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. 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.
  2. Pee-wee's Big Adventure
    Everything about Pee-wee's Big Adventure, from its toy-box colors to its superb, hyperanimated Danny Elfman score to the butch-waxed hairdo and wooden-puppet walk of its star and mastermind, Pee-wee Herman, is pure pleasure.
  3. Hotel
    If you're ready to roll with Hotel and take what it gives you, there's some rich entertainment here.
  4. The Girl Next Door
    Lost the friskiness and wildness and charm the movie might have had.
  5. He's Just Not That Into You
    Boring at best and insidious at worst.
  6. The Matrix Revolutions
    Isn't a terrible movie, but it is a tremendous disappointment.
  7. In the Land of Women
    The picture is so gentle, it barely leaves an impression.
  8. Jennifer's Body
    So contemptuous toward its own characters, and its audience, that it chokes off any visceral thrills it might have offered. The movie substitutes calculation for brains, and the filmmakers seem to think we'll all be too stupid to notice.
  9. Bad Teacher
    It's all just an embarrassment, the kind of pointless slog you'll encounter on Netflix in two years and wonder, How the hell did that get made?
  10. Lions for Lambs
    This is a weird movie hybrid, both a tasteful picture and an angry one.
  11. Heartbreakers
    Mirkin hits just the right note between naughty and raunchy.
  12. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    Legally Blonde was content to tickle you. The new one is something akin to a band that has a surprisingly successful debut deciding to rerecord all their originals and release a "Greatest Hits" collection for their second CD. It's both familiar and off.
  13. Ladder 49
    Might have been an oversized Hollywood dazzler. Phoenix keeps it firmly and modestly on a human scale.
  14. The Architect
    It's a compact and symmetrical picture with all its plot points in the right places, but I never found it convincing in the slightest.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Burlesque
    Anyone heading to Burlesque expecting it to live up to the standards of "Showgirls" is in for some serious disappointment: Burlesque isn't good, mind you, but it isn't the kind of bad that inspires midnight screenings and drinking games and Halloween costumes.
  16. Pushing Tin
    Almost always a pleasure to watch. Pushing Tin is, essentially, a western -- Cusack really is the fastest gun in the West.
  17. Swing Vote
    A maddeningly indistinct picture.
  18. Choke
    A fantastical sex farce, and a highly amusing one at that, without being the least bit momentous or memorable.
  19. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    Redford glances too lightly off the story's racial questions. You could call that approach "eminently tasteful" if you're looking for a nice substitute for "wimpy."
  20. The Shipping News
    Spacey mucks up an otherwise pretty and pleasantly vague take on E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
  21. Shall We Dance
    The movie feels choppy and rhythmless. And he's (Chelsom) rather hopeless at dance sequences.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Primal Fear
    It should have been sent straight to video. As a courtroom drama, it stumbles from one ludicrous howler to another. Were the movie's "legal technical advisers" on another planet while the rest of the world was learning about legal procedure courtesy of the O.J. trial?
  23. The Day After Tomorrow
    Despite the fact that The Day After Tomorrow is harnessed to the very real threat of global warming, it's still just a big, dumb movie, another Hollywood entertainment that, instead of tweaking and teasing our brains for fun, leaves us feeling thick and stupid.
  24. The Legend of Zorro
    The picture is almost shamefully entertaining, bold and self-effacing at once: Its intelligence reveals itself as a devilish gleam, not a pompous layer of shellac. Why can't more Hollywood movies be like this one?
  25. 27 Dresses
    The biggest disappointment of 27 Dresses is that it inhabits a Harlequin romance New York City, one remarkably short on homosexuals and divorce.
  26. 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.
  27. Blade
    Blade in no way resembles a good movie, but its combination of music-video bombast, goth-rock sensibility, high-tech industrial production design, cold-blooded glossy magazine visuals, high-fashion club culture, horror movies, blaxploitation movies, Hong Kong movies and comic-book nihilism make it diverting trash.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Practical Magic
    Like the rest of this new breed of witch story, it's about sisterhood instead of the supreme allure of housewifery, but like all too many witch movies (old and new), it's really just a self-congratulatory paean to banality and shrunken horizons.
  29. Black and White
    Toback's method of presenting the evidence without judgment backfires, finally appearing just as shapeless as the movie's structure.
  30. Man on Fire
    It's dispiriting to see good actors doing smart, solid work with so much unadulterated garbage swirling around them. Scott's art is also death, and we, the audience, are the ones he's jabbing at with his ruthless paintbrush. It's about time someone told him where to stick it.
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