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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    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
    SK3D, alas, banks it all on a dead-end VR aesthetic, albeit one emitting a certain black-hole fascination.
  2. The Shape of Things
    In its costumes, line readings, and structure, the movie faithfully preserves the stage production -- a provocative, if meretricious, evening of theater that ends in a paroxysm of LaButality with a bear swipe to the spectator's head. It is, however, more difficult to rattle a movie audience -- at least with words -- and, despite its streamlined presentation, The Shape of Things is not nearly as effective on-screen.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Better Than Sex
    Despite the wall-to-wall shagging in Cin's loft, -- this Three Days of the Condom is less Last Tango in Sydney than "When Harry Met Sally."
  4. Catch Me If You Can
    DiCaprio is far more successfully cast here than in Gangs of New York: His performance is all about acting; it's a mild kick to see how he'll manage to talk his way out of nearly every scrape.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    How Stella Got Her Groove Back
    It's not a very well-made movie, but Stella's many limitations will probably be a side issue among its target audience, irrelevant next to those repeating images of Angela being so rich and beautiful and black.
  6. Never Again
    A comedic semi-rehash of "An Unmarried Woman" (1978) with older leads, Never Again sports a good-hearted story but doesn't know how to tell it.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Lilo & Stitch
    But mostly the film is just hectic and homiletic: two parts exhausting "Men in Black" mayhem to one part family values.
  8. Drumline
    An exhilarating serving of movie fluff.
  9. The Hot Chick
    The cast, save the charisma-free Schneider, is uniformly hilarious, and deserves classier high jinks than this Juwanna Tootsie roll.
  10. Mean Creek
    As obvious in many ways as its title (and its poster), Mean Creek retains a gritty working-class ambience, but it feels over-rehearsed.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Raspberry Reich
    A lovingly overblown piece of terrorist-chic trashfilm.
  12. Tying the Knot
    We never get to see the dailiness of coupled life or learn what made these relationships tick--and why they are so worthy of legal validation.
  13. Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!
    A less offensive concoction than Luketic's "Legally Blonde," Win a Date is nevertheless an oddity, unsure of its tone and even of what period it's set in.
  14. Max
    For all its flaws, Max does propose a credible young Hitler, played by Noah Taylor as an unpleasantly opinionated, arrogantly ascetic, defensively vain autodidact with a diffident sneer and a bottomless well of grievance to draw upon.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Yes Nurse! No Nurse!
    It's all an excuse for some daft production numbers, however, and a chance to relive the vanished Holland of your youth. Yes Nurse? No Nurse? Maybe Nurse!
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Go Further
    Go Further meanders--narratively as well as geographically--all over the map.
  17. Hidalgo
    The screwball antics recall "Cannonball Run" more than David Lean.
  18. The Golden Bowl
    Though it often wallows in louche baroque textures, The Golden Bowl is perhaps the most visually accomplished of the Ivory soaps.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Moog
    Dry interviews and soggy performances by the likes of Money Mark and Rick Wakeman of Yes don't do much to burnish Moog's legacy.
  20. Phantom
    Easily the artiest queer stroke movie of the year.
  21. Vanity Fair
    The pacing feels choppy, and the characters' emotions are sometimes too sudden to be believable. (One exception is Rhys Ifans, affecting as Amelia's long-suffering and neglected suitor.)
    • 29 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Timeline
    Crudely written, haphazardly acted, and improbably fun.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. The Big Blue
    The results are predictably lachrymose, especially with the reinstated "unhappy" ending from the original French version.
  26. The Big Bounce
    The best Elmore Leonard adaptations ("Jackie Brown," "Out of Sight") play behind the beat, and although The Big Bounce isn't top-shelf Dutch, the film finds its own pace.
  27. Incident at Loch Ness
    The film slowly sheds its convincing identity as nonfiction and becomes a cruel parody of making-of docs, studio-movie pandering, and showbiz egomania.
  28. In the Cut
    Aggressively grim and gory.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    House of Sand and Fog
    The clunky manipulations of plot, and the sorry fate awaiting everyone in this foggy House is less wrenching than acted.
  30. All the Real Girls
    This earnest love story is borderline insufferable, and yet there are moments that, in their bold incoherence, have a startling emotional truth.
  31. Election
    The film never finds a confident tone: it's pitched as a satire, but seems to have no real targets.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    American Wedding
    The deliriously overacting Scott is game for anything, too much really, but as a one-man army against the tide of Z100-scored banality, he's the closest thing the movie has to a savior.
  33. Farmingville
    Authentic ethical dialogue is conspicuous for its absence, as is the potentially disturbing view of a normal, working-class corner of American society going not-so-quietly cuckoo.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rick
    Rick (Bill Pullman) is an embittered cad who fails to earn the audience's sympathy, so the film falls short of its source's tragic dimensions. That aside, Daniel Handler's script and Curtiss Clayton's direction hit all the right notes, especially in the final act.
  35. The Girl Next Door
    Begins with the same deathless question that has bedeviled generations of teenagers: how to fill the space allotted to graduating seniors for memories and shout-outs at the back of their yearbook?
