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 1.4 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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    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Reviewed by
      Max Cea
    Win It All
    Like every Swanberg picture I’ve seen, Win It All is a small character drama that, through improvisation, renders relationships impeccably; it’s at once specific and universal.
  2. A Single Man
    It doesn't matter if the movie around Firth is a good one or a lousy one: Either way, I wouldn't be able to explain how an actor could come up with a performance as subtle, in both its heartbreak and its magnificence, as this one is.
  3. Private Fears in Public Places
    I found the interlocking bitterness of Ayckbourn's play irritating and overly neat, and these people don't seem to belong to Paris or London or anywhere else, at least not anytime in the last 20 years.
  4. The Devil and Daniel Johnston
    As its title suggests, the picture is something of a ballad, an ode to an elusive character who's both quintessentially human and so outlandish he almost seems unreal.
  5. Child's Pose
    A gripping psychological thriller built around the luminous and terrifying performance of Luminita Gheorghiu, who is something like the Meryl Streep of Romania.
  6. Fat Girl
    It's a lean, mean movie, and not a pretty one, but it leaves no question as to Breillat's angular originality as a filmmaker.
  7. Grindhouse
    We need filmmakers who can move us forward even as they maintain a sense of the past. To that end, Grindhouse captures a bit of rowdy movie history in a bell jar.
  8. The Pool
    A lovely, warm, unforced film that gives you time to get to know its characters and isn't propelled by any artificial narrative conventions,
  9. A Band Called Death
    And then would come this generous, spirited documentary, to capture one of the strangest and most inspiring of all family stories of tragedy and triumph that this crazy country has produced.
  10. Chi-Raq
    Nick Cannon’s complicated and masterful performance as Chi-Raq, a young man who embodies the contradictions of his community, who is both a perpetrator and a victim of the heartless violence that has surrounded him all his life, accomplishes that.
  11. Calvary
    McDonagh walks a hazardous tightrope from scene to scene, from amiable comedy to black-hearted farce to heartbreaking tragedy, often trying to strike all those notes within seconds. It doesn’t all work equally well, but the cumulative effect is powerful.
  12. A Touch of Sin
    Anyone interested in the current state of China should see it, and it may open up this remarkable filmmaker to a larger audience.
  13. Shanghai Noon
    Jackie Chan's latest teams him up in 1880s America with Owen Wilson -- and gives a giddy glimpse of what he'll be doing after he gets too old to do his death-defying stunts.
  14. Under the City's Skin
    Solidly made and sometimes quite moving chronicle of a working-class family in Tehran.
  15. The Holy Girl
    It's a marvelously acted film, driven by a sweaty-palmed, exponentially mounting tension.
  16. Philomena
    Philomena turns out to be a subtly told tale of tragedy and redemption, with much of the sentimental payoff you’re expecting but several intriguing plot twists along the way.
  17. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
    If The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada has some languid patches, it's also a work of uncommon maturity and remarkable poetry.
  18. Brooklyn Castle
    It honestly makes no difference if you don't even know the rules of chess and have never visited New York; this is a story about human potential and the lingering possibilities of the American dream.
  19. Stephanie Daley
    Despite an overly abrupt and oblique conclusion, this is a major American film, announcing the arrival of an independent director who deserves all the hype.
  20. The Rape of Europa
    All in all, an exciting and terrifying new perspective on an era you probably thought you understood.
  21. Monsoon Wedding
    Monsoon Wedding is going to be a big art-house hit because it's one of those movies that reassures audiences that people in other countries are just like us.
  22. Broken Embraces
    This really is Cruz's movie: Almodóvar is her North Star -- following his lead, she's always found her surest and most graceful footing as an actress.
  23. Kandahar
    A stark and beautiful film traces a Afghan woman's journey across a landscape we may never understand.
  24. Adventureland
    Mottola (who also wrote the script) and his actors manage to shape the movie into something whole and tangible, capturing, among other things, the shapeless listlessness of summer, especially at that age when you're technically an adult and yet you're left waiting for life to begin.
  25. Every Little Step
    Given that "Chorus Line" is almost the paradigmatic backstage story, I guess Every Little Step is a meta-backstage story, capturing the "American Idol"-scale audition process.
  26. Inside Man
    It's Foster who rules the movie like an ice queen.
  27. Chico & Rita
    A dazzling and delightful work of modernist animation, a classic movie romance and a hip-swinging, finger-popping tale of musical revolution, Chico & Rita is the first big serendipitous surprise of 2012.
  28. Guardians of the Galaxy
    It’s a high-spirited, swashbuckling lark driven by cartoonish special effects and an ingenious double-layered nostalgia that allows it to become a virtual mixtape of ‘70s hits that predate its intended audience: “Hooked on a Feeling,” “The Piña Colada Song,” “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” etc.
  29. The Hunter
    A lean, disturbing and beautifully photographed thriller from writer, director and actor Rafi Pitts, who was born in Tehran, educated in Britain and did his filmmaking apprenticeship in France, working for Jean-Luc Godard and Leos Carax.
  30. 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.
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