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 Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    It's difficult to make this mediocre adaptation of perhaps the best-loved book in C.S. Lewis' Narnia series -- seem particularly interesting.
  2. The Fighter
    A movie so rousing, so real and so full of complicated emotions that it all feels brand-new.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Burlesque
    Anyone heading to Burlesque expecting it to live up to the standards of "Showgirls" is in for some serious disappointment: Burlesque isn't good, mind you, but it isn't the kind of bad that inspires midnight screenings and drinking games and Halloween costumes.
  4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
    The seventh and last volume in J.K. Rowling's series of best-selling fantasy novels has been split in half for Hollywood purposes, making this long, dour, impressive and handsome motion picture the penultimate chapter, largely designed to build up the heavy-duty suspense before the climax is delivered next year.
  5. I Love You Phillip Morris
    Carrey provides one of his most whacked-out and enjoyable performances.
  6. Black Swan
    One of the best movies of the year.
  7. The Next Three Days
    A ponderous but mesmerizing tick-tock thriller.
  8. Made in Dagenham
    Made in Dagenham offers girl power in a can, lightly seasoned with swinging London and topped with cute-clumsy Sally Hawkins charming us to pieces. But the real women of Dagenham deserve better, and so do their sisters in the audience.
  9. Morning Glory
    This is a brash, lightweight backstage comedy that looks lovely, doesn't insult its audience and uses its stars, both young and old, to terrific effect.
  10. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
    If Client 9 plays a lot like a murky, gripping political thriller, it lacks a fully satisfying ending -- or a fully satisfying hero.
  11. For Colored Girls
    Perry never solves the stage-to-screen translation problem. But the path he has chosen is as intriguing as it is irksome, and it works better than you might expect.
  12. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
    The good news is that Alfredson finds his footing in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and delivers a rousing, grueling, almost operatically scaled finale to the series.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. Paranormal Activity 2
    Paranormal Activity 2 suffers from the excessive expository blah-blah that's so common in horror-movie sequels.
  16. 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.
  17. RED
    All those guys are a blast, and the dark-hearted idiocy of Red is mostly quite enjoyable.
  18. Conviction
    Ultimately, though, it's a little schizo, like a depressed dude in a clown suit, or a Theodore Dreiser novel hopped up on not enough happy pills.
  19. Hereafter
    A movie that opens with a sensational bang and then proceeds to pursue the Big Questions about life and death in lovely, lugubrious and increasingly off-putting fashion, until all its drama has been frittered away in a dreamy, drifty haze.
  20. Carlos
    It's a tremendously absorbing blend of history, journalism and drama. As soon as it was over, I wanted to watch it again.
  21. Jackass 3-D
    Whether he's getting hit in the face with a dildo or cozying up to Martha Stewart, Knoxville is always affable, playful and able coax a laugh out of an audience by doing ridiculous things. He's a jackass all right, but he's a jackass in shining armor.
  22. Secretariat
    I enjoyed it immensely, flat-footed dialogue and implausible situations and all. Which doesn't stop me from believing that in its totality Secretariat is a work of creepy, half-hilarious master-race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl, and all the more effective because it presents as a family-friendly yarn about a nice lady and her horse.
  23. I Spit on Your Grave
    This well-crafted example just piles imaginary atrocities on top of real ones, and then halfheartedly claim that it means something. Well, it doesn't.
  24. Inside Job
    It might well be the most important film you see this year, and the most important documentary of this young century.
  25. Nowhere Boy
    Scott Thomas' delicate, ferocious performance captures a woman quietly at war with herself, who begins to realize that her vision of respectability may not fit the remarkable young man in her care.
  26. Let Me In
    An imaginative and largely intact retelling of this gory, troubling, uniquely sweet and uniquely dark vampire tale.
  27. The Social Network
    All I can say about Timberlake's performance as the thoroughly odious, desperately seductive, textbook-case metrosexual Parker is that he brings so much reptilian fun that he unbalances the movie, almost fatally.
  28. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
    It's an ambitious, uneven, surprisingly talky melodrama.
  29. Howl
    A very mixed bag. It's an oddly dry fusion of documentary and narrative film that arguably doesn't quite click on either level.
  30. Easy A
    A thoroughly delightful surprise, after a summer full of dim and dreary comedies.
  31. The Town
    Given the debased standards of action cinema these days this might be enough to make The Town a hit. But almost everything else about the movie is badly off balance, starting with Affleck's decision to cast himself as the implacably sexy and good-hearted Doug.
