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 1.2 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
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  1. Giuliani Time
    While Keating's agenda is clearly hostile, and Giuliani's political committee is eagerly trying to do counter-propaganda, this isn't a campaign of character assassination or innuendo, but rather a dutifully constructed biographical film about a tremendously skilled prosecutor and politician.
  2. Russian Dolls
    As long as Klapisch keeps his characters pinballing each other from one Euro-capital to the next, Russian Dolls remains fun and charming, without ever seeming remotely serious or meaningful.
  3. Mission: Impossible III
    Clearly designed to be an action thriller with emotional underpinnings. But you can't get blood from a stone, no matter how hard you squeeze. And so Cruise, a huge box-office star, is the single bright, blinking emblem of the failure of Mission: Impossible III.
  4. Down in the Valley
    While Jacobson navigates the first half of Down in the Valley deftly, he loses his way in the second.
  5. The Proposition
    It's the kind of movie we don't often encounter these days, and actually never did: A dramatically dense and morally complicated work, it's also a highly pictorial wide-screen entertainment with a dynamite cast, channeling the legacy of John Ford and Sam Peckinpah (and maybe Joseph Conrad too).
  6. United 93
    It's an expertly made picture that I wish I could stamp out of my mind. What's the value of artistry that sucks the life out of you?
  7. Lady Vengeance
    Dense with pathos, poetry and humor, this is Park's finest work to date. His stomach-churning climax -- which depicts gruesome bloodshed without directly showing it -- simultaneously gratifies and indicts our most primitive instincts.
  8. Army of Shadows
    Not just one of the great films of the '60s but one of the great films, period -- and the chance to discover it at the beginning of the 21st century, in an era when we think we've seen it all, is an unquantifiable privilege.
  9. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
    Almost as exhilarating as it is depressing. Puiu's filmmaking technique is remarkable, and all the more so because it's almost invisible.
  10. Three Times
    In these three potent miniatures, Hou Hsiao-hsien suggests that time passes differently when you're deeply in love. He captures the mystical quality of that time on film, making us feel as if we're living in it, rather than simply watching it.
  11. American Dreamz
    The jokes in American Dreamz whiz by with speed and grace, and Weitz maintains control of the material every minute.
  12. Somersault
    I'm sure some people will be driven mad by the deliberate ambiguities of Somersault, and by its characters' near-total inability to understand themselves or express themselves. But to me, that makes it uncannily true to life.
  13. Kinky Boots
    A sweet-tempered, mildly entertaining picture.
  14. The Notorious Bettie Page
    A picture that's fully open to some pretty rough truths. But it's also a joyful, heartfelt movie, one that speaks to the openness and vitality we see in Bettie's pictures.
  15. Nathalie...
    Nathalie becomes a complicated three-handed game, far more concerned with the narcissistic, pornographic and mutually manipulative relationship between Catherine and Nathalie than with the latter's purported affair with Bernard. If you live in New York, run, don't walk to see this on the big screen, because it won't be there long.
  16. Sisters in Law
    This is a story of real heroism that will leave you weeping, laughing and singing.
  17. Lucky Number Slevin
    With its wiry twists and turns, ends up buckling under the weight of its own cleverness.
  18. Take the Lead
    Its considerable charm lies in the way it fulfills, rather than bucks, our expectations.
  19. Friends with Money
    This is a dense and sophisticated work about mortality, materialism, madness, jealousy and pity.
  20. 4
    It's another blast of vibrant, vicious, gloomy electricity from the always-surprising Russian film scene, and the beginning of an important career.
  21. Free Zone
    Gitai's experimental technique in Free Zone is dizzying, sometimes thrilling.
  22. Sir! No Sir!
    It will change your understanding of the Vietnam era, even if you were alive then.
  23. I Am a Sex Addict
    This film is an inevitable product of our age, and enjoyable, right up to whatever your ickiness threshold is.
  24. Basic Instinct 2
    If you're trying to reinvigorate the art of the stylish thriller, the movie you come up with needs to be stylish and it needs to be thrilling. Basic Instinct 2, is neither.
  25. Brick
    Brick doesn't work 100 percent of the time, but it's a striking achievement, beautifully shot, often hilarious and occasionally moving.
  26. Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!
    After this movie, the Beasties and their fans, camera-totin' or not, are left drenched, exhausted, delighted.
  27. The Devil and Daniel Johnston
    As its title suggests, the picture is something of a ballad, an ode to an elusive character who's both quintessentially human and so outlandish he almost seems unreal.
  28. Drawing Restraint 9
    Conveys an intense sculptural loveliness with something moving beneath it, maybe a sense of menace. And it's leavened, like once per hour, with a teeny dash of humor. This isn't nearly as immediately likable or showy as "Cremaster 3," but in a quiet way just as spectacular.
  29. 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.
  30. Inside Man
    It's Foster who rules the movie like an ice queen.
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