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. 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.)
    • 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.
  3. De-Lovely
    Openly gay and overwhelmingly glum.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Sobreviviré
    Bears some resemblance to "All About My Mother," but lacks its compatriot's flamboyance, content to traffic in glib banalities and unwitting self-absorption.
  5. Ricky
    Ozon's fractured-working-class-family magical realism, liberally adapted from Rose Tremain's short story, "Moth," works best in specific moments.
  6. That's What I Am
    The writing hits the weeds on occasion, but Pavone evokes with feeling adolescence as a series of outlandish physical punishments and sweetly remembered firsts.
  7. Downtown Express
    Whether to let go and follow your own path is a stock dilemma, and an implausibly hopeful conclusion winds up undercutting the realism of this immigrant song.
  8. Monster Hunt
    There are some scary moments among the slapstick, and the picture surprisingly doesn't pull its punches during its Harry and the Hendersons–style denouement, but Monster Hunt is hindered by its overlong running time and often mawkish sentimentality.
  9. Palindromes
    If the point of "A Dirty Shame" was that nothing human is foreign to John Waters, Palindromes seems to suggest that, for Todd Solondz, everything human is.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    It's Easier for a Camel...
    Long-winded, jokingly self-deprecating, and clichéd.
  11. Let Fury Have the Hour
    The film joyfully surveys the evolution of a politically informed artistic movement, set to a soundtrack that includes MC5, Rage Against the Machine, DJ Spooky, and others.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Apres Vous (After You)
    Praised be the gods that this rom-com is French. If not, we'd be haunted by visions of a Focker-ish Dustin Hoffman rescuing a suicidal Tony Shalhoub then orchestrating the TV germophobe's reunification with ex Lisa Kudrow. Vive la France!
  13. Hysteria
    Proceeds as a tedious, clumsy diddle, constantly reminding viewers how much progress has been made since the Victorian era.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    We Are Marshall
    Even by the low standards of the young-jocks-as-good-clean-soldiers movie, there's little at stake here, unless you count the kids' hunger to win one for the Gipper.
  15. The Winning Season
    Writer-director James C. Strouse's The Winning Season respects its misfits (and its audience) by not stripping away their foibles in the service of sports-movie clichés.
  16. Earthwork
    Like Herd, the movie-which resists peeking above the horizon until its final, poignant skyline shot-strives for a connection with land and labor typically missing from depictions of urban life, and provides a timely model for finding value in lean circumstances and humble company.
  17. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    Apted seems too often to think like an old-hand action director and not enough like the 12-year-old boy who probably read Lewis's book. To enter Narnia, to really go giddy with the bright, laughing promise of a quest, a young viewer with no convenient magic portal of his own needs characters to bring him along. This is, I believe, the difference between a classic and a successful franchise reboot.
  18. Penguins of Madagascar
    Plays like a sampler of Dreamworks Animation's worst creative impulses: sugar-rush pacing, pandering meta-gags, and a slick, flavorless animation style.
  19. The Better Angels
    Kruger and Clarke do their best to look steadfast with a camera swooping around them like a wounded bird, but there's no rescuing this imprecise family portrait from its own impulses toward obscurity.
  20. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    Never a disaster but only fitfully inspired, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 doesn't quite end well, but it does end promisingly.
  21. Focus
    Dern and Macy give doughty performances in schematic roles, but glasses or no, these have to be two of the least Semitic-looking actors in American movies.
  22. Passionada
    There's much to admire here, including an often witty script and a cast that includes Theresa Russell, Seymour Cassel, and the irrepressible Lupe Ontiveros (Celia's mother-in-law).
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    ABCD
    Less effective in dramatizing the choices facing second-generation Indian Americans than as a showcase for Sheetal Sheth's terrific hair.
  24. 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.
  25. New Suit
    Despite frequent cuts to mambos and cha-chas, this insulated tale of rich interns swindling rich studio bosses has no “Clueless”-style SoCal breeze (or righteous “Working Girl” gotcha).
  26. Daydream Believer
    Eisenstadt has nowhere to go with her catalogue of relaxed urban crazies, and at 79 minutes, the movie is padded out by four song interludes too many.
  27. L'autre monde
    It's too bad that Allouache's insurgent Islamists, into whose clutches Yasmine falls for a time, come off like Indiana Jones villains.
  28. Magnifico
    If Michiko Yamamoto's screenplay overdoes Magnifico's holy-fool virtue to the point of hysteria, de los Reyes's fluid compositions, dead-on pacing, and knack for eliciting naturalistic performances make the story uncommonly cathartic.
  29. Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty
    The film's abrupt ending leaves many crucial questions unanswered, but that weakness doesn't detract from its overall power.
  30. Knock Knock
    The best villains are those whose motivations prove uncomfortably persuasive, and Knock Knock's drop-dead-gorgeous home invaders predicate their cruel game on too shaky a foundation to truly unsettle.
  31. Late Bloomers
    She (Rossellini) is radiant in a profoundly ordinary and believable way, as always, and stirs up generational pathos all by herself.
  32. Private Romeo
    The hunky ensemble shares a fine chemistry, but Brown's stylistic choices lie somewhere between perverse and nonsensical.
  33. Chagall-Malevich
    There's a great deal of rhetoric about revolution and radical art, but Chagall-Malevich is staid and conventional.
  34. Beyond Outrage
    It's somewhat surprising to find the filmmaker's sequel marked by such a lack of urgency. The action here seems dutiful, devoid of the indignation at criminal vileness that seethed below Outrage's surface.
  35. Humor Me
    Hoffman’s feature debut is hampered by well-worn tropes the writer-director seems at first to be aware of — and playing with — before he leans so hard into them that whatever originality the film at first displayed crashes right into a well of rom-com cliché.
  36. The Journey
    The film is buoyed by its sharp, witty lead performances, with Spall’s holier-than-thou imperiousness clashing suitably with Meaney’s more affable obstinacy.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rent
    Instead of bringing a universal love story to the living present, the film traps it in a frozen past like a prehistoric bug in amber, as removed from moviegoers' experience as a dusty diorama at the American Museum of Natural History.
  38. Hellbound?
    To the atheist, the various interpretations might seem as so many angels dancing on the head of a pin, but any admirer of good talk will be impressed by the scholasticism and pulpit-trained oratory here, as well as some choice fighting words: "Evangelicism in America is what the pharisees were to ancient Egypt."
  39. Free Samples
    Vibrant cameo performances by two of our most engaging young actors—Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Ritter—along with one film legend—Tippi Hedren—transform this modest comedy into something special.
  40. Free State of Jones
    Diligent and informative but also fragmented and inert, it plays like a series of scenes and notes for a longer, more fleshed-out movie.
  41. Mr. Popper's Penguins
    The only faint upside to this excruciating dud is that, in its movie clips of Charlie Chaplin - who the mesmerized birds view as a kindred waddling spirit - the film might hopefully function for some kids as a gateway to superior comedy cinema.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Trust You to Kill Me
    Perhaps you are wondering why a little-known band called Rocco DeLuca and the Burden merits a glossy feature-length documentary of its whirlwind European tour. After watching Manu Boyer's film, you may still wonder.
  43. A Good Woman
    Pleasant and undemanding, all the more so whenever Tom Wilkinson's on-screen as a possible Erlynne suitor, the movie miscasts Hunt as the pragmatic seductress.
  44. The Big Question
    While the questions may be universal, they're not particularly original, and the responses largely run the expected range, rendering the whole project less enlightening than your average collegiate coffee-and-cigarettes bull session.
  45. Another Evil
    Mell stages a climax that's thrilling and ridiculous in equal measure.
  46. The Killer Inside Me
    This withholding actor's (Affleck) impish smile and mild, pale-eyed stare--not to mention the Clintonesque hoarseness with which he spins his convoluted lies--are sufficiently convincing to keep The Killer Inside Me from being just a steamy, stylish, punishing bloodbath.
  47. The Rocker
    This is sugary-sweet stuff--pop instead of rock.
  48. The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
    Without characters whose fates we care about, nor fully comprehend, even the most visceral shocks are just that: impressive moments with no lingering terror.
  49. Mother India
    The performances are broad; the comedy is mainly slapstick. The politics are nationalist and vaguely left-wing.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Remember Me, My Love
    This sentimental movie is the simulacrum of an existential family drama. But the 48-year-old Morante is the real thing.
  51. Bachelorette
    The trajectory for all four characters is toward acknowledgment of the emptiness their indulgences can't fill. It's kind of heartening that Becky has that all worked out, pretty much, even if the film doesn't quite get there.
  52. On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter
    If anything unites On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter's cyclists, it's Brown and Rousseau's inability to highlight their subjects' most singular qualities.
  53. Gnomeo and Juliet
    The script feels workshopped to death yet still hits only a single broad note of irony-drenched whimsy, but the voice-work sparkles and the action-heavy animation clips along fluidly. There's charm in the backyard, but it's still of a garden variety.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Café de Flore
    Café de Flore - the title comes from a song heard in both halves - is like a story constructed from the perfume ads in Vanity Fair: the emotional problems of shallow, sexy jet-setters.
  55. Wanderlust
    Though Wanderlust finally laughs off the real discomforting conclusion that it's edging toward, it's gut-busting funny when mocking their hopeless options.
  56. Surrogate Valentine
    A rambling valentine to San Francisco musician Goh Nakamura, Surrogate Valentine is a stylish pseudo-portrait that refracts Nakamura's gently impassive persona and lilting indie pop ballads through several lenses.
  57. The Pretty One
    Kazan holds together a decent coming-of-age script that's emotionally sincere if tonally unfocused.
  58. Ejecta
    The whole never makes much sense, and there's entirely too much screaming, but the directors stage the shocks with wicked aplomb.
  59. Khadak
    Khadak recedes deeper and deeper into esoterica as it progresses.
  60. Hula Girls
    It's all warm, well-shot, instantly forgettable, and familiar to a fault.
  61. High Tech, Low Life
    Whatever their orientation, both men are intrepid in pursuing the truth, the consequences of which are made clear in a series of terrifying late-film crackdowns.
  62. Rid of Me
    Rid of Me is a bad movie, but at least it's a flailing, innocent badness.
  63. The Lucky Ones
    Its hopelessly schematic road-trip arc (bond-fight-reconcile-repeat) grows increasingly tedious.
  64. The Book of Eli
    The Book of Eli's plastic parable isn't much more advanced than "Insane Clown Posse" theology.
  65. Australia
    The result is mostly a woodenly derivative melding of '40s maternal melodramas, oaters, and World War II actioners.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Onmyoji: The Yin Yang Master
    Succeeds in visual splendor (it was shot on location in Kyoto) but falls flat on characterization.
  67. O
    Had Nelson and Kaaya been less concerned with following Othello to the letter and rather had pursued this love affair into uncharted cinematic waters, O might have been more than an unresolved mixture of gimmickry and good intentions.
  68. Boys Life 4: Four Play
    While Strand's gay-shorts series took a tentative step toward maturity with 2000's “Boys Life 3,” this fourth anthology represents a full-blown regression.
  69. Wasabi
    The real charm of this trifle is the deadpan comic face of its star, Jean Reno, who resembles Sly Stallone in a hot sake half-sleep.
  70. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    Roughly splits the difference between "Six Days, Seven Nights" and "9 1/2 Weeks." Which is something like the nth-order derivative of an infinite regression.
  71. A House on a Hill
    Squint through the humbug, and there's some genuine life going on.
    • 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.)
  73. Jig
    Bourne's lengthy chronicle of the World Championship is severely under-contextualized, leaving us in the dark about the competition's structure and frustrating our efforts to take a rooting interest in the proceedings.
  74. Brooklyn Rules
    As a longtime writer on "The Sopranos," Terence Winter has steered clear of most of the hoary organized-crime clichés. Instead, he's poured them all into director Michael Corrente's anemic urban drama.
  75. Fighting Tommy Riley
    Outrageously sentimental and retrograde.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Girls Will Be Girls
    The situations begin tamely, but escalate to drunken vomiting and drugged rapes—all played for yuks. Or is it yucks?
  77. Beauty Shop
    Breezy, sporadically funny.
  78. Earth to Echo
    Earth to Echo is a slender kiddie flick about a quartet of preteens and their palm-sized alien pal that's at once bland, well-intentioned, and utterly terrifying about the mental development of modern children.
  79. Over the GW
    Gaglia's torture re-creations become rote quickly, and his cross-processed, color-tinted, randomly inserted, over-zoomed Film School 101 indulgences need their meds adjusted.
  80. Big Game
    Predictably ridiculous.
  81. Samba
    Samba's relationship with Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a volunteer at an immigration advocacy center, has moments of sweetness, but is painted in too-broad brushstrokes.
  82. Viceroy's House
    Using the trappings of old-fashioned romanticism, Chadha envisions the cataclysmic upheaval of millions in the traumatic lives of a few.
  83. Good Fortune
    No doubt, these talking-head assertions about DeJoria’s charitable attitude toward work and life...are true. Alas, they’re delivered in a celebratory one-note package that feels like something cooked up by a publicity team.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    White Squall
    Despite a rousing fourth act (out of five), this disappointing adventure movie plays more like: "Dead Poets Goes to Sea." [06 Feb 1996]
    • Village Voice
  85. Year of the Fish
    Year of the Fish is the kind of really bad movie it takes a lot of misplaced conviction to make.
  86. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
    Even more of a party-hearty-Marty potlatch of silliness than its predecessor. The franchise having been established, Verbinski, Bruckheimer, and Co. have been liberated to indulge in absurdities, pile on the so-old-they're-new-again clichés, and make jokes at their own expense.
  87. Rigor Mortis
    The resulting creep show has some frantic action scenes, but never quite enough spring in its step.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Metroland
    An unflashy tale of memory and desire in suburban London.
  89. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
    In 120 frames a second, both Alwyn and Stewart came off as hopelessly stilted; at 24 frames, they breathe with life. But lose the flicker, and you lose the spell.
  90. Eight Legged Freaks
    Amid numerous identical skirmishes with leapfrogging arachnids, trace elements of black comedy and intentional camp are discernible but utterly extraneous.
  91. The Heart of Me
    Madeleine's such a cold bitch that the adulterous lovers' anguished scruples scan like inert masochism.
  92. The Big Tease
    A sub-sitcom stretched to an interminable 85 minutes.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Sky Blue
    Most of the action is tedious, and the less you pay attention to the dialogue, the less you'll feel your hand inadvertently twitching as if with joystick.
  94. The Awakening
    Hall's committed performance validates even the maddest developments, and she slips into the period well, recalling Virginia Woolf in her lank, swan-necked bearing and tremulous suffering.
  95. Approaching the Unknown
    Approaching the Unknown is the best science fiction movie since Gravity, and certainly the most melancholy since Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 Solaris.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Marley & Me
    Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston relegate Marley to a lifestyle accessory in his own biopic.
  97. Big Trouble in Little China
    Big Trouble in Little China is a far more enjoyable mash-up of classic Westerns, Saturday-morning serials, and Chinese wu xia than any of the Indiana Jones movies, with Kurt Russell in full bloom as Carpenter’s de rigueur hard-drinkin’, hard-gamblin’, wise-crackin’ loner hero—a bowling-alley John Wayne.
  98. Red Sparrow
    With Lawrence (the director) and Lawrence (the actor) so professionally in tune over the course of three Hunger Games films, you might have hoped that the pair would deliver an off-the-rails, more mature action film with a nuanced female protagonist. But instead, they’ve delivered a lifeless peep show.
  99. Carrie
    Kimberly Peirce changes almost nothing in her rallying remake of Brian De Palma’s classic about a troubled telekinetic teenager. She doesn’t have to.
  100. Measure of a Man
    The portentously titled Measure of a Man is at once an escapist fantasy and sensitive portrait of adolescent transformation.
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