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. The Beauty Academy of Kabul
    A spiny, puzzling and highly entertaining film, and whatever you go into it thinking, you're likely to come out thinking something else.
  2. L'Enfant (The Child)
    One of the greatest films of recent years.
  3. Stoned
    What we really need from Stoned, the very thing that it fails to give us, is a sense of Jones as a human being.
  4. V for Vendetta
    Both oversimplifies and overcomplicates Moore's and Lloyd's vision, but it never cuts to the bone. It's a movie drawn with big, bold strokes and very little feeling -- a tracing-paper exercise masquerading as a masterpiece.
  5. Thank You for Smoking
    The chief problem with Thank You for Smoking, isn't that it's over the top; it's that it fits so neatly UNDER the top.
  6. 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.
  7. Duck Season
    Duck Season is something quite different, capable of gratifying film snobs and regular viewers alike.
  8. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
    The movie is terrible, but made with verve and sincerity, all of it pointed in the wrong direction.
  9. Game 6
    A modest but agreeable, and often very funny, movie.
  10. 16 Blocks
    This is a sturdy little cop thriller, and even when it stretches the bounds of plausibility, you go with it, partly because you believe -- almost against your better judgment -- in what the characters are doing.
  11. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    At a time when our country feels divided to the point of cracking, Dave Chappelle's Block Party feels like a salve. It's a defiant act of optimistic patriotism.
  12. Merry Christmas
    It's a profoundly moving story of -- yes! -- the human spirit rising above horrible circumstances, and simultaneously a work of nostalgia for the gentlemen's war that marked the end, or the beginning of the end, of Christian Europe's world domination.
  13. Our Brand Is Crisis
    What makes Boynton's film stand out amid the current crop of political documentaries is its rigorous reportorial fairness, and its refusal to simplify material in order to score facile ideological points.
  14. Sorry, Haters
    A well-acted little thriller of the sort sometimes called a "twisty" -- I wouldn't call it a great movie, but it'll keep you guessing about its characters and it has an intriguing mean streak.
  15. Tsotsi
    An explosive wide-screen vision of the street life of Soweto, bursting with music, danger and vitality, and the extraordinary story of a ruthless young criminal known only as Tsotsi.
  16. Running Scared
    It's lower on the food chain than a mere exploitation picture because it clings so desperately to the notion that it's a serious movie about violence; it doesn't even have enough integrity to serve up cheap, sick thrills for their own sake.
  17. Street Fight
    It's an electrifying, suspenseful film, full of street-level political drama.
  18. Eight Below
    This is one of those lazy, lukewarm pictures that's even more disappointing than a purely bad one, and for one glaring reason: How could Marshall, his writers, and even his actors have let these dogs down so badly?
  19. Freedomland
    Freedomland, overall, could have been so much better. But Moore, even in a performance as patchy as this one, is something to watch. She's an echo of the movie that might have been.
  20. Battle in Heaven
    Reygadas is an undeniably important artist hewing his own path, but who is also self-consciously playing to the tastes of a tiny elite audience that craves obscurantism, confrontation and heavy-handed symbolism. Still, I really want you to see this. Then I'll have somebody to talk about it with.
  21. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
    It's a crisply made, absorbing human drama that frames its moral confrontation between good and evil in universal terms.
  22. Winter Passing
    Deschanel is great, with her feral eyes and Joey Ramone shag haircut, and Ferrell is fantastic. This one's worth the effort to find.
  23. 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.
  24. Firewall
    There's just not enough of Forster, who has a small role as Ford's work colleague and confidant. ..Sometimes star quality shines out from the corners of a movie, and not from the center.
  25. Neil Young: Heart of Gold
    Heart of Gold is a sweet, gentle picture, if not a particularly exhilarating one.
  26. The Fallen Idol (re-release)
    This is a fine example of British commercial filmmaking at its highest level of craftsmanship.
  27. A Good Woman
    This is one of those movies destined to be watched by family groups who can't agree on what to see: You'll all get a few chuckles, and then it's home for dessert.
  28. Something New
    Something New is the perfect date movie, not only because it explores a range of suitably romantic sentiments, but because it's so canny sociologically, as well as being delightfully good-natured.
  29. The Tenants
    Isn't exactly bad and isn't exactly good. It's raw in some places and overcooked in others.
  30. What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole
    I'd have no problem with the element of rampant, half-wacky speculation at the outer edges of physics in these movies if they came labeled as such.
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