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 1.4 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. Control
    Lovely and deeply touching picture.
  2. Buzzard
    Love it, hate it or tolerate it with reluctance, Buzzard has a ruthless clarity of vision, and breaks new ground in pushing character-based comedy right to the edge of profound discomfort.
  3. Iris
    Suffers from PBS syndrome, but Dame Judi Dench cures with a moving portrayal of life with Alzheimer's.
  4. Scream 3
    I enjoyed every moment of this densely plotted final chapter, and most other fans will too.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Daytrippers
    Daytrippers is so well-crafted that you may make it more than halfway through before wondering whether the story will sustain any lasting emotional power. It does -- but not in the way you think it's going to.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Usual Suspects
    For my money, The Usual Suspects was the pulp fiction of the '90s.
  7. Everything Must Go
    It's refreshingly honest, depicts the kinds of American lives not often seen on-screen and shows us a familiar star in a striking new light.
  8. Rolling Family
    Thoroughly wonderful.
  9. [Rec] 2
    [Rec] 2 is a pell-mell, edge-of-your-seat, theme-park ride through hell, and I strongly advise you to ignore the aspersions cast upon it by snooty critics and random Internet fanboys alike. I am your friend, horror fans! I know what you need, and this is it.
  10. A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile
    Riveting jigsaw-puzzle documentary.
  11. Gone Girl
    It’s a work of chilly wit and bleak metaphor, an artifice that invites the kind of analytical response where we pull on our chins and discuss how other people, more naive than we, will receive it.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pi
    It's precisely when Pi is the most arty and least "commercial," when it's serving up head scratchers instead of intrigue, that it's most entertaining.
  13. The Idol
    Assaf’s pop-culture transcendence was a coming-of-age moment for Palestinians, a sign that they could triumph in the most delicious, delightful and unlikely of contexts, despite a broken society built on institutional hopelessness. Abu-Assad’s films make the same point, in a darker register.
  14. Coraline
    Coraline is essentially faithful to the spirit of its source material. But it's also so visually inventive, and so elaborately tactile, that it stands apart as its own creation.
  15. Nymphomaniac: Volume I
    One of the strangest and least summarizable motion pictures ever made: tragic and hilarious, tightly constructed and miscellaneous.
  16. Splendor in the Grass
    Like nobody else, Kazan succeeded in capturing the overheated, self-pitying dramatization so near and dear to the teenage heart.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Elizabeth
    A handsome, diverting coming-of-intrigue story studded with meaty performances.
  18. The Dancer Upstairs
    The Dancer Upstairs, is a haunting and often beautiful work, part doomed romance and part political thriller, that demonstrates the adult command of the medium Malkovich has always demonstrated as an actor.
  19. What Time Is It Over There?
    Tsai Ming-Liang's new movie about urban isolation reinvents the delicate, poetic shadow play of silent movies.
  20. Head-On
    Vital and affecting romantic drama.
  21. The Intruder
    Exhilarating and exhausting, the kind of picture you don't bounce back from immediately. Yet its elusiveness is the very source of its poetic energy.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Safety of Objects
    All the acting in it is flawless, an overflowing handful of polished jewels.
  23. Enough Said
    On first viewing, I conclude that Enough Said is irresistible, and demands a second (and third) viewing right away.
  24. The Song of Sparrows
    This latest film from Iranian director Majid Majidi has the same combination of quiet contemplation, whimsy and tragedy that made his "Children of Heaven" an international smash a decade ago.
  25. Something New
    Something New is the perfect date movie, not only because it explores a range of suitably romantic sentiments, but because it's so canny sociologically, as well as being delightfully good-natured.
  26. Ever After
    Casting Barrymore as Cinderella is an inspired idea, and a tribute to director Andy Tennant's ability to see through the public's perception of Barrymore to her essence as a performer.
  27. Fratricide
    Fratricide marks Arslan as one of Europe's hottest young talents, drawing simultaneously on the film traditions of America, Western Europe and the Middle East.
  28. Submarine
    At its best when it feels specific to its setting; Erik Wilson's often lovely cinematography captures the distinctive, watery light and raw weather of the Welsh seacoast in winter, and Hawkins, as always, captures a character who is completely specific in terms of class, place and period.
  29. The Last Temptation of Christ
    It's a lovely, measured and deeply earnest work. It balances a realistic view of first century Palestine against a sincere consideration of how an ordinary man might learn he is divine.
  30. In the Loop
    In the Loop is clever and lively, but it isn't sharp or nasty enough to cut very deep; at best it's just a peppery trifle.
  31. Felicia's Journey
    As is typical with Egoyan, the structure is complicated and the layers of cinematic technique and texture are even more so.
  32. The Bourne Legacy
    A lean, clean killing machine that supplies some dark, late-summer thrills and chills and breathes new life into a seemingly extinct franchise.
  33. The Bridge
    I still have unanswered moral questions about the film -- unanswered because unanswerable, I suspect -- but it's a beautiful, wrenching, horrifying work of cinema, unlike anything I have ever seen or will see again.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    SubUrbia
    Linklater gets great performances from his young cast, and you'll find yourself thinking about the characters and their travails well after the movie's finish.
  35. Chocolat
    A cozy little ode to sensual and culinary pleasure.
  36. Crazy Love
    Formally, Klores film is a standard-issue documentary, combining period footage with talking-head interviews. But his talking heads are a hoot -- leathery, leisure-suited, foul-mouthed, larger-than-life characters, straight out of the Bronx by way of Palm Beach -- and their story is a Gothic yarn of obsession, crime and forgiveness.
  37. 28 Days Later...
    It's undoubtedly a canny and clever twist on the standard zombie-attack yarn, but anybody who's making grand claims for 28 Days Later simply hasn't seen enough horror movies.
  38. Hairspray
    Travolta, looking believably pretty and sweet under layers of fondant Latex, is a wholly different incarnation of Edna. And he's not bad. But that right there is the problem with Hairspray: It's all so "not bad" that it isn't nearly enough, even when Shankman and his cast work hard to send it soaring over the top.
  39. Scooby-Doo
    No serious film fan could stomach the cheap gags and farting contests in this goofball tribute. I laughed myself stupid anyway.
  40. Battle for Haditha
    Largely improvised, cast with ex-Marines and Iraqi refugees and shot in Jordan. It might just be the movie this war has been waiting for.
  41. The Raid 2
    Much as I enjoyed watching most of it, I was deeply grateful when it was over and feel no strong desire to see the inevitable “Raid 3.”
  42. Fast Five
    Fast Five is a fantasy that in no way resembles real life; ordinary morality doesn't apply, and the audience knows that as well as the filmmakers do.
  43. View from the Top
    There's a good chance that it will make you laugh, but even if it doesn't, you have to give Barreto credit for respecting his audience. The movie's jokes have a light, springy touch; if one doesn't tickle you, it sails by quickly to make room for the next one.
  44. A Most Violent Year
    It’s all just a little more boring than it ought to be.
  45. Last Life in the Universe
    Much of the pleasure of the movie is the way its mood lingers with you afterward.
  46. Green Zone
    This is a movie that recognizes there's no straight line to the truth, which is part of what makes it vaguely unsatisfying -- though it's also what keeps it honest.
  47. Return to Me
    Almost seems like a godsend in this age of romantic-comedy schmaltz.
  48. Freaky Friday
    Even though this is a light, cheerful picture about family relationships, it never feels overplayed -- its tone is bright without being garish. And it moves breezily.
  49. Drama/Mex
    Gerardo Naranjo's deliriously trashy Drama/Mex may not do much to burnish the international prestige of Mexican cinema, but it's an entertaining blend of obvious influences, from softcore cable-TV porn to Tarantino to "Less Than Zero" and "Leaving Las Vegas."
  50. The Wrestler
    Whatever Aronofsky did -- or didn't -- do, Rourke's performance comes off beautifully. The Wrestler may not be the "best" Aronofsky movie in any technical sense. But the director clearly feels a great deal of tenderness toward his lead character.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Prefontaine
    This is filmmaking in a higher-IQ Disney style, frequently verging on terminal sappiness, all heart-quickening-guitar-music, coming-around-the-last-turn, legs-pumping-toward-glory stuff.
  52. Boiler Room
    Made with confidence that borders on bravado, and sometimes it shows more conviction than it does grace.
  53. The Gingerbread Man
    Branagh is appealing here in the way we remember from movie heroes of the '30s: cynical, wisecracking and wised-up.
  54. Princesas
    Candela Peña is sensational in the leading role, and the film is big-hearted, poetic, sweet, sad and romantic.
  55. Highway Courtesans
    Not many documentaries about poverty in the developing world are so hopeful; you can't help wondering what Brabbée's camera will find among the Bachara in another decade.
  56. Sleuth
    Sleuth is well acted, and directed by Branagh with chilly, distant ingenuity. It has a certain edge and daring, or more to the point it pretends to.
  57. Down Terrace
    When it's all over and you don't have to spend any more time smoking pot with Karl and Bill in their horrid little house, you may feel the elation of tragic catharsis. Then again, you may feel as if you just drank a bottle of drain opener; the difference between those states is subtle.
  58. Cold Souls
    Works precisely because its ambitions are somewhat mellow; this isn't a relentlessly high-strung picture. Barthes and Giamatti do more with less, turning the idea of excessive navel-gazing into a kind of game.
  59. Who Killed the Electric Car?
    By the end of Who Killed the Electric Car? you'll be worked into a lather one way or another. Paine crams in more theories, ideas and arguments than the movie can easily hold, but that's OK with me.
  60. Outsourced
    Simply too bright and pleasant to become a huge hit, but it's a confident little genre film with near-classic charm.
  61. The Blue Room
    Amalric and cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne structure much of The Blue Room around Julien’s bewildered and increasingly disheveled face, as he tries (and fails) to understand the people around him.
  62. Southland Tales
    If it arrives in final form as (still) a total mess, it's such a passionate and ambitious mess -- overcrowded with extraordinary images, incomprehensible ideas, literary and pop-cultural references and colliding subplots -- that it transcends its adolescent awkwardness and approaches being magnificent.
  63. Good Dick
    A dark, sweet and sophisticated confection.
  64. Nil by Mouth
    This film is a portrait, and it's a mesmerizing, unforgettable one. The story of how a boy like Gary Oldman comes out of this world and becomes something different -- that's a drama, but perhaps its end has yet to be written.
  65. Glory Road
    When a movie plays every card, it's bound to win a hand or two. You can't exactly call that approach craftsmanship. But in the case of the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced inspirational sports drama Glory Road, it at least amounts to a kind of blunt effectiveness.
  66. Crazy, Stupid, Love
    Richer and more enjoyable than the other lame-stream comedies Hollywood has churned out this summer, even though it doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be when it grows up.
  67. Blood and Chocolate
    Never having read the book, I found Blood and Chocolate to be a lovely surprise, an imaginative and visually lush picture firmly rooted in the tradition of gothic romance and elegiac horror films about misunderstood monsters.
  68. Black Book
    It's a messy, colorful big-screen entertainment that veers from sober period piece to outrageous melodrama, which is to say it's a Verhoeven movie.
  69. Lilya 4-Ever
    Not without its own bleak integrity. But the movie wipes you out and leaves you with nothing, not even the feeling of exaltation that can be present in the most tragic works of art.
  70. Savages
    Savages is enjoyable in a way that's almost but not quite intentional camp; it's like eating a dinner made by a 7-year-old, with cake for every course, interspersed with Jell-O, Pepperidge Farm goldfish and chocolate sprinkles.
  71. Hollywood Homicide
    A definite improvement on the recent spate of dull action movies, if only because it has such a marked sense of humor about itself and the genre it belongs to. But somehow it never quite finds its center.
  72. Six Days Seven Nights
    Part of what's so entertaining about Six Days, Seven Nights is the way Reitman happily mixes all the conventions of the stranded-on-an-island motif -- unpleasant encounters with creepy-crawly nature, the building of stuff out of bamboo and found objects, the first kiss in paradise.
  73. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    Does so many things right, and still doesn't quite hit the mark.
  74. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
    A memorable and outrageous movie, but one more likely to be remembered as a massive folly than a whopping success.
  75. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    Some people will see Mr. and Mrs. Smith as cynical, but I think its heart is deeply romantic, admittedly in an anvil-on-the-head kind of way. It's a love story not for the faint of heart. In other words, it's a lot like marriage.
  76. Elysium
    If Elysium isn’t the post-millennial sci-fi masterpiece I was hoping for, it has tremendous resonance and is pretty doggone good for its category.
  77. High School Musical 3: Senior Year
    This is a movie that offers simple, buouyant pleasures.
  78. Ocean's Twelve
    A light, smartly turned-out amusement, the sort of thing that's becoming more and more rare on the movie landscape these days.
  79. Death Race
    Statham moves with such easy grace that you don't have to work hard to believe him. And if he can stand up to Joan Allen, melting her predatory stare with his own molten gaze, then it's clear he's not just the prettiest guy on the prison block, but also the toughest.
  80. Lymelife
    Lymelife offers charm and humor through its young central characters and pathos through its remarkable supporting cast, without pulling punches on its overall atmosphere of autumnal darkness and anomie.
  81. Pain & Gain
    Michael Bay sends a clear message to those of us who've been making fun of him: He's been in on the joke the whole time.
  82. Russian Dolls
    As long as Klapisch keeps his characters pinballing each other from one Euro-capital to the next, Russian Dolls remains fun and charming, without ever seeming remotely serious or meaningful.
  83. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
    It's enough to make you forgive a great deal of this film's dumbness and appreciate it as meaningless, goodhearted and mostly non-obnoxious entertainment.
  84. Notorious
    Surprisingly and pleasantly unflashy, a straightforward picture that makes a distinction between classiness and bling.
  85. Spy Game
    Manages to be entertaining and reasonably exciting. Scott's style may be slick and tricky but, if this and his last film, "Enemy of the State," are any indication, he's lost the glossy sadism that characterized his previous work.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    He Got Game
    Awkward and often downright silly, He Got Game is nonetheless heartfelt, a moving portrayal of a man who finds his long-lost son through faith, hope and basketball.
  87. Finders Keepers
    The bittersweet conclusion of Finders Keepers suggests that the important question is not whether we can retrieve what is lost or fulfill impossible dreams, but how we respond to those failures.
  88. Iron Man 3
    As far as bored and cynical, playing-out-the-string comic-book action sequels go – hey, Iron Man 3 is a pretty good one!
  89. Stuck on You
    It's a friendly, unpretentious little thing -- at times it's a bit too muted and indistinct, but then, you have to at least give the Farrellys credit for not making the mistake of trying too hard.
  90. Romeo Must Die
    A canny, ingeniously crafted guilty pleasure.
  91. xXx
    Brash, chaotic and jostlingly entertaining.
  92. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    Even though Prize Winner ultimately asks us to swallow that golfball-size happy pill, Anderson and her not-so-secret weapon Moore are actually clawing their way toward something deeper and far more complex than a cheerful, embroidered slogan.
  93. Go
    Liman's buoyant direction is almost enough to make one forgive the film its heavily appropriated plot (including its groaner of a punchline).
  94. Drumline
    When the camera is floating up high, as the band practices its moves on the field, you can imagine Busby Berkeley watching somewhere, jealous that he never got his mitts on a marching band.
  95. Jerichow
    Told in lean, tense cinematic gestures, Jerichow also captures a social portrait of newly multicultural Germany, at least as it extends into the country's forgotten rural interior.
  96. Good Morning, Night
    It's a strange and murky movie, at times a frustrating one, but I also found it profoundly moving in a way no regular thriller ever is.
  97. Pusher
    Pusher begins as a fairly standard ’90s crime saga, almost an open imitation of Quentin Tarantino... But something happens on the way to the film’s haunting and ambiguous conclusion.
  98. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    Veers unpredictably between wrenching psychodrama and "Spinal Tap"-style mockumentary.
  99. Dear John
    I'm fully prepared to hear people write off Dear John as corny, sappy, a movie for chicks. But I'd counter that Hallström's old-fashioned idealism about art and emotion is the more important quality shining through Dear John.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fierce Creatures
    Mostly smart enough to stick to pure farce and let its animals take care of their own rights. It's a charming diversion, and it treads lightly even when it has something weightier on its mind.
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