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 7.6 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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    • 28 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Third World Cop
    Cop is an energetic portrayal of mean-street ghetto life.
  2. American Psycho
    Lacking any equivalent to the Sadean excess of Ellis's prose, it is also further evacuated of purpose.
  3. 28 Days
    Thomas's fleet-footed approach suggests the anxious embarrassment of a director in an awful hurry to get it over with.
  4. Set Me Free
    Karine Vanasse, as the protagonist Hanna, is perfectly cast because she has the body of a woman and the sweet, sexless face of a child.
  5. Restaurant
    Director Eric Bross has a smooth nonstyle that serves him well until the screenplay turns melodramatic at the end.
  6. Return to Me
    First-time director Bonnie Hunt pays slavish adherence to the Nora Ephron rules of assembly for the prefab rom-com.
  7. Southpaw
    Barrett's trajectory is exciting, but his tribe is hilariously, dryly Irish about the experience.
  8. Me Myself I
    A feel-good, fatalist placebo.
  9. Rules of Engagement
    The clichés lap like bay waves, from the salutes to the brotherly brawl to the olive-oil tear streaks semipermanently painted down Jackson's cheeks.
  10. Est - Ouest
    Wargnier has assembled a stellar French and Russian cast, but all that talent can't overcome his heavy-handed screenplay.
  11. The Filth and the Fury
    The filmmaker might be accused of preaching to the choir were the story not so compelling and the performances so strong.
  12. Joe Gould's Secret
    A quietly ambitious, well-wrought, and tastefully poignant treatment of two local literary legends.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Ready to Rumble
    Rumble's aim is low and dirty.
  14. Black and White
    Peaks with its opening scene.
  15. Price of Glory
    Contrived and contrived sloppily, this self-adoring soap even manages to make its all-Hispanic cast seem unconvincing -- except for Seda.
  16. The Skulls
    Energetic and thoroughly brainless.
  17. High Fidelity
    It may seem perverse to fault a movie for being too accurate, but when surface accuracy is coupled with tunnel vision about self and society the result is a wee bit irritating.
  18. Beau Travail
    A movie so tactile in its cinematography, inventive in its camera placement, and sensuous in its editing that the purposefully oblique and languid narrative is all but eclipsed.
  19. The Color of Paradise
    Like a Hollywood dolt, Majidi strives to overwhelm us with emphasis, but it's the reality he was savvy to load his movie with that's touching.
  20. Buddy Boy
    Mark Hanlon's ridiculous and repellent hash of "Repulsion" and "Psycho," with scenic elements of "Seven" thrown in for good measure.
  21. All I Wanna Do
    A smart, sweet, and altogether smashing evocation of teenage girlhood.
  22. Such a Long Journey
    The filmmaking is fresh and unemphatic, and the acting is generally gripping.
  23. Winter Sleepers
    Unfolds in a shroud of nonspecific suggestiveness but never emerges from under it.
  24. Romeo Must Die
    The wall-to-wall rap score is as kinetic as the acrobatic fight choreography, and nothing else matters.
  25. Les convoyeurs attendent
    Mariage takes his time and allows the film to drift in an almost ostentatiously casual manner.
  26. Erin Brockovich
    This is the Julia Roberts performance her fans have been waiting for.
  27. The Disappearance of Finbar
    [Rhys Meyers] remains trapped in an enervating road movie - shelved so long that Rhys Meyers still appears to have baby fat - summed up when Finbar, who turns up in Finland (natch), asks whey-faced Danny, "You couldn't find anything better to do than to come find me?!"
  28. Soft Fruit
    Bursting with grotesque burlesques of household relations.
  29. Deterrence
    Begins and ends with footage of FDR intoning "I hate war," something the film takes two interminable hours to say.
  30. Mission to Mars
    Halfway through, De Palma literally explodes his narrative to orchestrate a superb deep-space float-opera replete with runaway modules, high-tech lassos, dramatic self-sacrifice, and, in the most surprising maneuver, a montage-driven modicum of actual suspense.
  31. The Ninth Gate
    Never quite becomes unwatchable.
  32. Condo Painting
    This is more than self-amused irony; this is kitsch as religion.
  33. The Next Best Thing
    A vanity project -- hell-bent on playing barely human characters as themselves, they've created something quitebewilderingly ugly in the process.
  34. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
    A movie as laconic as its hero, Ghost Dog is nonetheless diminished by its most un-Zen-like attachment to this underlying sentimentality.
  35. Drowning Mona
    Bette Midler and Danny De Vito mug more shamelessly than usual.
  36. What Planet Are You From?
    There's a certain satisfaction in recognizing that Harold -- even when he inevitably starts to feel, just like a human -- remains something of an a--hole.
  37. Judy Berlin
    A bit precious, ultimately wearisome.
  38. Mifune's Last Song
    Grows increasingly slack and silly.
  39. Claire Dolan
    Less awful than inert, Claire Dolan comes across as a willfully bad movie.
  40. Theeviravaathi: The Terrorist
    The movie's bold visual and psychological patterns, as well as its heavy immersion in the natural world, imbue Malli's journey with a folktale quality.
  41. Reindeer Games
    Punishing, visceral violence is the key element.
  42. The Closer You Get
    Clichéd and condescending.
  43. Wonder Boys
    Downey, who radiates more energy doing nothing discernible than most other actors do when they let it all hang out, takes the film to another level.
  44. The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg
    In the absence of any greater cultural context, the ritual reiteration of Greenberg's greatness grows wearisome.
  45. Beautiful People
    It seems like a more witty, wise, and succinct "Magnolia."
  46. Boiler Room
    Takes us inside the consciousness and the coded masculine world of a single character.
  47. Hanging Up
    So hackneyed and so condescending to its potential audience (adult women) that even Lifetime might hesitate before running it.
  48. Not One Less
    The film's occasional dips into sentimental cuteness and its too-pat ending can't cancel the gap that yawns ever wider between rural and urban society.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pitch Black
    (Diesel's) Riddick, a silver-eyed, musclebound escaped killer, is the most sequel-worthy sci-fi creation since the Terminator.
  50. Cotton Mary
    Brought to life by the weirdness of its subject matter and the risks Madhur Jaffrey takes in her brilliant performance.
  51. Sex: The Annabel Chong Story
    Quek is compelling not for her ideas but the tangled path by which she came to them.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Snow Day
    A family film that's about as fluffy as fresh powder.
  53. The Beach
    Barely a movie.
  54. Gun Shy
    It's the casting of Liam Neeson as the nervous breakdown that turns the movie to asphalt -- it's like watching Andre the Giant play Woody Allen.
  55. Scream 3
    Logic, motivation, suspense -- anything that might make the film frightening or resonant -- is buried under Dolby blams, medulla-shaming dialogue, and a rain of overdubbed hunting-knife schwings that grate like a 3 a.m. car alarm.
  56. Beloved/Friend
    More exciting and truthful than most better-looking films dare to be.
  57. The Cup
    The lovability quotient is as high as the altitude.
  58. Eye of the Beholder
    High-buffed, low-rack pulp.
  59. Isn't She Great
    Aspires to be both stylish and coarse, camp and vulgar -- which is pretty much how Bette Midler plays it.
  60. Santitos
    There's no gold dust to be found here, just an awful lot of stick-on glitter.
  61. The Big Tease
    A sub-sitcom stretched to an interminable 85 minutes.
  62. 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.
  63. Supernova
    Apparently fallen victim to the transparent damage-control tactics of studios in possession of perceived stinkers.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Next Friday
    A calculated teen gross-out flick that owes more to "American Pie" than its own progenitor.
  65. Fantasia 2000
    Arriving just after the best year for animated film in recent memory, Fantasia 2000 doesn't play like a celebration. In its sentimental yearning for a golden age when another one's upon us, it feels a little like a rebuke.
  66. Close-Up
    Like nearly every other Kiarostami film, Close-Up takes questions about movies and makes them feel like questions of life and death.
  67. The Hurricane
    Far too tepid.
  68. Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
    Morris, who more or less invented the ironic documentary, seems to struggle here for an appropriate tone even as he allows Leuchter more than enough rope to hang himself.
  69. The Third Miracle
    The first half has a nifty B-movie feel--it's a canny little movie with a big, big theme.
  70. Play It to the Bone
    The journey is a yawn -- an outpouring of backstory, punctuated by cute episodic diversions and ill-advised running gags.
  71. Titus
    A nonstop carnival of murder, rape, and mutilation .
  72. Galaxy Quest
    The many eight-to-11-year-olds in the audience seemed completely enthralled.
  73. The Talented Mr. Ripley
    It's a sign of how watered-down the movie is that only the supporting actors have any bite.
  74. Snow Falling on Cedars
    Trying to act in this movie is like trying to stand upright in a blizzard.
  75. Angela's Ashes
    Lacks development and dramatic coherence.
  76. Any Given Sunday
    Like a visual concussion.
  77. Man on the Moon
    The filmmakers don't even attempt to give Kaufman an inner life.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Girl, Interrupted
    Contains some nicely restrained turns, like Clea Duval as Kaysen's Oz-obsessed roommate, but mainly it's a showcase for Ryder's winsome victim
  79. Jing Ke ci Qin Wang
    Solid middlebrow entertainment, a vast period epic with an almost DeMillean taste for excess.
  80. Onegin
    Unable to capture either its wit, psychological acuity, or formal rigor, the movie essentially reduces the schematic, seesaw narrative to doomy clichés.
  81. Bicentennial Man
    Amid the complacent self-congratulation...is a bizarre reactionary bent.
  82. Simpatico
    A decked-out mediocrity with a high-octane cast.
  83. Stuart Little
    The story is little more than overdetermined trials and triumphs. Kids won't care, but they won't fall for it either; unsurprisingly, it doesn't stand a chance of providing them with the memories the book provided their parents.
  84. Topsy-Turvy
    Not only Mike Leigh's strongest film since "Naked" but a true show-making epic.
  85. Anna and the King
    Dusted off for one more run-through, and for those who applauded "Titanic's" old-is-new ethos, the moth-eaten, barely breathing Anna and the King will serve as a slap in the face.
  86. Magnolia
    Highly audacious, hugely enjoyable, exceptionally well-written, brilliantly edited, and exuberantly actor-driven extravaganza.
  87. The Cider House Rules
    This adaptation of John Irving's novel--- is as paternalistic, puffed-up, and dull as a congressional debate about abortion rights.
  88. Cradle Will Rock
    Historical forces and famous ghosts jostle past each other in this evocation of mid-1930s New York like harried commuters at Grand Central Station.
  89. Miss Julie
    Figgis's frenetic and grossly self-aggrandizing adaption of Strindberg's worse-for-wear two-hander about the battle between the sexes and the classes.
  90. The War Zone
    We may not want another film about incest, but there's a necessity about this one that won't be denied.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Diamonds
    With its superficial script, toneless direction, and unadmirable intentions...Diamonds is inappropriate for audiences of all ages.
  92. The Green Mile
    Irritatingly repetitious and piled high with long-foreseen conclusions.
  93. Agnes Browne
    Soft-boiled blarney so sluttish with Hollywood clichés it could've been made in Burbank.
  94. Holy Smoke
    Filled with flashy sight gags, overwrought performances, and madly overlapping dialogue.
  95. The End of the Affair
    About halfway through I began to imagine it as it might have been directed by Douglas Sirk as a vehicle for Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson.
  96. Sweet and Lowdown
    It's the prettiest movie of the year, maybe of Allen's career.
  97. A Map of the World
    Scott Elliott's palsied directorial debut, from a mine shaft-ridden script, is a sick joke, and Weaver's part in it screams of temporary insanity.
  98. Flawless
    Flawless never approaches the rancid bluster of "8MM," but it's an equally dishonest piece of manipulative hackwork.
  99. Tumbleweeds
    One of the refreshing aspects of the slight, flawed Tumbleweeds is that it creates a world inhabited by recognizable people.
  100. End of Days
    85 percent explosions and editing idiocy (a window can't break without director Peter Hyams cutting between five different angles) and 15 percent Arnold trying to grow a third dimension. Seeing him try for "sad" is like watching a dog try to talk.
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