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. Duplicity
    The structure of Duplicity is its own worst enemy.
  2. Failure to Launch
    Deschanel may not be as brilliant as the great comedian Gracie Allen (and, at any rate, it's too soon to tell). But her Rube Goldberg timing (which only seems indirect) and blissfully zonked demeanor suggest the spirit of Allen. She's the only actor in Failure to Launch who isn't earthbound; she leaves everyone else in the dust simply by hanging back.
  3. The Nanny Diaries
    An adamantly unterrible picture, a reasonably enjoyable diversion.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Night Falls on Manhattan
    The problem -- as anyone who gets home from the movie in time to catch even a portion of "NYPD Blue" can tell you -- is that the genre that Lumet invented has buried him alive.
  5. Goya's Ghosts
    The whole thing is handsomely mounted, with plenty of Goya paintings and supposed observations about the ironies of history and the cyclical nature of life, etc. Forman's always been a huckster, but I never thought I'd see him waste this many good actors on a movie this bad.
  6. C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America
    Of course, the very existence of someone like Willmott -- a black university professor who can make an angry, ruthless satire about American racism with impunity -- suggests that we're still a long way from living in the CSA.
  7. Tomorrow Never Dies
    The movie is efficient but scores zero in suspense, wit or class.
  8. Yang Ban Xi: The 8 Modelworks
    Perhaps understandably, these artifacts of a vastly different ideological and economic era -- have become kitsch objects, the focus of a half-horrified nostalgia, in the midst of the feverish Chinese boom.
  9. One Last Kiss
    It's in no way a stupid movie. The trouble is that there's only so much emotional energy you can expend on these assholes before you start wondering why you're paying attention to them at all.
  10. In Praise of Love
    Gives no indication that Jean-Luc Godard has anything left to say that is worth hearing, no indication that he has any drive or passion to continue making movies. What's on the screen is habit -- accomplished, rote, empty.
  11. Memoirs of a Geisha
    There's no life, no juice, in the picture. Instead of tempting you into submission, it merely drugs you. It's surprising that a filmmaker who gave us such a lively debut, "Chicago," could slap us with a picture as dull and worthy as this one.
  12. Antwone Fisher
    There's nothing in either the conception or execution to lift it above a TV-movie tear-jerker.
  13. Get Him to the Greek
    An uneven but surprising movie, often outrageously funny and just as often completely flat.
  14. There Will Be Blood
    There are epic impulses everywhere you look in There Will Be Blood; what's missing is character development, focused storytelling and, most significantly (apart from that terrific opening sequence), any sense of raw, intuitive drama.
  15. American Psycho
    (Harron) has made a passionless movie about a passionless man, and it's all supposed to add up to make us feel or even just think something, but what?
  16. 1408
    One night in 1408 stretches out until it ends up feeling more like a routine three-day business trip. The scariest thing in it may be the way the clock radio has a way of turning itself on, loudly, of its own accord. The song is always the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." Now THAT'S horror.
  17. Life of Pi
    I felt like I'd been invited to a seven-course dinner, and all seven turned out to be cake – and then the host insisted on delivering a lecture about how cake would bring me closer to God.
  18. The Baytown Outlaws
    I'm not sure whether to recommend The Baytown Outlaws as a guns 'n' glory time-waster or warn you off it as a piece of mendacious trash. So I'll do both.
  19. The Matrix Revolutions
    Isn't a terrible movie, but it is a tremendous disappointment.
  20. Crossing Over
    A disappointing picture that suffers from all manner of ills: Both the direction and the dialogue are stiff and awkward, and Kramer -- who also wrote the script -- crams too many not-believable-enough subplots into the movie's "Crash"-style construction. Yet Crossing Over is an interesting failure.
  21. Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
    Suffers from a lack of conviction.
  22. The Spy Next Door
    There's nothing wrong with Chan's making a silly comedy for kids. But he's got more in him than grinning, nodding and falling down a lot. All he needs is a filmmaker who's ready to let him to make that leap.
  23. Nowhere Man
    I'm always grateful to practice a little affirmative action on behalf of grade-C sleaze movies with a budget you could probably locate in your sofa cushions or your dryer, and Tim McCann's digital-video opus Nowhere Man is a fine example of the species.
  24. Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
    A very mixed bag. Despite some faint gestures in the direction of journalistic balance, it plays a lot like a two-hour infomercial for the Playboy publisher's historical importance, philosophical depth and personal greatness.
  25. Duets
    A simple entertainment that's by and large carried on the backs of its actors, some who are wonderful and others who are merely likable.
  26. Letters from Iwo Jima
    Eastwood is so busy humanizing Japanese soldiers that he ends up rewriting history.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fargo
    To the extent that the joke is on us, the audience, and the decadent taste we've acquired for flashy violence, it works; point taken.
  28. Monsters vs Aliens
    Even in 3D, as the picture is being shown in some theaters -- Ginormica is a disappointingly flat character.
  29. The Time Traveler's Wife
    Although it's supposed to be supremely romantic, there's no daring in it, no go-for-broke passion. It's a nice little movie about romantic compulsion, just big enough to fit in a teacup.
  30. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
    I suspect this guy can make a good movie if he learns the right lessons; he's made about half of one here. But the praise heaped upon A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is way too much, way too soon.
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