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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    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
    Dodgeball is the most satisfying comedy of the past year--at least among the ones starring Stiller.
  2. The Joneses
    What plays hard and dark for the film's first half goes squishy and blindingly bright as calamity and then outright tragedy lead to the saw-it-coming resolution writer-director Derrick Borte thinks is more sincere than it actually plays.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ichi the Killer
    Underneath the spillage and flow of this gonzo activity, Miike layers a blood-stained commentary on a toxic world in which men offer protection to men but really end up dooming them to exist within a spasmodic, shambolic, and hypermasculine sphere of violence.
  4. They Live
    They Live is, to scramble its most famous line, better at chewing bubblegum than kicking ass.
  5. Home
    If director Tim Johnson -- adapting Adam Rex's book The True Meaning of Smekday -- can't do much with the story's confused, if well-intentioned, agenda, at least he's got some charming, vivid characters to work with.
  6. Idlewild
    Idlewild has a sober, loving respect for history and the old South, and thereby grants itself a measure of distinction.
  7. Gun Hill Road
    Though two late plot developments are borderline-contrived, Green's direction is marked by mature dramatic and aesthetic understatement.
  8. Hamilton
    Avoids the narrative contrivances of many recent forays into Americana -- by virtually avoiding narrative.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The People vs. George Lucas
    It's an exhausting airing of nerd grievances, the monolithic arguments leavened only slightly by counterpoints seemingly inserted for comic relief.
  10. The 33
    The 33, directed by Patricia Riggen, makes a valiant effort to tell this harrowing story onscreen, and there are moments when every shifting plate clicks right into place. In the end, though, the picture stumbles, and it may not completely be the fault of the filmmakers.
  11. The Great Gatsby
    It's an expressionist work, a story reinvented to the point of total self-invention, polished to a handsome sheen and possessing no class or taste beyond the kind you can buy. And those are the reasons to love it.
  12. Ping Pong Playa
    Frantically paced, littered with cute kids, and overstuffed with split screens and a rap score, Ping Pong Playa angles a little too hard for tween attention, but there's no resisting the movie's antic affability or its irreverence.
  13. I Am Ali
    It’s unfortunate that, even with this wealth of uncovered materials, I Am Ali still plays as a greatest-hits version of its subject’s life, offering little depth or insight into any one element of it.
  14. The Bank
    Polished and visualized with a sharp sense of place, writer-director Robert Connolly's drama is propped up by bogus science (the relationship between stock undulations and the Mandelbrot set is never made plausible), and the characters are paint-by-numbers.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Old School
    A flatland of lowest-common-denominated retro-collegiate wackiness.
  16. Standing by Yourself
    A crystalline curio of dumbshit nihilism shot through with fleeting pathos, Koury's home movie often evokes "The Decline of Western Civilization Part III."
  17. Diminished Capacity
    It's the kind of lite movie you go and see with your mom, and she'll say she liked it--but then a year later, you're both trying to remember what it was even about. Two and a half shrugs.
  18. Fat Kid Rules the World
    The film succeeds thanks to Lillard's clear affection for the material and on the strength of its performances, especially Billy Campbell as Troy's conflicted father.
  19. The Men Who Stare at Goats
    Despite a backbeat of perky music and the sarcastic voiceover meant to lubricate the action, The Men Who Stare at Goats lacks pizzazz. The movie isn't funny enough to work as farce, but it's far too dippy to take seriously.
  20. The Pact
    A musty ghost story that morphs into a sluggish serial-killer mystery, Nicholas McCarthy's film tries to distinguish itself by minimizing dialogue and settings, a stripped-down approach that extends to sketchy characters and a script rife with convenient, easy-to-assemble clues.
  21. Ponies
    Nick Sandow's Ponies can claim the not negligible achievement of bringing one of the more irritatingly objectionable characters in recent cinema to the screen.
  22. Passion
    Passion is pretty good.
  23. Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead
    Fans will clamor for Wyrmwood 2; the brothers have the talent to aim higher.
  24. Kickboxer: Retaliation
    A hysterically entertaining train wreck.
  25. Magic in the Moonlight
    The story feels shapeless, un-tailored, defiantly off the rack.
  26. Hulk
    Nolte's exploding patriarch jacks up the story's antisocial wish fulfillment into a Nietzschean-anarchist's wet dream, but one can only vainly hope that the preordained sequel will head in that dastardly direction.
