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. Zebraman
    Utterly delightful.
  2. Delirious
    Among DiCillo's best, and returns to the central theme of his career: the elusive and destructive nature of fame.
  3. 2 Days in Paris
    Delpy's writing is sharply observed and often hilarious, and her own performance as the perennially enraged Marion -- whom she says was inspired by Robert De Niro's Jake LaMotta in "Raging Bull" -- is one of her most memorable.
  4. Descent
    It's a lot like a '70s exploitation movie, with its determination to seduce and shock the viewer with alternating currents of electrical stimulus, and its weird combination of arty arch-decadence and neo-Victorian moralizing.
  5. Rocket Science
    A well-meaning little picture that's piercingly genuine in places and annoyingly affected in others.
  6. Rush Hour 3
    Crass, stupid and crudely made. It's also, in places, weirdly brilliant, a picture that plays to the largest possible audience with mechanical efficiency but also, here and there, betrays glimmers of self-deprecating cleverness, as if it were striving, perhaps even unconsciously, to transcend its own dumbness.
  7. Stardust
    Imaginative and intricate, but it's also joyfully casual, maybe to the point of being a little messy in places. But even its flaws work in its favor.
  8. In Paris
    There's a vivid comedy to this family's emotional state of siege, an easy confidence to Honoré's camerawork, and plenty of beautiful bodies.
  9. Becoming Jane
    Becoming Jane would have been more honest if it had been called "No Sex in the Country."
  10. La faute à Fidel!
    A wrenching, funny and wise little picture, with a diva-like junior star at its center.
  11. The Bourne Ultimatum
    A great action movie, exhilarating and neatly crafted, the kind of picture that will still look good 20 or 30 years from now.
  12. El cantante
    Before long, El Cantante disintegrates into a stylized jumble -- even a straightforward jumble would have been preferable.
  13. The Willow Tree
    Majid Majidi's exquisite film The Willow Tree"is likely to make a very brief stop in theaters en route to home video, so catch it when and if you can.
  14. The Camden 28
    Not exactly blazing cinema, but intellectually riveting.
  15. No End in Sight
    From the first frames of Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight, replaying some of the oddest and twitchiest podium performances of Donald Rumsfeld during those heady days of spring 2003, you may feel the crushing weight of an almost Sophoclean impending doom.
  16. No Reservations
    Sometimes movies make sense in a logical way; sometimes they make only emotional sense. No Reservations makes no damned sense at all.
  17. The Simpsons Movie
    The picture works because, despite the fact that it took nearly six years for the filmmakers to bring it to the screen, it doesn't strive for greatness. It's fleet, concise and clever in a nut-ball way.
  18. This Is England
    One of the year's best movies...It's one of the simplest and best re-creations of downscale urban England during the gritty post-punk years ever put on screen, and it's both upsetting and very funny.
  19. The Devil Came on Horseback
    This shouldn't be a competitive sport or anything, but I'm pretty sure that Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern's documentary The Devil Came on Horseback has the most horrifying images I have ever seen in a motion picture.
  20. Goya's Ghosts
    The whole thing is handsomely mounted, with plenty of Goya paintings and supposed observations about the ironies of history and the cyclical nature of life, etc. Forman's always been a huckster, but I never thought I'd see him waste this many good actors on a movie this bad.
  21. 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.
  22. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
    With its tepid gags and faltering pacing, may not be a very good movie. But at least, within its clumsiness, it strives for some kind of solidarity.
  23. Sunshine
    One of those unapologetically cerebral space-exploration sci-fi movies that's both boring and compelling at once.
  24. Live-In Maid
    Pitch-perfect social comedy.
  25. Interview
    Whatever we may make of van Gogh's life and death, Buscemi's talky, stagey Interview -- the first of three van Gogh adaptations planned by American actor-directors -- doesn't make much of a case for him as an important or original artist.
  26. My Best Friend
    Terrifically acted, reassuringly formulaic, and moderately amusing.
  27. Talk to Me
    An imperfect picture that's alive every minute, a movie that perfectly captures the vibe of a person, a place, a time and a way of being, and even gets, indirectly and without a whiff of sanctimoniousness, to the heart of what being an American ought to mean.
  28. Tekkon kinkurîto
    Arias' blend of traditional cell animation and 3-D CGI effects is thoroughly mind-blowing, and the film's visual sensibility is utterly distinctive.
  29. Time
    I'm not sure yet if Time is a masterwork, a deranged folly or just a showman's highly persuasive trick. Whatever else it is, it's a clean, economical and handsome film, terrifically acted, with a heart full of treachery and mystery.
  30. 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."
  31. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
    This is a gangly, confusing sprawl, and yet there are enough patches of beauty scattered throughout that it's impossible to reject it wholesale.
  32. Joshua
    Only viewers with some appreciation for the odd, bloodless character of moneyed family life in New York will really understand how hilarious and deadly accurate this movie is. But then again, New York parents are the last people who will want to see it.
  33. Rescue Dawn
    You can't watch this exciting movie without rooting for little Dieter, but decoding the lessons of his ambiguous story will take a lot longer.
  34. License to Wed
    One unbelievably crappy movie.
  35. Sicko
    While Sicko is the most persuasive and least aggravating of all of Moore's movies, it still bears many of the frustrating Moore earmarks -- most notably, a deliberately simplistic desire to render everything in black-and-white terms, as if he didn't trust his audience enough to follow him into some of the far more complex gray areas.
  36. Ratatouille
    Bird is one of the great modern animators -- as well as an astonishingly gifted filmmaker, period -- precisely because he doesn't set out to wow us.
  37. Evening
    Evening feels like one of those devil's-candy productions that aim to bring artistry to a large audience, specifically a large audience of adult women who don't often go to the movies. Even considering it in that light, I found it miscalculated and overcooked.
  38. Live Free or Die Hard
    Willis' John McClane, with that sly, sideways smile, is like an old acquaintance you don't mind running into. He may be older and balder, but he's none the worse for the wear. And he can still take a punch.
  39. Ghosts of Cité Soleil
    A moving and profoundly upsetting portrait of life near the bottom of the global power pyramid.
  40. 1408
    One night in 1408 stretches out until it ends up feeling more like a routine three-day business trip. The scariest thing in it may be the way the clock radio has a way of turning itself on, loudly, of its own accord. The song is always the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." Now THAT'S horror.
  41. Evan Almighty
    Carell is on the fast track to becoming Robin Williams, a guy who lost the plot far too early on and began pouring his considerable comic gifts into brain-dead heart-warmers.
  42. A Mighty Heart
    That sense of one small, private world shattering within the larger and even more unstable one around it is the essence of Michael Winterbottom's unmooring, bleakly beautiful film version of A Mighty Heart.
  43. Black Sheep
    Jolly good fun.
  44. Broken English
    Despite its schizophrenic nature and often disagreeable characteristics, Broken English has flashes of something. You might say it has an integrity of purpose, if not of execution.
  45. Lady Chatterley
    If a film can be both lush and cold, both erotic and cautious, that film is Lady Chatterley. It's a picture to honor and appreciate, not necessarily to love.
  46. Manufactured Landscapes
    Manufactured Landscapes may tell you more about how the 21st century world actually works than you really want to know, but it's a heartbreaking, beautiful, awful and awesome film.
  47. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    More ambitious than its predecessor. It's also more cluttered and less fleet: The light, pleasingly casual quality of the first picture has evolved into something forced and metallic.
  48. Nancy Drew
    Fleming's movie is, at the very least, a tribute to Nancy Drew's longevity -- and a valentine to all of us who, even as we strive to live in the present, just like old things.
  49. Eagle vs Shark
    It's a perfectly cheerful time at the movies, without any hint of drama or surprise.
