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. What Goes Up
    This is rock bottom: I've seen a lot of terrible movies in the line of duty, but What Goes Up might be the only genuinely unreleasable one.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Merci Docteur Rey
    Litvack offers a cameo by Vanessa Redgrave as proof that there's a prestige picture within all this frivolous melodrama. Non, merci.
  3. Martyrs
    The co-directing brothers Goetz prove adept at building escape-the-bad-guy action sequences, but they continually run up against the story's Marquis-de-Sade underpinnings.
  4. The Legend of Hercules
    Renny Harlin's Legend of Hercules fulfills every silly, flimsy promise that it makes in the first place: There are lots of battles (albeit rather jerkily rendered ones), some grand-looking horses decked out in handsome metal headdresses, and lots of well-oiled beefcake.
  5. Getaway
    The smash-and-crash chase scenes are numbingly dull.
  6. Summer in February
    The characters are broadly defined and tedious, which makes sitting through the film's 100 minutes something of a chore.
  7. Shark Night 3D
    Aspires to nothing more or less than carrying along an audience through a string of unremarkable kills, often involving high-jumping fish.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Don't Tell
    Spectacularly incompetent, Don't Tell races into self-parody before the end of the opening credits.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Tiger and the Snow
    The results are neither profound nor funny, but merely uncomfortable. A hubristic failure at risky humor, The Tiger and the Snow provides Benigni his own Michael Richards moment.
  10. The Watcher
    Sidesteps any juicy subtext in favor of routine chase-movie thrills.
  11. Christmas with the Kranks
    Cringe-worthy spectacle.
  12. Barefoot
    The gradual revelation that there's more to Daisy than meets the eye is no great surprise, but it does at least negate — too late! — some of the more troubling subtext.
  13. Backgammon
    Backgammon may not be effectively provocative, but it is sometimes dumb enough to be offensive.
  14. A Love Affair of Sorts
    It is part of the film's premise that the movies are only a pretext to serve personal needs. Given how little the murky finished product offers an outside audience, this comes across all too convincingly.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Take
    Take has the audacity to excuse its bad cinematic habits as figments of both Saul and Ana's imaginations.
  16. Exists
    Against all good sense, Exists plays its material straight, possibly proving itself the year's most laughably derivative and dreary film.
  17. One for the Money
    Making even more appearances than the rodent is the Big Gulp; the lady bounty hunter is constantly consuming junk - though at least when Heigl is snacking, she isn't talking.
  18. Locker 13
    Locker 13 brings the hurt, and not in a good way.
  19. Ironclad: Battle for Blood
    Co-writer/director Jonathan English ups the viscera and nudity at the expense of a compelling narrative, which was hardly the original’s strong suit (if indeed it had one) anyway.
  20. Brush with Danger
    Almost nothing makes sense in Brush With Danger, a bewilderingly incompetent and inexplicably racist Indonesian action film.
  21. Fight Valley
    Rob Hawk's cheap, barely competent action movie Fight Valley is by and for Ultimate Fighting Championship fans, but they deserve better.
  22. Reach Me
    Writer/director John Herzfeld (15 Minutes, Two of a Kind) earnestly tries and spectacularly fails to dilute the acrid pretentiousness of Reach Me, a tone-deaf everything-is-connected melodrama, by cutting his characters' pseudo-enlightened philosophizing with goony broad humor.
  23. Ice from the Sun
    It's barely a movie.
  24. Say It Isn't So
    Elicits not the voluptuous discomfort stirred by the boys' (Peter and Bobby Farrelly) best corporeal shenanigans but creeping embarrassment for everyone on screen.
  25. Alien Girl
    Romanycheva exudes cunning carnality, yet her wiles are as rote as the rest of this B-grade genre flick, which feigns interest in post-Communist Eastern European power dynamics but favors listlessly staged shoot-outs and heists devoid of emotional, psychological, or sociopolitical substance.
  26. Saving Lincoln
    The tragic ending the material demands precludes viewers from complaining that the movie is the most unpleasant thing that could happen in a theater.
  27. The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
    Much has changed in the two decades since the release of Joel Schumacher's Falling Down, but, as The Angriest Man in Brooklyn flatly reminds us, the grievances of America's petulant middle-class men apparently have not.
  28. The Body
    Indiana Jones has never been so missed, but instead this shaggy God story hones in on the faith dilemmas of Banderas and a sputtering Derek Jacobi, so Sunday-hammy you want to rivet him with cloves.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Emerald Cowboy
    The filmmakers may have aimed for doc-like authenticity, but the result is more like a QVC fabulous fake.
  30. 9 Dead Gay Guys
    The film scores points needling the guys' lingering insecurities.
  31. House of the Sleeping Beauties
    One of the year's worst releases. A second viewing of "Synecdoche" would be less painful.
  32. K-11
    More like an on-the-nose parody of Lee Daniels directing an episode of Oz, K-11 is a pulpy, tone-deaf mess of confused directorial intent—exploitation laughs one minute, somber tragedy the next.
  33. 8MM
    A nasty piece of work, and it's nasty in a particularly ostentatious and sophomoric way.
  34. Let's Kill Ward's Wife
    The film is as vacuous and undeserving of regard as any of its characters.
  35. Dirty Grandpa
    Call it a dissenting opinion if you must, but Dirty Grandpa has sporadic moments of hilarity.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    The Order
    This ghost-in-the-Vatican thriller regurgitates enough occult clichés to deserve its own special circle of hell.
  37. Rocky Road
    This perky would-be consciousness-raiser dilutes a potentially interesting subject -- interracial marriage -- with half-baked platitudes, self-conscious acting, and a plot trite enough to be rejected by the PAX channel.
  38. Silver Circle
    The charms of what might charitably be called Silver Circle's homemade look and feel are limited.
  39. The Clapper
    The Clapper unsuccessfully attempts to be sincere and embrace the absurdity of its characters’ lives.
  40. Summer Catch
    Can only be enjoyed with a skullful of Old Bohemian and a faceful of high school crotch.
  41. Ghost Team One
    Thanks to the shakiest of shaky-cams, you don't know whether to wince or lose your lunch.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bratz
    In the end, the most offensive part of Bratz isn't its stereotypes or brand expansion; it's the sorry state of Jon Voight's career.
  43. Homecoming
    Glued together with shards from much better movies, the humorless plot offers no mystery about who's doing what to whom, or why.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Wing Commander: Space Will Never Be the Same
    Gets sucked into a gravitational cesspool of sci-fi clichés.
  45. 3000 Miles to Graceland
    Costner's not a mannered showboat, and what we get isn't a riff—it's a semi-oblivious glimpse of bitter outlaw banality.
  46. Boricua's Bond
    Despite its incoherence and inaudible dialogue, this slice-of-life film manages to be simultaneously thuggish and platitudinous.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Bigger Than the Sky
    At least Sean Astin, as a scene-chewing prima donna, seems to be having a good time--and mom Patty Duke gets to call him a "turd."
  48. Spinning Into Butter
    Approaches its ideas of reverse racism and the hypocrisies of tolerance with a heavy hand and odious moralizing.
  49. Hoodwinked Too! Hood VS. Evil
    One of the more depressing, desensitizing experiences I've had in a theater, Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil feels as computer-generated as its creepy, talking-ceramic-toy style of animation.
  50. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You
    These 2-D characters might as well be wearing T-shirts that say things like "Predatory College Professor" and "Self-Obsessed Father" on them.
  51. Branded
    Branded has ideas, but unfortunately, the ideas are reeking batshit nuts, especially once the cheaply animated "brand" monsters, which might not actually exist, start flying around like Ghostbusters mistakes biting one another. You've been warned.
  52. The Seventh Dwarf
    The original Brothers Grimm stories were hardly feminist, but The Seventh Dwarf's female characters are deplorably retrograde on both the script and design levels; they have little to do except be rescued, and Snow White is a vain, buxom sexpot whom the dwarfs leer at.
  53. Harlem Aria
    Racial tensions and bawdy humor carry the day, until, following an unfunny set piece at a fancy hotel and a street robbery, black and white (far too) easily come together to help their young charge.
  54. The Informers
    A tale of absolute self-absorption and unconscious revelation.
  55. A Haunted House
    Are the movie's half-dozen genuine laughs there just to tease the audience? What can we do to keep "A Haunted House 2" from happening?
  56. 30 Beats
    It is absolutely terrible.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Besotted
    Although the existentialist conclusion highlights the stochastic nature of everyday life, this story of unrequited love doesn't sustain interest beyond the first half-hour.
  58. Would You Rather
    Would You Rather verges on genuine intrigue at times, but it's ultimately just a slasher without the gore.
  59. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
    Bizarre and hysterical.
  60. Son of the Mask
    At its heart is a deep, unresolved ambivalence about child rearing.
  61. The Stroller Strategy
    Writer-director Clément Michel can't escape the usual infant-related movie pitfalls.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Marci X
    Moving beyond stultifying to stupefying.
  63. Absence
    There are many things absent from this found-footage horror movie, including suspense, logic, and originality.
  64. Cellmates
    The film, directed by Jesse Baget, aims to be a satiric look at racism but at every turn flaunts the laws of logic and believability.
  65. Assassin's Bullet
    Fans of incessant flashbacks and endless whooshing zooms into close-ups will find much to love about Assassin's Bullet; less satisfied, alas, will be those with a fondness for lucid plotting, compelling intrigue, and credible performances.
  66. The Word
    Attempts to offer the white-knuckle gratifications of a studio procedural with a conspicuous lack of production values, screen talent, plausibility, originality, or a lick of aesthetic flair.
  67. Soldiers of Fortune
    Christian "Direct-to-Video" Slater lends not a shred of credibility to the role of Craig MacKenzie.