  27. The Ranger
    By the time the killings start, the film already feels draining, with no characters worth caring about, much less watching.
  28. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
    At times it's dense and sluggish, too much like a novel. But there is some exhilaration to be had.
  29. Plaza Suite
    Plaza Suite is a strenuous bore, far less amusing than the play, but no less empty and heartless in its insistence on creating grotesques for easy laughs and then forcing them to feel sorry for even easier pathos. [20 May 1971, p.61]
    • Village Voice
  30. To Rome with Love
    This Rome is luminous, and Allen, as in "Manhattan," is great at imbuing his film with a strong sense of location.
  31. Empire of Silver
    It's decent, exoticized pulp with a porcelain veneer, and should be consumed idly.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Humboldt County
    Jeremy Strong's minimalist performance in the lead role makes for an unconvincing character arc--he seems almost as ill-at-ease and dispirited by the end of the film as he does at the beginning.
  33. Is Anybody There?
    Even Crowley, who seems to have a knack with overloaded material, can't quite bring the thing in for a safe landing in all the slush.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    V/H/S
    In too many of the shorts, bad acting quickly undermines the "authenticity" the aesthetics labor to achieve.
  35. And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen...
    Has little to offer beyond muzzy kismet and generalized amnesia, a bit of National Geographic and a lot of cocktail jazz.
  36. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
    Inexplicable as it is, the Joan of Arc story encourages contemplation of ourselves as a species. The Messenger is more apt to prompt meditation on the nature of show business.
  37. Deep Blue Sea
    One of those hellishly predictable digital-monster gauntlets that makes you pity the actors.
  38. Cuba: Island of Music
    An odd blend of passionate performance footage and maddeningly shallow analysis of Cuba's music and politics.
  39. Cézanne et Moi
    The film gains power in the final third...one wishes Thompson had chosen to view the great artist's lives through the eyes of the women who loved (and tolerated) them
  40. Snow Cake
    Does sidle up to the brink of mawkishness, but it pulls back so nicely into Weaver's rich, hard-headed evocation of Linda's limitations.
  41. The Green Butchers
    The two leads capably humanize an overdetermined screenplay that often fumbles with bludgeoning symbolism and rank sentimentality.
  42. Imagine That
    Imagine That does manage to get a crowd tearing up on cue for its emotional climax; as much as it works, it's through the personal charm of Murphy and Shahidi.
  43. Puncture
    Puncture is proudly "Based on a True Story." As is so often the case, this means an indifference to "true" human relationships in favor of crusading self-righteousness.
  44. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
    Stiller balances his big ambitions with small, grounded truths.
  45. Marie's Story
    To play Marie today, Améris found the non-actor Ariana Rivoire at the Institute for the Deaf. And Rivoire is a revelation — showing what it's like to be in, and then break out of, a world of total darkness and silence.
  46. Charlie Bartlett
    Like most wannabe heroes of the eager-to-please teen comedy, poor little rich boy Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) is too charming by half and not nearly quirky enough.
  47. You Don't Mess with the Zohan
    If nothing else--and there isn't much else--You Don't Mess With the Zohan pronounces the Middle East fair game for absurdist comedy.
  48. The Hunting Party
    Like many of the best movies about war and its lingering echo, The Hunting Party is full of dark humor. Writer-director Richard Shepard, maker of 2005's "The Matador," is becoming a master at finding the right tone, balancing the seriousness of his characters' purpose with the madness of their intentions.
  49. Bee Season
    The mysticism only mystifies; its hieroglyphics are vividly rendered, but Bee Season never manages to spell them out.
  50. Mood Indigo
    Mood Indigo is bitter candy, a heartbreaker that uses sugar as a trap.
  51. One Missed Call
    One Missed Call, one of the five movies he made in 2003, is no more than Miike's shot at generating a polished, rote, expertly composed J-horror flick.
  52. Thor: The Dark World
    Lacking Iron Man’s wit, the Hulk’s brains, and the Captain’s ideals, he’s in peril of going poof himself if the franchise doesn’t figure out how to capitalize on its most glorious hero.
  53. The Riot Club
    Director Lone Scherfig’s stagings of these suspenseful set pieces are masterful, but the rest of the thriller is a fairly predictable manifesto against Britain’s de facto oligarchy.
  54. Lonesome Jim
    Lonesome Jim has the import of a deliberately squelched sitcom, or a home movie that's poisoned by unhappiness but shown anyway for stray laughs.
  55. The Last Stand
    Kim finally lets loose, and the imaginatively choreographed mayhem that ensues - culminating in two fast cars chasing each other across a pesky cornfield - can be a wonder to behold.
  56. Thanks for Sharing
    A winsome mix of funny, harrowing, and smart, it's most commendable for making characters who are addicted to bad behavior—and who refuse to blame themselves for it—somehow exceedingly sympathetic.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy
    In a way, the porn legend seems to have cut a tragic Faustian deal. He's always wanted to be a mainstream actor.
  58. Groove
    Groove is less a work of subcultural ethnography than a curiously dorky act of hipster sincerity, less party movie than cheesy valentine
  59. Angela's Ashes
    Lacks development and dramatic coherence.
  60. Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
    All in all, Hijacking is less a movie than a litany of arguments intended as, or at least only useful as, a brickbat in the discourse, aimed at your neighbor's Republican noggin.
  61. God of War
    The athleticism on display shames much of Western action cinema’s quick-cut hand-to-hand editing, and the final swordfight between Qi and Japanese general Kumasawa (Shaw Brothers mainstay Yasuaki Kurata) ranks as high as any in recent memory.
  62. I Am Not a Serial Killer
    It's not a riot, though the Midwest textures are sharp (especially for an Irish filmmaker in an entirely Irish production), and the idea of witnessing a killing spree from the p.o.v. of a town's funeral home is full of rich discomfort.
  63. Pandora's Promise
    The proceedings, no matter how logical their contentions, come off as merely one side of the debate.
  64. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    There is an odd cognitive dissonance at work between the obvious ingenuity dedicated to the film's visual details -- alien anatomies, industrial machinery, technological minutiae -- and the retarded intelligence quotient evident in its content.
  65. Sleepless Nights Stories
    More often, Mekas's focus on "names" comes off as a cloistered insensitivity to the wider world.
  66. A Short History of Decay
    For the most part, A Short History of Decay triumphs over its pretensions.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cashback
    The movie is too cute by half, made close to unbearable whenever Ben's narration spews glib pseudo-profundities about memory and temporal stillness. But the flaky humor of wage slaves serial-killing time is good, rude fun.
  68. Cracks
    Alas, the hopelessly miscast Green is too darn French, lacking the voraciously loony brio it takes to play Miss G.
  69. Battle in Seattle
    Flapping like a scarecrow in the wind, Battle in Seattle is too frantic to make more than a transitory impression, yet too responsibly hackneyed in its characterizations to achieve pure tabloid hysteria.
  70. Ya lyublyu tebya
    Not without its loopy charms. Indeed, the film is most buoyant when most over-the-top.
  71. Jersey Boys
    Eastwood may never show us his boys discovering themselves under that street lamp, but he gives us a clutch of moments worth treasuring — and mostly without overdoing it.
  72. SiREN
    Bishop isn't afraid to leave the club behind, confidently expanding beyond the seedy premise to become a three-way chase among the bachelor party guys, the club management, and a ferocious supernatural force.
  73. Effie Gray
    You can feel the good intentions vibrating off the screen, but it's still a listless affair, one that takes forever to go almost nowhere. The picture struggles so valiantly to be a woman's empowerment fable that it leaves you wishing for just a little romance.
  74. Memoirs of a Geisha
    Swaddled in the posh vulgarity that passes for awards-season elegance, Memoirs is deluxe orientalist kitsch, a would-be cross between "Showgirls" and "Raise the Red Lantern," too dumb to cause offense though falling short of the oblivious abandon that could have vaulted it into high camp.
  75. Battle for Terra
    Terra, to be fair, looks fairly clean, and the 3-D is totally passable, but watching it will be no fun for either kids or adults.
  76. Hidalgo
    The screwball antics recall "Cannonball Run" more than David Lean.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Milan Hlavsa a Plastic People of the Universe
    For the non-Czech audience, the overview may be patchy. Viewers who know heroes aren't saints deserve more information about the band's internal rifts, the main thing that kept them nonfunctional after 1988. With history this juicy, the music gets upstaged -- it's a limitation of the medium.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    4:44 Last Day on Earth
    The use of stock footage eventually approaches overkill in the montage-heavy climax. Much more impressive is the way Ferrara uses his own "documentary" footage of the city.
  79. He's Way More Famous Than You
    As unhinged as it is hilarious.
  80. Cooper and Hemingway: The True Gen
    If Mulholland made The True Gen half as aesthetically pleasing as it is informative, the film would be remarkable.
  81. 12-12-12
    Despite some pleasant backstage-footage filler, however, 12-12-12 ultimately so truncates its artists' performances (each is given one song, and those are heavily edited) that the effect is like watching the original TV broadcast in fast-forward.
  82. A Will for the Woods
    While the film also captures many private, sometimes heartbreaking scenes, it takes a lot of time to make its simple point.
  83. Love Beats Rhymes
    Love Beats Rhymes is more of a showcase for star Azealia Banks than director RZA, but his influence is still felt in this formulaic hip-hop romance.
  84. Free to Run
    The philosophical underpinnings of Swiss director Pierre Morath's well-paced documentary about the evolution of long-distance running evoke the motto of neighboring France: liberté, égalite, fraternité.
  85. The Paris Opera
    Unfortunately, the film has nothing much to say other than that the enterprise is inherently complicated — which isn’t point enough for 111 minutes of screen time.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Anatomy of a Male Ballet Dancer
    David Barba and James Pellerito’s doc foregrounds Marcelo Gomes’s beautiful body even as it revels in his good brain, excellent spirits, flawless dance technique, and sense of humor.
  87. F.I.S.T.
    I found myself reasonably absorbed in this grown-up though not sufficiently lived-in and thought-through entertainment. [01 May 1978, p.45]
    • Village Voice
  88. All Is Bright
    Maudlin and mirthless, it's a film misbegotten enough to almost make one hate Christmas.
  89. Pontypool
    For a film about the perils of too much talk, there's quite a lot of babbling presented as profundity. The political statements in Pontypool, much like those in another recent Canadian offering, Atom Egoyan's trite terrorism hand-wringer "Adoration," seem all the less provocative for appearing several years too late--McDonald's film might have had more punch if it were released when Bluetooth first rolled out.
  90. Art School Confidential
    Art School Confidential is replete with humorous detail--in that respect, the student art projects are particularly fine--but it's the attitude that rules.
  91. Ricki and the Flash
    Demme's film plays out like a catnapping afternoon dream. We recognize the world, yet the logic is screwy.
  92. Save the Date
    Unremarkable, thinly sketched characters, many adorned with creative careers or hobbies, populate the romantic dramedy Save the Date, yet another unfocused movie about generic relationship quandaries.
  93. Sparkle
    The forebear's underwritten melodrama has been supplanted by Tyler Perry–like soap operatics and much jawing about the Lord, riots in the Motor City, marriage proposals, and maternal heartbreak and disapproval.
  94. The Devil's Rejects
    By rubbing your nose in this hillbilly mayhem, Zombie all but dares you to acknowledge your liberal elitism, simply because just now, in Dubya's America, you don't happen to find anything particularly funny or lovable about stupid, dangerous provincials.
  95. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
    By Jackass standards, Bad Grandpa is benign—it’s neither as fun nor as thrilling as watching Knoxville play tetherball with a beehive.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    10 Items or Less
    10 Items or Less is a case study in cluelessness.
  97. Hands of Stone
    The bouts are all muddles lacking sustained choreography or a sense of trajectory, with crowd-reaction shots and sports-announcer voice-over carrying the slack.
  98. Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti
    Cassel’s Gauguin may ultimately be a lightweight cinematic descendant of the monstrous European pioneers that Klaus Kinski played in Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, but he’s also both menacing and pitiable enough to make Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti riveting on a moment-to-moment basis.
  99. 12 Strong
    Fuglsig is adept at showing choppers and peaks, caves and campfires, at suggesting the great silence at the roof of the world. He’s also a sure hand with the geography of battle, with ensuring we understand why the bullets fly in the direction they’re flying — and both where they come from and where they hit. That said, the firefights do wear on.
  100. Melinda and Melinda
    Neither comedy nor tragedy, the movie is closest to genteel soap opera.
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