  32. Never Let Me Go
    Director Mark Romanek captures the slightly seedy and rundown reality of '70s and '80s British life in astonishing and even tragic detail; this is more like a period piece than a science-fiction movie.
  33. The Romantics
    A middling little movie that tries to trespass on Bergman-Renoir territory and simply isn't adroit enough to pull it off, and because in its weaker moments it's overheated and silly.
  34. A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
    Alternately comic and terrifying, "Woman/Gun/Noodle" is a dazzling act of transliteration that may not require knowledge of the original film.
  35. Going the Distance
    I don't mean that this movie is strikingly good or strikingly bad, in cosmic terms -- it's a solid but totally forgettable entertainment, redeemed somewhat by Barrymore's loud, horsey laugh and some agreeably racy comic situations.
  36. The American
    What redeems the movie, and then some, is the soulful weariness of Clooney's performance, which is in some ways an earthier and less glib version of the go-go axeman from "Up In The Air."
  37. The Last Exorcism
    So some good acting and decent scares get entombed within too many dull postmodern iterations.
  38. Centurion
    Centurion has its moments of manly cornpone camaraderie and certainly isn't blazingly original, but it offers riveting storytelling, gorgeous cinematography and scenery, loads of gore, and a politically complicated history lesson.
  39. Change of Plans (Le code a changé)
    Change of Plans may not be earth-shattering cinema, but it's masterfully structured and edited (by Sylvie Landra) with a first-rate cast.
  40. The Switch
    Taken on its own terms, it's a light, sweet, curiously enjoyable misfit romance, whose real star is not Aniston but her magnificently awkward Lothario, Jason Bateman.
  41. The Tillman Story
    It's a fascinating film, full of drama, intrigue, tragedy and righteous indignation, but maybe its greatest accomplishment is to make you feel the death of one young man -- a truly independent thinker who hewed his own way through the world, in the finest American tradition -- as a great loss.
  42. The Army of Crime
    This is a solid, spellbinding drama based closely on real history, which along the way offers a not-so-subtle commentary on the diverse, immigrant-rich society of contemporary France.
  43. A Film Unfinished
    The first Holocaust movie that's actually about another Holocaust movie, and in some peculiar way it brings us closer to the terror and tragedy of the original event.
  44. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
    Highly entertaining, from minute to minute, and its semi-mythical portrayal of Torontonian life is entirely charming. If you can stand massive doses of cute and clever, it's a fine use for your summer-movie dollar (whether or not that dollar has a funny old lady on it).
  45. Eat Pray Love
    A minor and superficial summer diversion that offers female viewers not much more than a two-hour escape fantasy, but that's not a crime.
  46. Animal Kingdom
    It's a distinctive, ominous and hypnotic work of cinema.
  47. The Other Guys
    It's a mixed bag with plenty of gags that fall flat, not a comic masterpiece. But it's got tremendous zing, a sense of mischief and a big heart, more than enough to mark it as a delicious shot of caffeinated ice cream, and the summer season's funniest comedy.
  48. Middle Men
    Even as this film unravels into incoherent, self-justifying moral instruction, it never becomes boring to watch.
  49. Lebanon
    A terrifying, absorbing 93 minutes spent in hell. It captures the intensity of warfare in a visceral fashion that recalls Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" and Oliver Stone's "Platoon."
  50. Dinner for Schmucks
    Carell's performance as Barry, is nothing short of magnificent.
  51. Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
    A very mixed bag. Despite some faint gestures in the direction of journalistic balance, it plays a lot like a two-hour infomercial for the Playboy publisher's historical importance, philosophical depth and personal greatness.
  52. The Extra Man
    You'll either find The Extra Man utterly charming or thoroughly mystifying, but either way Kevin Kline, playing a community-theater version of himself, with all the foppishness and Shakespearean pretension but half the talent and none of the luck, inhabits its peculiar soul.
  53. Smash His Camera
    Highly entertaining and skillful documentary.
  54. Salt
    This is a daring, audacious and sometimes terrifying movie -- purely as a thrill ride, it's probably the summer's best offering so far. That doesn't mean it left me feeling entirely satisfied. There's an emptiness at the soul of Salt -- again, meaning both the movie and the character -- that's extremely disturbing, maybe on purpose.
  55. Countdown to Zero
    A terrifying and highly effective documentary.
  56. Inception
    For the most part "Inception" is a handsome, clever and grindingly self-serious boy-movie, shorn of imagination, libido, spirituality or emotional depth. Nolan establishes a fascinating world, loaded with trapdoors, symbols and hidden secrets, and then squanders the opportunity on an overpriced "Twilight Zone" episode.
  57. Valhalla Rising
    Lots of movies about the Middle Ages can do the mud and blood -- though we sure see a lot of both here -- but in this movie it's like Refn has ripped you out of time and dropped you there.
  58. Despicable Me
    Coffin and Renaud's execution is fresh, sincere, often lovely and a great deal of fun -- and in this kind of movie, and this kind of movie summer, execution is everything.
  59. Winnebago Man
    Tracking down Rebney proved to be no easy task. But Steinbauer found him, living on a mountain in California, and spends much of the film trying to get Rebney to reckon with his unsought celebrity, which Rebney had only recently become aware of.
  60. [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.
  61. The Kids Are All Right
    The Kids Are All Right ranks with the most compelling portraits of an American marriage, regardless of sexuality, in film history.
  62. The Girl Who Played with Fire
    There's way too much plot here getting in the way of the story, which makes it tough for Alfredson and cinematographer Peter Mokrosinski to focus on the series' strongest elements. Of course it's the character of Lisbeth that has made these books and movies into a worldwide phenomenon.
  63. The Last Airbender
    It's a little bit Tolkien, a little bit Lucas, a little bit "Matrix," a little bit "Dune" and rather too much Philip Pullman, all stuck together with some powerfully expensive effects and lots of cute kids doing tai chi.
  64. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
    One of the better multiplex options of this legendarily dismal summer.
  65. Grown Ups
    The guys abuse each other in what's meant to be fraternal affection but feels more like the discomfort of being stuck together in a terrible movie.
  66. Restrepo
    Junger and Hetherington take our conflicted ideas about war and its let's-make-a-man-out-of-you purpose and throw them in our faces, in a way "Hurt Locker" never does.
  67. Knight and Day
    Roy is like a meta-Cruise or a Cruise pastiche; even the disturbing, stalkerish aspects of his character seem as if they were constructed from tabloid stories about the actor's marriage, his religious affiliation, his sexual identity.
  68. Toy Story 3
    A bona fide summer delight loaded with action, humor, nostalgia, a veritable blizzard of pop-culture references and general good vibes.
  69. Jonah Hex
    It's a challenge to take a comic-book adaptation that stars Josh Brolin, John Malkovich and Megan Fox and drain nearly all the fun out of it. Jonah Hex is one of those movies that combines a certain amount of being ridiculous on purpose with a great deal of pseudo-profound silliness.
  70. Cyrus
    An enjoyably off-kilter romantic comedy with a touch of madcap farce and just a hint of darkness.
  71. The Karate Kid
    At times, the movie feels less like a coming-of-age tale and more like an extended promo for the Chinese tourism bureau.
  72. The A-Team
    Reasonably good fun. If you're a 12-year-old boy riding an intense Cherry Pepsi buzz and totally devoted to destroying some brain cells, that is.
  73. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
    Maybe Joan Rivers is a high-powered engine of self-debasement who will go lower than anyone else for a laugh and a dollar, and maybe she's a skilled actress who has spent her whole life playing one. Either way, yes, she's quite something. And I'd rather appreciate her from a distance.
  74. Winter's Bone
    This movie's an absolute knockout. I know it's only June, but I'm damned if this isn't the breakthrough American film of the year.
  75. Splice
    Dark, sleek, funny and creepily infectious, the genetic-engineering horror-comedy Splice is a dynamic comeback vehicle for Canadian genre director Vincenzo Natali, who made a splash a few years ago with "Cube."
  76. Get Him to the Greek
    An uneven but surprising movie, often outrageously funny and just as often completely flat.
  77. Killers
    Somehow Kutcher and Heigl and Tom Selleck and Catherine O'Hara (as her parents) are all fun to watch a fair amount of the time, without the movie they're in being any good at all.
  78. Sex and the City 2
    Indeed, this movie's offensive on many levels, but Arabs and Muslims don't get to feel special. It relies on stupid stereotypes because it's a stupid movie that's offensive to virtually everyone.
  79. Shrek Forever After
    After an uninspired middle period, the "Shrek" series has, like the revitalized character himself, roared back to form.
