TV Guide Magazine's Scores

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For 7,979 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Badlands
Lowest review score: 0 Terror Firmer
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,504 out of 7979
  2. Mixed: 3,561 out of 7979
  3. Negative: 914 out of 7979
7979 movie reviews
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    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Great Escape
    Expertly directed and written with an infectious undercurrent of wry humor, this classic WWII POW escape yarn features an all-star cast of hardened Allied prisoners who the Germans have thrown together in a special escape-proof camp.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Frankenstein
    Nothing can detract from the power of the most influential monster movie ever made.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Psycho
    It's got a jet black sense of humor that becomes increasingly apparent upon repeated viewings and there's no doubt that it is masterful filmmaking. Hitchcock himself approached it almost as a technical joke...The film is a textbook example of audience manipulation, as Hitchcock shifts our identification from character to character with the alacrity of a magician.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Goodbye Girl
    A rarity for Neil Simon's screen efforts, The Goodbye Girl perfectly blends humor, sentiment, and romance on a level so pleasant it's almost suspicious.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Aliens
    A nonstop, high-tech, souped-up war movie, with gung ho marines blasting special-effects creatures, and a genuinely convincing, exciting action heroine.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Days of Heaven
    Director Malick endows this simple, timeless story with the enormous scope and resonance of myth through a clear vision unclouded by sentimentality and by a deft juxtaposition of image, music, and character.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Billy the Kid
    In the end, Bill emerges as someone truly unique and someone who we feel privileged to know.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Iraq in Fragments
    Tragically, the title of James Longley's beautifully shot 90-minute documentary refers to not only the state in which he found the Iraq during the two years he spent there shooting over 300 hours of footage, but the structure the violent factionalism that divides Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds imposes on his film.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Delicatessen
    Delicatessen is an ingeniously funny film with a surprisingly sweet romance at its center.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Point Blank
    The ultimate arty 60s thriller, and we mean that as a compliment.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Funny Girl
    The oddly cast Sharif is better than usual, but Streisand, of course, is most of the show, belting out songs, pulling heartstrings, alternating between raucous slapstick and dramatic power, and generally demonstrating that she has arrived in a big way.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Pinocchio
    This was Disney's second full-length animated feature and it may well the greatest of the studio's cartoon classics.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Funny Face
    This film exists only for its glamorous visuals, gorgeous Gershwin music, and the dancing choreographed by Astaire and Eugene Loring.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Hold Back the Dawn
    A touching and memorable film, this brilliant romance offers evocative performances by Boyer and de Havilland.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    All That Heaven Allows
    With its touching story and stylized treatment, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS is one of Sirk's finest films.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Inland Empire
    In the end, it's best to make peace with the film's essential and deliberate inscrutability -- something Lynch fans have learned to do since Twin Peaks -- and to simply marvel at Dern's astonishing performance, which few actresses are likely to top anytime soon.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It's a Wonderful Life
    Few filmmakers have rivaled director Frank Capra when it comes to examining the human heart, and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is a masterfully crafted exercise in sentiment, augmented by Capra's undying faith in community. Reed and Barrymore give excellent performances, as does a superb cast of character players, but this is Stewart's film--heart-stirring as the dreamer who sacrifices all for his fellow man.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Once Upon a Time in the West (re-release)
    Sergio Leone's masterpiece. In Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone pulls together all the themes, characterizations, visuals, humor, and musical experiments of the three "Dollars" films and comes up with a true epic western. It is a stunning, operatic film of breadth, detail, and stature that deserves to be considered among the greatest westerns ever made. (Review of Original Release)
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    East of Eden
    A powerful film whose influence can be seen in Hud and most other antihero films, East of Eden is masterfully directed by Kazan. All the principals give riveting performances, but it was Dean who emerged as an overnight sensation. Eden also features a quintessentially hardbitten performance from Van Fleet, who won an Oscar for her pains.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Rear Window
    A superb example of suspense filmmaking, especially when one considers the technical limitations of its single set.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Beyond the Gates
    Caton-Jones' refusal to pull back on showing exactly what happened to the 800,000 Rwandans who were murdered that spring means that strong stomachs and even stronger nerves are required, but the film demands to be seen by anyone attempting to grasp how -- and just how quickly -- genocide can occur.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Big Sleep
    THE BIG SLEEP comes magically alive through Hawks's careful direction and Bogart's persona, which is twin to his character of Philip Marlowe.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Godfather
    The Godfather is a generational saga; it's also an action film; but above all, it catches the imagination of audiences because it suggests that the career of a gangster is not so very different from the career of a businessman or a politician.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sunset Boulevard
