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. A Mighty Wind
    It's a fine-grained picture that goes for the sideways laughs rather than the straight-ahead ones. This is sketch comedy as method acting.
  2. The Damned United
    It's a classic and even charming yarn of vanity, hubris and redemption, played out against the bizarre, intense alternate universe of '70s English soccer.
  3. 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.
  4. Juno
    As lively and entertaining as Juno is, Reitman and Cody have also done the work of shaping the story into something emotionally direct, unsparing and generous.
  5. Blue Valentine
    An intimate, gorgeous and wrenching portrait of a working-class marriage in what may be a state of terminal decay.
  6. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
    Magnificent and heartfelt.
  7. The Secret of Kells
    A gorgeous transcription of medieval decorative art and its themes into a contemporary animated narrative, one that should enthrall children older than 8 or so, along with the adults lucky enough to watch with them.
  8. A Simple Plan
    Holds us in a state of horrified empathy.
  9. My Joy
    My Joy has a bleak, grotesque, near-perfect poetry in its soul.
  10. 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.
  11. White Material
    It's a disorientingly beautiful movie at times, which promises -- as Denis always does, I think -- that human madness and human love will balance each other out, in the fullness of time.
  12. The Station Agent
    It's hard to say why The Station Agent sends you out feeling so benevolent. It may have something to do with being in the presence of a director who treats you with respect. McCarthy allows us to feel without telling us how and what we should feel.
  13. Foxcatcher
    Foxcatcher is another strange and compelling anthropological drama from Miller, a director with evident expertise at enabling Oscar-worthy star performances.
  14. Bamako
    A barrel of laughs, this ain't. But it's a fearless high-wire act, grim and witty, confrontational and self-mocking. Its message may be dire, but Bamako is a feat of intellectual and cinematic daring that will leave your brain buzzing.
  15. Beginners
    A sad, sweet, funny and ultimately unforgettable love story about a man and a woman and a father and son, and also ranks among the most affectionate and sensitive portraits of homosexuality ever crafted by a straight person.
  16. Bright Star
    The film works on its own as an unfussy, passionate and gently erotic love story that never tips into sentimentality.
  17. Jackie
    Jackie transcends mimicry to achieve something greater — bringing the first lady’s grief and resolve in the face of unspeakable loss to vivid life.
  18. Tropical Malady
    It's a haunted picture, one that feels inhabited not just by actors and scenery but by spirits, too.
  19. Weekend
    Weekend is such a smart, prickly, sexy, inventive film that it critiques itself and critiques its viewers, gay or straight, even as it spins an archetypal romantic fable.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Happiness
    A masterpiece.
  21. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
    Maybe if Wes Anderson and Lars von Trier tried to write a sitcom together, the result would be something like A Pigeon Sat on a Branch, which essentially consists of a series of comic sketches whose gags are often revealed in their final seconds.
  22. Inherent Vice
    Inherent Vice is like that; you’ll have to enjoy it for the pileup of exquisite images and hilarious episodes, and let go of the need to hold the whole thing in your head, or you won’t enjoy it at all.
  23. Under the Sun
    There’s a terrible wonder in this rare glimpse inside a country that has tried to empty itself of all thought, all commerce and all civil society — of pretty much everything except an especially lame version of hero worship and despotism.
  24. Fish Tank
    Absolute dynamite.
  25. No
    A troubling, exhilarating and ingeniously realized film that’s part stirring political drama and part devilish media satire.
  26. Hot Fuzz
    At once deeply affectionate and sharply observed: There's never anything smart-alecky about Wright's approach as a director.
  27. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
    A strange and gorgeous and haunting film that brings the indie aesthetic of the mid-1980s into a context that feels both timeless and highly contemporary.
  28. The Big Short
    With its cartoonish pace, larger-than-life characters and detours into farce and agitprop, this movie captures the accelerated pace of life in the financial markets and the vast scale of their mendacity far more vividly than a naturalistic drama could.
  29. The Wailing
    Forget the inflated Trumpian moral dilemmas of "Superman" and "Captain America." The summer’s most powerful and most disturbing thriller has arrived, in the form of an intensely atmospheric Korean movie called The Wailing.
  30. Skyfall
    Skyfall is a push-pull between the past and the present, an effort to drag a symbol of maleness as iconic as the Union Jack bulldog on M's desk into a world of approximate gender equality and approximate acceptance of sexual difference. I'm not sure how sustainable that is over the long term; this is a smashing entertainment, but also one that feels over-engineered and constrained by its origins.
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