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
  1. August Evening
    The heart of the movie is not in its plot but in its characters and atmosphere. Castaneda, a nonprofessional actor who runs a towing company in San Antonio, gives a towering, Robert Duvall-style performance as a granitic man in late middle age whose internal world of pain and love and knowledge occasionally flickers to the surface.
  2. 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.
  3. Laurel Canyon
    Cholodenko and her actors pull it off; the performances here are like a wary ballet, ruled as much by the mysterious magnetic attractions and repulsions these characters feel for one another as by anything so dully explicable as psychology or standard rules of social conduct.
  4. (500) Days of Summer
    Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel charm the pants off us -- and each other! -- in this irresistible comedy.
  5. 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.
  6. Stuff and Dough
    It's a terrific little movie, gritty, real, ironic, ruthless and deeply humane.
  7. How to Make Money Selling Drugs
    Despite its slick packaging and overtly facetious premise, director Matthew Cooke and producer Adrian Grenier’s faux-educational documentary How to Make Money Selling Drugs packs a wallop.
  8. 4
    It's another blast of vibrant, vicious, gloomy electricity from the always-surprising Russian film scene, and the beginning of an important career.
  9. Bachelorette
    I'm going to suggest, somewhat tentatively, that Bachelorette is most unlike "Bridesmaids" because it fundamentally isn't a comedy at all, but something closer to a dense, dark character drama tarted up in high heels and a short skirt and dosed with pills and coke.
  10. Me Without You
    This film's intelligence and forthrightness about the things women sometimes do to one another -- and its resoluteness about where the line should be drawn in terms of selflessness between friends -- set it head and shoulders above most contemporary movies that deal with friendships between women.
  11. The Last of the Mohicans
    The Last of the Mohicans is a striking mixture of the ersatz and the genuine. In other words, it’s vintage Hollywood. It’s also a smashingly entertaining and satisfying adventure.
  12. I'm So Excited
    Almodóvar isn’t just flashing back, retro-style, to the era of “Pepi, Luci, Bom” and “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” He’s also returning to a core principle of that era and of his work, which is that human sexuality, as much as it drives us crazy and makes us do stupid things, is also a force for the liberation of the human soul.
  13. Summer Hours
    The magic of Summer Hours is that even in its elusiveness, it gives us something to hang onto.
  14. ...And They Lived Happily Ever After
    Happily Ever After is an exhilarating, joyous picture, but it's sometimes terrifying, too. It offers a vision of marriage as an adventure we embark on together, alone. If you didn't cry, you'd laugh.
  15. Inside Man
    It's Foster who rules the movie like an ice queen.
  16. The Guest
    I enjoyed it from beginning to end, and if you've been lamenting the dearth of violent genre movies that don't assume the audience to be morons, you will too.
  17. Bubot Niyar
    Sad, sweet and oddly inspirational.
  18. The Mother
    Reid is stunning here.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Aliens
    The startling thing about "Aliens" is how obsessed it is with women as child bearers. It's the theme that allows the movie to have all the trappings of a typical science fiction/action movie while creating a primal emotive connection for the audience.
  20. Let the Fire Burn
    Disturbing and extraordinary new documentary.
  21. Man on the Train
    Watching Man on the Train is like coming across one of those threadbare Persian rugs you see on public tours of private homes. Its elegance is more comfortable than cold, and it carries its worn, battered mien proudly.
  22. Little Miss Sunshine
    Carell's physical comedy is close to genius.
  23. The Host
    A thrilling ride and a sometimes dry, sometimes sweet comedy, but beneath all that is a humane and tragic view of life worthy of the greatest films. Even those without rubber monsters.
  24. Kissing Jessica Stein
    Westfeldt and Juergensen keep Kissing Jessica Stein bright and funny and loose.
  25. The Score
    A weaker actor, one more naked than De Niro is now capable of being, might have revealed some inner compulsion in the character. But De Niro's steadiness becomes part of the movie's rugged stolidity.
  26. Masked and Anonymous
    See it in one glorious shot, grab as much from it as you can and run like hell. I say that not because I hated Masked & Anonymous, but because I loved it.
  27. The Matrix Reloaded
    I found The Matrix Reloaded so exhilarating. It's a sadder, wiser, more grown-up movie than its predecessor. It was made, one might almost say, for a sadder, wiser, more grown-up world.
  28. Midnight Special
    I suspect this movie will sharply divide Nichols' existing fan base for reasons I can only allude to vaguely in a review; I loved it, or almost all of it, but I can understand the uncertainty.
  29. The Neon Demon
    If you want a movie that eviscerates “The Hunger” and eats its bloody insides while daring you to look away, here it is.
  30. Best of Enemies
    Vidal vs. Buckley was pretty much a clown show. It was also total TV gold. Those two guys went viral when that adjective only referred to actual disease; they invented the YouTube clip decades before the Internet was even a gleam in Al Gore’s eye.
  31. The Guys
    The scenes between LaPaglia and Weaver, directed and played with a straightforward austerity that occasionally moved me to tears, make up for every one of The Guys flaws.
  32. Yves Saint Laurent 5 avenue Marceau 75116 Paris
    Visual tone poem.
  33. Straight Outta Compton
    A sprawling, overstuffed, formulaic but highly entertaining story of pop stardom.
  34. What If
    What If could be the breakthrough film that underappreciated Canadian director Michael Dowse (“Goon” and “It’s All Gone Pete Tong”) has been waiting for, and at any rate it’s a sparkling screwball highball, perfect for a late-summer weekend.
  35. Under the City's Skin
    Solidly made and sometimes quite moving chronicle of a working-class family in Tehran.
  36. How I Ended This Summer
    Combines memorable images of the gorgeous, rugged wilderness, meticulous sound design that emphasizes the characters' isolation, a dash of dark wit and a dose of madness.
  37. Portraits chinois
    Truly is an ensemble comedy.
  38. Bridge of Spies
    Bridge of Spies is itself a form of historical whitewashing, albeit one less noxious and harmful than the customary American variety. I liked the movie a lot – it’s one of Spielberg’s most measured and most adult films in years.
  39. Red Flag
    If it's all reasonably familiar indie-comedy terrain, it's delivered at a brisk, economical clip with plenty of laughs, and a series of running gags that keep getting funnier.
  40. Crimson Peak
    Here’s the thing about Crimson Peak, which is lurid and ghastly and immensely enjoyable and frequently spectacular and also thinner and less substantial than it wants to be, like a meal eaten in a dream.
  41. Listen Up Philip
    Once you adjust to Listen Up Philip, it’s also invigorating, disturbing and frequently hilarious, but that adjustment’s not entirely painless.
  42. Austin Powers in Goldmember
    It's a mess, and a ridiculous golden shower of toilet humor. But Mike Myers' superspy spoof still provides the summer's purest movie delight.
  43. The Triplets of Belleville
    Chomet bows to the tradition of conventional animation even as he tests its limits.
  44. Mr 3000
    A superb mainstream entertainment in the purest sense of the term: It's a picture made to please a wide audience without ever pandering to it.
  45. Infernal Affairs
    One of the truest American gangster films of all time.
  46. little man
    A marvelously compressed and immaculately constructed work.
  47. True Crime
    An electrically paced and brilliantly acted death-row thriller.
  48. Heaven
    Tykwer's actors seem completely clued in to his intentions. Both Blanchett and Ribisi give performances so restrained they're almost subliminal.
  49. Killing Them Softly
    This is a deliberately chilly and nerve-wracking experience, and one of the bleakest portraits of American society seen on-screen in the last several decades.
  50. Kill List
    There's no disputing the ingenuity and even the brilliance of this mind-bending mashup, which begins as a gritty recession-era marriage drama - the opening scene features a couple arguing about whether they have the money to get the Jacuzzi fixed - and then descends into ominous violence and finally total insanity.
  51. The Snowtown Murders
    An impressive but exceptionally disturbing feature debut from Australian director Justin Kurzel that pushes the new wave of Aussie crime films up a notch.
  52. Edmond
    It's hilarious, and contains some of Mamet's best dialogue. And that somehow, by making a racist, murderous, Everycreep his protagonist, Mamet is able to produce some of his most penetrating psychological and spiritual insights.
  53. 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.
  54. Out of Time
    Starts out as noir, takes a shift into something like deadpan screwball comedy and ends up as a comedy of remarriage.
  55. The Kids Grow Up
    His final scenes with Lucy and with his own dad are both surprising and shattering, and I was left humbled by the film's honesty.
  56. The Tailor of Panama
    A sophisticated, subtle adult entertainment that is also a compliment to the audience.
  57. Darwin's Nightmare
    Among the most depressing films ever made...It's a stomach-turning tale of globalization at its very worst, though what any of this has to do with Darwin is unclear to me.
  58. Jesus' Son
    It has a nobility and modesty, along with a refreshing lack of cynical attitude, that you rarely find in independent films these days.
  59. Smash His Camera
    Highly entertaining and skillful documentary.
  60. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
    There's no doubt that Kill Bill is an epic, and no doubt of the skill that's often apparent. But what it leaves us with is awesomely trivial.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
    It's not necessarily the drama inherent in these stories that moved some to tears -- and it's possible that some audiences won't recognize the restraint Lee exercised in rendering them -- it's the heartbreaking matter-of-factness with which they're being retold.
  62. A Scanner Darkly
    There's no other filmmaker, living or dead, who could produce a futuristic sci-fi nightmare, a hipster comedy, a haunting film noir and a cartoon, all in the same movie.
  63. The Lookout
    So refreshingly straightforward that at first you may not know what to make of it.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Saving Private Ryan
    Using the overpowering techniques of modern film, Steven Spielberg has cut through the glory-tinged gauze that shrouds World War II to reveal its brutal reality, creating a phenomenology of violence unsurpassed in the history of cinema.
  65. The Princess and the Frog
    The sweetest, most sincere romantic comedy to come along in ages, and a luminous love letter to a great American city.
  66. Band of Outsiders
    Band of Outsiders is about the tyranny of living a life of movie-fed fantasies, and while it makes us see the poverty of those fantasies, it also makes them unaccountably rich, poetic, sad.
  67. Another Road Home
    It's a fascinating human story and a film as pure as ice water
  68. 10 Things I Hate About You
    What really elevates it, though, is the film's sharp wit and tender heart, both of which are conveyed beautifully by the fresh-faced cast.
  69. The Blair Witch Project
    The most inventive and genuinely frightening horror movie to appear in years.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grass
    A flashy, smoker-friendly documentary on the twisted history of the evil weed -- and the misguided drug war against marijuana.
  71. Jimi: All Is by My Side
    The damn thing is, Ridley very nearly makes this insuperable obstacle work to his benefit. He delivers a flawed, ambitious and deeply peculiar portrait of one of the 20th century’s most enigmatic musical talents, in the year before he ascended to rock-god status, that resembles no other pop-music biopic you’ve ever seen.
  72. Moonlight Mile
    A dazzling true-life comedy that might be the funniest movie about grief ever made.
  73. Demonlover
    It's a consistently exciting piece of moviemaking, but it's not a pleasant experience; it's one of the few recent movies that have the power to leave you genuinely shaken up.
  74. Birders: The Central Park Effect
    As "Birders" makes clear, and as Franzen would surely agree, birds and birders have always been among us and require no reinvention. What they have to offer us is what that heron offered me, for just a split-second – a sense that despite our best efforts we are still a part of nature, and not yet an alien species disconnected from the real world.
  75. Kate Plays Christine
    I would simultaneously argue that Sheil and Greene go off the rails several times during Kate Plays Christine, most notably in their overly artful and self-conscious attempt to re-enact the shooting but also that they get viewers closer to the real Christine Chubbuck than I would have thought possible.
  76. Why We Fight
    A film that stands out for its passion, ambition and clarion-call sincerity, even amid the contemporary onslaught of political documentaries.
  77. Air Guitar Nation
    I don't know whether to call it interpretive dance for dudes or performance art or just a highly developed form of wanking. Who cares? It seriously rocks.
  78. Charlie Wilson's War
    Philip Seymour Hoffman utters one of the year's most refreshing lines in this terrific tale of political wheeling and dealing.
  79. 127 Hours
    Franco is up to every bit of Boyle's challenge, capturing Aron's transition from clownish outdoorsman and party boy to an introspective chronicler of his own impending demise and a visionary lunatic.
  80. Zombieland
    The picture is beautifully paced, with an exhilarating, comically violent opening, a halcyon middle section where, in what could be viewed as a sideways homage to "Rebel Without a Cause," our rootless wanderers share a brief respite in an empty, lavish mansion, and a finale filled with light and color and movement (as well as piles of vanquished zombies).
  81. Wonder Boys
    With a cast this terrific and a story this rich and wry, Wonder Boys really can't miss, even if it thumps to an underwhelming and moralistic ending that undoes a fair amount of its goodwill.
  82. The Clearing
    Just when you think The Clearing is too simplistic to have any dramatic edge, the actors dig in and flesh out the stark framework of the story.
  83. Walk the Line
    I suspect many Cash fans will think it's too conventional. But I think its conventionality is part of its power.
  84. Another Happy Day
    The younger Levinson has considerable storytelling talent, an admirable honesty and a streak of ruthlessness.
  85. Duplex
    Delicious dark comedy.
  86. The Adjustment Bureau
    Nolfi's dialogue is lean and often funny, while Damon and Blunt play appealing and clearly delineated characters drawn together by the kind of old-fashioned romantic passion you don't often see in contemporary movies.
  87. Three Times
    In these three potent miniatures, Hou Hsiao-hsien suggests that time passes differently when you're deeply in love. He captures the mystical quality of that time on film, making us feel as if we're living in it, rather than simply watching it.
  88. Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
    Another strong journalistic-style film, this one exposes how unbelievably rapacious the financial industries have become in extending credit to unlikely prospects -- among them college students, nursing-home residents, small children, dogs and dead people.
  89. Knuckleball!
    Immediately leaps near the top of the list of greatest baseball documentaries.
  90. Miles Ahead
    To give a performance this layered and complex and unstinting while also directing the film around it, which is risky and imaginative and full of life, testifies to impressive powers of concentration.
  91. Lolita
    For all of their vaunted (and, it turns out, false) fidelity to Nabokov, Lyne and Schiff have made a pretty, gauzy Lolita that replaces the book's cruelty and comedy with manufactured lyricism and mopey romanticism.
  92. Charlotte Gray
    Lush, even juicy entertainment.
  93. 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.
  94. Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
    Gorgeous and terrifying.
  95. Moulin Rouge!
    It's a mishmash of decoration, drapery and debauchery that's both deeply pleasurable and kitschy.
  96. Full Battle Rattle
    If Full Battle Rattle begins as surreal, almost goofball farce, with a bunch of beefy guys playing a fancy-dress version of laser tag in the desert -- aided by a bunch of rented Iraqis who'd rather be watching TV in suburbia -- it ends on an ambiguous and haunting note, much closer to tragedy.
  97. King Kong
    Jackson is far more interested in the relationship between the girl and the ape than he is in the power of special effects for their own sake. As big as King Kong is, its sense of intimacy is what really sticks with you. This is an epic Big Little Book of a picture.
  98. Nanking
    Nanking both calls attention to a horrifying set of war crimes that remains little known in the West and crafts an impossible-but-true hymn to the power of the individual conscience.
  99. À Tout de Suite (Right Now)
    Le Besco gives an unforgettable performance in a movie that's sweet and sad, formally near-perfect but never cynical.
  100. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
    At the very least, this implausible trifecta displays an abundantly talented new filmmaker who has risked everything, including the prospect that we may get sick of him immediately. If you care about the remaining possibilities of American movies, then this one – well, one of the three, anyway! – is a must-see.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »