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. Underworld: Evolution
    The plot is so convoluted that missing even five minutes at a stretch won't make any difference in your comprehension of the story.
  2. City by the Sea
    Robert De Niro and Frances McDormand almost rescue this lifeless, clichéd cop drama! Close isn't good enough!
  3. The Machinist
    Bale gives a remarkable performance in a movie I can recommend to no one, because the sight of him is more distressing than any of the allegedly deep themes of the picture.
  4. Darling Companion
    The doggie in Darling Companion is a big, warm bundle of puppy love; his owners are lost forever in a big chill.
  5. Chill Factor
    A movie that wants to be "Speed" so badly that it runs roughshod over the essentials, including a decent script.
  6. Gloria
    The most dispiriting thing about Gloria is that it's further evidence that filmmakers just don't know what to do with Sharon Stone.
  7. Amelia
    Amelia is a stunted epic, an ambitious and handsome-looking picture that tells its story in the dullest, most confusing way possible.
  8. Batman Begins
    Needs much more energy and kinetic flow -- less dolor and more dolomite.
  9. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
    An offshoot of a popular computer game, is really all about inducing visual awe. And for the first few minutes, it does.
  10. Sex Tape
    An awkward and distinctly unsexy farcical misfire.
  11. The Avengers
    What I see in The Avengers, unfortunately, is a diminished film despite its huge scale, and kind of a bore.
  12. Black and White
    Toback's method of presenting the evidence without judgment backfires, finally appearing just as shapeless as the movie's structure.
  13. Inception
    For the most part "Inception" is a handsome, clever and grindingly self-serious boy-movie, shorn of imagination, libido, spirituality or emotional depth. Nolan establishes a fascinating world, loaded with trapdoors, symbols and hidden secrets, and then squanders the opportunity on an overpriced "Twilight Zone" episode.
  14. The Town
    Given the debased standards of action cinema these days this might be enough to make The Town a hit. But almost everything else about the movie is badly off balance, starting with Affleck's decision to cast himself as the implacably sexy and good-hearted Doug.
  15. Evolution
    Proceeds at such an amiable pace and features enough creepy-crawly effects that many viewers won't quite notice or care how rickety and second-rate it is.
  16. First Sunday
    First Sunday is simply a case of wasting gifted performers on material that feels slapped together and unshaped.
  17. The Hunger Games
    The Hunger Games has some cool moments here and there, and is never entirely dreadful. Lawrence is both radiant and triumphant. They haven't screwed it up badly enough to kill it, although they've tried.
  18. Storytelling
    Todd Solondz's newest debacle drips with contempt for his audience, his characters and his critics.
  19. What Happens in Vegas
    As it is, it's too restrained, too often -- too eager to gallop toward postcard sunsets on the beach when tequila shooters and lap dances are what the moment calls for. You'd think the combination of Diaz, Kutcher and Vegas would be good for at least a little sexy, silly fun. But don't bet on it.
  20. The Back-up Plan
    A dispiriting and thoroughly ineffective romantic comedy, with some juicy morsels provided around the edges by a great supporting cast but no heat whatever in the central coupling between Lopez and Aussie TV hunk Alex O'Loughlin.
  21. Enduring Love
    If Enduring Love doesn't make sense as a thriller, it's equally nonsensical as the parable it wants to be.
  22. Stop-Loss
    A filmmaker's personal connection to the material doesn't necessarily mean that the resulting picture will be any good, and Stop-Loss is so dramatically tedious that it feels remote instead of resonant.
  23. Under the Tuscan Sun
    The movie has some sex in it, and yet it's as unsexy as a rusty old olive oil can (minus the olive oil).
  24. Limitless
    Begins as pseudo-realism before descending into weird and mangled wank-job fantasy.
  25. Milk
    I can admire the professional flexibility that leads Van Sant from slow-motion, half-experimental works like "Paranoid Park" or "Last Days" to an inspirational, Oscar-season package like Milk, but I wish he could split the difference between his two modes more effectively.
  26. Picture Perfect
    What Picture Perfect sells as romance is a junior high school health class morality lecture we all got years ago. And it was a crock then, too.
  27. Man on the Moon
    Too conventional to capture Kaufman's insanity and too haphazard, too shapeless, to recapture Kaufman's energy in any meaningful way.
  28. Killers
    Somehow Kutcher and Heigl and Tom Selleck and Catherine O'Hara (as her parents) are all fun to watch a fair amount of the time, without the movie they're in being any good at all.
  29. Flightplan
    An exercise in edgy tedium, and even though it's only 90 minutes or so, it seems to last longer than an actual transatlantic flight. If you bring an eye mask and a few sleeping pills, you should get through it OK. A magazine or book wouldn't hurt, either. It'll be over before you know it.
  30. Sweet November
    Does neither of its leads any favors. But they fill their roles admirably, and then some. Time and again, in a movie that repeatedly threatens mawkishness, you can sense them gently steering away just in the nick of time.
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