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. True Story
    There’s enough unfulfilled possibility in True Story to make it an intriguing introduction to this story of deception and self-deception, but the balance between true-crime cable soap and the darker, richer layers of Franco’s performance never quite adds up.
  2. The Road to Guantanamo
    At the risk of retreating into Waffle House aesthetic relativism, I think the unsettling power of Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross' film stems from its contradictions.
  3. 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.
  4. The Great Debaters
    About midway through Denzel Washington's new film The Great Debaters comes a raw and terrifying scene that exemplifies why the movie's worth seeing, despite its hackneyed and awkward story.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Capital
    Uneven as Capital is, unlike so many films about capitalism it’s never boring and is unafraid of its point of view.
  6. Gone Baby Gone
    Ben Affleck is smart about setting the scene -- he's even better at it than Clint Eastwood was in another Lehane adaptation, "Mystic River." But he's less adept at defining individual personalities, at making us care about the characters who deserve our sympathy -- or, maybe more important, the ones who don't.
  7. State and Main
    At its best, State and Main is fast and sharp, but when a movie like this goes off the rails, it's more disappointing than when a bad movie does.
  8. Collateral
    If you boil the psychology of Collateral down to its essence, what you get, mostly, is Vincent badgering Max for not having enough chutzpah -- in essence, for not being enough of a tough guy.
  9. The Place Beyond the Pines
    I never stopped being interested in The Place Beyond the Pines, and never stopped rooting for Cianfrance to make the hubristic ambition of his immense tripartite scheme pay off, even as it evidently falls apart.
  10. Yes
    For the most part Yes buzzes with visual life and imagination.
  11. The Last Kiss
    The Last Kiss is more a capable-craftsman film than a work of genuine dramatic insight, but here and there it opens a window onto the terror and wonder of grown-up life, one its characters don't especially want to look through.
  12. Valentine
    OK, so Valentine is, like, this new serial-killer movie that totally blows. But kind of in a good way. Like, it's funny.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Batman & Robin
    There's something almost maniacally heroic about packaging the fourth sequel of a superhero action series without resorting to the old standbys of good writing, capable acting or inspired directing.
  14. Underworld
    The funny thing about all this is that a half-hour into Underworld I couldn't wait for it to be over. When it really was over, I couldn't wait for the next installment. Go figure.
  15. A Civil Action
    Millions of people read Harr's gripping bestseller, but Steven Zaillian may be the only one who didn't understand it.
  16. Enigma
    Director Michael Apted does a smooth, competent job, but like almost all his work, Enigma lacks excitement and a vivid personality.
  17. Bean
    Whatever the reason, Bean saddles Atkinson with a story that hangs on him like a dead weight and a filmmaking style that surrounds him like dead air.
  18. Down to Earth
    The Weitzes haven't come up with a masterpiece in Down to Earth, but they have put their stamp on a perfectly pleasant 90-minute diversion
  19. Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
    Greenwald isn't capable of the magisterial, mournful manner of, say, Eugene Jarecki's "Why We Fight," but the two films would make a natural double bill.
  20. Black Hawk Down
    An endless battle scene in search of a movie. It's every bit as harrowing -- and also every bit as pointless and misguided -- as the botched military mission it depicts.
  21. Girl with a Pearl Earring
    What's the point of setting up a historical fantasia around an invented character if you're only going to make her part of the scenery?
  22. The Valet
    A sunny, cheerful, thoroughly artificial concoction, going nowhere with no particular speed. Still, better than your average airplane movie.
  23. He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not
    Not half as clever as its setup leads you to think it might be: It's all buildup and no payoff, the kind of romantic thriller in which if just one sensible character called the police at the moment as any normal human being would -- well, then, you wouldn't have a movie.
  24. Brooklyn's Finest
    An agreeably chewy, pulpy work of old-fashioned crime cinema, a fair bit overcooked and overlong, but worth catching for its acting, its atmosphere and its action set-pieces.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    U Turn
    There's no overt message in this fatuous montage of crowd-pleasing brutality, just double and triple crosses, gory shoot-outs set to ironically cheerful Peggy Lee songs and tons of horrific, technicolor Americana.
  26. The Door in the Floor
    It's nearly impossible to tell whether Williams thought he was making a family tragedy or a sex farce.
  27. Funny Games (2008)
    Haneke's new Funny Games has a current of bleak humor that comes through more clearly when you're not reading subtitles. It remains a horrifying, implacable mind-fuck, liable to be widely misunderstood and widely despised.
  28. Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
    Many years in the making, Freida Lee Mock's documentary Wrestling With Angels paints an intimate and detailed portrait of playwright Tony Kushner, in the years since he became the most important living American dramatist. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this is something of a booby prize.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Changing Lanes
    Despite some solid acting and cinematography -- mistakenly turns what should have been a fast-paced thriller into a cerebral sermon about the slippery slope of corporate law.
  30. Escape from Tomorrow
    Disney World, in this incoherent but often amazing work of American psychodrama, has a lot in common with the Overlook Hotel of “The Shining,” the Venice of “Death in Venice” and the booze-soaked Cuernavaca of “Under the Volcano.” It’s a zone of existential dread, the place where masculine dreams go to die, the place where the unburied ghosts of civilization rise up like Mouse-eared, three-fingered zombies and bite us in the ass.
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