  36. In the Bedroom
    Increasingly unconvincing, In the Bedroom turns genteel rabble-rouser. Field's leisurely buildup forestalls but doesn't prevent his movie's mutation into a granola "Death Wish."
  37. Scooby-Doo
    As this movie knows what it is, Scooby-Doo's a relatively painless 85 minutes.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Callas Forever
    Sadly, this camp drama, a eulogy by one of Callas's closest friends, pales in comparison to the four minutes of "La Mamma Morta" in Philadelphia.
  39. A Silent Love
    The movie can't resist putting its key points in italics, but it maintains a refreshingly unsentimental trajectory.
  40. Levity
    First-time director Ed Solomon, a comedy writer (MIB, both Bill and Ted movies), clots up Levity with symbols -- empty chairs, reflections, winter slush -- and achy, tastefully drawn characters.
  41. Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man
    Cirque du Soleil's campy, crackbrained, and in no way unenjoyable 3-D IMAX pageant Journey of Man might be the oddest movie offering of the year so far.
    • 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.
  43. Everything Put Together
    Seeks to portray loss as a literal, convulsive nightmare, and it's not above resorting to horror-movie tropes and Grand Guignol trickery.
  44. What Lies Beneath
    Suggest a Clintons-at-home scenario for 2001 -- haunted by the ghosts of dalliances past.
  45. Monster's Ball
    Wastes a ton of potent material.
  46. Monsters, Inc.
    But Monsters, Inc. -- directed by Pixar soldier Pete Docter, not by master digital comic John Lasseter -- turns out to be stingy on context, commentary, and the prism-ing view of pop culture that made the earlier films mint.
  47. The Iron Ladies
    We get a bunch of straight actors focusing on the "gayness" of their characters, mincing and lisping and melodramatically breaking nails, all in the besmirched name of tolerance.
  48. Three Kings
    Increasingly muddled, cumulatively monotonous, would-be heartwarming, Three Kings becomes its own entertainment allegory -- searching, Hollywood style, for the point at which blatant self-interest can turn humanitarian, while still remaining profitable.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    National Security
    As the two cop manqués overcome their dearth of common sense to save the day, the film achieves a comic playfulness.
  50. An Everlasting Piece
    It's a sprightly, low-fiber comedy while the comedy lasts.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Who Killed Bambi?
    Too vague in its cat-and-mouse play to succeed as a psychological thriller, Who Killed Bambi? fares better as a visual exercise in white-on-whiteness.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Brother to Brother
    First-timer Rodney Evans's leaden script fails to live up to the poetry of its subjects and raises more themes--black-on-black homophobia, light-skin versus dark-skin prejudice, writers' envy--than it can fully develop.
  53. 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.
  54. When Will I Be Loved
    More wacky than wack.
  55. The Patriot
    A movie of cornball sentiment, humorously anachronistic dialogue, and expensive Colonial Williamsburg sets.
  56. Me, Myself & Irene
    This is the first movie I've ever seen -- porn included -- in which a guy gets coldcocked with a dildo.
  57. Valentin
    Argentinean director Alejandro Agresti's own specs are rose-colored. This loosely autobiographical tale feels inorganically upbeat, with all potentially upsetting material glossed over or truncated.
  58. New Guy
    Never quite locates a sensibility to call its own.
  59. Hollow Man
    Gleefully confrontational in its ludicrous, pulpy tawdriness.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jeepers Creepers II
    An apparent Atkins devotee, he eschews the carb-heavy corn fields, opting for protein-rich human flesh, primarily a high school basketball team returning home on a lonely highway.
  61. The Inheritance
    The Inheritance is most effective in its first half...But the film falters as it moves closer to home and the heart, veering off into melodramatic and quasi-surreal scenarios.
  62. This Is Spinal Tap
    Begs the question: Did the lads from Squatney trail the zeitgeist at every turn, or were cobandleaders David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel simply in touch with their past and ahead of their time?
  63. Save the Last Dance
    The disjointed plotting and afterschool-special dialogue offer scant opportunity for the charismatic leading duo to work up much chemistry.
  64. Warriors of Heaven and Earth
    Comfortably familiar. It lacks the tension between grandeur and intimacy that characterizes the films it apes.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Prince and Me
    Their opposites-attract trajectory entertainingly reaches an applause-inducing climax -- but heeding Eddie's exegetical advice, Prince refuses to end on such an easy emotional note.
  66. Suzhou River
    A ghost story that's shot as though it were a documentary -- and a documentary that feels like a dream. Almost too fashionable for its own good.
  67. 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.
  68. 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.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Bruce Almighty
    A looking-glass cover version of "The Truman Show," the maudlin Jim Carrey vehicle Bruce Almighty lets the comedian ply his rubber-limbed shtick as well as indulge his pursuit of sappiness.
  70. Enemy at the Gates
    It does offer Annaud the opportunity to show his directorial muscle in elaborate battle scenes, where many bodies are torn apart and blood flows freely.
  71. The Man Who Bought Mustique
    Tennant had hoped the documentary would serve as an "instrument of revenge" on Mustique's new owners. It's the filmmakers who end up exacting revenge on Tennant, gleefully recording his every splenetic outburst and infantile hissy fit.
  72. Blue Crush
    Director John Stockwell keeps the proceedings casual, and the film is admirably at ease with its dutifully trite plot and porn-worthy dialogue (most of which vanishes under the crash of a wave or the roar of a jet-ski anyway).
  73. Being Julia
    Bening's comic gifts make the most of Ronald Harwood's witty screenplay, though she falls flat in her character's rare moments of sincerity.
  74. Bush's Brain
    The campaign's latest scare doc takes its title, Bush's Brain, and much of its argument from the portrait of political operative and bogeyman Karl Rove published last year by a pair of Dallas newsmen.
  75. Nico and Dani
    The movie avoids grand conclusions, and its restraint heightens the clarity of the perspective shifts that constitute a rite of passage; Nico and Dani is a modest chronicle of a summer during which everything had to change so that everything could stay the same.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Fighting Temptations
    The camera loves Beyoncé, but her acting coach may harbor more ambivalence; if she could convert the imperious urgency of her best singing to screen presence, we might stop wishing Whitney would come back from her own private netherlands.
  77. Unfaithful
    Casual familiarity with Lyne's oeuvre is all you need to predict the major plot contortion.
  78. Saw
    With its toilet-bobbing and blood spurting and Elwes's fey, Vincent Price–like mugging, Saw succeeds in capturing something like Takashi Miike by way of William Castle. Happy Halloween, indeed.
  79. King Arthur
    Everything is pre-medieval and unwashed, but with Antoine Fuqua at the steering wheel King Arthur is still a comic book, if a little more "Classics Illustrated" in tone than we'd have the right to expect.
  80. Bedazzled
    It might be worth enduring the Limburger to see Fraser morph from freckled-faced Rod McKuen dweeb to seven-foot albino ball star and never miss a beat.
  81. Bowling for Columbine
    It's poorly structured, a half-hour too long, and devotedly fixated on the filmmaker's persona.
  82. Garage Days
    Spotting trains that left the station a few years back.
  83. Luther
    How did this rude monk, prey to depression and satanic hallucinations, change the course of history? Luther offers scant illumination, for the big brown eyes that served Joseph Fiennes so well in "Elizabeth" are little help with the spirit of Reformation.
  84. The Perfect Storm
    Rains on its own parade.
  85. Super Troopers
    Close enough in spirit to its freewheeling trash-cinema roots to be a breath of fresh air.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception
    Schechter has a broad sub-Chomskian critique of the media's complicity in building support for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
  87. Ararat
    If the movie feels cumbersome and overstuffed, it's because Egoyan's characters, so often aphasic, are this time driven by a compulsion to speak -- though the noisy tumble of words mostly underscores their failure to communicate.
  88. The American Astronaut
    Rarely funny and straining to reach feature length, The American Astronaut achieves sweetness via its straight-faced take on utter gobbledygook.
  89. Fight Club
    This malevolently gleeful satire...is extremely funny, surprisingly well- acted, and boldly designed...at least until its steel-and-chrome soufflé falls apart.
  90. Dog Days
    Dog Days adheres dogmatically to the school of sado-miserablism that Seidl's compatriots Michael Haneke and Jessica Hausner have turned into something of a national industry (non-Austrian adherents abound too, from Gaspar Noé to Harmony Korine).
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cowboy Bebop the Movie: Knockin' on Heaven's Door
    Americanized through western showdowns, shadowy film noir, gangster shootings, sci-fi, Bruckheimer explosions, slapstick, and soaps, Bebop aims to transcend its own genre by emulating all genres, and it falls short only in the melodrama.
  92. The Green Butchers
    The two leads capably humanize an overdetermined screenplay that often fumbles with bludgeoning symbolism and rank sentimentality.
  93. Imaginary Heroes
    Despite Weaver's wise instincts for the thoughtful pause, we're stuck with yet another ass-kicking female actor struggling to shade in the contours of a wispy sketch.
  94. Whale Rider
    Like the film, Pai's character is muddily conceived and ill-focused, but the coltish, tremulously delicate Castle-Hughes is a hypnotic camera subject.
  95. Friday After Next
    If "Next Friday" approximated smoking the same old shit, FAN is a manically generous Christmas vaudeville.
  96. Malibu's Most Wanted
    Most Wanted isn't aiming for social commentary, but it isn't too difficult to enjoy its good-natured humor.
  97. What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?
    Matlin's haphephobic character dry-swallows anti-anxiety pills only in instances of extreme duress, but the actress herself looks pained throughout the movie, wincing reflexively at inappropriate moments.
  98. Behind Enemy Lines
    Though Wilson gives a customarily sympathetic, engaged, and unpredictable performance, his work is drowned out by pyrotechnics and orchestral paroxysms of patriotism.
  99. Dolls
    Dolls risks the bank on symbology as gaudy as teen anime and as heavy as a stone temple.
  100. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
    The movie rises to another level whenever its star has a chance to cut loose -- leading the ensemble in a conga line, winning a sack race in slow motion, torching the Whos' Christmas tree while screaming, "Burn baby burn."
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