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 1.3 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. Hope Springs
    Hope Springs is an oddly ambitious blend of bland humor and startling insight into the realities of married life. It's something like Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage," as translated into the universe of the Lifetime Network.
  2. Exit Through the Gift Shop
    The British street artist's hilarious documentary is a head-spinning, wild ride.
  3. Dogma
    Kevin Smith's comic-religious fantasy turns out to be the sweetest hot-potato movie imaginable.
  4. 20 Feet from Stardom
    This is one of those moving, tragic and triumphant secret histories of American culture where the biggest surprise is that no one’s told it before.
  5. Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
    One of the most intriguing tangents in Mea Maxima Culpa involves the Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald, founder of the Servants of the Paraclete, a Catholic congregation established to help priests who were struggling with celibacy, alcoholism and other personal issues.
  6. The Hateful Eight
    My personal view is that Quentin Tarantino is now permanently high on his own supply, but you could just as well say that he has succeeded in reinventing the art film. Is it worth it to put yourself through the brutal and incoherent three-hour ordeal of The Hateful Eight for its moments of brilliance and its ultimate catharsis? Jesus, don’t look at me.
  7. The Impossible
    Both here and in "The Orphanage," Bayona reveals himself as a masterful genre stylist of almost unlimited talent and a storyteller addicted to sentimental happy endings that feel a bit sardonic. Like, it's all OK now – but just wait till next time!
  8. Ghost Town
    Ghost Town is a rarity, a contemporary romantic comedy that honors the traditions of the genre without checking them off some plasticized list. The picture is breathing, and alive, every minute.
  9. The Border
    Jack Nicholson is at his best playing a burned-out border patrol officer in a small Texas town.
  10. '71
    It’s a riveting, man-on-the-run genre movie, almost a combination of “Black Hawk Down” and “After Hours,” rather than an allegory or a historical treatise.
    • 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.
  12. Boys Don't Cry
    Gripping, and it's moving, but it isn't particularly subtle. There's a strong thread of tabloid drama running through its core -- but at least it's sensationalistic storytelling with a heart.
  13. 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.
  14. No Impact Man: The Documentary
    The movie is a hilarious, riveting must-see about a family as it breaks down almost all the way and then reinvents itself.
  15. John Dies at the End
    Is this an "indie" film with a deliberately messed-up chronology and an ambitious narrative you'll appreciate even more the second time through? Yes. Is this a deliberately trashy horror-comedy with a few decent jolts and several big laughs, best viewed with a gang of friends and a consciousness-altering agent of your choosing, parasitical or not? That too.
  16. Brand Upon the Brain!
    The result is giddy, exciting and hilarious, not quite like any artistic experience you've ever had.
  17. Rescue Dawn
    You can't watch this exciting movie without rooting for little Dieter, but decoding the lessons of his ambiguous story will take a lot longer.
  18. Wendy and Lucy
    Reichardt is a tremendously conscientious filmmaker, and not out to torture the audience. Yes, this is a fraught and agonizing story, but the way it ends, although heartbreaking, is absolutely right.
  19. The Young Unknowns
    It isn't a masterpiece; there are occasional clunkers in Jelski's dialogue (adapted from a play by Wolfgang Bauer) and the acting, although superior to maybe 85 percent of Hollywood movies, is a little uneven.
  20. Oblivion
    Oblivion is a technical triumph rather than a philosophical breakthrough, demonstrating how beautifully digital effects can be blended with real people and real sets, demonstrating that neither Tom Cruise nor the 1970s will ever die, and announcing the unexpected arrival of a major science-fiction director.
  21. Cinévardaphoto
    Varda's photography is a pure joy, but rereleasing this film four decades later, absent any commentary on the ironic distance between then and now, is a typically challenging gesture.
  22. Almost Famous
    Like rock 'n' roll itself, the movie's really all about girls. Even when -- no, especially when -- it's pretending not to be.
  23. The Wolverine
    Taken on its own terms The Wolverine is the cleanest, least pretentious and most satisfying superhero movie of the summer.
  24. Half Nelson
    It's a complex and defiant fable of American life run just slightly off the rails, delivering all the impact of "Crash" without the phony-baloney paradoxes or brick-in-the-face message delivery.
  25. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
    As a performance-art act of juvenile Id-fulfillment, it's magnificent.
  26. Machuca
    Wood's film works, first and foremost, as a powerful character drama; it's not trying to teach historical or ideological lessons.
  27. Midnight in Paris
    Allen seems to be paying attention in a way he hasn't always done in recent films, and has found a way to channel his often-caustic misanthropy, half-comic fear of death and anti-American bitterness into agreeable comic whimsy.
  28. Born Romantic
    Dancing, like being in love, sometimes means making a mess of things. Born Romantic makes glorious sense of that mess, trampled toes and all.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Children of the Revolution
    Children of the Revolution won't leave its audiences weak with laughter, but it should have the most perceptive among them arguing in the aisles.
  30. Cowboy Bebop the Movie: Knockin' on Heaven's Door
    There's something to be said for watching an animated movie not with the eyes of a child, but with those of a turned-on grownup.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »