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. The Claim
    One of those rare literary adaptations that finds its fidelity in freedom, that stands as both a fitting version of its source material and as its own creation.
  2. Shadow of the Vampire
    An academic exercise driven by adolescent ideas that never shape themselves into a narrative: in short, a movie that can never dislodge the art fatally wedged up its butt.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Traffic
    In the scorching new film Traffic, director Steven Soderbergh captures the hypocrisy -- and tragedy -- of the nation's unwinnable war on drugs. Traffic is a huge, determined movie in every way.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Thirteen Days
    A thoroughly bland and mediocre movie about the Cuban missile crisis.
  5. All the Pretty Horses
    At under two hours, the movie crawls by; at four, people would become fossilized to their seats.
  6. Before Night Falls
    As good as it is, Before Night Falls might not work if Schnabel hadn't found a leading man to hold it together and the Spanish actor Javier Bardem has the understated charisma to pull it off.
  7. The House of Mirth
    Anderson's Lily is the kind of heroine who earns our protectiveness by never begging for it; it's an astonishing performance.
  8. Cast Away
    It's mournful and troubling in a way that goes beyond ordinary movie manipulation. It burns clean.
  9. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
    From moment to moment, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a pleasure. But when the Coens are really cooking, when the acting and the conception and the music all come together, it's something more -- Dogpatch rapture.
  10. The Family Man
    But in the end conventional sentiment, rather than any actual morality, is all that the script for The Family Man (by David Diamond and David Weissman) has to offer.
  11. Injeong sajeong bol geot eobtda
    Lee can't tell a story to save his life, but he's something of a visual magician, laying out glittering piles of goodies that you instinctively want to follow.
  12. State and Main
    At its best, State and Main is fast and sharp, but when a movie like this goes off the rails, it's more disappointing than when a bad movie does.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Finding Forrester
    A farrago, with a few morsels of deft social observation and likable performances floating around in a conventional stew of overblown, bogus emotion and rigged catharsis.
  14. The Gift
    If you love actors, it's the sort of thing you might be tempted to see a second time, even after you've found out whodunit, just to examine more carefully the way the performers -- particularly the mesmerizing Cate Blanchett -- weave shining silken threads around what's essentially a pretty uninvolving narrative.
  15. What Women Want
    Aggressively offensive.
  16. Pollock
    As good as Harris is, though, it's Harden's performance that sticks with you long after you've seen the movie. She understands what Krasner must have known intuitively. Greatness comes not from cleaning up messes, but from allowing them to be made in the first place.
  17. Chocolat
    A cozy little ode to sensual and culinary pleasure.
  18. Vertical Limit
    Wants to be a dizzy, precarious thrill ride. Glenn provides the only gravity that doesn't seem dull, literal and earthbound.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Proof of Life
    Everything about Proof of Life is intriguing and a little off.
  20. Dungeons & Dragons
    This fantasy crap, fake-o effects and all, betrays princes of dice, masters of graph and wielders of bong.
  21. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
    There's so much dreamy beauty in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that it's almost like a narcotic.
  22. 102 Dalmatians
    The whole movie is overbright, overloud, antic, telling us the characters and animals are endearing rather than allowing them to reveal themselves as such.
  23. Quills
    It's an unapologetic dazzler, which is why it's never overwhelmed by its themes.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Unbreakable
    For its perilous ambitions, Unbreakable has to be admired, but any ending that succeeds only in pulling the rug out from under a credulous, trusting audience has to be laughed at and called out for the extravagant nonsense that it is.
  25. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
    You will not like it on the screen, you will not like it -- not one scene!
  26. Bounce
    A pallid, mediocre tale that treacles its way through well-worn channels.
  27. Little Nicky
    Sandler deserves to be damned to the pits of hell for this witless masturbatory comedy.
  28. You Can Count on Me
    A subtle and often surprising study of the relationship between damaged adult siblings, full of mordant humor and dramatic invention.
  29. Red Planet
    Isn't particularly offensive, except in its total mediocrity.
  30. Men of Honor
    In its quest to create "wholesome" entertainment, the movie industry is furiously turning back the clock four decades or so, to the days when men were men, girls were cute but knew their place and pencil-necked Poindexters stayed out of your damn face.
  31. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    Redford glances too lightly off the story's racial questions. You could call that approach "eminently tasteful" if you're looking for a nice substitute for "wimpy."
  32. Charlie's Angels
    Who cares about the fate of privacy, of all things, when you can watch three sexy babes stamp out crime in zip-off suits and high-heeled boots?
  33. Vénus beauté (institut)
    Lets you indulge your taste for soapy heartache without leaving you feeling that you have to wash the bubbles out of your mouth.
  34. Lucky Numbers
    There's something refreshing about the way it invites us to splash around in its little wading pool of amorality.
  35. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
    There's nothing scarier than a group of hormone-crazed 20-somethings, but this sequel isn't much more than a footnote of a footnote.
  36. Bedazzled
    It might not measure up to the 1967 original, but now Satan's got sooty pussycat eyes and a kitten-cruel smile.
  37. Calle 54
    Calle 54 doesn't have that coherence or vision of the "Buena Vista Social Club."
  38. Pay It Forward
    No wonder Arlene (Hunt) keeps a bottle of vodka in the chandelier. You would too with this demonic, passive-aggressive, New Age munchkin (Osment) trying to run your life.
  39. Dr T and the Women
    Almost all of the movie's romantic lunacy is too calculated and sly; the picture never quite sweeps us away.
  40. Animal Factory
    You come away with the sense that you should have come to care (or at least to know) more about its central characters than you do.
  41. Billy Elliot
    A surprisingly wise and funny meditation on the nature of what it truly means to be a man.
  42. Lost Souls
    A lugubrious sub-"Exorcist" demonic possession film that's absolutely no fun at all.
  43. 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.
  44. The Contender
    The most gutless and naive political drama of recent memory.
  45. Get Carter
    Stallone returns in a gangster remake that wears itself (and the audience) out trying to be cutting-edge stylish.
  46. Two Family House
    The epitome of the small, character-driven film that the indie movement was supposed to champion before it became a hip mirror of the Hollywood star system.
  47. Yi Yi
    Quietly overwhelming.
  48. Bamboozled
    Spike Lee's explosive, near-masterpiece media satire balances between brilliance and incoherence.
  49. Meet the Parents
    De Niro's performance works because it isn't exactly likable -- he's totally at ease with his own jokes, but he's not out to make us feel relaxed.
  50. Requiem for a Dream
    The tremendous power of Aronofsky's filmmaking -- its omnivorous omnipotence, if that makes any sense -- has the curious effect of diluting its emotional impact.
  51. Girlfight
    A little more flair and polish could have made Girlfight a terrific movie instead of just the decent one it is.
  52. Remember the Titans
    Herman Boone was no doubt a terrific football coach, but the lessons to be drawn from his success in Alexandria are ambiguous, and Remember the Titans is too wrapped up in its weepy macho sentimentality to address them clearly.
  53. Best in Show
    Guest revels in the eccentricities of dog lovers everywhere, but there's kindness at his core. He's a mensch among mutts.
  54. Urban Legends: Final Cut
    Predictable, gratuitous and just self-referential enough to believe itself hip and knowing.
  55. Woman on Top
    Just a string of cute gags and pouting on Isabella's part that's supposed to signify soul-searching.
  56. Dancer in the Dark
    Lars von Trier is a mechanic, not an artist. And his movies are meat grinders he feeds his characters through.
  57. Under Suspicion
    An engrossing, gem-hard little popcorn-cruncher.
  58. Crime and Punishment in Suburbia
    Even dressed up in tabloid lighting and cut with jagged edits, this pulp nihilism never goes beyond daytime TV banality.
  59. Bait
    It's long. Long movies almost always mean the audience member has time to think, and in this context that's not a good thing.
  60. Duets
    A simple entertainment that's by and large carried on the backs of its actors, some who are wonderful and others who are merely likable.
  61. Almost Famous
    Like rock 'n' roll itself, the movie's really all about girls. Even when -- no, especially when -- it's pretending not to be.
  62. The Way of the Gun
    The directorial debut of the writer of "The Usual Suspects" keeps tossing the genre hand grenades one might expect, but they all wind up duds.
  63. Nurse Betty
    LaBute is some kind of find: an auteur for people who don't like movies.
  64. The Watcher
    It stinks pretty bad, but not so bad you'd go out of your way to avoid it.
  65. Turn It Up
    This awkward fable of ghetto redemption mixes painfully earnest message-delivery with occasional scenes of brutal violence.
  66. Titanic Town
    In some ways it's not a very good movie... tries to mix comedy and tragedy...but the movie has an exciting subject -- a true story.
  67. Highlander: Endgame
    This is a movie full of now-you-see-it, now-you-don't plot points.
  68. The Art of War
    Grade-B blockbuster.
  69. Bring It On
    Unexpected late-summer treat.
  70. Love & Sex
    It's sharply chiseled but not cynical, and that's a delicate line to walk.
  71. The Crew
    It's sunny and cheerful without coming off as too saccharine.
  72. The Original Kings of Comedy
    Turns a hysterical night of African-American humor into the hottest little picture of the summer.
  73. Steal This Movie
    The disgrace of Steal This Movie isn't just that it fails to do justice to its subject, but that, as a movie, it's barely competent.
  74. The Cell
    If The Cell were six minutes long it would blow your mind. At two hours, it's a disordered muddle of hellacious highs and pedestrian lows.
  75. Cecil B. DeMented
    This is a sweet-spirited movie about a nice bunch of kids having good clean fun.
  76. The Replacements
    The worst movie of the new millennium.
  77. An Affair of Love
    Has the rare distinction of being slight and tragic at the same time.
  78. Autumn in New York
    Who cares about old guys and young girls? This handsome romantic slop finds other problems.
  79. Aimee & Jaguar
    A consistently engrossing piece of work.
  80. Saving Grace
    It's a breezy and entertaining little charmer.
  81. Space Cowboys
    Although his (Eastwood's) intentions are good, he simply isn't capable of the wry, wistful blend of humor and sadness this story desperately needs.
  82. Coyote Ugly
    A weaselly little thing.
  83. Hollow Man
    I haven't had a worse time at the movies this summer.
  84. Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
    This is a parlor trick, but it's a hell of a good one.
  85. Girl on the Bridge
    Shot in sumptuous black-and-white by Dreujou, Girl on the Bridge might just be the most beautiful-looking movie of the year.
  86. Wonderland
    By the end of Wonderland, I might have felt completely pistol-whipped if not for the gracefulness of some of the movie's actors.
  87. Loser
    The bitterness of her new comedy, Loser, comes as a shock. It's not a mean-spirited movie.
  88. Alice et Martin
    It isn't an entirely successful or satisfying film, but it's far from dismissible.
  89. What Lies Beneath
    You feel you've been both a little creeped out and vigorously entertained. Its showmanship comes through in the clutch.
  90. The In Crowd
    Summer's most shameless piece of trash since "Wild Things."
  91. X-Men
    A distinctively absorbing entertainment, offering just enough popcorn thrills for mass audiences and just enough chewiness for hardcore sci-fi fans.
  92. The Kid
    Perfectly acceptable entertainment in the Mouse Factory's most familiar vein.
  93. But I'm a Cheerleader
    Even with the outlandish characters, gaudy colors and gay satire, this smug John Waters knockoff can't stand up to the real thing.
  94. Scary Movie
    I walked out of Scary Movie feeling as if I'd been whacked around with a two-by-four for an hour and a half.
  95. The Perfect Storm
    Its spectacular special effects threaten to swallow characters whole, and there are times when overwrought and clumsy dialogue... nearly pitch you right out of the movie's mood.
  96. The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle
    This clunky TV remake is stiffer than an iron curtain.
  97. Trixie
    Classic Rudolph: a tone of sweet-edged, slightly kooky melancholy, a terrific cast mostly left to its own devices and a few intriguing moments. Not, I'm sorry to say, a movie.
  98. The Patriot
    This bloody celebration finally gives the American Revolution the epic it deserves.
  99. Me, Myself & Irene
    Leaving the theater, I couldn't quell those waves of disappointment: It just should have been funnier.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Chicken Run
    This movie's cornucopia of humorous riffs and stunts never fails to amuse or enthrall because it never ceases to be unexpected.
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