a much bigger board, bystanders who move around exploding mortars and whizzing bullets to produce the most stunning tableaux possible.
  2. Little Women
    Gerwig manages to honor both the letter and the spirit of Alcott’s tale; Little Women is stuffed with trials and tribulations, yet overflowing with goodwill, just as Alcott described it herself.
  3. Cats
    Whether you think the imagery is beautiful or nightmarish, this is a film that demands to be looked at. If nothing else, I can confirm it’s the most Jellicle experience I’ve had all year.
  4. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    The Rise of Skywalker is a fitting epitaph for the thrills and limits of repetition; may it be the last episode of a saga that should’ve ended long ago.
  5. A Hidden Life
    The current implications of A Hidden Life feel most pressing here: Malick is asking the audience (and himself) if they would capitulate in the face of tyranny or make Jägerstätter’s sacrifice. It’s a decision Malick memorializes beautifully, in a film that is his most affecting effort in almost a decade.
  6. Uncut Gems
    Horrifying, transfixing, and ultimately, to use Tony Kushner’s immortal phrasing, intestinal.
  7. The Aeronauts
    The Aeronauts is as thin as the high-altitude air surrounding its heroes, a visually splendid thrill ride that somehow manages to feel entirely without dramatic stakes. But if it’s balloons you’re after, then this is the film to see.
  8. Richard Jewell
    To Eastwood, Jewell is a hero not just because he saved people’s lives, but also because he was an ordinary and imperfect man who rose to the occasion when the moment demanded it. That’s the story Richard Jewell should be telling, and it succeeds when it sticks to that path.
  9. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
    Portrait of a Lady on Fire is primarily a romance. But it’s also a film about the deeply personal process of creativity—the pain and joy of making one’s emotions and memories into a work of art.
  10. The Two Popes
    At heart, the film is mostly a buddy comedy, an odd-couple clash between an old-fashioned stick in the mud and his more easygoing replacement. That makes it a breeze to watch—one just wonders if a movie about the modern papacy should be so cheerful.
  11. Knives Out
    The art of a cinematic murder mystery is to make the act of putting clues together seem suspenseful and worth watching. In the hands of Craig at his most gleeful, de Armas at her career best, and Johnson oozing love for the genre, Knives Out rises splendidly to the task.
  12. Dark Waters
    As a piece of pure exposition, Dark Waters is interesting enough. But around the hard work and do-goodery, Haynes also provides a sense of crushing dread—the kind of unsolvable paranoia these procedure-bound movies usually work to counter.
  13. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
    It’s a sincere, measured, and clever homage to its subject, a work of storytelling that would have made Mister Rogers proud.
  14. Ford v Ferrari
    With its precise production design and rumbling racing scenes, Ford v Ferrari is as sleek and visually alluring as the vintage vehicles it showcases—but beneath its shiny hood is an engine with real complexity.
  15. Frozen II
    The result is a convoluted, sporadically sensical, occasionally trippy film that can’t quite find a purpose amid all the manic world-building.
  16. Marriage Story
    It’s sad and sometimes angry, with a heartfelt view of a relationship’s dynamics that some of the director’s prior works lacked.
  17. Doctor Sleep
    Over its 151-minute running time, Doctor Sleep floats between the bleak and mournful themes of King’s writing and the chilling, inimitable dread of Kubrick’s filmmaking. But it never quite figures out how to bring the two styles together.
  18. Last Christmas
    Where the film succeeds, it’s because Feig and Thompson have remembered to mix in a little sour with the sweet.
  19. Motherless Brooklyn
    Motherless Brooklyn has all the markers of a good Oscar-season movie: a talented cast, worthy source material, a script loaded with complex social issues. Even so, it doesn’t add up to much.
  20. The Irishman
    It’s a stunning achievement, worthy of a great director’s twilight years.
  21. Terminator: Dark Fate
    Dark Fate will likely feel like a blessing for Terminator diehards, a reboot that taps into what made the original films special and smooths out a timeline that’s grown more convoluted with every sequel. For newer fans, Hamilton’s and Schwarzenegger’s performances should be enough to keep things absorbing without the lure of nostalgia.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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.
  26. 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.
  27. 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.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. Gemini Man
    Lee is innovating and looking backwards at the same time, and the viewing experience is as bewildering as that sounds.
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