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. Only Lovers Left Alive
    It’s shot through with sadness and beauty, with dry humor, with the certainty that even things meant to last forever actually don’t.
  2. The People vs. Larry Flynt
    "Larry Flynt" should have a slick, whorish look, but there's no juice in Forman's sleaze. Hustler's centerfolds look like Renoirs next to the cold-eyed way Forman shoots women's bodies.
  3. Selma
    The scenes with Johnson and Wallace, although intrinsically interesting, drag down the drama somewhat, and...every minute we're away from the firecracker atmosphere of rural Alabama detracts from the overall impact.
  4. Tabu
    If you have the patience to watch this film develop and unfold, like some bizarre night-blooming orchid, what you'll see is not just the last movie released in 2012, but possibly the most original of them all.
  5. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    Any film that begins with one of those fake-news montages, where snippets of genuine CNN footage are stitched together to concoct a feeling of semi-urgency around its hackneyed apocalypse, already sucks even before it gets started.
  6. Affliction
    Affliction is a harsh experience, but the harshness isn't a matter of punishing the audience or of the director, Schrader, showing off his toughness: That unvarnished harshness is the very essence of the material.
  7. Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary
    Consistently interesting without feeling essential until, in its last half-hour, it becomes utterly compelling.
  8. Life of Pi
    I felt like I'd been invited to a seven-course dinner, and all seven turned out to be cake – and then the host insisted on delivering a lecture about how cake would bring me closer to God.
  9. Let Me In
    An imaginative and largely intact retelling of this gory, troubling, uniquely sweet and uniquely dark vampire tale.
  10. Miss Bala
    Terrifically choreographed, violent and amoral, but never wantonly cruel, Miss Bala is a knockout.
  11. 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.
  12. Mother
    Its combination of dazzling cinematic craft, psychological insight and black humor make this one of the year's moviegoing musts -- and even or especially at her most deranged, Kim Hye-ja's amazing mother is profoundly, passionately human.
  13. Keep the Lights On
    Not only does this film gloriously fulfill the potential that Ira Sachs has tantalized movie-lovers with for years, it also help explains what took him so long. Out of lost love comes a terrific work of art; it's the oldest story in the world, but it always feels new when it's done right.
  14. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
    The most powerful documentary I've seen all year, and one of the two or three best films ever made about an artist or musician.
  15. Va Savoir (Who Knows?)
    Never less than witty, charming, accomplished.
  16. Manufactured Landscapes
    Manufactured Landscapes may tell you more about how the 21st century world actually works than you really want to know, but it's a heartbreaking, beautiful, awful and awesome film.
  17. Zodiac
    Bits of the picture are fascinating to look at, but eventually, exhaustion kicks in, to the point where we're not sure what we're looking at, or why.
  18. Brand Upon the Brain!
    The result is giddy, exciting and hilarious, not quite like any artistic experience you've ever had.
  19. Run Lola Run
    Potente pumps strong and true from the first frame to the last.
  20. Black Swan
    One of the best movies of the year.
  21. Enough Said
    On first viewing, I conclude that Enough Said is irresistible, and demands a second (and third) viewing right away.
  22. Insomnia
    Like the best thrillers it dives below the ordered surface of the genre into the coldest waters of the individual soul, where Hitchcock and David Lynch and Dostoyevsky have ventured. Does Christopher Nolan belong in that company? Not quite yet, but he's on the way.
  23. 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.
  24. Control
    Lovely and deeply touching picture.
  25. Starting Out in the Evening
    It's rare to see a movie adaptation in which a filmmaker has taken so much care in translating the odd little qualities that make a particular novel special, to preserve the complex and fragile threads of feeling between characters that are often much easier to grasp on the page.
  26. Princess Mononoke
    A big movie for the ages, full to the brim with sympathy, imagination and sheer visual delight.
  27. Head-On
    Vital and affecting romantic drama.
  28. The Deep End
    The Deep End doesn't have a knotty message, but it's a much more meaningful picture than "Suture."
  29. Public Speaking
    Even if her writers block continues for another three decades, Lebowitz herself remains undeniably fascinating. Scorsese's documentary offers us a long overdue taste of her unique, queasily accurate perspectives on our culture -- always right, never fair and never disappointing.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Bug's Life
    It's impossible not to be utterly blown away by Pixar's animation.
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