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. Running on Empty
    Improbable as some of the plot may be, Lumet's movie -- directed with artful simplicity -- strikes powerful emotional chords. Running on Empty also happens to be the year's best teen romance: quirky Lorna (Martha Plimpton), in stubborn rebellion against her family's Wasp propriety, is a delightfully real teenager. [03 Oct 1988, p.57]
    • Newsweek
  2. Monkey Shines
    The first test of a horror movie comes not the morning after but in the midst of the onslaught. By these standards, Monkey Shines is a white-knuckle triumph. Romero's film has its lurid, nonsensical lapses, but it touches some deep nerves. It's as unsettling as anything he's done. [08 Aug 1988, p.66]
    • Newsweek
  3. Big Top Pee-wee
    Though sprinkled with comic gems, Big Top Pee-wee runs out of gas in the home stretch. Kleiser, of Blue Lagoon fame, is too bland for the job -- the tame Big Top finale makes you yearn for the cartoonish pizzazz of Big Adventure director Tim Burton. [01 Aug 1988, p.54]
    • Newsweek
  4. Big Business
    You can convince yourself you're having a good time watching Big Business. The idea seems so funny you smile in anticipation of the jokes, but the laughter is strangely tinny. It's a harmless concoction, but so mechanical it vanishes from your head the instant it's over. It should have been so much more. [13 Jun 1988, p.74]
    • Newsweek
  5. Tokyo Pop
    As a quirky travelogue, Kubui's movie has an unassuming appeal, but the characters remain too sketchy to elicit much passion. [16 May 1988, p.83E]
    • Newsweek
  6. Bright Lights, Big City
    The fact is, you are not the kind of novel who should be turned into a move. Without McInerney's deft, witty prose to divert and amuse us, where's the beef in "Bright Lights"? [4 Apr 1988, p.72]
    • Newsweek
  7. Beetlejuice
    For sheer off-the-wall audacity, Tim Burton's demented Beetlejuice certainly demands respect, even if it's more enjoyable in concept that in execution. [4 Apr 1988, p.72]
    • Newsweek
  8. Biloxi Blues
    Simon shies away from the more interesting implications of his own growth in favor of ingratiating his audience. This weakens the movie versions even more than the original plays. [04 Apr 1988, p.72A]
    • Newsweek
  9. Babette's Feast
    The meal is more than mouthwatering -- it's Dinesen's metaphor for the transcendent power of art. This bountiful movie, like the feast itself, can turn your heart. [14 March 1988, p.61]
    • Newsweek
  10. Frantic
    Polanski treats the hotel with the same virtuosity he displayed in filming the apartment in Rosemary's Baby, one of the most deeply satisfying thrillers ever made. Frantic doesn't maintain this level: there are some irritating illogicalities, and Polanski hasn't fully mined the possibilities of all the elements in his screenplay (cowritten with Gerard Brach), such as Arab terrorists in Paris and the tiny nuclear-bomb trigger they are after. [07 Mar 1988, p.68]
    • Newsweek
  11. Hope and Glory
    Turning the pious cliches of World War II melodrama on their heads, Boorman has made his most dizzyingly funny movie, an anarchic celebration of family. The warmth that exudes from these turbulent recollections isn't a sentimental heat but a joyful one: Boorman's eyes see the foibles and betrayals of adult life, the casual savagery of children, and forgive all. It's an idyll set amidst urban rubble. [19 Oct 1987, p.84]
    • Newsweek
  12. Ironweed
    Ironweed is strong stuff. [21 Dec 1987, p.68]
    • Newsweek
  13. Au Revoir les Enfants
    Malle's film -- the most personal he's ever made -- goes out of its way not to tug on your heartstrings. Dealing with the most painful memory of his childhood in France during World War II, Malle has made a film of uncommon restraint. [15 Feb 1988, p.70]
    • Newsweek
  14. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    At its tense, funny/melancholy best it hits notes other movies don't even attempt. It was probably folly to film this unfilmable book in the first place. But what an honorable, fascinating folly. [15 Feb 1988, p.71]
    • Newsweek
  15. Moonstruck
    A delightful surprise... Jewison does his best work in decades. [21 Dec 1987]
    • Newsweek
  16. Throw Momma from the Train
    Using the distinctive cinematographer Barry Sonnefeld, who shot "Raising Arizona," DeVito gives his comedy a crisp, colorful pop look: you can almost see the broad cartoon outlines drawn around the figures. [14 Dec 1987, p.69]
    • Newsweek
  17. Manon of the Spring
    A rousing tale of retribution that ties up the dangling threads with bold melodramatic flourish. [09 Nov 1987, p.77]
    • Newsweek
  18. 3 Men and a Baby
    Nimoy and his writers prefer blandness to satire; an E.T. without toilet training, little Mary has been sent to earth to prove that even playboys have big hearts. A feel-good fantasy for baby boomers, Three Men and a Baby is so aggressively innocuous you may be ready for beddy-bye time long before it's over. [30 Nov 1987, p.73]
    • Newsweek
  19. Cry Freedom
    Whatever its imperfections of structure and symmetry, Cry Freedom is an exciting film because of Attenborough's passionate feeling for the complex, bitter war for justice that's going on in South Africa. [09 Nov 1987, p.79]
    • Newsweek
  20. Less Than Zero
    My advice to moviegoers: Just say no. [16 Nov 1987, p.108]
    • Newsweek
  21. Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
    Ambitious, unsettling, funny and perhaps too smart for its own good. With so much on its satirical agenda, it tends to spin out of orbit. [9 Nov 1987]
    • Newsweek
  22. Suspect
    Like a TV movie, Suspect is aggressively and glibly topical, paying lip service to the plight of the homeless and the Vietnam vet. But the cast, which includes John Mahoney, E. Katherine Kerr and Joe Mantegna, is first rate, and the pace rarely flags. Take one salt tablet and enjoy. [26 Oct 1987, p.86]
    • Newsweek
  23. Someone to Watch Over Me
    What Scott brings to this, for him, surprisingly conventional genre moving is a superb sense of mood, seductive settings and a nice feel for the comedy of colliding social classes. Yet for all its tension and style, the movie feels thin. The obligatory violent ending is a real letdown: implausibly plotted and much too familiar. And while there's nothing wrong with Berenger's solid, witty performance, he's a little bland. [12 Oct 1987, p.84D]
    • Newsweek
  24. The Pick-up Artist
    The first hour of Toback's movie bounces and sparkles like a stone skipping on water. Downey is such an ingenuous con man it's impossible not to smile at his chutzpah, and Ringwald reveals a grave, grown-up solidity we haven't seen before. [28 Sept 1987, p.77]
    • Newsweek
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Amazon Women on the Moon
    Like the object of its lampooning -- television -- "Amazon" is lightweight and often predictable. Anyone who's left grade school by the time "Leave It to Beaver" came on the air might want to sit this one out. [5 Oct 1987, p.86]
    • Newsweek
  26. The Fourth Protocol
    The Fourth Protocol, based on a Frederick Forsyth thriller, ought to be gripping, but it is merely diffuse, mechanical and overlong. So much windup, so little delivery. [14 Sept 1987, p.82]
    • Newsweek
  27. Hamburger Hill
    Its battle scenes have a raw, gritty power that's closer to an actual documentary than any other Vietnam movie (the director, John Irvin, is an Englishman with an extensive background in documentaries, including ones about Vietnam). But its uncompromising indictment of the antiwar movement back home is much too simplistic and undercuts the film's tremendous momentum as a record of the combat soldiers' hellish ordeal. [14 Sept 1987, p.83]
    • Newsweek
  28. Matewan
    This moving, engrossing work shows that Sayles is as valuable a chronicler of our past as he is of our present. [14 Sep 1987, p.82]
    • Newsweek
  29. Dirty Dancing
    Flirts throughout with cliches, and some of the more melodramatic plot devices creak at the joints. Still, the potency of this pop romantic can't be denied. [24 Aug 1987]
    • Newsweek
  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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