More recent reviews, penned after a resurgence of interest and respect for Sirk's directing, are uniformly positive. In 1998, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the "Chicago Reader" included the film in his unranked list of the best American films not included on the AFI Top 100. Dave Kehr writes in "The New York Times": "'The Tarnished Angels' is among Sirk’s most self-conscious and artistically ambitious creations... This is bravura filmmaking in the service of a haunting vision. Yet there are moments of almost microscopic subtlety: the camera movement that expresses the moral reversal of the Hudson and Stack characters, one growing larger than the other; the infinite tenderness with which Hudson strokes Ms. Malone’s hair, helplessly trying to comfort her after a shock."