Village Voice's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Jurassic Park III
    Drama is minimal and character nonexistent.
  2. Soul Plane
    Coming off a memorable supporting turn in Starsky & Hutch, Snoop Dogg is sadly underutilized as the stoner pilot.
  3. Freddy vs. Jason
    About as threadbare as a favorite childhood plushy. What's more, trying to keep the story line of strained meta-sequel Freddy Vs. Jason straight requires too much of a cogitative investment.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
    Even if, per Wilde, all art is quite useless, it need not be quite as useless as this.
  5. Black and White
    Peaks with its opening scene.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Radio
    Based-on-a-true-story kitschfest.
  7. Love Liza
    What should have been an idiosyncratic 20-minute short is distended by repetition and loads of standard indie-film time-killers.
  8. View from the Top
    The film, meanwhile, goes for that choppy, air-pocket sensation, veteran helmer Bruno Barreto directing like he's never made a movie before, and never wants to again.
  9. Wirey Spindell
    Brimming with fatuous "clever" dialogue and gorgeous women swooning over Schaeffer-played boors, the like-sounding titles denoted a vain, smarmy Woody Allen acolyte drowning in his own reflection.
  10. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
    So pandering and pebble-brained you'd guess it had been test-screened on barnyard animals.
  11. Love Don't Cost a Thing
    Even in the teen-flick "Sweet Valley" of 1987, there were few places outside John Hughes's brain where paying somebody to be your girl didn't look like prostitution. Yet somebody made the Slow-Times-at-Clueless-High stinker Can't Buy Me Love.
  12. Drowning Mona
    Bette Midler and Danny De Vito mug more shamelessly than usual.
  13. Very Bad Things
    Very Bad Things is a guy film, and, as such, it's a dog. The gross-out humor lacks edge, the guilt never kicks in, and the outrages are predictable. It's one flat brewski.
  14. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
    The Phantom Menace is simply a billboard for itself. Anyone who sees it will be experiencing it for the second time. The hype was not about the movie, the hype was the movie.
  15. The Time Machine
    If it's remembered at all, it will be as a time capsule of early-21st-century blockbuster cowardice and redundancy.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Fish Without a Bicycle
    Strong performances are marred by a script whose dialogue ranges from cheesy to unspeakably bad.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Twisted
    No mystery here: Twisted is D.O.A.
  18. Town & Country
    Limps into theaters at long last, practically begging, with every arthritic pratfall, to be put out of its misery.
  19. Tears of the Sun
    This "Black Hawk Down" theft is a trial by cliché until the climax, which suggests a dress rehearsal for the torching of Baghdad.
  20. Ghost Ship
    Despite a couple of inventive CGI effects (one involving mass evisceration), the results are more predictable and less frightening than a Con Ed bill in mid August.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Daredevil
    Affleck and impressively amazonian Alias star Jennifer Garner (as the ninjitsu-savvy daughter of a wealthy tycoon) are lankier than "Spider-Man's" Maguire and Dunst, which is good if you like lanky, but their relationship substitutes cliché for chemistry.
  22. Dragonfly
    The climax comes at you like a thrown cream pie, but given its faux-mythic nerve, it's tolerable. Too bad this latest station in Costner's ongoing self-crucifixion is such small potatoes until then.
  23. Mind the Gap
    In the crass, endless Mind the Gap, Schaeffer dares to ape "Magnolia," telling five barely connected stories with all the grace of a juggler tossing open bottles of Drano.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Happy Hour
    Every alkie downward-spiral cliché from "The Lost Weekend" to "Leaving Las Vegas."
  25. 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.
  26. Chelsea Walls
    The digital-video results play like a flatulent teenager's first discovery of jazz, cigarettes, and hooch.
  27. Rush Hour 2
    This movie doesn't just kill time but tortures it.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Haunted Mansion
    Lamer than Tiny Tim on a damp London day.
  29. What's the Worst That Could Happen?
    I'd rather watch a forgotten houseplant dehydrate and die.
  30. Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London
    It's hard to despise a movie with the balls to posit that its Blair-look-alike PM has been brainwashed by a corrupt CIA operative, but Banks 2 is really pretty hateful.
  31. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
    Wallows in the same affected retro stylishness as the earlier film (Croupier), suffers from the same lack of narrative focus, and is just as choked with clichés.
  32. Eulogy
    If the recurring gag about Grandma's suicide attempts doesn't have you rolling in the aisles, there's always the domineering aunt whose husband sits at the kiddie table.
  33. Snatch.
    For those who care, Madonna has found her match in Guy Ritchie, whose absence of talent when it comes to the film medium is equal to her own.
  34. The Barbarian Invasions
    Shear away the film's pretensions, and it's a soap opera of assholes.
  35. Red Dragon
    Red Dragon's formula is so risible and rote by now that the natural reaction to scenes of peril, torture, and suffering is flippant laughter.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    American History X
    A mess of a film.
  37. Turn It Up
    The staging and performances are awkward, the frequent shoot-outs a snore.
  38. Treasure Planet
    Despite more betrayal and loyalty than a Chris Carabba box set, there's no real good or evil here.
  39. Dreamcatcher
    If hopeless literalist Kasdan could have decided on a tone this could have been a gynophobe's "Independence Day."
  40. Overnight
    Grim going.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    After the Sunset
    Despite its misguided comic pretensions, this brazenly unimaginative caper movie is most effective as a feature-length infomercial for its location, which will here remain undisclosed.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Adored
    The film's witlessness keeps any satirical potential submerged well below soap opera levels. Filiberti's self-casting exacerbates this already shoddy melodrama: Frequent come-hither stares beaming from his patently sub-marquee mug provide one too many non-ironic "Zoolander" moments.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Underworld
    Speedman's such a nonentity here I worried that the theater air-conditioning would blow him off the screen.
  44. Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000
    The movie's mode is brutal and excremental.
  45. May
    The flavor is textbook '90s indie -- self-regarding quirk with an occasional spasm of Solondzian incorrectness.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    John Q
    Washington is in default dignified mode here. He capably embodies the hero's transformation from doughy dad to man of action, amid the movie's shameless button-pushing and cheap religious overlay.
  47. The Aryan Couple
    Feel-good historical fiction, The Aryan Couple insultingly seeks to soothe and comfort against the reality of atrocity.
  48. Christmas with the Kranks
    Cringe-worthy spectacle.
    • 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.
  50. Beyond the Sea
    By the end of this wholly disorienting experience (this must be what it's like to be held captive in a Long Island supper club and force-fed hallucinogens), there's only one thing we damn well know, and it's that Kevin Spacey sure as hell believes he was born to play Bobby Darin.
  51. A Clockwork Orange
    Let me report simply that A Clockwork Orange manifests itself on the screen as a painless, bloodless, and ultimately pointless futuristic fantasy...The last third of the movie is such a complete bore that even audiences of confirmed Kubrickians have drowned out smatterings of applause with prolonged hissing.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
    Havana Nights es mucho frío -- the only titter of excitement comes in a cameo from a strangely reptilian Patrick Swayze.
  53. The Life of David Gale
    Going through the motions of a liberal-Hollywood polemic with the sweaty, mounting hysteria of a bad liar, The Life of David Gale is foremost an overheating gotcha machine, scripted by first-timer Charles Randolph with seams showing and red herrings stinking up the joint.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The One
    In The One the maze of death leads only to exhaustion -- a solipsistic extension of Bruce Lee pacing the room of mirrors at the end of "Enter the Dragon."
  55. 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.
  56. Without a Paddle
    Burt Reynolds turns up as scruffy mountain man, sparking unfulfilled expectations of some primo Deliverance jokes.
  57. Bend It Like Beckham
    Only silent Becks himself rises unstained from this reheated ethno-niche stew.
  58. 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.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Darkness
    Rarely has a film's tagline been more fitting: "Some secrets should never come to light."
  60. Father of the Bride
    Martin's grin-and-don't-bare-it performance lifts the picture above sitcom level. [31 Dec 1991]
    • Village Voice
  61. The Corruptor
    That in such a miserable film I could still care whether his character lived or died is, perhaps, the greatest proof that Chow Yun Fat's a movie star.
  62. The Governess
    The Governess is too dirty-minded to fit the Merchant Ivory mold but not salacious enough to qualify as bodice-ripping laff riot. [04 Aug 1998]
    • Village Voice
    • 27 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Heartbreak Hospital
    Sluggish, tonally uneven -- In fact, it doesn't even rise to the level of 1991's Soapdish, with the feverishly mugging Elisabeth Shue sending up TV's cesspool of sentimentality.
    • 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.
  65. Russian Doll
    The cheesy idiot-twin of Pawel Pawlikowski's superb "Last Resort."
  66. Into My Heart
    Anemic.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Miss Wonton
    As genre comeuppance, this might have been nasty fun, but the movie barely makes sense, with its unbelievable naïveté and arbitrary flashbacks.
  68. Clouds
    Has nice, pearly, black-and-white cinematography, but it also has the shocking temerity to run over 100 minutes. Sweet air is required.
  69. The Price of Air
    Culminates in a second bing-bang-boom triple shoot-out that effectively cancels out the shreds of remaining plot but is shot and cut like a sixth grader's Super-8 struggle for Woo-ness.
    • 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.
    • 9 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Mail Order Bride
    The hapless goodfella-in-training is as unsuccessful at fulfilling his uncle's wishes as the star and co-director, Robert Capelli Jr., is at delivering punchlines.
  72. Trouble Every Day
    This modern-day vampire story is purposefully shocking in its eroticized gore, if unintentionally dull in its lack of poetic frissons.
  73. 7 Year Zig Zag
    Green, saucer-eyed, cokey, frying in flop sweat, gives the viewer the shrill thrill of being in someone else's nightmare. But the songs? Swung, man, swung.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Better Housekeeping
    Too stupid to be satire, too obviously hateful to be classified otherwise, Frank Novak's irritating slice of lumpen life is as reliably soul-killing as its title is nearly meaningless. ("Good Housekeeping" magazine's legal muscle forced a last-minute change.)
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Story of the Eye
    This skin-deep flick is merely art-school sophomoric, unwittingly cornball, and counterrevolutionary.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Rockets Redglare!
    A bloated, intermittently coherent mess.
    • 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.
  78. Loudmouth Soup
    This micro-budget amateur-acting exercise plays like "The Anniversary Party" without the frisson of marquee performers behaving badly. We get F-listers playing at being marquee performers behaving badly.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Don't Tell
    Spectacularly incompetent, Don't Tell races into self-parody before the end of the opening credits.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    They're Just My Friends
    For such a poorly made autobiopic to earn a theatrical release, Nwamu must have some friends in high places.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Broken Sky
    That's the movie--desperate grasps, huffy affronts, gulping kisses, and one juicy (if silent) sex scene, early in the film, before our senses have been deadened by boredom. Without dialogue, we don't know who the characters are, so we can't care about what they do.
    • 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.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Wayward Cloud
    The Wayward Cloud fails as allegory, human story, anti-porn screed, postmodern musical, and even formal delight (Tsai's emptied-out aesthetic has never felt so empty, his mannerisms so pointlessly mannered), but it seems to have worked well enough as a necessary purge.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Provoked: A True Story
    Short-changing issues of race and wearing its heart way out on its sleeve, it's the film's amateur exposition that's most dumbfounding -- poised to provoke more sarcasm than righteous indignation.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Changeling
    Stern's direction is reticent where it should be nervy, and the chemistry-free cast of mostly New York stage actors appears to have been chosen for its discomfort with dialogue such as "Come hither!" and "Get thee from me!" Ye have been warned.
  86. Funny Games (2008)
    Professional obligations required that I endure it, but there's no reason why you should.
  87. America the Beautiful
    The scattershot America the Beautiful recapitulates vintage "Beauty Myth" trumpery.
  88. What We Do Is Secret
    The worst kind of bastard adaptation, Secret subtracts without adding.
  89. Year of the Fish
    Year of the Fish is the kind of really bad movie it takes a lot of misplaced conviction to make.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Choose Connor
    For all the potential of this coming-of-age/political-awakening tale, Choose Connor undoes itself with an egregiously sordid turn.
  91. 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.
  92. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
    As a film, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is a disaster.
  93. A Beautiful Life
    Misery pile-up.
  94. Eulogy for a Vampire
    This is one gay vampire film that's surprisingly anemic.
  95. How to Seduce Difficult Women
    It is, perhaps, best not to expect too much from the directorial debut of Grace Kelly's ex-hairdresser; still, How to Seduce Difficult Women is woefully incompetent and ugly.
  96. 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.
  97. Oh My God
    The drubbing score leaves one nearly insensate to the fact that Rodgers has nothing original or even interesting to say about his subject, flattening fine points of scripture to recommend interfaith group hugs.
  98. Falling Awake
    The film hints at progressive themes...soon disregard both in the service of a hokey gangsta plot.
  99. The Secret in Their Eyes
    Campanella, who overconfidently takes his time, outfits the film with ludicrous interrogation scenes, a drunken colleague who provides comic relief and redemptive tragedy, and a climactic flood of memories that plays like a trailer.
  100. Harry Brown
    Director Daniel Barber's lame handwringing about the root causes of youthful alienation forms a thin veneer over the real purpose of this self-important piece of rubbish--to hold us hostage to the director's bottomless appetite for spurious depravity.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »