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. Dirty Pretty Things
    Steven Knight’s smart, if overly plotted, script delivers social insights tautly wrapped in genre thrills.
  2. Punch-Drunk Love
    Punch-Drunk Love is one dark, strange-tasting sorbet, its sweetness shot through with startling, unexpected flavors. It’s a romantic comedy on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
  3. The Thin Red Line
    Juxtaposes beauty and horror to fashion a savage and lyrical cinematic poem.
  4. Trouble in Mind
    [Rudolph] may compose from borrowed parts, but his synthesis is uniquely his own -- nutty and gorgeous and moody as all hell. [31 March 1986, p.72B]
    • Newsweek
  5. After Dark, My Sweet
    Like a hot Santa Ana wind, this sexy, unsentimental thriller makes your senses tingle. [03 Sep 1990, p.66]
    • Newsweek
  6. A Passage to India
    What a sumptuous canvas Lean gives us, and what a superb cast. [24 Dec 1984, p.53]
    • Newsweek
  7. Devil in a Blue Dress
    What stays with you finally is not the mystery's byzantine twists and turns, which are fun but don't resonate very deeply. It's the time, the place, the palpable feel of community. [2 Oct 1995, p.85]
    • Newsweek
  8. Jungle Fever
    In some of its most powerful sequences, Lee addresses the devastating impact of crack. In Jungle Fever, he is stretching his imaginative grasp (his women have much stronger voices than usual) and refining his technique.
  9. Best in Show
    It's as smart, quiveringly alert and fleet of foot as a purebred pointer on the scent of fresh game.
    • Newsweek
  10. Chariots of Fire
    Chariots of Fire will thrill you and delight you and very possibly reduce--or exalt--you to tears...Chariots of Fire is for everyone; it's exactly what a popular film ought to be: superb work by first-rate people out to achieve the highest standards of excellence. [28 Sept 1981, p.88]
    • Newsweek
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Eve's Bayou
    In the end, first-time writer-director Kasi Lemmon's ambitions exceed her skill, but her creativity and the breadth of her vision more than make up for her occasional missteps, luring us into a family album of secrets and lies that keeps the audience groping along with this fine ensemble cast for the truths buried in murky waters.
  12. Tex
    Tex, a Walt Disney production, makes good on that studio's promise to return to quality family filmmaking. You don't have be 16 to be moved by it -- having been 16 will do. [02 Aug 1982]
    • Newsweek
  13. Ruthless People
    Ruthless People is a tight, vulgar, low-down black farce that starts funny and, wonder of wonders, gets funnier as it goes. [30 June 1986, p.59]
    • Newsweek
  14. Lost in America
    The peril of making a movie about monochromatic people is that you'll make a monochromatic movie, and Brooks hasn't entirely avoided this problem. Basically, his imagination doesn't include other people: the audience is trapped inside one insanity and starts to crave variety. Still, few comics cut so close to the bone of daily life, and that's to be cherished. [25 Feb 1985, p.85]
    • Newsweek
  15. Enchanted April
    It's a tribute to Newell's seductive filmmaking, and to the delicious wit of the sterling cast, that this unlikely romantic idyll casts so potent a spell. A sweet pipe dream, Enchanted April won't bear much scrutiny; just bask in it indulgently like a spring sun.
  16. The Saddest Music in the World
    Hilariously odd and prodigiously inventive.
  17. Thief
    Brutal and precision-made, Thief is a high-tech crime movie that closes in on its subject with such relentless purpose that it approaches abstraction. Nothing enters Mann's frame that is not designed to be there: the expertise he honors in his criminal hero is mirrored by his own meticulous craftsmanship. He gets the job done--and blows you away while doing it. [30 Mar 1981, p.82]
    • Newsweek
  18. The Buddy Holly Story
    This unpretentious, affectionate biography of the horn-rimmed Texas boy who changed the course of rock 'n' roll is a real movie, with a firm grasp on its characters, an honest-to-god plot and an old-fashioned heart. [26 June 1978, p.79]
    • Newsweek
  19. Magnolia
    At its best, Magnolia towers over most Hollywood films this year.
  20. Barbarosa
    If Barbarosa is a decidedly bumpy ride, its quirky ambitions are always interesting. Schepisi doesn't play safe, but he's a real filmmaker -- even his mistakes are arresting. [02 Aug 1982, p.62]
    • Newsweek
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
    At the heart of all Morris's films -- from "The Thin Blue Line" to "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control" -- is a fundamental belief in the unreliability of truth.
  22. James and the Giant Peach
    Dahl himself thought his book would be impossible to translate into film, and for all the ingenuity that's been thrown at the screen, perhaps he was right. This overgrown peach never ripens.
  23. 2046
    In this gorgeously melancholic fresco of love affairs, Tony Leung Chiu Wai plays a womanizing pulp-fiction writer in '60s Hong Kong.
  24. Kung Fu Hustle
    Defies all laws of gravity in its pursuit of thrills and laughs—and it's so disarmingly eager to please that only a stone-faced kung fu purist could object.
  25. Apollo 13
    By sticking resolutely to the facts of the most amazing rescue mission of all time, the movie builds tremendous suspense, even though most people will know how it came out.
  26. The Aviator
    DiCaprio is astonishing.
  27. The Big Red One
    Marvin's taciturn performance--a moving demonstration of masculine grace under pressure--may be his finest.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Shootist
    Wayne's proud, quietly anguished performance, one of his very best and certainly his most moving, has a richness that seems born of self-knowledge; he lends the film a tremendous sense of intimacy and a surprisingly confessional mood. [16 Aug 1976, p.68]
    • Newsweek
  29. Rescue Dawn
    As taut and exciting as many edge-of-your-seat Hollywood escape movies.
  30. No Way Out
    The preposterous plot is riddled with holes, and Patton, as the psychotic homosexual aide, badly overplays his hand. Nonetheless, Australian-born director Roger Donaldson does a bangup job tightening the suspense screws inside the Pentagon. Costner, much more vibrant than he was allowed to be in "The Untouchables," brings great dash and conviction to material that probably doesn't deserve it, and Hackman finds pockets of humanity in his badguy role. The result is taut, stylish and, for those willing to suspend about three tons of disbelief, a good deal of fun. [24 Aug 1987, p.60]
    • Newsweek
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