  68. The Cat in the Hat
    Comes scarily close to being the most unendurable Hollywood creation of the last dozen years.
  69. All the Queen's Men
    The fiercely original Eddie Izzard is wasted in this botch, not something you could say for lucky millionaire Friend Matt LeBlanc.
  70. Crave
    Hey, Crave, the jerk store called, and they're running out of you.
  71. Reprisal
    It’s downright sad watching Willis go all half-assed in another movie. I guess we’re gonna have to wait for Glass to come out next year to see if Willis can do a movie in whole-assed form again.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Underclassman
    British bliss czars, the doughnut-loving LAPD, and bitchin'-hot Spanish profs, no matter how many, how fat, or how bitchin' hot, can't make up for easy double entendres and zero character development.
  73. Labor Day
    A well-intentioned but dull, video-ugly documentary if it weren't partly financed by its subject, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); that just makes it a crappy infomercial.
  74. Tomorrow You're Gone
    What starts out as a moderately interesting thriller in the vein of Blue Velvet and Angel Heart ends up less than the sum of its portentous parts.
  75. To Save a Life
    To Save a Life wants to rescue kids from the Satanic messages of "Gossip Girl"--a benign, even worthy enough objective, but must alternatives to empty, materialistic adolescence require baptism in the Pacific?
  76. Grown Ups 2
    A few decent one-liners notwithstanding, the movie comes off as willfully uninspired.
  77. Cavemen
    A tiresome film that itself knows nothing but other rom-com plots.
  78. The Lovers
    Bring a notebook and some tissues — the mission to protect the queen becomes a tangle of shifting alliances between local and British forces that might require visual aids, while the snail-slow realization of gloomy prophecies may well tear you up in boredom.
  79. After Fall, Winter
    Schaeffer can't be trusted or believed as a broken man - he's got no humility.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    36 Saints
    The real problem with this film is that its voiceover at the beginning is its only real attempt at storytelling; there is no central character or quest to latch onto. There is only the senseless curse and its slow but sure fulfillment.
  81. The Prince
    Screenwriters Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore fail to conjure a single witty line. Nor is there any finesse to be found in director Brian A. Miller’s inept staging of car chases and shoot-outs.
  82. Kite
    In a film that pits the heroine directly against the sexualization of young women, the camera's gaze itself feels awfully exploitative.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Downloading Nancy
    The jump cuts and nonlinear narrative are gratuitously stylish, and when you peel away this film's complex performances, at the core of its drawn-out suicide spectacle is pain so extreme, so alienating, and, in the end, so pointless.
  84. Surviving Christmas
    This ghastly comedy emits the subliminal whine of a sucking chest wound.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Into the Fire
    If there's an element of Into the Fire that isn't rank and offensive, I've failed to find it.
  86. Supernova
    Apparently fallen victim to the transparent damage-control tactics of studios in possession of perceived stinkers.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    BloodRayne
    Our blood-smacking antiheroine, Rayne (Kristanna Loken), isn't a vampire; she's a dhampir, a half-human, half-vampire cross-fiend who's as anguished, strange, and sloppy as mercenaries, or movies, get.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Stripped Down
    It's a thriller, it's a strip-club soap opera, it's an inner-child reclamation inspirational - it's really unpleasant to look at.
  89. Swearnet: The Movie
    Canadian comedy hits rock bottom in this abhorrent meta-infomercial.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Ultraviolet
    Seems this is yet another puddle of futuristic sludge for us to blame on John Cassavetes.
  91. Company Man
    Bracingly unfunny.
  92. Gigli
    Gigli berates, insults, dismisses, throttles, and bellows at Bartha's meticulously aped retard, and then turns sensitive and warm—it's hard to decide which attitude is more insulting.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Cupid's Mistake
    Made with $980 and about as many brain cells, Cupid's Mistake is more cute than clever.
  94. Swept Away
    Merely an indulgent vehicle for Mrs. Ritchie -- and Madonna is so spectacularly convincing as a hateful, self-absorbed, nouveau riche ogress that her character's third-act transformation is as preposterous as her overmuscled physique.
  95. The Vanishing Of Sidney Hall
    The Vanishing of Sidney Hall fails to give its characters depth, leaving viewers with little more than a shallow white guy troubled by his fame.
  96. Movie 43
    It's the kind of thing you feel you should laugh at through a phlegmy, hacking cough-and it does get laughs, if inconsistently, predictable given the circumstances of production.
  97. Boat Trip
    The movie improves immeasurably if you visualize a looming iceberg in the corner of the frame.
  98. Momentum
    Longtime camera operator Stephen S. Campanelli's directorial debut is frustratingly by-the-book, with all the trappings of a movie marketed to rowdy fifteen-year-old boys.
  99. The Nutcracker
    The wildest thing about this movie is its faith that what kids (and parents) really want for Christmas is a Nutcracker version of the Final Solution.
  100. The Apparition
    The Apparition is not a great or even good haunted-house movie, but it does have the advantage of a memorable setting.
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