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. Sicko
    While Sicko is the most persuasive and least aggravating of all of Moore's movies, it still bears many of the frustrating Moore earmarks -- most notably, a deliberately simplistic desire to render everything in black-and-white terms, as if he didn't trust his audience enough to follow him into some of the far more complex gray areas.
  2. Four Christmases
    Gordon's best not-so-secret weapons, though, are his two stars: Vaughn and Witherspoon are an inspired pairing, not least because they're such a mismatched set of salt-and-pepper shakers.
  3. Monsters, Inc.
    It's a nice movie. But Disney has never learned that "nice," especially in comedy, is a negative virtue.
  4. Charlie's Angels
    Who cares about the fate of privacy, of all things, when you can watch three sexy babes stamp out crime in zip-off suits and high-heeled boots?
  5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    Represents a failure of nerve: As if Gondry and Kaufman weren't sure that the story of Joel and Clementine would hold us, the doomed couple's unfolding-in-reverse romance is intercut with a subplot filled with zany touches.
  6. The Cats of Mirikitani
    An irresistible fable of reconciliation and forgiveness.
  7. The Turin Horse
    I left the theater oddly exhilarated - to see daylight again was so great! - and, odder still, eager to see it again (although perhaps not today). Tarr's films can be arduous, even wrenching, but they're not boring. Watching them is something like visiting the world's most fantastic art museum and taking an ice-cold shower, both at the same time.
  8. Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry
    Crisp, informative documentary.
  9. Scoop
    It's the kind of small pleasure that can make you feel intensely grateful.
  10. Janie Jones
    A compelling and unpretentious indie built around two wonderfully layered performances and straightforward storytelling. Give it a listen.
  11. Shattered Glass
    Smart, tightly coiled.
  12. Tickled
    It seems like it’s more about what happens after the tickling stops, which is also when Tickled stops being hilarious.
  13. On the Outs
    A scared-straight after-school special, but actually good.
  14. 2 Guns
    2 Guns is both enjoyable trash and a fascinating snapshot of Hollywood’s current mentality when it comes to the United States government.
  15. Been Rich All My Life
    Been Rich All My Life is something like the "Ballets Russes" of tap dancing. I'm delighted to report that the similarities include the fact that the Belles are transmitting their improvisatory "rhythm tap" style to generations of younger dancers.
  16. Elegy
    While excellent in many technical respects, is a muted, pretty, anesthetic concoction that's never fully satisfying.
  17. Big Bad Love
    It's made with an accurate and loving, but also wary and squinty-eyed, view of the South. If only the movie hung together better overall.
  18. Tears of the Black Tiger
    This is a scrapbook, a happy jumble, of many of the things we instinctively respond to in movies: color, shape, sound and movement, all intensified by heightened emotion.
  19. Friends with Benefits
    On the whole, Friends With Benefits is a rewarding summer diversion, albeit one that's fatally torn between what it wants to be -- riotous, anarchic and anti-moralistic -- and the disappointing wet-blanket formula it reverts to in the end.
  20. Take the Lead
    Its considerable charm lies in the way it fulfills, rather than bucks, our expectations.
  21. Only Human
    A movie that is never elegant but is often hysterically funny, and maintains a rabbit-on-speed pace that Hollywood comedy long ago abandoned.
  22. Sliding Doors
    At least entertaining enough to keep you amused for an hour or two.
  23. Descent
    It's a lot like a '70s exploitation movie, with its determination to seduce and shock the viewer with alternating currents of electrical stimulus, and its weird combination of arty arch-decadence and neo-Victorian moralizing.
  24. My One and Only
    Sweet, modest and quietly classy, it's the perfect late-summer entertainment -- and it also happens to feature the most relaxed and nuanced performance Renée Zellweger has given in years.
  25. Brave
    Moms and girls everywhere deserve this movie, absolutely, and I hope they have a great time. But they also deserve much more, and much better.
  26. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    However you respond to it, the fraught sexual and investigative chemistry between Mikael and Lisbeth is the most powerful ingredient of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The movie's second half is a capably executed but mostly by-the-numbers procedural.
  27. Side Effects
    It’s masterfully shot and edited, with a brooding soundtrack and a mysterious, dreamlike undertow – and, when all is revealed, it’s not even half as interesting as it seems to be.
  28. 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.
  29. Water Lilies
    Dismissed in some quarters as trash because it depicts a sexual act (of sorts) between two teenage girls, Water Lilies struck me instead as a hypnotic and wholly convincing look at teen culture from the inside, with all its courage, cruelty and unspoken codes of silence intact.
  30. Twilight
    Hardwicke still manages to find the sweet spot where Gothic literature and the iPod meet and make goo-goo eyes at each other. Without embarrassment, she and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg dig right into the almost generic simplicity of the story.
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