Salon's Scores

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For 3,130 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 The Wolf of Wall Street
Lowest review score: 0 Event Horizon
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,748 out of 3130
  2. Mixed: 1,003 out of 3130
  3. Negative: 379 out of 3130
3130 movie reviews
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  1. Battle in Heaven
    Reygadas is an undeniably important artist hewing his own path, but who is also self-consciously playing to the tastes of a tiny elite audience that craves obscurantism, confrontation and heavy-handed symbolism. Still, I really want you to see this. Then I'll have somebody to talk about it with.
  2. The Recruit
    Just the latest forgettable thriller that might have been enjoyable if only its conclusion lived up to its windup.
  3. The Paperboy
    While the portrayal of Southern race relations in the '60s is less central here than in "The Help," it's also less labored and earnest, and one could argue that it's subtler, more intimate and more honest.
  4. The Secret Life of Bees
    May be overly sentimental at times, but at least it's about something.
  5. There's Something About Mary
    The type of comedy the Farrellys love requires dizzy, pell-mell pacing. If There's Something About Mary were tightened up by about 20 minutes, it would be much funnier.
  6. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    To my taste, savvy Hollywood veteran Bill Condon debuts as director of the two-part "Twilight" conclusion in satisfying fashion, delivering a voluptuous if often inert spectacle that splits the difference between high camp and decadent romance.
  7. Nicholas Nickleby
    To paraphrase a line from another Dickens' novel, Nicholas Nickleby is too much like a fragment of an underdone potato. The chef tended it very, very carefully, and still, it didn't turn out quite right.
  8. LUV
    Both for good and for ill, LUV has a film-school feeling about it, and channels a legacy of fatalistic American crime cinema that includes "Mean Streets" and "Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
  9. Jersey Girl
    As an ode to fatherhood, Jersey Girl is sweet without being particularly deep; but Smith is really onto something when he nudges against the ways in which the geographic landscape of a life merges with the genetic one.
  10. Cars
    Cars is an elaborate concoction all right. But it feels soldered together from a scrap heap of tired ideas.
  11. Entrapment
    It's too bad that the glamour wears off about halfway through Entrapment, when it stops being a movie about art heists and starts being one about stealing (ho-hum) money.
  12. Lonely Hearts
    A handsome and well-acted film -- if you like that bitten-off, half-Hemingway style -- but also a grim, emotionally strangled one with a strong sadistic current, no genuinely likable characters and almost no humor.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
    As lightweight as it is, it's easy to feel real affection for the movie.
  14. The Importance of Being Earnest
    This well-cast adaptation somehow feels obvious and overblown.
  15. Legally Blonde
    Witherspoon's sophisticated-pixie brilliance practically makes the movie, and her easy, confident, curvaceous carriage doesn't hurt, either -- she's the thinking guy's cupcake, maybe because her mind is just as supple as her curves.
  16. Shaft
    Lean, fast and undeniably entertaining.
  17. Magnolia
    None of the characters in Magnolia feel as vividly imagined as the porn stars and filmmakers and hangers-on of "Boogie Nights."
  18. Slumdog Millionaire
    The real star of the film is not a person but a city, the vertiginous, exciting, massively overcrowded "maximum city" of Mumbai. On one hand, this environment of Dickensian, almost hallucinatory contrasts between rich and poor, good and evil feels perfect for Danny Boyle.
  19. Run, Fatboy, Run
    If you can get past its toothpick of a premise, Run Fatboy Run is a perfectly enjoyable light comedy. It's also just good enough that I wanted it be better.
  20. Tea with Mussolini
    The 76-year-old Zeffirelli will make many more movies, but Tea With Mussolini has the unmistakable feeling of a personal testament. Its sunny disposition and modest wit are well-suited to the genial temper of this born entertainer.
  21. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
    It has a pleasing, noodly elasticity about it -- the picture knows what its limits are and proceeds to boogie unself-consciously far outside them.
  22. Johnny English
    Malkovich is usually such a numbingly self-serious actor. But he cuts loose here in a way that's outlandishly brilliant: It's his best performance in years.
  23. The Time Machine
    The Time Machine is, for the most part, a handsome, pleasant entertainment.
  24. Ratcatcher
    A large part of the movie's problem is that both the characters and the actors who portray them serve as vehicles for Ramsay's stylistic flourishes.
  25. Sideways
    Alexander Payne's new movie, Sideways, makes you feel like you're trapped at dinner with a wiseass who's trying to convince you what a sensitive guy he is.
  26. Shrink
    Shrink offers a roster of wonderfully eccentric characterizations, shoehorned into a dramatic structure that's just a little too formulaic.
  27. Ant-Man
    A discombobulated summer movie that’s kind of fun but doesn’t have nearly enough story to fill up two hours.
  28. G.I. Jane
    This hot-button picture isn't especially well thought-out, but it might be crafty and manipulative enough to rile up audiences.
  29. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
    This is Lunson's debut picture and she's smart enough to keep the whole affair very simple.
  30. The Gambler
    Some fragments of that Dostoevskian romance linger on here: Just enough so that Wyatt and Wahlberg nail the climactic scene, when Jim is literally playing for his life, and make it momentarily seem to mean something. But not quite enough that you’ll remember what that something might be the next day.
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