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. The Gingerbread Man
    Branagh is appealing here in the way we remember from movie heroes of the '30s: cynical, wisecracking and wised-up.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Spice World
    There are several non sequitur subplots woven together -- and that, along with a dearth of acting talent, is Spice World's biggest flaw.
  3. Live Flesh
    Live Flesh isn't terrible. It's accomplished and watchable.
  4. The Boxer
    In some ways, this is the most conventional of Sheridan's movies. But it never feels sentimental because of the grittiness of his approach.
  5. Oscar and Lucinda
    Whatever the reason, Oscar and Lucinda winds up feeling like a collection of bits in search of vision and an emotional surge.
  6. Jackie Brown
    If Jackie Brown lost 45 minutes, it might have been a snazzy entertainment. As it is, it wears out its welcome well before the end.
  7. Wag the Dog
    Wag the Dog is such a crisply delivered political satire, so packed full of wickedly amusing details and expertly modulated performances and with its heart so obviously in the right place that I really, truly wish I could tell you it was also a good movie.
  8. Kundun
    Kundun, which was written by Melissa Mathison ("E.T.") from interviews conducted with the Dalai Lama, doesn't make you greedy for its images the way some gorgeous films do. It allows you to drink each one in tranquilly.
  9. As Good as It Gets
    Appreciate it instead as an exceedingly well-crafted fairy tale, alive with eccentric, overdrawn Dickensian characters and irresistibly wholehearted sentiment, and you'll enjoy perhaps the most accomplished and satisfying work of Brooks' career as a middlebrow entertainer.
  10. Titanic
    Cameron manhandles the real story, scavenging it for his own puny narrative purposes. It's a film made with boorish confidence and zero sensitivity, big and dumb and hulking.
  11. Tomorrow Never Dies
    The movie is efficient but scores zero in suspense, wit or class.
  12. The Apostle
    This little knockout of a movie, written and directed by Robert Duvall -- who also plays the title character, a roving Texas evangelist -- can strike you in the same way that Bible stories did when you first encountered them as a child.
  13. Scream 2
    Inevitably a little patchier and less startlingly original than its predecessor -- S2 is an ingenious, often hilarious, movie that does nothing to diminish the well-deserved cult reputation of its director.
  14. Deconstructing Harry
    A fever dream about an aging, grasping, neurotic artist who brings his disastrous personal life, thinly veiled, into his work and ends up as a grotesque caricature of himself, alienating everyone who ever loved him.
  15. Amistad
    A little like looking at pictures without a text to unify them… Prestige filmmaking bereft of inspiration -- sometimes even of the nuts and bolts of craft.
  16. Good Will Hunting
    It isn't surprising that the film was originally based on actors' improvisations, since it creates a universe of tremendously enjoyable characters and allows them plenty of room to roam, but has only the most predictable notion of plot and nothing whatever to say beyond be-yourself pieties.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alien: Resurrection
    Weaver obviously relishes playing this feral, sarcastic new Ripley, and her pleasure is infectious.
  18. Welcome to Sarajevo
    Winterbottom's film is openly a polemic. Messy and visceral, with an articulate, pointed anger that's recognizably British, Welcome to Sarajevo hits with an impact that's not diminished by the fact that Sarajevo's uneasy peace has held.
  19. The Sweet Hereafter
    The movie has a crispness about it, an unwillingness to succumb to sentimentality.
  20. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
    A dragging, rhythmless piece of work.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rainmaker
    What filmgoers get is a satisfactory mainstream entertainment, with a handful of major actors in juicy minor roles tossed in for good measure.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Starship Troopers
    In this bizarrely discordant mixture of ultraviolent action footage, bad acting, crisp special effects and futuristic camp, the remnants of Heinlein's rhetoric of military pride stick out like a grimy Marine uniform at a high-toned Hollywood party.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Wings of the Dove
    The rigid distinction usually made between a terrific outfit movie and cinematic art is just another barrier washed away in the overflowing riches of The Wings of the Dove.
  24. Bean
    Whatever the reason, Bean saddles Atkinson with a story that hangs on him like a dead weight and a filmmaking style that surrounds him like dead air.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Eve's Bayou
    Eve's Bayou treads across a fragile and complex emotional landscape, and Lemmons is exceptionally adept at creating characters who are simultaneously despicable and lovable.
  26. Mad City
    It has, at times, a loopy, edgy humor and moments of genuinely affecting pathos. But somehow the combination doesn't add up to anything.
  27. Happy Together
    Happy Together feels joylessly fussed over.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Gattaca
    Implausible in countless ways and wooden for long stretches, Gattaca at least never collapses into a special-effects barrage or erupts in long, choreographed explosions; it sticks carefully to its pristine vision.
  29. A Life Less Ordinary
    Gloriously excessive, passionate and messy, A Life Less Ordinary is the kind of picture that's becoming more and more of a rarity in the landscape of American movies: a love story with a hard-on.
  30. The Devil's Advocate
    The picture starts off slick and amusing, gets convoluted, draggy and strange round about the midway point, and ends up just plain ludicrous.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »