Village Voice's Scores

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For 11,162 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 40% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 56% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 7.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 57
Highest review score: 100 Hooligan Sparrow
Lowest review score: 0 Followers
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4,708 out of 11162
  2. Mixed: 4,553 out of 11162
  3. Negative: 1,901 out of 11162
11162 movie reviews
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  1. Deadline
    The fact that real-life deadly racial animus in America is often cartoonish in its manifestation doesn't excuse Deadline's cliché-ridden characterizations of bigotry. Worse, the film has no pulse and no dramatic tension, despite its subject matter. It's a slog to get to its big revelations.
  2. Generation Um...
    Reeves is able to make such potentially silly material as this strangely compelling, but his hard work is ultimately a drop in an otherwise empty bucket.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    One-Third
    A borderline experimental, nearly silent film loosely based on Dante's "Inferno."
  4. Enough
    Campbell is the movie's primary power source. His steely gaze and overbearing quietude are forever tainted; "Once and Again" doesn't stand a chance in Lifetime reruns.
  5. Rushlights
    The endless hidden connections and coincidences eventually become ridiculous.
  6. Savannah
    The story overflows with reverence but is drastically short on passion or suspense.
  7. Merry Christmas
    What's really absent from this fiasco is a sense of purpose or an interest in character, as the participants in this weekend-getaway contest are ciphers defined mainly by their degree of obnoxiousness.
  8. Apollo 18
    His (Gonzalo López-Gallego) this-is-authentic conceit is by now a tediously corny device, and his story delivers no scares during the interminably long, uneventful build-up to its deflating climax.
  9. Dawn Patrol
    The developments keep getting more outrageous from there, with the psychologies of the characters becoming increasingly bizarre.
  10. Misconduct
    The new thriller Misconduct is getting kicked to the curb by its distributor, which is too bad, because director Shintaro Shimosawa's debut feature boasts an elegant visual style and a mystery plot with so many absurd twists that the film becomes enjoyable high melodrama.
  11. Assault on Wall Street
    An hour of these repetitive, predictable disasters should wear down all but the most bailout-hating viewers.
  12. The Family Tree
    Thin as it is, Family Tree is no slog - the droll, attentive performances by Davis and Mulroney are endearing, and the extraneous guest-star bits (including Christina Hendricks as a secretary, no less) and rambling B stories aren't overly distracting.
  13. The Loft
    The Loft's boorish leads aren't sensible enough to be worth caring about, making the film's character-driven conclusion feel like a self-defeating cop-out.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    London
    Syd's (Chris Evans) emotional tailspin is embarrassingly banal, and his assertion that "everybody here hates me" quickly applies to the audience as well.
  15. A Sound of Thunder
    The movie recovers from a sluggish opening act to pack some real suspense in its second half.
  16. The Whole Ten Yards
    An anemic attempt at Coen-style bodies-and-bowling deadpan, The Whole Nine Yards compensated for its comic shortcomings with a casual, uncharacteristically likable performance by Bruce Willis.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sun Kissed
    The only joy to be extracted from Sun Kissed is voyeuristic: watching Teddy and Leo's taut bodies as they frolic in the sun-drenched surf. To music you like.
  18. Sex and Death 101
    Stupid monikers are just one symptom of a stultifying, overwritten cleverness that substitutes quirk for character.
  19. Eating Out: All You Can Eat
    Seems comprised in equal measure of foul-mouthed humor and good-natured coupling.
  20. The Skulls
    Energetic and thoroughly brainless.
  21. House
    The central problem here is one common to faith-based films: The heroes (Reynaldo Rosales and Heidi Dippold) are both overly bland and poorly cast.
  22. The Strip
    Could Dave Foley prostitute his talent to amuse any further without actually becoming a prostitute? In a plunging step down from emceeing celebrity poker, Foley provides a recognizable face to Jameel Khan's picked-over Goodwill bin of workplace comedy, The Strip.
  23. Falling Awake
    The film hints at progressive themes...soon disregard both in the service of a hokey gangsta plot.
  24. Burzynski
    Who's the bigger charlatan--Burzynski or Merola--and why is this conspiratorial rubbish being released into theaters?
    • 24 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Now & Later
    Worse, all of this sex is so garishly lit and unimaginatively framed that it's not even fun to watch.
  26. Piranha 3DD
    Add to this that it takes place in the town of Merkin, and you'll get an idea of the labored spirit of dirty-old-man humor that prevails.
  27. Certainty
    Clemens's and Lipinski's equally stiff performances are also disappointing as they staunch the humor inherent in O'Malley's dialogue.
  28. Saving Grace B. Jones
    The film packs in more characters, subplots, and moments of nostalgic detail than it can gracefully accommodate, and the pacing often feels rushed.
  29. Mission Park
    The tense prologue of writer-director Bryan Ramirez's Mission Park...evokes a tactile, scary reality utterly betrayed by the following 90-minute string of hackneyed, basic-cable plotting and dialogue.
  30. Dumbbells
    Dumbbells manages to be pleasant and largely inoffensive despite early indications that it might turn into a T&A-fest.
  31. Demi-Soeur
    The film indulges in much wannabe-funny wailing, shrieking, and flopping about by Nénette and Paul, only to then lace its buffoonish material with semi-serious undercurrents.
  32. Fugly!
    It's a comedy that's so broad and cartoony that the occasional dramatic pivots seem diminished and ridiculous, like performing a soliloquy on a Chuck E. Cheese stage.
  33. A Strange Course of Events
    Its emotions prove curiously inconsistent, hinting at darkness but never committing fully.
  34. Mr. Deeds
    Stay home. Your entertainment-seeking efforts would be better expended perusing old phone books. The white pages.
  35. Chloe and Theo
    Chloe and Theo is a film that operates entirely on a vague sense of uplift.
  36. Jawbreaker
    Stein's script is slack and tin-eared, too feeble to pass for satire, and inadequate even by lazy-pastiche standards.
  37. Captivity
    Roland Joffé creates a visually interesting and aurally unsettling vibe, and the story from B-movie maestro Larry Cohen keeps it simple.
  38. Tales of Erotica
    Whittled down from a series of 36 short films commissioned by a German television network between 1996 and 2000, Erotic Tales leaves you only to ponder the horror of the 33 that didn't make the cut.
  39. Juwanna Mann
    This flat run at a hip-hop "Tootsie" is so poorly paced you could fit all of Pootie Tang in between its punchlines.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Sex, Politics & Cocktails
    Overwhelmingly poor camerawork helps obscure the deficiencies in the dialogue but can't conceal a sparse plot stretched to feature length by an endless parade of lame sketches.
  41. Knucklehead
    A schmaltzy family comedy that won't pass the smell test for kids, parents, or even stoner second cousins, Knucklehead is too sluggish for young attention spans, and not inventive enough to keep adults engaged.
  42. Happiness Runs
    Loosely based on writer-director Adam Sherman's similar cult upbringing and disillusionment, the film builds on a fascinating cautionary tale, but doesn't develop its characters past whatever movie-of-the-week crisis each suffers from.
  43. Unfreedom
    Though it starts off as a cautiously optimistic conversion narrative, the pseudo-progressive, banned-in-India LGBT drama Unfreedom quickly devolves into an absurdly pessimistic provocation.
  44. Dark Crimes
    This is one very ugly movie at its heart, not for how Englert photographed it but for how bleak and unrelenting the violence is — even that ending can’t dig Dark Crimes out of its dark hole.
  45. Godsend
    The pivotal plot twist isn't hard to predict, and Brit theater vet Hamm and screenwriter Mark Bomback rely on jolts that date back to the silent era.
  46. Hollow Man
    Gleefully confrontational in its ludicrous, pulpy tawdriness.
  47. Saw 3D
    The film's aim to bring its convoluted saga full-circle through the reappearance of original "Saw" victim Carey Elwes merely reeks of desperation, a futile final stab at imparting significance to a creatively bankrupt franchise that need not be resuscitated.
  48. Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe
    Vaxxed is, in the words of Sheriff Bart, the last act of a desperate man. It’s Andrew Wakefield’s Hail Mary, thrown — I hope — as his time in the public arena finally runs out.
  49. The Love Guru
    Now and again some pungent writing leaks through to poke fun at the excruciating banality of guru wisdom. But mostly it’s dreary dick jokes and elephant poop, slack directing by Marco Schnabel, and, of all fatal errors, Mike Myers, shooting for cuddly.
  50. The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
    John Woo outgrew stylizing movies like this in the '90s, but Duffy is still chasing his perfect slide-and-shoot, except now with more self-satisfied posturing, awkward pop-culture referencing, casual homophobia and racism, and the most vulgar co-opting of religious iconography this side of Dan Brown.
  51. Life on the Line
    The country songs that play over the credits offer more arresting detail about life on the line than the film manages in 100 minutes.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Breaking Point
    Breaking Point is so dry you may wish it had the good sense to be a campy hoot.
  53. Return to Sender
    Even with the dramatic buildup, Mikati hesitates to make Return to Sender an all-out revenge fantasy, and the characters are too sketchy for an effective psychological thriller.
  54. Furry Vengeance
    Furry Vengeance isn’t really a movie at all; it's a message provided by the good people at Participant Media.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The War on the War on Drugs
    Ineptitude is so thorough here that War on . . . could only make sense as a sinister governmental smear campaign to justify the war on drugs and total sobriety.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
    It's an unimaginative, mean-spirited gross-out that forgot to bring the funny.
  57. Collateral Beauty
    Maybe you'll be at a dinner. Maybe nobody will believe you. Or maybe they will, and someone will say, "Hollywood is terrible at making movies about trauma.”
  58. Love, Honor and Obey
    Superhumanly awful BBC bottom-feeder Love, Honour and Obey, which, paramount among its many faults, is not recognizably a film.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Walking on the Sky
    "School Ties" heartthrob Randall Batinkoff and the rest of the cast make do with wooden lines and a plot that fails to jell.
  60. Jack and Jill
    It's a dull drag-show routine headed nowhere until Pacino (playing a self-important version of himself) begins stalking Jill.
  61. Sacrifice
    This watered-down throwback to The Wicker Man never really heats up.
  62. Make a Wish
    With its lukewarm gender politicking and clumsy performances, Make a Wish achieves only one real distinction: It has to be the dullest lesbian campout movie ever made.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    My Baby's Daddy
    Homies can make good hubbies, goes the moral of this January dump job, a tired send-up of hip-hop-isms that also aspires to be a Waiting to Exhale for men.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Ready to Rumble
    Rumble's aim is low and dirty.
  65. The Outsider
    Fairbrass proves a hulking wannabe ass-kicker without much distinctive charisma, and his leaden performance is matched by sleepy, one-note supporting turns by the slumming-it Patric and Caan.
  66. Truth
    Truth is hammier than Easter brunch, but its depictions of rejection transfiguring into violence are always affecting and distressing.
  67. An Invisible Sign
    Jessica Alba gets plain-Jane crazy for An Invisible Sign, a syrupy "A Beautiful Mind" redux in which the starlet sports big brown bangs and Pippi Longstocking pigtails.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Formula 51
    Emily Mortimer and Robert Carlyle generate heat as criminal lovers, but most of the cast just engages in embarrassing scenery-gnawing.
  69. Underworld: Blood Wars
    Menzies should be just the spark to bring Underworld back to life, but it doesn’t happen. Screenwriter Cory Goodman (The Last Witch Hunter) isolates Marius from Selene and the other major players so that Menzies is left adrift, like a great fighter without a worthy sparring partner.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Darkness Falls
    This is horror-flick boo-ya at its most rote.
  71. Beautiful
    Surpassing Dan Aykroyd's "Nothing but Trouble" as the most astoundingly atrocious walrus-flop of a directorial debut by a languishing actor ever contrived, Sally Field's Beautiful.
  72. I Do
    Ross's on-the-nose script offers little subtext or nuance, and the film—for all the inherent drama of the situation—has very little real-life grit.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    All Relative
    All Relative requires a strenuous suspension of disbelief. As Harry struggles through this surreality toward love, his mother-daughter love triangle yields few laughs and instead delivers disappointing moments.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Half Past Dead
    Morris Chestnut, known for his "Best Man"-style nice-guy roles, is surprisingly effective against type as the evil commando leader, but he's handcuffed by a script that never adequately explains his motivations.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Eight Crazy Nights
    This dull extension of Sandler's ubiquitous "Chanukah Song" squanders the cross-cultural comedy potential of a Jewish-themed Christmas movie on cheap fart gags and boilerplate schmaltz.
  76. I'm in Love with a Church Girl
    It's hard to quibble with Steve Race's film on theological grounds, though in narrative and aesthetic terms, there's something unholy about its mixture of inane clichés, shallow music-video glossiness, and incessant preaching.
  77. Pay the Ghost
    The script doesn't know the difference between being something scary and pointing at something scary. It's less a film than a series of imitative gestures, a bunch of horror signifiers pointing to nothing.
  78. The Cobbler
    The Cobbler has invented a new category of terrible: cruel schmaltz.
  79. Yoga Hosers
    Yoga Hosers is lazy, unfunny, and self-indulgent.
  80. Reunion
    Not so much a "Big Chill" knockoff as a poor man's Whit Stillman comedy, this pretentious gab-fest from trial lawyer-turned-filmmaker Alan Hruska (Nola) feels like it traveled through a wormhole after someone watched "Metropolitan" in 1990.
  81. A Novel Romance
    Cohabitation "commandments" and talk of "chick flicks" further send the material into a cutesy tailspin, with the script's low point an egregious scene featuring Nate sneaking a peek at a silhouette of Jenny undressing behind a curtain.
  82. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
    The Brothers Grimm may have come up with some cruel, weird material in their day, but they'd never condone actor abuse like this.
  83. Brother's Justice
    Like an overlong episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" with none of the wit and twice the irritation, co-director/writer/star Dax Shepard's impotent, largely unscripted showbiz satire is yet another goof on clueless filmmakers who don't know how to make a film.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Beneath the Darkness
    Unfortunately for Quaid, director Martin Guigui's pathetic thriller doesn't even have the pulse-pounding excitement of a second-tier Scooby-Doo mystery.
  85. The Moment
    What's fresh is Weinstock's interweaving of flashbacks, slightly altered versions of flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, so that viewers must work as hard as Lee to determine past from present.
  86. Dark House
    Dark House is one nutty horror movie, but what's crazier still is how well it works — until it doesn't.
  87. Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son
    John Whitesell's extraordinarily witless movie operates as a checklist for cultural and racial clichés.
  88. Prince of Central Park
    A stinky dumpster for sentimental dung about homelessness and the magical mecca that isn't Manhattan.
  89. Saving Silverman
    A sharp-dumb, jack- and goof-off affair.
  90. Supercapitalist
    Even caped do-gooders couldn't save Supercapitalist, a dramatic dud whose title refers not to some big-business hero but rather to wheelers and dealers living lives of swank suits, fast cars, loose women, plentiful drugs, and goofy corporate-espionage spy games.
  91. Ghost Team
    The jokes are thinner than the apparitions.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Enter the Dangerous Mind
    Despite its pretensions to social awareness — most clearly embodied in Scott Bakula's concerned-caseworker character — the film displays a luridly exploitative attitude toward mental illness.
  93. Ripped
    Much of the humor in Ripped fails to inspire more than a mild chuckle at best, in part because Epstein’s deliberate pacing sucks the air out of countless scenes.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Black Christmas
    The product itself isn't so much afterthought as afterbirth -- a bloody mess to be dumped discreetly.
  95. Mr. Smith Gets a Hustler
    The high-concept scenario soon proves preposterous, the acting is robotically italicized, and truth-in-advertising hounds take note: There's very little hustling on view, though McCrudden does arrange for his lead gym rat to be shirtless as often as possible.
  96. Twelve
    Though Crawford's bangs and facial hair are the most art-directed aspect of the movie, he's costumed to look like a member of the Trenchcoat Mafia (Madison Avenue branch).
  97. Bad Kids of Crestview Academy
    There’s very little fun to be had with the camp of Bad Kids.
  98. New Year's Eve
    A movie so excruciating that it makes its predecessor, "Valentine's Day," seem like "Nashville" in comparison.
  99. Postal
    Manages to be as toothless as he (Boll) is tasteless. Poorly framed, tone-deaf, and nonsensical (yet still Boll's best!).
  100. Home Sweet Hell
    Home Sweet Hell is a pleasantly unpleasant dark comedy, one that gives new meaning to "detached and subdivided" in the mass production zone.
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