Salon's Scores

Select another publication »
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 1.2 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
view
per page
  1. Child 44
    Ultimately I’m going to vote with my heart and say you should see it, largely for the brooding, physical performance of Tom Hardy, an actor still a shade too peculiar for Hollywood stardom, along with the ominous evocation of Stalin’s Russia on the cusp of change. But that recommendation comes with many asterisks, and in various respects Child 44 is a lost opportunity or, as they teach us to say in film-critic academy, an “interesting failure.”
  2. The Dead Lands
    Once you get past an awkward and artificial beginning and roll with the movie’s crazy rhythm, The Dead Lands is also a blast, and one that delivers an unexpected emotional wallop along with gore, thrills and spectacular scenery.
  3. 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.
  4. Clouds of Sils Maria
    Kristen Stewart doesn’t screw it up. She’s in on the joke, but she never plays Valentine as a joke. She’s alive and alert and present in every second of screen time, alongside one of the greatest living European actresses, working not for herself but for the benefit of a strange, imperfect and sometimes brilliant film. There’s nothing more you can ask.
  5. About Elly (2009)
    As with the Antonioni film that Farhadi has so ingeniously turned to his purposes, you shouldn’t go see About Elly hoping for a Hitchcock-style thriller that will answer all your narrative questions. But if “L’Avventura” is a deliberately frustrating portrait of European postwar anomie and a study in abstract, black-and-white composition, About Elly is more dynamic and more realistic.
  6. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
    A memorable, haunting and highly original American movie.
  7. Welcome to New York
    Lurid but compelling.
  8. Get Hard
    Cohen had neither the chops nor the clout to prevent Get Hard from ending up, no doubt through the normal process of producer rewrites, focus groups, worried agents and weevil infestations, as a confused and contradictory mess. More to the point, it’s almost never funny, and full of elementary screenwriting blunders.
  9. Backcountry
    Another way of reading a movie like this is that it channels our ancient hatred of nature while recognizing that it’s essentially nostalgic, and that the occasional hungry ursine cannot compete with the animal we really have reason to fear.
  10. The Gunman
    It’s clearly a directorial accomplishment to assemble this level of acting talent in one movie and come away with something so – well, “bad” is not sufficient to capture the idiot glory of this motion picture.
  11. It Follows
    It Follows pretty much earns its buzz as the scariest and best-engineered American horror movie of recent years, and that’s all down to Mitchell’s sophisticated understanding of technique and the trust and freedom he accords his youthful cast.
  12. Cymbeline
    If this willfully peculiar and daring Cymbeline isn’t to all tastes, it brings back the blood, the thrills and the sense of moral discovery to a long-neglected work.
  13. Chappie
    It’s not just that Chappie is a mishmash of familiar ingredients whose story quickly slides off the rails into a swamp of action-movie clichés, or another misbegotten project from the Land of Intriguing Premises. It doesn’t have an intriguing premise in the first place. It’s cluttered, goofy and incoherent from beginning to end, and much too long.
  14. Buzzard
    Love it, hate it or tolerate it with reluctance, Buzzard has a ruthless clarity of vision, and breaks new ground in pushing character-based comedy right to the edge of profound discomfort.
  15. '71
    It’s a riveting, man-on-the-run genre movie, almost a combination of “Black Hawk Down” and “After Hours,” rather than an allegory or a historical treatise.
  16. Bluebird
    A delicate and affecting drama with grace notes of mystery and redemption.
  17. Wild Canaries
    The 21st-century combo of screwball comedy and half-baked thriller in Wild Canaries isn’t exactly like anything you’ve seen before, and it offers an unpredictable ride that’s kind of fun, or at least sporadically simulates fun.
  18. Fifty Shades of Grey
    I wouldn’t say that Taylor-Johnson has made a good movie from Fifty Shades of Grey, precisely. That’s asking too much. But she and Marcel have risen to the challenge of this bizarre cultural moment with an odd and memorable film.
  19. Jupiter Ascending
    It has the kind of jumbled, pseudo-spectacular, overdecorated digital design that the eye and mind can’t really take in. Individual shots can be gorgeous, but there are just too damn many of them, and the overall experience is the visual equivalent of eating an entire wedding cake.
  20. Seventh Son
    It’s a thoroughly incoherent, generally inane and surprisingly entertaining tale of witches and monsters and what legendary film critic Joe Bob Briggs calls “beast fu,” all set in a sub-Tolkien, sub-“Game of Thrones” pseudo-medieval universe.
  21. Timbuktu
    An extraordinary accomplishment, a heartbreaking, visually spectacular and largely accessible work from a cinematic master who is more than ready for international attention.
  22. Amira & Sam
    Amira & Sam came along and swept me off my feet, like Fabio riding a stallion. It largely works thanks to Starr and Shihabi, a pair of likable and restrained actors who build slowly from tangible discomfort toward an unexpected passionate chemistry.
  23. Mommy
    There’s so much that is brilliant and unexpected and often downright thrilling about Mommy, the fifth feature (a fact amazing in itself) from 25-year-old Quebec enfant terrible Xavier Dolan.
  24. Song One
    This is a sweet-tempered and small movie that’s not remotely trying to be hip.
  25. Gangs of Wasseypur
    As a rich and exuberant character-driven crime saga in an idiom you absolutely have not encountered before, and a dense, unsentimental portrayal of the collision between democracy, capitalism and gangsterism on the frayed margins of the post-colonial world, Gangs of Wasseypur is a signal achievement in 21st-century cinema.
  26. Appropriate Behavior
    Akhavan turns out to be a distinctive and oddly charismatic performer with exquisite comic timing.
  27. Leviathan
    Leviathan, the fourth feature from Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev, may be the one true masterpiece of global cinema released in 2014.
  28. A Most Violent Year
    It’s all just a little more boring than it ought to be.
  29. Selma
    The scenes with Johnson and Wallace, although intrinsically interesting, drag down the drama somewhat, and...every minute we're away from the firecracker atmosphere of rural Alabama detracts from the overall impact.
  30. Unbroken
    A rousing old-fashioned yarn with numerous exciting set-pieces and an uncomplicated hero you root for all the way through. It’s entertaining throughout and made with a high level of technical skill. If made 40 years ago, it would have been a leading Oscar contender and a huge hit, whereas today it’s a bit “meh” in both categories
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »