Rachel Saltz

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The New York Times
For 154 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 27% higher than the average critic
  • 25% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 10.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Rachel Saltz's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 54
Highest review score: 90 I Killed My Mother
Lowest review score: 20 Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 42 out of 154
  2. Mixed: 94 out of 154
  3. Negative: 18 out of 154
154 movie reviews
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    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Rachel Saltz
    Panga
    Tiwari is better at probing the emotions under the drama than building a nail-biting, rah-rah finish, though she tries.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Rachel Saltz
    Dabangg 3
    Dabangg 3 is earnest, and it earnestly wants to deliver thrills. To do so, though, it would have to provide that other essential Bollywood ingredient: emotion. What’s missing are the tears. The movie hardly leaves a trace.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Rachel Saltz
    Saaho
    The movie is crisply, sometimes stylishly shot (Madhie did the cinematography), but it’s too muddled to be slick and too lacking in charm to establish any emotional stakes.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Rachel Saltz
    Nureyev
    Nureyev, directed by the brother-and-sister team of Jacqui Morris and David Morris, suffers from a common documentary-film problem: great story, not-so-great storytelling.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Rachel Saltz
    Kalank
    This kind of fantasy-spectacle is Mr. Varman’s forte, not storytelling. When the singing and dancing and action stop, which is less often than you might think, so does “Kalank.”
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Rachel Saltz
    Super Deluxe
    Super Deluxe, though, runs three hours, and Kumararaja loses his way in the draggy, overlong second act.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Rachel Saltz
    Total Dhamaal
    The moral seems as tacked on as the villain. But it’s a sweet thought and not entirely out of keeping with a movie that for all its crassness, comic and commercial, is basically good-spirited.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Rachel Saltz
    Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga
    The makers of the Bollywood movie Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga have a touching, if slightly demented, belief in the transformative power of art. How to combat ugly stereotypes and entrenched beliefs? Put on a show!
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Rachel Saltz
    Padmaavat
    Mr. Bhansali is painting with a broad brush.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 30 Rachel Saltz
    The Black Prince
    A dramatic life does not necessarily a dramatic film make.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Rachel Saltz
    Badrinath Ki Dulhania
    If “Badrinath” ends up being less about female empowerment than about schooling gents on a cardinal rule, its pop comes from Ms. Bhatt.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Rachel Saltz
    Raees
    Avoiding flabby subplots, Mr. Dholakia keeps Raees taut and suspenseful, even at two and a half hours, though it probably has a song too many
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Rachel Saltz
    M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story
    The movie, written and directed by Neeraj Pandey, is not hagiographic or overly obvious. Instead, it’s something of a quiet muddle, with too many squandered or dramatically blurry scenes.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Rachel Saltz
    Mohenjo Daro
    Mr. Roshan, an appealing dancer, works hard to twinkle his way into our affections and make Sarman something more than a cardboard hero. He can’t, but the effort is appreciated.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Rachel Saltz
    Baaghi
    Because the filmmakers have given their characters labels (rebel, guru, villain) instead of personalities, the movie’s bid for epic resonance feels particularly hollow.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Rachel Saltz
    Fitoor
    Based, sometimes loosely, sometimes carelessly, sometimes pointlessly, on “Great Expectations,” the Hindi movie Fitoor is at all times more Bollywood than Dickens.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Rachel Saltz
    Saala Khadoos
    Ms. Kongara seems to know the clichés of fighter movies and is mostly unembarrassed to embrace them. That keeps the film humming along, as does Mr. Madhavan, who grows in stature along with Adi.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Rachel Saltz
    Bajirao Mastani
    There’s plenty of story here, but Bajirao Mastani has more visual pop than narrative traction.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Rachel Saltz
    Prem Ratan Dhan Payo
    The director, Sooraj R. Barjatya, courts and embraces cliché at every turn, which is both the movie’s charm and its limitation.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Rachel Saltz
    India's Daughter
    India’s Daughter is a portrait of a place and time. And for all of its horrors, the movie has a positive message, too: Out of tragedy — and this case is just one of many — can come galvanizing change.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Rachel Saltz
    Guilty (Talvar)
    Mr. Khan is this movie’s best weapon. Playing a familiar character type, the world-weary detective, he gives a performance, full of small, sly details, that doesn’t seem familiar at all.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Rachel Saltz
    A Trick of the Light (1995)
    With its light silent comedy, Mr. Wenders’s film presents movie history as a meeting of the inventive and the inevitable — a playful lark.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Rachel Saltz
    Paul Taylor: Creative Domain
    Through it all, Mr. Taylor’s creative mysteries remain intact; a master of the casual and the vernacular (a good way to learn about movement, he says, is to watch football halftime shows), he nonetheless approaches the mystical.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Rachel Saltz
    Phantom
    The hapless secret agent heroes of Kabir Khan’s revenge thriller Phantom, could have used some pointers before being sent into the field.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Rachel Saltz
    Brothers ... Blood Against Blood
    Although Brothers is a remake of Gavin O’Connor’s 2011 “Warrior,” its plotting, timeouts for montages and a song or two — Kareena Kapoor appears as a spangly item girl, the sole female in a sea of leering chorus boys — are echt Hindi movie. Even more so is its emotional appeal.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Rachel Saltz
    Bombay Velvet
    For much of its first half, Bombay Velvet hums with the kind of energy found in movies by the 1970s American directors....Mr. Kashyap is perhaps too faithful to his Bollywood imperatives, though. In the grand tradition, his film is overlong (149 minutes) and overplotted.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Rachel Saltz
    Piku
    This movie, as the title suggests, is set up to be Piku’s story: How will she make a life? But the filmmakers let Mr. Bachchan overwhelm the story. Ms. Padukone, an always likable performer, remains in his shadow, just as Piku remains in Bhashkor’s, liberated but without real agency.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Rachel Saltz
    Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!
    The twisty story has a kink or two too many, a problem of whodunit plotting rather than of Bollywood excess. And the war comes across here as a kind of heightened backdrop rather than real crisis. But these aren’t fatal deficiencies in a film more attuned to movie-made ideas of history and style than to history itself.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Rachel Saltz
    Around The World In 50 Concerts
    If the movie gets a bit gooey at times that’s probably an occupational hazard when considering the sublime. And Ms. Honigmann’s restraint — there’s something classical in her style, too — keeps the film from floating away. When it threatens to, something piercing or traumatic brings it back to earth, where any account of art belongs.
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