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 1.7 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. Cruising
    What Friedkin's film is about is anybody's guess. If he just wanted to make a thriller, he has made a clumsy and unconvincing one. If he wanted to explore the psychology of his characters, he has left out most of the relevant information. If he intended to illuminate the tricky subject of S&M, he hasn't even scratched the surface. "Cruising" is quite effective in working up an atmosphere of dread: the ominous bar scenes are butch grand guignol, full of sweaty flesh, menacing shadows and barely glimpsed acts of degradation performed by glowering, bearded men in black leather and chains. But who are these people and why are they doing all these kinky things? Friedkin isn't interested in explaining his milieu; he merely offers it up as a superficially shocking tableau for the titillation and horror of his audience. [18 Feb 1980, p.92]
    • Newsweek
  2. The Fog
    The Fog needs more suggestive magic to sustain its farfetched premise. There's no doubt that Carpenter has talent to spare, but he's misjudged his gifts this time. The Fog ought to come on little cat feet, but its tread is heavy and literal. The harder it tries, the sillier it gets. [03 March 1980, p.68]
    • Newsweek
  3. 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
  4. Going in Style
    It doesn't try to knock your socks off. But if quiet integrity and grave charm count for anything, Brest has made an important debut. [14 Jan 1980, p.86]
    • Newsweek
  5. The Electric Horseman
    In THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN, they're at their most golden, ethical and sexy. This ability to make right-mindedness so seductive, stylish and debonair is what makes The Electric Horseman such a sweet and beguiling movie. [17 Dec 1979, p.112]
    • Newsweek
  6. The Black Hole
    I'll take the Disney any day, in spite of the fact that the characters are cardboard, that the dialogue belongs in a deflated cartoon balloon, that the ending is hopelessly murky and that the acting -- by Schell, Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux and especially Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forster and Joseph Bottoms -- is abysmal. The magic of Peter Ellenshaw's production designs disarms the critical mind: the child in me had a dandy time. [24 Dec 1979, p.79]
    • Newsweek
  7. Cuba
    By the time this atmospheric but thoroughly muddled story reaches its conclusion, the film has totally self-destructed. [31 Dec 1979, p.49]
    • Newsweek
  8. All That Jazz
    An actor of great integrity, Scheider at last makes the powerful impression we've been waiting for; he plays Joe with wonderfully delicate and telling detail. You see all the lusts and weaknesses, but you see also an underlying sweetness, a kind of forlorn and desperate innocence that makes something deeply human out of good, bad, weakness, strength, triumph, defeat and all that jazz. [24 Dec 1979, p.78]
    • Newsweek
  9. Being There
    Being There's dry, dark humor sneaks up on you: until Chauncey arrives at Douglas's home you may not even know it is a comedy. That's Ashby's method, and his confidence pays off in one of the year's most unusual and engrossing films. [31 Dec 1979, p.48]
    • Newsweek
  10. The Human Factor
    Sometimes flat, The Human Factor is nonetheless a lucidly impressive return to form for the 73-year-old director. It's not really a thriller at all, but an understated, uncompromising dissection of an event: an anatomy of the murder of a soul. [11 Feb 1980, p.82]
    • Newsweek
  11. 1941
    Spielberg has brought forth a farce that is both relentlessly spectacular and spectacularly unfunny. [17 Dec 1979, p.111]
    • Newsweek
  12. The Jerk
    The Jerk is a kind of post-psychedelic Jerry Lewis movie -- Broad, dirty and juvenile, but definitely hip to its own dumbness. Half the jokes fall flat on their face, but when they score they're laugh-out-loud funny. Almost invariably, the best routines are non sequiturs -- off-the-wall riffs where Martin fixates with dopey brilliance on a subject that has nothing to do with the plot. [17 Dec 1979]
    • Newsweek
  13. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
    No matter how important teamwork is on a job of industrialized entertainment like these ostensibly visionary films, the vision itself has to come from a single inspired sensibility. Despite some intriguing ideas, episodes and effects, that isn't the case with "Star Trek." [17 Dec. 1979, p.110]
    • Newsweek
  14. The Rose
    Almost certainly Joplin's friends, associates and many of her old fans will accuse The Rose of distortion, sentimentality, vulgarization andother crimes. They will not be entirely wrong, and yet Mark Rydell's film has a certain coarse, splashy integrity. And it has a remarkable, going-all-the-way performance by Bette Midler in her first movie. [12 Nov 1979, p.107]
    • Newsweek
  15. ...and justice for all.
    If the movie is a mess, it's a vital, entertaining mess -- the most interesting film Jewison (F.I.S.T., In the Heat of the Night) has made in years. [22 Oct 1979, p.102]
    • Newsweek
  16. Meteor
    Director Ronald Neame, who once made good movies, has instructed his actors to shout as much as possible. The rest is special effects -- and not very special ones at that. [05 Nov 1979, p.101]
    • Newsweek
  17. The Black Stallion
    Shot in stunning color by a gifted cinematographer named Caleb Deschanel, beautifully scored by Carmine Coppola in moods ranging from Arabian Nights impressionism to Wagnerian exaltation, the first hour of The Black Stallion is a state-of-the-art demonstration of film as a purely visual medium, a formal exercise that is nonetheless suffused with feeling. [29 Oct 1979, p.105]
    • Newsweek
  18. 10
    Blake Edwards's riotous, deeply felt "10" proves just how many fresh turns are left on this well-traveled road and demonstrates again that a gifted writer-director can convert the most conventional commercial formulas into a movie as personal, in its way, as "Apocalypse Now." Edwards provides the side-splitting slapstick one expects from the maker of five "Pink Panther" movies, but he gives us something more: an introspective, bittersweet comedy of manners about a man whose voyeurism prevents him from seeing himself...This is the sort of classical Holly wood comedy that will still look good in 30 years. [15 Oct 1979, p.133]
    • Newsweek
  19. Time After Time
    Some of this is mildly amusing, but most of it is thumpingly obvious. [01 Oct 1979, p.77]
    • Newsweek
  20. 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
  21. Yanks
    The film has too much class for its own sensibility; it seems often stuck in this class like a fly in molasses. [24 Sep 1979, p.102]
    • Newsweek
  22. The Concorde... Airport '79
    As the credits roll by, you may suspect you have wandered into a fund-raiser for the Actors Guild. [13 Aug 1979, p.75]
    • Newsweek
  23. My Brilliant Career
    Armstrong's first feature is a terrific job, a universally appealing story told with an integrity, humanity, warmth and humor you can taste. It is beautifully shot and performed with a style and sensitivity worthy of England's best actors. Russet-haired, bold-eyed, defiantly freckled Davis is like a summer storm, and Sam Neill has the rueful charm of a young James Mason. [22 Oct 1979, p.101]
    • Newsweek
  24. The Seduction of Joe Tynan
    The considerable virtues of THE SEDUCTION OF JOE TYNAN reflect the temperament of its author and star, Alan Alda. Decency, dependability, cozy sexuality: these are the qualities Alda projects as the star of TV's "M*A*S*H," and they are the underpinings of this intelligent, beautifully acted cautionary tale about the conflict between the siren call of success and the responsibilities of a private life. [27 Aug 1979, p.62]
    • Newsweek
  25. Apocalypse Now
    Apocalypse Now is the ultimate war movie, a riveting adventure story, a searching and deeply committed probing of the moral problem of the Vietnam War -- and something more than all of these, transcending categories and genres in a way that only true art, and specifically true movie art, does at its best. The film seethes with violence, horror, madness, irony, humor, sweetness, anger, despair and hope, but the seething is controlled by the hand of a master. [20 Aug 1979, p.57]
    • Newsweek
  26. Sunburn
    It is entirely forgettable except for Grodin, who once again compensates for having the most anonymous face in movies with his sly, expertly timed comic delivery. [10 Sep 1979, p.76]
    • Newsweek
  27. North Dallas Forty
    It's not exactly news that pro football is just big business with the cleats showing. But North Dallas Forty brings the news home in fresh, funny and powerful ways. It's a bitter comedy of Sunbelt manners that packs a substantial emotional wallop. Director Ted Kotcheff, who stays faithful to the spirit of the novel by Peter Gent (an ex-Dallas Cowboy), captures the vulgar, born-again spirit of nouveau riche Dallas society, but he never condescends. The cogs caught in this corporate wheel always remain sweatily human - this is a locker-room satire with soul. [6 Aug 1979, p.55]
    • Newsweek
  28. More American Graffiti
    In lieu of dramatic depth, Norton's film relies on its wonderful sound-track music to suggest the emotional truth of the era. Anyone who went through the '60s listening to Heat Wave and 96 Tears, to Cream and the Byrds and Aretha Franklin, will be instantly aroused: the memories they prompt are more stirring, troubling and complex than anything More American Graffiti chooses to show us. [27 Aug 1979, p.63]
    • Newsweek
  29. The Amityville Horror
    I suspect a lot of people will be scared - and thus satisfied - by The Amityville Horror, a film that stoops to some of the oldest and cheapest tricks of the trade in its dogged pursuit of goose bumps. It's a crude haunted-house movie that depends for much of its tension on the possibility that the events that befell George and Kathleen Lutz might be true (though there is considerable evidence that Jay Anson's best-selling book was more fiction that fact). [13 Aug 1979, p.75]
    • Newsweek
  30. The Villain
    Though kids may enjoy The Villain's harmless high jinks, most adults will feel that, at 90 minutes, this cartoon is about 80 minutes too long. [06 Aug 1979, p.56]
    • Newsweek
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