Newsweek's Scores

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For 1,617 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 57% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 40% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.6 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Children of a Lesser God
Lowest review score: 0 Down to You
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 952 out of 1617
  2. Mixed: 532 out of 1617
  3. Negative: 133 out of 1617
1617 movie reviews
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  1. Up in Smoke
    Unless you are suitably bent, you might notice that the movie has little continuity and a plot that is no more than a grab bag of familiar Cheech and Chong routines. If you're suitably prepared, probably none of this will matter. There is something irrepressibly good-natured about the peppery Cheech and the zonked-out Chone as they low-ride through East Los Angeles and Tijuana in pursuit of the eternal high... In this funky, slapdash and occasionally very funny movie, dope is not an issue, it's a way of life. [2 Oct 1978, p.86]
    • Newsweek
  2. Heaven's Gate
    An epic vision isn't worth much if you can't tell a story. This, in a nutshell, is the problem at the heart of the three-hour-and-39-minute debacle called Heaven's Gate. In his painstaking quest for period authenticity and his reliance on the operatic set piece, Cimino has lost all sight of day-to-day reality--and all sense of dramatic truth. [01 Dec 1980, p.88]
    • Newsweek
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bossa Nova
    Sort of like a Jennifer Lopez video: pretty to look at, easy on the ears, but ultimately completely vacuous and lackluster.
  4. Brainstorm
    Under the direction of special-effects whiz Douglas Trumbull, Brainstorm provides lots of good cheap thrills and a juicy performance by Fletcher as a passionate scientist. But Trumbull is consistently more at home with technology than with the human drama (can Walken rescue his relationship with his wife, played by the late Natalie Wood?), and the spectaculariy cosmic ending leaves too many key questions unanswered. [10 Oct 1983, p.94]
    • Newsweek
  5. Victory
    When the dust settles, you may well suspect you've been taken for a sentimental ride, which is not what one normally expects from director John Huston. What he does bring to Evan Jones and Yabo Yablonsky's proficient script is his confident, unhurried pacing and his ease in mixing the professional actors and professional soccer players into a seamless ensemble. [10 Aug 1981, p.69]
    • Newsweek
  6. The Human Stain
    For all its shortcomings, The Human Stain is an honorable, sometimes moving attempt, better at evoking the poignancy of Silk's autumnal affair than exploring the moral ambiguities of his deception.
  7. Rocky III
    As tempting as it is to ridicule Rocky III, the disarming fact remains that Stallone has created a very potent populist myth. It worked for him before, and it works for him again. Just as Sinatra can endlessly reprise My Way and still raise goosebumps, so Stallone can turn out shameless variations on his Believe-in-Yourself miracle play and still get the old adrenaline pumping. [31 May 1982, p.70]
    • Newsweek
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Christine
    It's to the credit of John Carpenter, who directs Christine, that he sees the comic side of King's metaphor. With the very talented 22-year-old Keith Gordon as Arnie, giving some fresh and funny turns on alienated youth, and a strong supporting cast including newcomers John Stockwell and Alexandra Paul and veterans Robert Prosky and Harry Dean Stanton, Christine has just enough comic energy to carry this fable to its crash-bam conclusion. [19 Dec 1983, p.66]
    • Newsweek
  9. Hannibal
    Strikingly devoid of suspense. It’s not always clear who’s the protagonist and who’s the antagonist. Nor is it scary—at its most intense moments, it’s merely yucky.
