Salon's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Son of the Bride
    Crisply agreeable picture.
  2. Resident Evil
    Mildly grisly, assaultively noisy and tremendously boring.
  3. Y Tu Mamá También
    One of the most joyous movies I've ever seen, and one of the handful of great erotic films the movies have given us.
  4. Showtime
    Isn't particularly assaultive, but it can still make you feel that you never want to see another car chase, explosion or gunfight again.
  5. Harrison's Flowers
    The fact that its sound and photography are gracefully crafted, or that fragments of a tolerable film are visible here and there, only makes its dumb-ass, romance-novel version of tragedy worse. This is one of the most badly botched mainstream movies I've seen in years.
  6. The Time Machine
    The Time Machine is, for the most part, a handsome, pleasant entertainment.
  7. All About the Benjamins
    The comedy is tepid, the action is dopey and even the violence is boring and occasionally cruel.
  8. We Were Soldiers
    Isn't a great movie; I'd say it's barely a good one. But it's a war movie that at least acknowledges the distinction between macho and masculinity, always putting the dignity of the latter over the bluster of the former.
  9. Borstal Boy
    As drama it feels forced and highly conventional.
  10. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    It's too mild to be crass; it's clumsy. Lehmann has made what amounts to an anti-sex sex comedy, the first youth sex comedy made to be enjoyed by those creepy abstinence teens.
  11. Stolen Summer
    Just slides off the screen and disappears.
  12. Big Bad Love
    It's made with an accurate and loving, but also wary and squinty-eyed, view of the South. If only the movie hung together better overall.
  13. Mean Machine
    I'm not sure Mean Machine is any worse than "The Longest Yard," but it lacks the nihilistic '70s background that lent the latter's combination of humor and brutality an air of (arguably bogus) social commentary.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Queen of the Damned
    Just as the author's characters suffer through their immortality, as they crave closure and a death to their blood-sucking madness, so Queen of the Damned demands an end to its own misery.
  15. Maryam
    This movie may not have the highest production values you've ever seen, but it's the work of an artist, one whose view of America, history and the awkwardness of human life is generous and deep.
  16. Monsoon Wedding
    Monsoon Wedding is going to be a big art-house hit because it's one of those movies that reassures audiences that people in other countries are just like us.
  17. Dragonfly
    Dragonfly wants desperately to be the spiritual heir to "The Sixth Sense," but it's not even as effective a thriller.
  18. Hart's War
    Put Bruce Willis and this bewildering World War II movie in front of the firing line.
  19. Crossroads
    The movie is a lumbering load of hokum, but unlike those other recent pop star white elephants -- it's at least watchable.
  20. John Q
    Leaves you feeling as if you've been alternately milked and bitch-slapped. Its manipulation is so clumsy and obvious -- and, ultimately, it goes so far astray from its original guiding principles -- that it leaves you feeling dangled and dazed.
  21. Collateral Damage
    Quickly plunges into boggy terrain from which it can never extricate itself.
  22. Scotland, Pa.
    This adolescent comic-noir trounces Shakespeare's "Macbeth," but Maura Tierney sizzles as a vengeful Lady Frycook.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Big Fat Liar
    Generally succeeds. But with just a bit more effort the movie might have been funnier and a lot more fun.
  24. Birthday Girl
    It's that sense of ardor that's missing from Ben Chaplin's performance in Birthday Girl.
  25. Slackers
    Slackers is supposed to be a gross-out comedy, but the tastelessness of its jokes is nothing compared to its sheer cluelessness.
  26. Storytelling
    Todd Solondz's newest debacle drips with contempt for his audience, his characters and his critics.
  27. The Son's Room
    Isn't bold or daring, but it is delicately distinctive; it's the kind of picture that stirs subterranean rumbles of empathy in us rather than flashy, gushing waves.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Count of Monte Cristo
    To say the film doesn't quite recapture the thrill of the novel is like saying that soda pop doesn't really have the same kick as heroin.
  29. A Walk to Remember
    A vehicle for teen singing sensation Mandy Moore. As vehicles go, it's an Edsel.
  30. Orange County
    A feebly pleasant surprise: It's not as cheap, loud and sleazy as it might have been, but it's also too eagerly well-meaning and indistinct to really stick. It's a piece of mildly entertaining, inoffensive fluff.
  31. Brotherhood of the Wolf
    Whatever it is, it's simultaneously on speed and Quaaludes; I don't know if any movie this profoundly insane has been seen in general release since Antonia Bird's Gold Rush cannibal comedy "Ravenous."
  32. What Time Is It Over There?
    Tsai Ming-Liang's new movie about urban isolation reinvents the delicate, poetic shadow play of silent movies.
  33. Impostor
    Familiar and profoundly unoriginal.
  34. Black Hawk Down
    An endless battle scene in search of a movie. It's every bit as harrowing -- and also every bit as pointless and misguided -- as the botched military mission it depicts.
  35. Charlotte Gray
    Lush, even juicy entertainment.
  36. I Am Sam
    Penn's portrayal strikes me as equally insensitive. It's the nightmare performance of 2001.
  37. Monster's Ball
    Handled more delicately, Monster's Ball could have been a fine little movie about human beings' capacity for growth and change. As it is, it's less than half a fine movie. The great surprise is that its actors come through in the clutch.
  38. Gosford Park
    Isn't much more than marvelous entertainment -- but then, that's a lot right there.
  39. Ali
    Will Smith flies like a butterfly, but what director Michael Mann does to the greatest fighter of all time just stings.
  40. The Shipping News
    Spacey mucks up an otherwise pretty and pleasantly vague take on E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
  41. Kate & Leopold
    The problem with Kate & Leopold is that although this is supposed to be a romantic comedy, the best scenes are the ones in which there's no Ryan.
  42. A Beautiful Mind
    It's not just our emotions that are being played on here, it's not just our intelligence being insulted because of Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman's presumption that we won't have any interest in a character whom it's not always possible to like. It's John Nash's life, being turned into an Oscar machine and an easy way to jerk tears.
  43. The Majestic
    One of those movies that makes you feel as if the national IQ was dropping while you're watching it. It's the return of all the homiletic clichés about an America that never existed.
  44. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
    I see it as nearly perfect: It's one of the best fantasy pictures ever made.
  45. Piñero
    A sustained piece of showboating mythmaking, and something of a snow job.
  46. Iris
    Suffers from PBS syndrome, but Dame Judi Dench cures with a moving portrayal of life with Alzheimer's.
  47. Lantana
    Elegant but never overstated, sinister but never coldhearted, this is a note-perfect masterwork on a modest, human scale.
  48. The Royal Tenenbaums
    Anderson's other hallmarks here are brilliant gags that deflate in the execution, potentially interesting characters that end up so flat they feel as if they'd been cut out of paper, a plot that's all setup and no story.
  49. Kandahar
    A stark and beautiful film traces a Afghan woman's journey across a landscape we may never understand.
  50. Vanilla Sky
    Who would have thought that Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right.
  51. Last Orders
    Unassuming masterpiece about life, love and the cruel joke of old age.
  52. Ocean's Eleven
    Together, they (Clooney and Gould) threaten to sneak off with the movie when Soderbergh isn't looking, sowing madness and sex appeal in their wake.
  53. The Business of Strangers
    Stettner must be one of the luckiest and unluckiest debut directors in years, blessed with actors who both take the focus away from his limitations and wind up shining a spotlight on them.
  54. The Affair of the Necklace
    The best thing I can say about it is that the costumes and the hambone acting keep it from being a deadly bore.
  55. Behind Enemy Lines
    Sometimes stylish flashiness can be fun, and the movie does have a terrific, bleached-out, ice-blue look. But anyone who cares about what actors do has a right to be distrustful of a director who puts more emphasis on the look of his movie than on the performances.
  56. Trouble Every Day
    A haunting and terrifying film. It's also a film of wonderful spaces and silences.
  57. In the Bedroom
    For all its flaws, In the Bedroom is an unusual accomplishment, a serious drama about violence and morality that plays out with a fatalistic intensity somewhere between Greek tragedy and film noir.
  58. Sidewalks of New York
    Isn't much more than a student film made by a talented amateur who's in over his head. Burns has a decent eye and a breezy sense of pace, and he'll make better movies if he remembers where he came from.
  59. 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.
  60. Black Knight
    Too bad it's not so funny. Almost every gag in Black Knight feels forced and contrived, as if the movie is desperate to squeeze laughs out of us.
  61. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
    This version of the Potter saga is fun and harmless rather than memorable or imaginative. That's certainly no crime.
  62. The Fluffer
    Stay away from this cautionary tale about the gay porn industry -- it blows.
  63. Shallow Hal
    May be the best Farrellys movie yet, even though it doesn't live up to the pair's usual level of uproarious, crass comic genius. They're learning, movie by movie, to articulate ideas that are more and more sophisticated, without being oppressively heavy-handed.
  64. Heist
    There's something offensive about how Mamet continues to win praise as a serious filmmaker with such a joyless picture, a picture that -- intentionally -- gives the audience so little.
  65. Monsters, Inc.
    It's a nice movie. But Disney has never learned that "nice," especially in comedy, is a negative virtue.
  66. Amélie
    The problem is that the charm and good spirits of Amélie feel calculated rather than natural.
  67. Domestic Disturbance
    It's clear from the outset that a thriller is going to be big and dumb -- as opposed to tight and smart.
  68. The Man Who Wasn't There
    What makes me respect The Man Who Wasn't There despite myself is the sense that the Coens want it to be about something that can't be described or defined.
  69. K-PAX
    What keeps the movie going, besides Softley's intelligent direction and Mathieson's inventive cinematography, is the actors' duet between Spacey and Bridges.
  70. Life as a House
    Forget about cancer -- it's weepy movies like this that are the real scourge.
  71. Better Than Sex
    It could be funnier, sharper, more probing, but at its best it is sexy, and that's always something to celebrate.
  72. Donnie Darko
    A stunning technical accomplishment that virtually bursts with noise, ideas and references, but it's fundamentally a gracefully crafted movie that's about human beings and not images.
  73. Bones
    Too jumbled to become the major pop hit it wants to be. But it's not an entirely bad film despite its lack of coherence. Horror aficionados and other midnight-movie fans shouldn't miss it.
  74. Trembling Before G-d
    By the end of Trembling Before G_d, you desperately wish that at least some of DuBowski's subjects would see the light.
  75. From Hell
    A brain-dead version of a dark and complex work.
  76. The Last Castle
    Deadly dull.
  77. Riding in Cars with Boys
    Every scene is coated with Marshall's thumbprints, ultimately connecting into a manhandled, mangled, misshapen whole, its themes written out in thunderously obvious cues.
  78. Waking Life
    It's the perfect marriage of music and animated movement. But even when there's no music playing in Waking Life, the movie's lyricism is sustained by the way it looks and feels.
  79. Bandits
    Nothing is more dispiriting than forced high spirits. Bandits keeps reminding you of what a good time you should be having. You leave with a feeling of being swindled, and that's the only genuine thing about it.
  80. Iron Monkey
    A guilt-free, no-fat dessert from start to finish.
  81. Mulholland Dr.
    Lynch's Hollywood is a grand old girl, but she's one with some very treacherous curves. To trace the contours of her sensuality, you need a camera as sensitive as a set of fingertips. Lynch's is.
  82. Fat Girl
    It's a lean, mean movie, and not a pretty one, but it leaves no question as to Breillat's angular originality as a filmmaker.
  83. Joy Ride
    The kicker is that Joy Ride is funny, too. In fact, it would be a superbly frightening entertainment if not for the way Dahl fixates, disturbingly, on sadistic details.
  84. Training Day
    One of the finest cops-and-robbers thrillers of recent years.
  85. Serendipity
    Airy and enchanting, this romantic comedy works overtime to sprinkle moonlight and stardust over itself.
  86. Va Savoir (Who Knows?)
    Never less than witty, charming, accomplished.
  87. Born Romantic
    Dancing, like being in love, sometimes means making a mess of things. Born Romantic makes glorious sense of that mess, trampled toes and all.
  88. Don't Say a Word
    A stupid, brutal and nonsensical picture.
  89. Zoolander
    It's to Stiller's credit that he can sustain the joke for the length of the movie, but just barely. Ten more minutes of Zoolander would have been 10 minutes too many.
  90. Hearts in Atlantis
    The resulting film directed by Scott Hicks is afflicted by terminal nostalgic drift. You come out of the theater with nothing more specific than half-pleasant memories of baseball gloves, Ferris wheels and vintage automobiles. I've had naps that were more exciting.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Endurance
    The film is a pleasure, which the real thing was not. It's also a chilling adventure and a compelling story from beginning to end.
  92. Glitter
    I desperately wanted Glitter to be trashy and over-the-top, to be so courageously awful. As it is, it isn't nearly bad enough to be that kind of good. It's simply there, all dressed up with no place to go, and that's the most damning thing you could say about it.
  93. Haiku Tunnel
    The charm and the shoddiness of Haiku Tunnel stem from the same source. It's basically a San Francisco underground theater production that somehow escaped onto the movie screen without losing any of its eccentric, insular qualities.
  94. Hard Ball
    It may follow a formula, but sometimes formula equals comforting routine. And there are times, in the movies and elsewhere, when routine is exactly what you need.
  95. Two Can Play That Game
    Ultimately feels somewhat overprocessed, and its humor is a little too broad at times -- it probably crosses the acceptable threshold of penis and boob jokes.
  96. The Musketeer
    There isn't a frame of The Musketeer that's believable even as a Hollywood re-creation of a fantasy world. It's conventionally picturesque, except in the nighttime and interior scenes, which are dark to the point of glaucoma.
  97. Rock Star
    But even here, in a role that doesn't ask much of Wahlberg, I find plenty of evidence that he's among the finest actors of his generation.
  98. L.I.E.
    Though I admire much of what Cuesta does in L.I.E., the film didn't give me much pleasure. I didn't find it unpleasant or repulsive; it's just that I felt he was too much outside the story.
  99. O
    The film is a plodding, earnest adaptation that strips the source of its richness and ambiguity.
  100. Jeepers Creepers
    Gets off to a great start and then simply shuts down, like an awesome vintage car on an ambitious road trip.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »