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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  1. The Sixth Sense
    Complain all you want about Willis's posturing and the rabbit-in-the-hat ending (predicated as it is on a vast plothole), the film is still a rarity, a studio horror movie focused on a child's traumatic stress.
  2. Dick
    Most conveniently synopsized as Romy and Michelle's Watergate Adventure.
  3. Twin Falls Idaho
    Neither as weighty nor as weird as it would like to think.
  4. Runaway Bride
    Runaway Bride isn't as offensive as most studio romantic comedies—just pointless and dull.
  5. Deep Blue Sea
    One of those hellishly predictable digital-monster gauntlets that makes you pity the actors.
  6. Drop Dead Gorgeous
    Even sillier than it is cynical, Drop Dead Gorgeous is a tiresome tale.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Inspector Gadget
    Shot mostly in close-up, with nearly every action accompanied by a sound effect, the film itself is slightly hysterical.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wood
    A diverting but uneven nostalgia trip.
  9. Eyes Wide Shut
    Feels like a rough draft at best.
  10. The Blair Witch Project
    Paranoid, hysterical, and programmatically subjective, the movie is in every sense a psychological thriller. Although the payoff is ambiguous, the experience remains in the mind. It's an absolutely restrained and truly frightening movie.
  11. Arlington Road
    The mode is hysteric-Hitchcockian, the result mostly devoid of suspense.
  12. American Pie
    Returns the teen movie to the uncomplicated glory days of "Porky's" and "Losin' It."
  13. Summer of Sam
    A film in which many things seem to happen twice and others not at all.
  14. Wild Wild West
    So extremely stupid and incompetent, I doubt that even the most impartial critic could find much to praise.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut
    The ultimate truth, though, is that certain, probably arrested, personalities (like mine) just find this kind of shit pretty funny and any attempt to talk your way around that is, as Cartman would say, blowing bubbles out your ass.
  16. Big Daddy
    Sandler is less goofy than spitefully self-absorbed, and most of the comedy feels like child abuse.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tarzan
    Visually rich yet numbingly formulaic.
  18. An Ideal Husband
    His film is hardly memorable, but it's amusing enough for two hours, and it never panders or cloys.
  19. Run Lola Run
    An enjoyably glib and refreshingly terse exercise in big beat and constant motion.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The General's Daughter
    Plotwise, Daughter is an "aha!"-intensive but thoroughly random mystery.
  21. The Red Violin
    It sustains its purplish, epic sweep by thrusting broadly etched characters into extravagantly hokey situations, and registers mainly as a flamboyant joke.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Buena Vista Social Club
    Feels like a timeless blast from the past.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Instinct
    Instinct moves along at a competent clip, but it's mostly a tease.
  24. The Thirteenth Floor
    It'll make you cyberlaugh, it'll make you cybercry, just like cyberlife -- One thing is certain: your boredom
  25. Notting Hill
    It is not, the filmmakers stress, a sequel to "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (which writer Richard Curtis was also responsible for), but it fits the latter-day Hollywood definition of the term -- same movie, only worse.
  26. The Loss of Sexual Innocence
    The film isn't short on ideas, it's just that those ideas are dumbfoundingly pretentious and trite.
  27. 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.
  28. A Midsummer Night's Dream
    The early scenes whir and buzz along to create quite a pleasing clamor.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tea with Mussolini
    Luca's transformation from waif to budding artist may be the thrust of the film, but it's the psyche of the conflicted grandson that you wonder about.
  30. The Mummy
    Crudely remaking the 1932 Universal original.
  31. Pusher
    As botched-drug-deal tales go, Pusher digs surprisingly deep— its surface clichés give way to an existential despair that finally swallows the movie whole.
  32. The Winslow Boy
    This film is solidly built, faithful to its material, and utterly lacking in pretense, but its maker is still running in place.
  33. Pushing Tin
    Pushing Tin pivots on our dubious fascination with professional erection duels, which are a sad substitute for dramatic conflict.
  34. eXistenZ
    Almost buoyant in its creepiness and positively bejeweled in its disgust -- the movie can be enjoyably considered as a self-conscious fiction in the convoluted tradition of Raul Ruiz or Brian De Palma's "Raising Cain."
  35. Election
    The film never finds a confident tone: it's pitched as a satire, but seems to have no real targets.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Life
    An uneven but extremely funny throwback.
  37. SLC Punk!
    Merendino's most innovative directorial strategy is to collapse present and past by having Lillard shout Stevo's reflections about his youthful rebellion directly at the camera, while the scene he's describing in the past tense takes place behind him. I know it sounds like a Brechtian affectation, but it works.
  38. Go
    A showy exercise in nervous grit, Go never strays too far from a sense of itself as stunt.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Never Been Kissed
    A lively tribute to the awkwardness and power of adolescent girlhood.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Metroland
    An unflashy tale of memory and desire in suburban London.
  41. Cookie's Fortune
    Long before it ends, its leisurely immersion in the Mississippi Delta has turned downright lukewarm and even chilly.
  42. Following
    Following is modest and engaging, but in being strenuously clever, it surrenders any dibs it might have on being relevant, or original.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    10 Things I Hate About You
    Anyone who hates '80s pop will find this movie awfully tiresome, but Stiles and her underage Petruchio (Australian actor Heath Ledger, as hunky as his name) are charismatic and bold enough to carry any romantic comedy.
  44. The Matrix
    The cumulative effect is perversely deflationary: long before it's over, the film has flushed the paranoia from its system.
  45. Edtv
    It's a lot of plot but none of it is particularly funny or compelling. What keeps the film chugging along and also gives it a depressive aftertaste is a middle-aged male sexual anxiety subtext that intermittently sputters to the surface.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Walk on the Moon
    Tony Goldwyn, making his directorial debut, lets his cast do the work for him, and they hold up well.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Forces of Nature
    Well-constructed, if chilly, road romance, with some great throwaway lines.
  48. Ravenous
    Ravenous loses resonance as it proceeds.
  49. True Crime
    A ridiculous deus-ex-machina "wrong man" story.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Wing Commander: Space Will Never Be the Same
    Gets sucked into a gravitational cesspool of sci-fi clichés.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trekkies
    There's a great deal of love in Trekkies, Roger Nygard's warm and good-naturedly funny documentary about the world of Star Trek fandom.
  52. The Rage: Carrie 2
    A smart, realist drama -- I wouldn't be surprised if this one winds up on my 10-best list for '99.
  53. 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.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    With Friends Like These...
    Messina's characters gripe at being typecast as goombah hit men, yet the director seems blissfully unaware that he dooms them to the very fate they protest by painting them with such prosaic, uninspired strokes. (review of re-release)
  55. Analyze This
    Enjoyable but slight— an intermittently funny, one-joke vaudeville.
  56. Cruel Intentions
    A "guilty pleasure" -- only it's the sort of film that would mock anyone who felt guilt in pleasure.
  57. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
    Given its boundless sarcasm, running-jumping- standing-still ambience and hyperbolic Guignol violence, Lock, Stock aspires to be something like the Beatles meet the "Wild Bunch." Too bad it doesn't have even a rubber soul.
  58. The School of Flesh
    Predicated as it is on Huppert's pensive, provocative blankness, the action moves a bit slowly, although, as is often the case with Jacquot, events make more sense after the movie is over.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    20 Dates
    The movie's best observations come from its sinister, unseen producer, who sneers at Berkowitz, "You're making a cartoon piece of shit . . . that ends with you jerking off by yourself."
  60. 200 Cigarettes
    Nothing much happens, and that's the point, but all this wheel spinning could have used more grease.
  61. The Other Sister
    Plunging headfirst into mush at every opportunity, Marshall brings out the worst in his actors.
  62. 8MM
    A nasty piece of work, and it's nasty in a particularly ostentatious and sophomoric way.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Office Space
    A surprisingly good-natured comedy.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    October Sky
    A professionally crafted family film that reserves all its challenging moments for its characters, letting the audience bask comfortably in the approach of a predetermined warm and fuzzy ending.
  65. Jawbreaker
    Stein's script is slack and tin-eared, too feeble to pass for satire, and inadequate even by lazy-pastiche standards.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blast from the Past
    Most fun when it's locked up with daddy.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Simply Irresistible
    Scores points for oddball charm.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    She's All That
    Amid all the cameos (Anna Paquin, Usher, Lil' Kim), only Prinze, who has the ethereal, gentlemanly quality of a young Anthony Perkins, gets enough screen time to really make an impression.
  69. Children of Heaven
    Clumsily staged (a bike accident any 15-year-old Super-8 maven could’ve cut better), lit like a soap opera, and acted with all the bribed relish of a peanut butter commercial, Majidi’s movie is merely the simplistic bid being made by every national industry impatient for mass audience attention. Gallingly, it may succeed.
  70. At First Sight
    The film slips into a coma early on and never awakens.
  71. The Thin Red Line
    As mystical as it is gritty, as despairing as it is detached.
  72. Affliction
    As chilly a spectacle as you're likely to see. It's like watching a comeback in an empty stadium.
  73. Hilary and Jackie
    Hilary and Jackie tries far too hard to dictate emotional involvement right out of the gate, and you're left counting off the doom-laden cues for things that are sure to return full circle.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Faculty
    Since the codes of science fiction are different from horror's cant, the patented Williamson method doesn't make a perfect fit with the material; Faculty's fun, but less fun than it could be.
  75. Stepmom
    Loathsome though Stepmom is, the eternally coltish Roberts is always a pleasure to watch and Sarandon's mordant wit occasionally comes to the fore.
  76. A Civil Action
    A slick, shameless job that takes way too long to make its point.
  77. Patch Adams
    The year's most repugnant movie.
  78. The Theory of Flight
    Earnest and misguided in equal measure, The Theory of Flightis ostensibly a bold and rare attempt at depicting disabled people as sexual beings, but the notion is couched in such spurious and schematic terms that the film never really stands a chance.
  79. The Prince of Egypt
    As entertainment goes, however, this desert spectacle is no "Aladdin"-- despite the impressively strong graphics of the vast urban spaces.
  80. The General
    The General is a refined, traditional movie about a character who is never more traditional than when he imagines himself outside the law. It’s a great paradox, but it barely comes alive on the screen.
  81. A Simple Plan
    As straightforward in narrative as it is gut-wrenching in effect, A Simple Plan is a sort of slow-motion skid down an icy blacktop— it's a movie you watch with a mounting sense of dread...[It's] an extremely credible thriller and an affecting brother-story.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Star Trek: Insurrection
    The latest Star Trek flick, Insurrection, is the 9th, and although it doesn't suck as completely as some ignoble odd-numbered low points, it doesn't exactly boldly go where no one has gone before.
  83. Shakespeare in Love
    It soon becomes evident just how inane a film this is.
  84. Rushmore
    I can't remember a teenage romance this engagingly offbeat since "Lord Love a Duck."
  85. Little Voice
    The show that Horrocks puts on when she finally takes to the stage is more than worth the wait.
  86. Psycho
    The response for anyone familiar with the original Psycho is likely to be restricted to a narrow range between briefly enjoyable déjà vu and mild disappointment. The movie lacks the chutzpah to even be a travesty.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Home Fries
    The just plain folks in Home Fries -- down home, slightly slow, and desperate for happiness -- would make great Jerry Springer Show guests if they weren't so damned pretty.
  88. 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.
  89. A Bug's Life
    There are big crowd scenes, intimate close-ups, and lots of bug’s-eye point-of-view shots. Call me gullible: I believed every second of it.
  90. Waking Ned Devine
    It's instructive that Waking Ned Devine is being so aggressively sold as a feel-good comedy; the "good" feeling in question is called condescension.
  91. Celebrity
    The Allen persona has always blurred the distinction between his art and his life. Still, one would scarcely expect Allen's attempt to satirize daily life in the National Entertainment State to be this tired, sour, and depressed.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Central Station
    A mildly saccharine but kind-hearted movie.
  93. Enemy of the State
    Enemy of the State isn't really a smart film, but it makes a concerted stab at pretending to be one.
  94. Meet Joe Black
    This ponderous, didactic weepie aspires to "Titanic" stature even if the only ship it sinks is itself.
  95. Velvet Goldmine
    After a most promising beginning, Velvet Goldmine's progress grows increasingly labored, stumbling around the structural roadblocks Haynes has erected in its path.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Siege
    An intramural debate masquerading as an action movie.
  97. Elizabeth
    Elizabeth's most triumphant aspect is Blanchett's transformation from saucy, spirited toe-tapper to iconic Virgin Queen.
  98. Gods and Monsters
    The relationship is touching, painful, revealing, and often funny, which is true of the film as a whole as well.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Living Out Loud
    Richard LaGravenese peppers his directorial debut with the narrative trickery (fantasy sequences, flashbacks) that often tangles his sceenplays ("The Fisher King," "Beloved").
  100. Vampires
    A gorefest of epic proportions.
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