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. Supergirl
    Though Helen Slater makes a bad first impression, she's not a bad Supergirl by the end, being likably straightforward, guileless and sweet. And unlike Reeve, who looks exactly the same whether he's Clark Kent or Superman, Slater makes you believe that people wouldn't know brunette Linda Lee was actually blond Supergirl. That may not be a major cinematic achievement, but it's about the best that Supergirl has to offer. [26 Nov 1984, p.119]
    • Newsweek
  2. Dune
    It is a dark, spellbinding dream, full of murmurs and whispers, byzantine plots and messianic fevers. It finds its iconography of the future deep in the past. It's not always easy to follow, but it's even harder to get out of your system. For better and for worse, it takes more artistic chances than any major American movie around. [10 Dec 1984, p.93]
    • Newsweek
  3. Things Are Tough All Over
    It's a shaggy-dog road movie, with all the team's usual ingredients but one -- it's not funny. There's no fresh insight in Things Are Tough All Over, little of their surrealist pothead non sequiturs, and to see them through, they've begun to fall back on tired, conventional sight gags -- a car going through a carwash with its top down, Cheech hiding in a spinning laundermat dryer. [6 Sept 1982, p.75]
    • Newsweek
  4. Halloween II
    The plain fact is that Halloween II is quite scary, more than a little silly and immediately forgettable. [16 Nov 1981, p.117]
    • Newsweek
  5. Tempest
    Tempest is too long and often rambles when it should scintillate, but it has wit and heart, and some of its Shakespearean switcheroos have a touching charm. [16 Aug 1982, p.59]
    • Newsweek
  6. Fletch Lives
    Fletch Lives feels like TV, but at least it's clever, unpretentious TV. [20 Mar 1989, p.83]
    • Newsweek
  7. Rocky IV
    In this tetralogical effort, writer-director-star Stallone has succumbed to the old one-two of silliness and cynicism. [9 Dec 1985, p.92]
    • Newsweek
  8. The Phantom of the Opera
    It's sometimes hard to tell the characters from the candelabra. This lavish screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is so chockablock with decorative detail the human figures are often competing with the decor for attention.
  9. Over the Top
    If you can lose like a winner, can you win like a loser? And if it doesn't matter if you win or lose, how come Sly always wins? Maybe these ambiguities will be resolved in his next opus, when Sly, playing Oldsmobile Cutlass, enters the high-stakes arena of championship horseshoe pitching. [23 Feb 1987, p.79]
    • Newsweek
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Message in a Bottle
    The film has its dumb points: too many shots of churning surf and lovers nestled in beach blankets, not to mention the premise that women find incommunicative, hulking shells like Blake the height of irresistibility. But it gets you.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
    The singin' and dancin' ain't much to write home about; you'd reckon that some $30 million would buy you somethin' with more pizzazz than an Amarillo road-show version of Oklahoma. Reckon again. [26 July 1982, p.79]
    • Newsweek
  12. Alexander
    Sometimes stunning, ultimately stupefying epic .
  13. Pay It Forward
    If this is what Hollywood considers serious, important filmmaking, maybe the movie industry should stick to the low road.
    • Newsweek
  14. Head in the Clouds
    A paint-by-numbers old-fashioned romantic epic, Head in the Clouds is neither romantic nor epic, but it does succeed at old-fashioned.
  15. A View to a Kill
    In his seventh movie as James Bond, Rog is looking less like a chap with a license to kill than a gent with an application to retire. [27 May 1985, p.74]
    • Newsweek
  16. Toys
    The failure of Barry Levinson's Toys is of a different order: it's the kind of folly only a very fine filmmaker could make, a labor of misguided love.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Wild Wild West
    A mish-mash of special effects, tasteless comedy and pointless action.
  18. Exorcist II: The Heretic
    This sequel is so laden with dubious, spurious, curious and tedious stuff about theology, parapsychology, entomology and speleology that it forgets to frighten you in its frantic concern with being hip in the fad world of the occult. The Heretic simply drowns in its own malarky. [27 June 1977, p.61]
    • Newsweek
  19. Lethal Weapon 4
    Richard Donner's sequel is more than eager to please -- it's desperate.
  20. Extremities
    Fawcett is admirable; evoking the pathos of beauty that turns from a blessing into a target, her own beauty is deepening into courage and talent. [1 Sept 1986, p.86]
    • Newsweek
  21. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
    This sweet, sometimes clunky chick flick is a likable teen romance, but not likely to arouse the giddy swoons Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey generated back in ’87.
  22. Teachers
    Just about every scene written for JoBeth Williams, as an idealistic lawyer pushing the lawsuit and falling in love again with her old teach Nick Nolte, strikes a stridently false note, and in the final 20 minutes the movie totally self-destructs. Too bad. The cast is good and so are Teacher's intentions. A strong principal should have whipped this show into shape. [08 Oct 1984, p.87]
    • Newsweek
  23. 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
  24. The Bodyguard
    If you can overlook the obvious flaws -- a bumpy beginning, a villain whose motive is both too obvious and hard to swallow -- The Bodyguard has its flashy, shallow pleasures. There's some wit in Kasdan's script, and plenty of dread in the big Oscar-ceremony climax (reminiscent of "The Man Who Knew Too Much"). When it works, it's like watching a paranoid edition of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." [30 Nov 1992, p.80]
    • Newsweek
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Final Destination
    Final destination? Video store bins.
    • Newsweek
  26. Runaway Bride
    It's not just that the movie is formulaic; it's disingenuous. It relies on Roberts's smile to erase all misgivings. But all the stardust in the world can't disguise the fact that this is more package than picture.
  27. Sheena: Queen of the Jungle
    Movies this bad make you wonder if somebody's kidding. [03 Sep 1984, p.73]
    • Newsweek
    • 38 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Chronicles of Riddick
    Twohy knows how to shoot tense, bare-knuckle action, and his towering, gunmetal gray world is a fun sandbox to play in for two hours.
  29. Summer Rental
    The indignities inflicted on the Chester family by writers Jeremy Stevens and Mark Reisman are barely clever enough to sustain a half-hour TV show. Carl Reiner directed this tepid farce, as if half asleep. [26 Aug 1985, p.62]
    • Newsweek
  30. Capricorn One
    Since we've lost our innocence, our "fun" movies have to be smarter than they used to be. Now that we're so much better informed and more miserable than we were a generation ago, dumbness is no longer charming for its own sake. But CAPRICORN ONE is just too dumb to be fun. We know too much about space shots, astronauts and moonwalks to swallow the dopey implausibility with which writer-director Peter Hyams tells his story of how sinister forces fake the first manned landing on Mars... But Brolin, Waterston and Simpson are just jump-suited dummies. O.J. displays more style, wit and grace in a one-minute Hertz commercial than he's allowed to show in this entire flick. [19 June 1978, p.75]
    • Newsweek
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