    No other motion picture about Hollywood comes near Billy Wilder's searing, uncompromising and utterly fascinating portrait of the film community.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Star Is Born
    Judy Garland is at her peak, pulling out all the stops, daring the gods in this dark, weighty fable of the price one pays to be at the top.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Notorious
    This brilliant Hitchcock offering combines romance, suspense, and international intrigue with unforgettable performances from Grant and Bergman.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
    The second film in John Ford's "Cavalry Trilogy" features John Wayne at his best and boasts some incredible, Oscar-winning Technicolor photography of Monument Valley.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Jules and Jim
    Francois Truffaut's greatest achievement, Jules and Jim is a shrine to lovers who have known obsession and been destroyed by it.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cinderella
    Excellent animation, marvelous color, and lovely music make Cinderella a delight all the way around.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Lady Eve
    Chic, sly little masterpiece of comic seduction.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dead Man
    A slow-paced but hypnotically absorbing movie, it's buoyed by Jarmusch's trademark off-key humor and embellished throughout by an electrifying instrumental score, courtesy of Neil Young.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cool Hand Luke
    Too cool for words, then switches past midstream into a work of poignancy and power.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Up
    You get the feeling that, had Pixar been in business 25 years ago, Steven Spielberg might have made this movie for them as a follow-up to "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Duck Soup
    A masterpiece...DUCK SOUP is perhaps the best, and funniest, depiction of the absurdities of war ever committed to celluloid.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    True Confessions
    The period detail is letter-perfect, the cast is uniformly excellent, and Delerue's score is haunting and evocative. TRUE CONFESSIONS is a thoughtful but deeply disturbing film, and its frank portrayal of corruption and murder makes it for adults only.
  36. The Departed
    A thrilling return to form.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    White Heat
    WHITE HEAT is primal, flamboyant stuff--close your eyes and you could be watching a 30s picture. But don't close them more than momentarily; the film's visuals make it linger in the mind's eye.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    North by Northwest
    NORTH BY NORTHWEST has everything--thrills, suspense, mystery, and black humor, as well as dark undertones of sexual exploitation and covert political machination.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bombshell
    This early precursor to Sunset Boulevard and The Bad and the Beautiful was so inside that many people outside the movie business didn't catch the nuances, and it still packs a considerable comic punch.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Straw Dogs
    Straw Dogs is one of Sam Peckinpah's finest films, a relentless study in violence and machismo that is shocking, not only for its explicit gore, but for the degree to which it manipulates "civilized" audiences. Even the most passive viewer may find himself silently cheering on the carnage at the film's climax--an act that, in retrospect, gives much cause for discomfort.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Pat and Mike
    The point isn't what happens, but how it happens, and under the direction of George Cukor--working from the script by Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon--Tracy and Hepburn turn in unforgettable performances.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mean Streets
    Mean Streets is a brilliantly made film--terrifically acted, sharply photographed and crisply edited.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Little Miss Sunshine
    What makes husband-and-wife directing team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' hilarious debut such a great family film isn't that it's suitable for the whole family (it's not), but that it speaks a simple truth about what it means to be part of one.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Beauty and the Beast
    Beauty And The Beast is a nostalgic feast, drawing shamelessly on the best traditions of screen animation and American musical theater and film. Thoroughly derivative but thoroughly charming.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Greatest Show on Earth
    It's big, it's garish, it's loud, and most of all, it's wonderful. This is Cecil B. DeMille's superlative salute to the circus world, and all its glamour and flashy hoopla suits perfectly the director whose middle name was epic.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    United 93
    One of the most harrowing, viscerally upsetting films ever made.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    The Decomposition of the Soul
    Released simultaneously in the U.S. with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Oscar-nominated fictional thriller "The Lives of Others," this chilling 82-minute documentary about three souls destroyed by the Stasi, the notorious secret police of East Germany, puts a cold, factual gloss on what might otherwise be taken for fiction.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Henry V
    Straightforward, energetic, updated Bard. 28-year-old star-director-adapter Kenneth Branagh's spellbinding version of Shakespeare's Henry isn't superior to Olivier's 1944 version - it's different, and complementary to it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Still Life
    Few of China's Sixth Generation filmmakers have turned to their country's explosive economic growth and its attendant upheavals with so sharp an eye and so heavy a heart as Jia Zhang-ke.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Two-Lane Blacktop
    Certainly not an average car chase movie, Two-Lane Blacktop is perhaps director Monte Hellman's finest film.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The 39 Steps
    One of Hitchcock's best British films, and a prototype for so much of what would follow in his American career. For those who love a grand spy mystery, a wild chase, and a harrowing portrait of an innocent man struggling to prove his innocence while the world turns inexplicably against him, The 39 Steps is ideal.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
    This landmark TV-movie brings history to vivid life, never sacrificing moving personal drama to score sociological or political points.
  53. Waking Life
    A collection of interconnected vignettes shot as live-action digital video footage which is then 'fed into' computer animation software, Linklater's latest film is an audacious, ambitious undertaking. There's a surreal yet consistent logic to it, which is the film's biggest accomplishment.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    King Kong
    The ultimate monster movie and one of the grandest and most beloved adventure films ever made, KING KONG is a film that has given us one of the most enduring icons of American popular culture--a massively destructive but curiously sympathetic giant gorilla whose rampage through New York City suggests, on a psychological level, the re-emergence of repressed desire.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Paths of Glory
    This is a harrowing and still very effective antiwar film that ranks with Lewis Milestone's epic All Quiet On The Western Front in its power.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Exiled
    The final confrontation is a slow-motion, De Palma-esque massacre in a hotel lobby that begins and ends in the amount of time it takes for a high-flying can of Red Bull to hit the floor. Breathtaking.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cat People
    A haunting and subtle film, filled with desires gone awry and everyday settings turned inexplicably nightmarish.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Stalag 17
    Unlike previous POW films, Wilder and co-writer Edwin Blum's script, based on the play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, presents the prisoners not as paragons of patriotic virtue but as real, self-interested, bored soldiers trying to survive. Holden is magnificent as the heel-turned-hero, but Stalag 17 is full of wonderful, well-directed performances.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Big House
    Grimly realistic and often brutal, it exposes the inhuman conditions and paranoia that deepen criminal resolve among inmates.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sullivan's Travels
    This brilliant, often devastating look at Hollywood and the real world behind its tinsel is arguably Preston Sturges's greatest film.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cavalcade
    A rare beauty. Noel Coward, in an atypically serious venture, traces 30 years of a British family's life.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Scarface
    A beautiful, at times poetic exercise in excess from Brian De Palma.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Dirty Dozen
    Aldrich was a master at presenting his distinctly cynical outlook in the context of crowd-pleasing entertainment, and The Dirty Dozen is one of his most effective and lasting efforts.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Berlin
    Never an easy one to impress, Reed is clearly in awe of Antony's ethereal voice, and it must now stand as the definitive version of a 40 year old song.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Horse Feathers
    Not a masterpiece but divine all the same. The Marx Brothers bring their special brand of anarchy to the world of college football in this wonderfully madcap comedy.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Magnificent Ambersons
    Welles's second great masterpiece.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
    The marvelous sets--with their quaint blend of Victorian and futuristic elements--are worth the price of admission alone. The direction is sharp as are the special effects. All the major performances are fun but James Mason is a standout. Dare we say it? It's fun for the entire family!
    • 67 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Time Machine
    This smashing science-fiction adaptation of H.G. Wells's famous novel has more creativity in every frame than most latter-day rip-offs have in their entirety.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Raiders of the Lost Ark
    Ford's performance is an underrated but remarkable achievement; he succeeds in fully embodying a comic-book style hero without ever descending into camp.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Miracle Worker
    The film is a harrowing, painfully honest, sometimes violent journey, astonishingly acted and rendered.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Goldfinger
    Goldfinger contains more crowd-pleasing moments than any other Bond film, including Oddjob's flying bowler, a laser beam that almost emasculates Bond, the lavishly accessorized Aston Martin DB5, and the bizarre murder of Goldfinger's secretary (Shirley Eaton): she's gilded to death. It also features Shirley Bassey's terrific rendition of the Leslie Bricusse-Anthony Newley title song.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Silkwood
    Mike Nichols, in his first venture into movies since "The Fortune," elicited superlative performances from the actors, particularly Streep and stage veteran Sudi Bond.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Shining
    With remarkable visual panache and a keen sense of irony, Stanley Kubrick rehabilitates Stephen King's trashy, terrifying novel. Not a horror film in any traditional sense, but a perversely comic, occasionally frightening melodrama of intrafamilial rage, THE SHINING retains the Oedipal structure of King's narrative while running rings around its pulpy sensibility.
  74. Volver
    Crammed with outrageous turns of fortune and quicksilver shifts in tone, Almodovar's film is held together by performances so subtle and complex it's hard to single out only one as exceptional. But Cruz is astonishing.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Deep Water
    The real emotional impact of the film lies in the candid interviews with Crowhurst's wife, Clare, and his son, Simon, both of whom are clearly still haunted by Crowhurst and his fateful voyage.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Away We Go
    Like "Juno" or "Little Miss Sunshine," Away We Go is a small film, the kind of gem that's easy to crush with hype or overpraise. But, the fact is that few movies deal with feelings this profound with as much restraint as Mendes and his crew display here.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Brute Force
    Rozsa's pounding score and a savage climax make Brute Force first rate all the way.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The King of Comedy
    De Niro gives a miraculous character performance, much different from the intense brooding loners for which he is renowned. He seems to disappear into this oddball, somewhat repulsive, but ultimately rather touching character. Sandra Bernhard, in her film debut, is nearly as memorable as Rupert's outrageous partner in crime.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Candy Mountain
    O'Connor is superb as the would-be rock star whose romantic notions persist despite the fact that he is an empty vessel with absolutely nothing to say, and this odd, offbeat film richly deserves the audience it failed to find during its theatrical run.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Late Spring (1949)
    One is left with an overwhelming sense of knowledge about these characters and of human nature, and finally, a recognition of the profound sadness of everyday life. LATE SPRING is truly transcendent.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Matewan
    Matewan is beautifully shot, and there is not a weak performance in the film. Jones is a tower of dignity; Cooper is the epitome of quiet strength; and Oldham glows with the passion of a zealot, first for God, then for the union.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Three Caballeros
    A smashing follow-up to SALUDOS AMIGOS, this is one of the most dazzling achievements of the cartoon genre.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Wrong Man
    The bleakest of Hitchcock's films, this stark, deliberate probing of a man wrongfully accused is almost wholly based on fact, creating its drama from a celebrated New York City case.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Shop Around the Corner
    This may be the best romantic comedy ever made. The great Ernst Lubitsch handles his "small" theme brilliantly, bringing the lives of everyday people to the screen as he had never done before.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Aladdin
    Aladdin is a fairy tale with an edge--a popular children's story that will have even the most media-savvy parents straining to keep up with Williams's machine-gun delivery of quips, allusions and imitations.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Black Narcissus
    An odd, unsettling film which suggests the dangers of both emotional restraint and unchecked passion, Black Narcissus is also one of the most visually beautiful films ever made in color.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Sir! No Sir!
    Zieger's thoroughly researched film is a vital reminder that beginning in the mid-'60s, a few conscience-stricken military individuals -- including dermatologist Dr. Howard Levy, sickened by cynical attempts to win Vietnamese "hearts and minds" through medical treatment, and Navy nurse Susan Schnall, who wore her uniform to a civilian antiwar demonstration -- actively and openly voiced peace sentiments.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dumbo
    A masterpiece of visual story-telling.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Shot in the Dark
    The picture is filled with one sight gag after another, many familiar to anyone old enough to remember the glory days of silent comedy.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sunrise at Campobello
    Ralph Bellamy is superb as Roosevelt, capturing every nuance of a man who was the most photographed and listened-to politician of his generation. Surpassing Bellamy, though, is Garson, who doesn't play Eleanor Roosevelt, she becomes her.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Peter Pan
    A wonderful movie.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Little Big Man
    Hoffman is uncharacteristically charming in a demanding role; the supporting cast is uniformly excellent, particularly Chief Dan George as a befuddled patriarch who takes the supernatural as a matter of course.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Au Revoir les Enfants
    A delicately rendered and exceptionally moving reminiscence of a boyhood friendship cut short by war.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    42nd Street
    The film that revived public interest in musicals after many early talkie bombs sabotaged the genre, 42nd Street was the first real glimpse of the surreal artistry of choreographer Busby Berkeley.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Loggerheads
    Beautifully acted, structurally sophisticated heart-tugger.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    3 Godfathers
    A wonderful, sentimental western about a bad man who redeems himself.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Major Barbara
    Valuable as a fine performance of an important and delightful play, MAJOR BARBARA makes for bracingly intelligent cinema.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Gallipoli
    Director Weir and cinematographer Russell Boyd's re-creation of the invasion and battle action is stunning, but what makes Gallipoli such an affecting film is its intimate presentation of the friendship between Archy and Frank (wonderfully essayed by Lee and Gibson).
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Zulu
    Set in 1879 in Natal, this magnificently staged, brilliantly acted film tells the story of the heroic defense by overwhelmingly outnumbered British troops of the tiny outpost Rorke's Drift.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Long Riders
    THE LONG RIDERS is one of the last great westerns made in America, directed tautly by Walter Hill from an excellent, well-researched script. The cinematography by Ric Waite is magnificent, the period is beautifully captured, and Ry Cooder's outstanding score nicely incorporates folk music of the era. The whole feeling of this film is one of antiquity, an atmosphere marvelously created by Hill and enhanced by a superb cast.
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