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. Jimi: All Is by My Side
    The damn thing is, Ridley very nearly makes this insuperable obstacle work to his benefit. He delivers a flawed, ambitious and deeply peculiar portrait of one of the 20th century’s most enigmatic musical talents, in the year before he ascended to rock-god status, that resembles no other pop-music biopic you’ve ever seen.
  2. The Equalizer
    The Equalizer is gripping, mysterious and even sometimes moving, but it’s never pleasant, still less fun. If you decide to go, don’t claim you weren’t warned. If you skip it, you’re missing one of the year’s signal works of superior Hollywood craftsmanship.
  3. The Two Faces of January
    A subtle, underplayed psychological drama with terrific work by all three actors.
  4. 20,000 Days on Earth
    For the most part, 20,000 Days on Earth – the approximate amount of time Cave has been alive on this planet – is an imagistic and impressionistic work, a Nick Cave-esque tone poem driven by moments of visual and thematic juxtaposition you either have to reject or accept.
  5. This Is Where I Leave You
    Frequently irritating and occasionally insulting.
  6. The Guest
    I enjoyed it from beginning to end, and if you've been lamenting the dearth of violent genre movies that don't assume the audience to be morons, you will too.
  7. The Drop
    I found this dark odyssey through an amoral dream Brooklyn curiously invigorating; it’s a masterful construction that held me rapt from first shot to last, that builds intense electrical energy and then releases it.
  8. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
    At the very least, this implausible trifecta displays an abundantly talented new filmmaker who has risked everything, including the prospect that we may get sick of him immediately. If you care about the remaining possibilities of American movies, then this one – well, one of the three, anyway! – is a must-see.
  9. Memphis
    Can I tell you exactly what happens in Memphis, or what it’s “about”? Absolutely not. But it worked its magic on me, and its meaning is something I take on faith.
  10. Life of Crime
    With the genial pairing of Jennifer Aniston as a rich guy’s trophy wife and John Hawkes as a low-rent criminal at the center of a colorful cast and a pitch-perfect rendering of caste-divided Detroit, Life of Crime is a bittersweet end-of-summer surprise.
  11. Love Is Strange
    You need to give Love Is Strange your eyes and ears and attention, let it work its effects on you gradually, like the lovely Chopin piano music that forms the spine of its soundtrack.
  12. The One I Love
    There’s nothing disgraceful about The One I Love, and if you’re just in the mood for a VOD time-waster, you could do worse. But despite the agreeable lead performances, it doesn’t quite repay your 90 lost minutes of life.
  13. Expedition to the End of the World
    An experience that wrenches you free of the everyday world and urges you to contemplate all sorts of big-picture questions.
  14. The Trip to Italy
    I am not the first to make this joke, but The Trip to Italy may live up to the “Godfather: Part II” analogy, at least insofar as it’s better and tighter than its predecessor.
  15. The Giver
    The initial setup for the story is engaging enough, but Noyce and cinematographer Ross Emery have shot the whole thing in generic digital fake black-and-white, so it looks like a late-‘90s TV commercial for a soon-to-be-recalled compact car.
  16. Dinosaur 13
    This is not one of those Eisenhower-Little Rock moments where you get to feel warm and fuzzy about the power of the state being on the right side of history.
  17. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
    This extremely stupid movie, with its recycled Batman/Spider-Man-style plot involving a dead father, an evil scientist-tycoon (played by the reliably terrific William Fichtner) and a massive criminal underworld of masked thugs, also features the best action sequence of the summer, bar none. I’m not kidding!
  18. What If
    What If could be the breakthrough film that underappreciated Canadian director Michael Dowse (“Goon” and “It’s All Gone Pete Tong”) has been waiting for, and at any rate it’s a sparkling screwball highball, perfect for a late-summer weekend.
  19. The Maid's Room
    Let’s be clear right up front that The Maid’s Room doesn’t quite work, intriguing premise and all, and that the fault lies with Walker’s labored script and wooden characterization.
  20. Calvary
    McDonagh walks a hazardous tightrope from scene to scene, from amiable comedy to black-hearted farce to heartbreaking tragedy, often trying to strike all those notes within seconds. It doesn’t all work equally well, but the cumulative effect is powerful.
  21. Get On Up
    While Brown’s complicated trajectory as a cultural and political figure gets short shrift in Get on Up, his music does not – the sequence depicting his legendary “Fever in the Funkhouse” show in Paris in 1971 is an absolute knockout, worth the price of admission all by itself.
  22. Guardians of the Galaxy
    It’s a high-spirited, swashbuckling lark driven by cartoonish special effects and an ingenious double-layered nostalgia that allows it to become a virtual mixtape of ‘70s hits that predate its intended audience: “Hooked on a Feeling,” “The Piña Colada Song,” “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” etc.
  23. Boyhood
    In its own quiet way, it’s a world of marvels.
  24. Happy Christmas
    A subtle, witty, wise and deeply compassionate American movie.
  25. The Kill Team
    Soberly executed and highly principled documentary filmmaking, tightly focused on the Winfield family’s efforts to navigate the byzantine Army bureaucracy and the ass-covering military justice system. But it’s also a kind of Rorschach test of any viewer’s attitudes about war, the military and the United States’ amorphous 13-year mission in Afghanistan.
  26. The Killer Inside Me
    Winterbottom's adaptation of the novel is spellbinding cinema, with all the atmosphere, technical excellence and expert pacing the British director is known for.
  27. Magic in the Moonlight
    Maybe that pictorial pleasantness will distract summer moviegoers from the fact that shot-to-shot transitions are often awkward, dialogue scenes are forced and poorly staged and that even by rom-com standards the obstacles created to keep Sophie and Stanley apart until a respectable running time has elapsed are idiotic.
  28. Lucy
    There are a number of terrific production numbers in Lucy, basically violent action scenes that border on slapstick, and as long as we agree in advance that the “science” in this movie goes beyond pseudo into total B.S., I believe you will leave satisfied.
  29. Mood Indigo
    This is Gondry at his most liberated and inventive. You simply can’t grab hold of Mood Indigo in its early scenes, and you’re better off surrendering to its crackpot energy and enjoying the ride.
  30. Wish I Was Here
    If you liked “Garden State” — or if you hated it, for that matter — you pretty much know what you’re in for with Wish I Was Here.
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