  80. MacGruber
    MacGruber dutifully rehearses the genre's standbys -- so dutifully, at times, that the joke disappears altogether.
  81. Solitary Man
    Solitary Man is funny and absorbing, and it features a lead performance by Michael Douglas that's both hugely entertaining in itself, and fascinating for the way it illuminates the actor's long, colorful career.
  82. Robin Hood
    Despite its abundant flaws and historical howlers and generally dimwitted tone, Robin Hood is a surprisingly enjoyable work of popcorn cinema, if you're willing to take it on its own terms.
  83. Letters to Juliet
    It may not be a great film, but for moviegoers, Letters to Juliet is like that long buried missive of its title -- a hopeful sign that when we hold out for good things, our patience is sometimes rewarded.
  84. Iron Man 2
    Yes, yes, yes, Downey is blasé, intelligent and hilarious as Tony Stark -- what do you expect me to say? -- but I'm convinced that sticking with this character much longer won't be good for him.
  85. A Nightmare on Elm Street
    For all the filmmakers' talk about reinvigorating the franchise for a new generation, and all their attention to technical details, this is a sloppily conceived remake with no passion for the genre or this story behind it, a movie that assumes its audience is brain-dead and likes it that way.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Losers
    Don't ask for much, and your expectations will be met. Why invest anything as extraneous or irrelevant as "thought" into such a transaction?
  87. The Back-up Plan
    A dispiriting and thoroughly ineffective romantic comedy, with some juicy morsels provided around the edges by a great supporting cast but no heat whatever in the central coupling between Lopez and Aussie TV hunk Alex O'Loughlin.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kick-Ass
    With Kick-Ass, there are more cheap thrills, gory explosions and superheroes than a movie geek's YouTube mash-up.
  89. Death at a Funeral
    Death at a Funeral works and then some. The movie is labored, overly familiar and about 10 miles away from deep -- an elemental, sometimes excremental comedy about petty twits behaving badly. As totally unnecessary remakes go, it's one of the best.
  90. Exit Through the Gift Shop
    The British street artist's hilarious documentary is a head-spinning, wild ride.
  91. Date Night
    As a pleasant domestic comedy/action-adventure that, refreshingly, doesn't seem to hate its characters, Date Night is just fine. But is it good enough to merit hiring a baby sitter? I'd rather have some potato skins at the Teaneck Tavern.
  92. When You're Strange
    Offers a mesmerizing, behind-the-music glimpse at a crucial and bizarre moment in rock history, and maybe in American cultural history, period.
  93. Breaking Upwards
    That whole meta-biographical aspect doesn't bug me much because everybody who's ever written or directed a romantic comedy is drawing on their own emotional experience; this one's just a little more obvious about it.
  94. The Thorn in the Heart
    A quiet, unglamorous film that sneaks up on you slowly. I found it had a lovely, peculiar emotional resonance by the time it was over, but it's likely to appeal more to documentary buffs and obsessive Gondry fans than ordinary moviegoers.
  95. Clash of the Titans
    Unlike the original -- which, in a crazy stroke of genius, allowed Shakespearean thespians like Claire Bloom and Maggie Smith, plus Bond babe Ursula Andress, to mix it up as jealous goddesses -- the new Clash of the Titans is frightfully low on babes.
  96. The Last Song
    Maybe I'm expecting too much of Cyrus. But The Last Song rests heavily on her alleged appeal, and I can't remember the last time I came across such a singularly charmless teenage performer. I hesitate to even use the word "actress."
  97. The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom
    Sarin and Sonam also lift the veil on potentially explosive divisions within the Tibetan exile community, which is torn between spiritual and cultural loyalty to the Dalai Lama and a widespread longing for true independence. (The filmmakers clearly belong to the pro-independence camp.)
  98. Blue Beard
    It's too convoluted by half, and turns what ought to be an idiosyncratic, delightful folktale-film into a baffling personal psychodrama with a nasty sting in its tale. Still, Breillat wouldn't be Breillat if she made movies that were easy to like, or to get your head around.
  99. Hot Tub Time Machine
    At its best the film is blissfully, anarchically funny, and director Steve Pink keeps the pace crackling.
  100. The Eclipse
    This is another mini-triumph from the resurgent Irish film industry, but much more than that it's a resonant yarn of love, loss, loneliness -- and things that go bump in the night.
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