  50. When the Road Bends: Tales of a Gypsy Caravan
    I was thrilled and transported by it. It's a two-hour movie, and I'm only sorry it isn't two or three times as long.
  51. Strike
    If Thalbach's fiery performance is the heart of Strike, her costar is the vast and impressive Gdansk shipyard itself.
  52. Czech Dream
    On one level, this is an altogether obvious lesson about market capitalism.
  53. Lights in the Dusk
    So stylized and slow-moving (even at a spare 75 minutes) that you may have trouble adapting to its hypnotic rhythms -- but if you can, there are sumptuous visual rewards to be found, plus the faintest emotional uptick right at the end.
  54. Ocean's Thirteen
    Ocean's Thirteen has a pleasingly casual, raffish quality -- it's enjoyable to watch, particularly if you've got nothing better to do.
  55. La Vie en Rose
    Dahan's filmmaking damn near sabotages the performance.
  56. Gracie
    A gentle, easygoing picture -- it's not exactly dramatically gripping, but somehow, its spirit carries it through.
  57. Knocked Up
    A beautifully shaped piece of work: There are no slack patches, no gratuitous feel-good moments -- if you walk out of Knocked Up feeling good, that means you've earned it.
  58. Mr. Brooks
    Beneath its drab veil of self-seriousness, Mr. Brooks is nothing but just plain silly.
  59. 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.
  60. Ten Canoes
    It's a fascinating immersion within a highly ritualized Stone Age oral culture that, at least according to tradition, existed almost unchanged for thousands of years before the European arrival.
  61. Bug
    A humorless picture, a somber, arty exercise in deep denial of its exploitation roots. The dialogue is stiff and mechanical and the performances are too.
  62. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    This is a glazed, inhuman, cluttered piece of work, a storytelling mishmash that buries the considerable charms of its actors under heavy drifts of silt.
  63. Angel-A
    Angel-A isn't as nutso as some of Besson's other pictures: It doesn't have the crazy inventiveness of, say, "The Fifth Element." As I watched it, I found myself wishing it were just a little loopier. But the picture is still seductive and pleasing.
  64. Shrek the Third
    Brings back the characters you may have loved, as I did, in the earlier movies: My particular faves are Antonio Banderas' poon-hound Puss-in-Boots.
  65. Once
    Although there's plenty of music, and plenty of joy, in Once, it's ultimately a quiet, wistful picture.
  66. Georgia Rule
    [Georgia Rule] is clearly intended to be an uplifting multigenerational drama about abuse, healing and forgiveness. Yet there's something unsavory about the way it uses a character's emotional and psychological scars as a gimmick.
  67. Brand Upon the Brain!
    The result is giddy, exciting and hilarious, not quite like any artistic experience you've ever had.
  68. Lucky You
    Even if you think you know where Lucky You is headed, there's something pleasurable about watching it unfold, maybe chiefly because Hanson isn't trying too hard.
  69. Away from Her
    Polley captures the brisk, cheerful fascism of nursing-home existence with merciless clarity; if you've visited a parent or grandparent in one of those places, you may want to laugh and cry in the same moment.
  70. Spider-Man 3
    The good news about Spider-Man 3 is that it's more of the same -- except better.
  71. Waitress
    It's an openhearted picture, an unintentional goodbye that feels more like a beginning than an ending.
  72. Jindabyne
    I wish one-tenth of the films I saw were made with this much craft and integrity, this much intuitive understanding of where to put the camera, how much of the story to explain in words (not much) and how much to trust his outstanding cast to carry the film with their voices, faces and bodies.
  73. Next
    Next is clearly an attempt at a puzzle movie, one of those brainteaser pictures that lures viewers into another dimension, but it doesn't have the momentum, the quick-wittedness, to keep us wondering what's going to happen next.
  74. Snow Cake
    The picture is so drab and listless that it often feels like punishment, even though Rickman gives a fine performance, one that's heartfelt as well as characteristically elegant (not to mention sexy).
  75. Les amitiés maléfiques
    Bourdieu's cast is terrific throughout. Any fellow academic brats out there will especially appreciate Jacques Bonnaffé, one of the greatest French comic actors, in an imperious turn as the severe, guru-like professor.
  76. Zoo
    Quiet, sensitive, resolutely unsensational documentary about virtually the most sensational subject you can imagine.
  77. Triad Election
    In To's movies no one is innocent, and the social corruption has reached down to the soul. He orchestrates action scenes with an elegance that suggests Scorsese.
  78. Hot Fuzz
    At once deeply affectionate and sharply observed: There's never anything smart-alecky about Wright's approach as a director.
  79. Fracture
    The picture is clever, somber, quiet: There's just no reason it has to be as deadly boring as it is.
  80. In the Land of Women
    The picture is so gentle, it barely leaves an impression.
  81. The Valet
    A sunny, cheerful, thoroughly artificial concoction, going nowhere with no particular speed. Still, better than your average airplane movie.
  82. Stephanie Daley
    Despite an overly abrupt and oblique conclusion, this is a major American film, announcing the arrival of an independent director who deserves all the hype.
  83. Syndromes and a Century
    As human beings, we're geared to desire an actual plot in our movies, and I regret to inform you that nothing really happens in Syndromes and a Century -- and yet the experience of the movie is all about the NOT happening.
  84. Red Road
    It's still dynamite, the kind of sexy, paranoid, creepily atmospheric picture that invades all your senses at once.
  85. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
    Feels deeply calculated rather than genuinely crazy.
  86. Perfect Stranger
    Perfect Stranger is one of those movies that two years, or two months, from now, you won't recall having seen. Ostensibly a movie about big secrets, it comes up with few that are worth keeping, or telling.
  87. Everything's Gone Green
    Fundamentally, it's a well-executed formula movie, perfect for first-date couples or miscellaneous group outings.
  88. Lonely Hearts
    Hayek, with that old-time movie-star pout, those dark, reflective eyes (they could be Satan's twin swimming pools), is the shivery, chilling backbone of Lonely Hearts. Martha Beck couldn't get away with murder. But Salma Hayek can.
  89. Private Fears in Public Places
    I found the interlocking bitterness of Ayckbourn's play irritating and overly neat, and these people don't seem to belong to Paris or London or anywhere else, at least not anytime in the last 20 years.
  90. Year of the Dog
    Year of the Dog is an enjoyable, patchy, rambling affair, a series of bittersweet comic sketches strung together with thin wire.
  91. Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
    Offers an intriguing, and profoundly frustrating, view of the New York underground hero whose 1962 erotic fantasy "Flaming Creatures" paved the way for Andy Warhol, John Waters, the "queer cinema" explosion and pretty much anybody who's ever made a movie starring his friends in weird Salvation Army outfits.
  92. Rock the Bells
    Tense, hilarious and totally serendipitous.
  93. Grindhouse
    We need filmmakers who can move us forward even as they maintain a sense of the past. To that end, Grindhouse captures a bit of rowdy movie history in a bell jar.
  94. The Hoax
    An entertaining botch of a movie.
  95. The TV Set
    This is a tepidly amusing film that will offend no one, including those it claims to skewer.
  96. Whole New Thing
    Whole New Thing comes unglued toward the end, spiraling into melodrama without ever escaping its whiny, indie-rock soundtrack.
  97. Los Muertos
    It's a tremendous experience, whatever it is; the kind of thing supposed art-movie audiences used to tolerate and pretty much don't anymore.
  98. 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.
  99. Blades of Glory
    While I don't think Blades of Glory is exactly homophobic -- it's not mean-spirited enough for that -- there's something a little too cheap and easy about the way it plays up to the ultra-straight guys in its target demographic.
  100. The Lookout
    So refreshingly straightforward that at first you may not know what to make of it.
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