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 1.3 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
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  1. Girlfight
    A little more flair and polish could have made Girlfight a terrific movie instead of just the decent one it is.
  2. Owning Mahowny
    Just doesn't give us enough to hold onto, perhaps partly because it's executed with so much restraint and subtlety. It's often a tense, uncomfortable little movie.
  3. In & Out
    The movie swirls around Kline a little too much -- he's a brilliant comic actor, but he isn't allowed to cut loose as much as we'd like, to show us the slightly loony person we know is lurking beneath this ultrasane. character's veneer.
  4. The Revisionaries
    One of the great things about Scott Thurman's film - a low-budget but thoroughly watchable documentary, largely funded on Kickstarter – is that it helped me see the world from McLeroy's point of view, which I might previously have considered impossible.
  5. Late August, Early September
    Assayas' triumph here is in making sense of confusion and emotional drift -- bringing his characters gently forward into life, and making the film feel full and rounded while still resisting easy resolution.
  6. House of Sand
    It's an impressive film, beautifully photographed and marvelously acted. But is it more than a set of undeniably gorgeous affectations?
  7. Turn Me On, Dammit!
    This yarn about an innocent-looking but desperately horny teenage girl might not have that much commercial upside, but its bittersweet, faintly depressed brand of Nordic humor is definitely enjoyable.
  8. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
    It needs to seem cool enough that we want to watch it despite its obvious silliness, and viewed through that prism of canny analysis, the craftsmanship of “Winter Soldier” is first rate.
  9. Primary Colors
    A slack, tepid picture stuck in a no man's land between satire and drama.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Better Living Through Circuitry
    In this floor-level view of the rave scene, director Jon Reiss keeps it pumping, humming, buzzing and spinning.
  11. 10 Things I Hate About You
    What really elevates it, though, is the film's sharp wit and tender heart, both of which are conveyed beautifully by the fresh-faced cast.
  12. Thirteen
    If you boil Thirteen down to its flimsy bones, you'll find that it's not really so much about peer pressure in contemporary teen life as it is a story about a classic bad egg. That right there dilutes its highfalutin aspirations.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Personal Velocity: Three Portraits
    The thing I took away from that opening was that it was small, and looked beautiful. There was some technique and a little confusion. It didn't seem to have a conflict all plotted out and neatly resolved. The thing I didn't like is that the rest of the movie did.
  14. Freaky Friday
    Even though this is a light, cheerful picture about family relationships, it never feels overplayed -- its tone is bright without being garish. And it moves breezily.
  15. Sleep Tight
    Sleep Tight, first of all, is a nifty new Euro-horror film, with several wicked-cold Hitchcockian twists, that shows off the range and craft of terrific Spanish director Jaume Balagueró, co-founder of the "[Rec]" franchise (still the gold standard in found-footage horror).
  16. Merry Christmas
    It's a profoundly moving story of -- yes! -- the human spirit rising above horrible circumstances, and simultaneously a work of nostalgia for the gentlemen's war that marked the end, or the beginning of the end, of Christian Europe's world domination.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    eXistenZ
    Cronenberg, who both wrote and directed, is out to fool you -- to give you just enough information to let you figure out what's going on, and then bluff you out of using it. The movie, in other words, is a game itself.
  18. Gunner Palace
    A nerve-jangling work of visual poetry and ironic juxtaposition, and a powerful human story of a group of brave young Americans.
  19. The Skin I Live In
    It's as stylish and kinky as you could want, but compared to his recent female-centric melodramas ("Broken Embraces," "Volver," "All About My Mother"), this is a chilly genre exercise that casts his obsession with gender and sexuality in a harsh new light.
  20. Curse of the Golden Flower
    Another remarkable chapter in the career of Asia's most important living filmmaker. After "Pan's Labyrinth," this is the movie to see this season.
  21. Rock the Bells
    Tense, hilarious and totally serendipitous.
  22. Post Tenebras Lux
    I also understood that while this movie is deliberately constructed so that almost nobody will “get it” or like it – and I’m not sure how I feel about that perversity – it’s a masterpiece despite that, or because of that or just anyway.
  23. How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)
    A loving tribute to one of the strangest and most enjoyable figures to emerge from American pop culture in its entire history.
  24. Elephant
    Elephant is not as bad as the National Rifle Association's decision to hold a pro-gun rally near Columbine High School shortly after the killings. Unlike the NRA, Van Sant doesn't have blood on his hands. But he shares something of its callousness.
  25. The Science of Sleep
    No one who sees it will confuse it with anything else. Fans of Gondry's DIY low-tech aesthetic, which he blends, as always, with exceptionally sophisticated animation techniques, will adore it.
  26. Love Songs
    You could describe Love Songs, as a blend of François Truffaut's wistful Parisian sentimentalism and Pedro Almodóvar's acrid polysexual comedy, which were never far apart to begin with (given the difference in climate and native temperament between France and Spain).
  27. The Syrian Bride
    An extraordinary social comedy.
  28. Strange Culture
    Lynn Hershman hasn't reached much of an audience, which makes the modest national rollout of her fascinating Strange Culture a noteworthy event.
  29. Doubt
    Shanley offers no resolution to this Sharks vs. Jets conflict. For that, we have to wait for "Doubt! The Musical."
  30. Informant
    [An] evenhanded and carefully crafted documentary.
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