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. The Raid 2
    Much as I enjoyed watching most of it, I was deeply grateful when it was over and feel no strong desire to see the inevitable “Raid 3.”
  2. Fast Five
    Fast Five is a fantasy that in no way resembles real life; ordinary morality doesn't apply, and the audience knows that as well as the filmmakers do.
  3. View from the Top
    There's a good chance that it will make you laugh, but even if it doesn't, you have to give Barreto credit for respecting his audience. The movie's jokes have a light, springy touch; if one doesn't tickle you, it sails by quickly to make room for the next one.
  4. A Most Violent Year
    It’s all just a little more boring than it ought to be.
  5. Last Life in the Universe
    Much of the pleasure of the movie is the way its mood lingers with you afterward.
  6. Green Zone
    This is a movie that recognizes there's no straight line to the truth, which is part of what makes it vaguely unsatisfying -- though it's also what keeps it honest.
  7. Return to Me
    Almost seems like a godsend in this age of romantic-comedy schmaltz.
  8. 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.
  9. Drama/Mex
    Gerardo Naranjo's deliriously trashy Drama/Mex may not do much to burnish the international prestige of Mexican cinema, but it's an entertaining blend of obvious influences, from softcore cable-TV porn to Tarantino to "Less Than Zero" and "Leaving Las Vegas."
  10. The Wrestler
    Whatever Aronofsky did -- or didn't -- do, Rourke's performance comes off beautifully. The Wrestler may not be the "best" Aronofsky movie in any technical sense. But the director clearly feels a great deal of tenderness toward his lead character.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Prefontaine
    This is filmmaking in a higher-IQ Disney style, frequently verging on terminal sappiness, all heart-quickening-guitar-music, coming-around-the-last-turn, legs-pumping-toward-glory stuff.
  12. Boiler Room
    Made with confidence that borders on bravado, and sometimes it shows more conviction than it does grace.
  13. The Gingerbread Man
    Branagh is appealing here in the way we remember from movie heroes of the '30s: cynical, wisecracking and wised-up.
  14. Princesas
    Candela Peña is sensational in the leading role, and the film is big-hearted, poetic, sweet, sad and romantic.
  15. Highway Courtesans
    Not many documentaries about poverty in the developing world are so hopeful; you can't help wondering what Brabbée's camera will find among the Bachara in another decade.
  16. Sleuth
    Sleuth is well acted, and directed by Branagh with chilly, distant ingenuity. It has a certain edge and daring, or more to the point it pretends to.
  17. Down Terrace
    When it's all over and you don't have to spend any more time smoking pot with Karl and Bill in their horrid little house, you may feel the elation of tragic catharsis. Then again, you may feel as if you just drank a bottle of drain opener; the difference between those states is subtle.
  18. Cold Souls
    Works precisely because its ambitions are somewhat mellow; this isn't a relentlessly high-strung picture. Barthes and Giamatti do more with less, turning the idea of excessive navel-gazing into a kind of game.
  19. Who Killed the Electric Car?
    By the end of Who Killed the Electric Car? you'll be worked into a lather one way or another. Paine crams in more theories, ideas and arguments than the movie can easily hold, but that's OK with me.
  20. Outsourced
    Simply too bright and pleasant to become a huge hit, but it's a confident little genre film with near-classic charm.
  21. The Blue Room
    Amalric and cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne structure much of The Blue Room around Julien’s bewildered and increasingly disheveled face, as he tries (and fails) to understand the people around him.
  22. Southland Tales
    If it arrives in final form as (still) a total mess, it's such a passionate and ambitious mess -- overcrowded with extraordinary images, incomprehensible ideas, literary and pop-cultural references and colliding subplots -- that it transcends its adolescent awkwardness and approaches being magnificent.
  23. Good Dick
    A dark, sweet and sophisticated confection.
  24. Nil by Mouth
    This film is a portrait, and it's a mesmerizing, unforgettable one. The story of how a boy like Gary Oldman comes out of this world and becomes something different -- that's a drama, but perhaps its end has yet to be written.
  25. Glory Road
    When a movie plays every card, it's bound to win a hand or two. You can't exactly call that approach craftsmanship. But in the case of the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced inspirational sports drama Glory Road, it at least amounts to a kind of blunt effectiveness.
  26. Crazy, Stupid, Love
    Richer and more enjoyable than the other lame-stream comedies Hollywood has churned out this summer, even though it doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be when it grows up.
  27. Blood and Chocolate
    Never having read the book, I found Blood and Chocolate to be a lovely surprise, an imaginative and visually lush picture firmly rooted in the tradition of gothic romance and elegiac horror films about misunderstood monsters.
  28. Black Book
    It's a messy, colorful big-screen entertainment that veers from sober period piece to outrageous melodrama, which is to say it's a Verhoeven movie.
  29. Lilya 4-Ever
    Not without its own bleak integrity. But the movie wipes you out and leaves you with nothing, not even the feeling of exaltation that can be present in the most tragic works of art.
  30. Savages
    Savages is enjoyable in a way that's almost but not quite intentional camp; it's like eating a dinner made by a 7-year-old, with cake for every course, interspersed with Jell-O, Pepperidge Farm goldfish and chocolate sprinkles.
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