    • Newsweek
  10. Split Image
    Part satire, part love story and, in its lurid deprogramming scenes, pure horror story. Not everything jells, and one never fully believes the hero's transformation from skepticism to subservience. Yet Kotcheff has again delivered a compelling entertainment and one savvy enough to raise more questions than it answers. [25 Oct 1982, p.119]
    • Newsweek
  11. Greased Lightning
    A patchwork affair held together by spit, a prayer and the volatile, baby-faced charm of Richard Pryor. [15 Aug 1977, p.77]
    • Newsweek
  12. The Onion Field
    The Onion Field is one of the best films of the year, a powling, gripping, disturbing movie that has its own far-from-simple vision of evil in our wretched and sinister cities. [24 Sep 1979, p.107]
    • Newsweek
  13. Saint Jack
    Saint Jack should clear away all irrelevancies, reminding us that Bogdanovich is a gifted and distinctive director who should be making movies, not enemies. [07 May 1979, p.88]
    • Newsweek
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Addams Family
    The plot is lame; the jokes are often broad, though if you have a weakness for dumb humor -- or you're under 10 years old -- you'll find them hilarious. [25 Nov 1991, p.56]
    • Newsweek
  15. Bubba Ho-tep
    A one-of- a-kind horror movie: hilarious, a little scary and strangely poignant. Campbell’s cranky, valiant, sad-sack King is a soulfully funny creation.
  16. Black Sunday
    The best thing about Black Sunday is its pulsating rhythm of suspense and the glittering texture of details it assembles as it drives its way toward its climax. [04 Apr 1977, p.73]
    • Newsweek
  17. American Pop
    That American Pop is a work of anti-nostalgia does not make it any less banal than the sunny trip-down-memory-lane formulas it mocks. For all his very real skills as an animator, Bakshi's limitations as an artist are all too clear in American Pop. There's something perversely small-minded about a saga of pop music that resolutely refuses to convey any sense of the joy of making music. Bakshi's ears hear only the downbeats. [16 March 1981, p.94]
    • Newsweek
  18. Back to the Future Part II
    Director Robert Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale assume you've seen the original and are ready to swallow whatever zany time-travel notion they offer. They're not wrong. As unapologetically broad and silly as this sequel it, it's also a good deal of fun, and its relentless velocity is part of the joke. [4 Dec. 1989, p.78]
    • Newsweek
  19. American Gigolo
    Though it tells us that it's about a man who gives pleasure for a living but is incapable of accepting pleasure, it is in fact about the guilty obsessions of a filmmaker who seems incapable of giving pleasure to an audience. [11 Feb 1980, p.82]
    • Newsweek
  20. The Kingdom
    As a genre movie, The Kingdom delivers atmosphere, heroic American derring-do and some decent thrills, though director Peter Berg's approximation of a jerky documentary style suffers from its proximity to the more textured "Bourne Ultimatum."
  21. Rising Sun
    There is some elegant and clever filmmaking in Rising Sun. But ultimately Kaufman and Crichton are a bad fit: trying to transcend the material, the director loses the novelist's crude but compelling urgency.
  22. Die Another Day
    Flat, distressingly witless -- To put it bluntly -- the thrill is gone. Nobody did it better. But that was then.
    • Newsweek
  23. Excalibur
    Boorman is both a romantic and a realist, an idealist and a skeptic, and Excalibur is an impressive but uneasy attempt to marry these opposites. [13 April 1981, p.82]
    • Newsweek
  24. The Driver
    As ludicrous as the dialogue by screenwriter/director Walter Hill may be, the film's visual scheme is hypnotic. Dark, moody and muscular, its style gets under your skin even if your brain rebels. [21 Aug 1978, p.66]
    • Newsweek
  25. Eraser
    Director Charles ("The Mask") Russell is no James Cameron. He can produce a requisite amount of suspense and mayhem..., but his filmmaking is strictly B-movie generic. [01 Jul 1996 Pg.62]
    • Newsweek
  26. A Knight's Tale
    Maybe you have to be 14 to find all of this terribly clever.
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Human Nature
    Kaufman's new script isn't as inspired as "Malkovich." It's a precious little concoction -- the B-plus work of a madcap genius.
    • Newsweek
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    How Stella Got Her Groove Back
    Rarely have we seen black love be this sensual.
  29. A Dirty Shame
    Never mean-spirited, A Dirty Shame has some big laughs, but it's a one-joke movie that shows its strain well before the finish line.
  30. Waterworld
    A pretty damn good summer movie.
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