Robert Pattinson's 5 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes
by Nina Starner · /FilmIt is genuinely astounding — and I mean this in the best possible way — that Robert Pattinson started his career as a teen heartthrob and became one of the most audacious and respected performers of his generation. After booking a role in the 2004 film "Vanity Fair" only for his scenes to end up on the cutting room floor, Pattinson rose to prominence as the doomed Cedric Diggory in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." Then the guy booked a little independent movie called "Twilight," and the rest is history.
After a five-film saga as the century-old teenage vampire Edward Cullen — who falls for actual teenager Bella Swan, played by Kristen Stewart (who also went on to build a truly fascinating and excellent career as an adult actor), Pattinson was ready to spread his wings, and he did. Despite working on non-"Twilight" fare during the franchise like "Remember Me" (notable for its absolutely bonkers twist ending), "Bel Ami," and "Cosmopolis," gutsier projects like "Maps to the Stars" and "Good Time" put Pattinson firmly on the map, making it clear that he's much more than a sparkly vampire.
So which Pattinson movies are the best of the best as far as review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes is concerned? I did skip his second-highest-rated film, 2022's "Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer," because it's a documentary and Pattinson appears in archival footage, so it's not exactly a good indicator of his on-screen talent. Beyond that, though, there's an embarrassment of riches to choose from, so here are Robert Pattinson's five best movies according to Rotten Tomatoes, ranked.
5. The Lighthouse
In 2019, Robert Pattinson got, in the words of Danny DeVito's Frank Reynolds from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," real weird with it when he appeared in the bizarre Robert Eggers two-hander "The Lighthouse." Based on an unfinished short story by Edgar Allan Poe that was adapted by Eggers' brother Max, "The Lighthouse" stars Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as Ephraim Winslow and Thomas Wake, who take up residence for four weeks in an isolated lighthouse; Ephraim is a "wickie," or lighthouse keeper, and Thomas is an older sailor who's supervising Ephraim's work. Thomas runs a tight ship, so to speak, and while enduring back-breaking work, Ephraim starts experiencing hallucinations ... and both men start to slip into abject madness.
I don't want to spoil any of the weird narrative twists that "The Lighthouse" takes during its run, but if you go directly from the Twilight Saga to this deeply twisted film, you'll be in for quite a shock; Pattinson is, and I mean this as a compliment, absolutely disgusting as Ephraim. Eggers is one of the most fascinating directors working today, and even though he frequently teams up with Dafoe, "The Lighthouse," which earned a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, is the only time Pattinson worked with the director. Here's hoping they team up again someday.
4. The Childhood of a Leader
Everyone is familiar with actor and director Brady Corbet thanks to his best picture nominee "The Brutalist," but you're missing out if you've never seen his directorial debut "The Childhood of a Leader" — which also happens to feature an all-timer of a performance from Robert Pattinson. Adapted from a short story in Jean-Paul Sartre's collection "The Wall," this 2015 drama is told across three chapters and a coda and centers around a young man named Prescott, played as a child by Tom Sweet, who lives in the French countryside as an American ex-pat with his unnamed German mother (Bérénice Bejo) and his diplomat father (Liam Cunningham), who's one of the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles. Against this backdrop, Prescott gets into trouble with local boys, practices English with his mother, and endures the company of his father's friend Charles Marker, a hard-drinking figure played by Pattinson.
Pattinson actually plays a dual role in "The Childhood of a Leader," and again, I really don't want to tell you about the second character he plays so that it doesn't spoil your entire viewing experience. "The Childhood of a Leader" is a genuinely unsettling tale of a boy raised in an oppressive home who is, essentially, groomed to accept tyranny and fascism, and when the film reaches its stunning conclusion — which centers around Pattinson — you'll see why this movie has maintained 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.
3. Good Time
When people think of stressful films by Benny and Josh Safdie — back when the brothers still worked together as a directing duo — they probably think of "Uncut Gems." Before that Adam Sandler vehicle, though, the Safdie brothers made "Good Time," a similarly stress-inducing film that was released in 2017, was written by Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, and centers around brothers Constantine (or "Connie") and Nikolas (or "Nick") Niklas, played by Robert Pattinson and Benny Safdie. When we first meet Nick, he's struggling through a court-mandated therapy session with his well-meaning but underprepared counselor Peter (Peter Verby) when Connie shows up to get Nick into some trouble. The two manage to rob a bank together before a dye pack explodes in the money, identifying the cash as stolen; in the fray, Nick is hauled off to New York City's infamous Rikers Island prison, and Connie escapes.
The rest of "Good Time" sees Connie attempting to find enough money to pay Nick's bail, springing a totally different wanted man (who was heavily bandaged) from a supervised hospital room, and tricking police officers and other officials to remain on the run. "Good Time" might make you feel like you're experiencing a cardiac event, but enough critics loved it — and Pattinson's performance — to give the movie an excellent 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so while it might be tense, it's definitely worth watching.
2. The Odyssey
It's a serious understatement to say the cast of "The Odyssey," written and directed by Christopher Nolan and released to acclaim and a massive box office haul in 2026, is stacked. Nolan cast Matt Damon as the mythic hero Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Odysseus' long-suffering wife Penelope, Tom Holland as the royal Ithacan couple's nearly-grown son Telemachus, John Leguizamo as Odysseus' loyal blind swineherd Eumaeus, and Zendaya as the mythical goddess Athena. Then there's Robert Pattinson, who, alongside Corey Hawkins, plays the leader of Penelope's group of loutish, drunken suitors; Pattinson portrays the greasy Antinous, and Hawkins plays his right-hand man Polybus.
Pattinson is, at his heart, what I like to call a "weird little guy." Put more eloquently, he's a strange character actor in a leading man's body. This is on perfect display in "The Odyssey," where Pattinson's Antinous — a guy who's determined to win Penelope's hand for his own gain and who once tricked a fellow child to go to war instead of him — is positively unctuous, whether he's kicking dogs or barely concealing his disgust when an assassination attempt on Telemachus' life fails. During the film's third act, when Antinous goes full coward and starts yelling instructions at fighters from his ivory tower as Odysseus wreaks havoc on a room full of suitors, I was laughing out loud. Antinous is not the hero of "The Odyssey," which has an impressive 94% on Rotten Tomatoes ... but he's definitely a standout character, and Pattinson's performance absolutely sells this a-hole.
1. The Boy and the Heron
If there's one thing Robert Pattinson is going to do in a movie, it's affect a weird friggin' voice, and that's precisely what he does as one of the two title characters in Hayao Miyazaki's 2023 masterpiece "The Boy and the Heron." Frankly, on lists like these, I tend to omit animated films because I don't think they typically show off the actor's range. This is simply not true of "The Boy and the Heron," which assembled an all-star cast for its English voice dub (as is always the case with English dubs for Miyazaki movies, honestly) and which shows Pattinson at his very best as he voices the Grey Heron, a serene and supernatural figure encountered by a young boy named Mahito Maki (Luca Padovan). After Mahito's mother dies, he and his father Shoichi (Christian Bale) move to a countryside estate so that Shoichi can remarry. When a mysterious grey heron — yes, that same one — lures Mahito to a strange tower in the wilderness, Mahito's magical adventure truly begins.
Pattinson's performance in "The Boy and the Heron" is so good and so insanely strange that he's basically doing a Willem Dafoe impression, which is particularly funny when you realize Dafoe also lends his voice to this movie. (He plays another bird, the Noble Pelican.) Pattinson is joined by luminaries like Florence Pugh, Mark Hamill, Gemma Chan, and Dave Bautista in the English voice cast, but it's his performance as the bizarre Grey Heron that sells the movie ... and keeps it sitting pretty at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes.