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. No God, No Master
    Green's historical diligence proves rewarding... But the movie, shot largely in Milwaukee in 2009, can still be dry.
  2. First Comes Love
    Wise, warm, funny, open, and more interested in life as it's actually lived than any other to debut this summer.
  3. I Feel Pretty
    Schumer remains likable, and the film has its moments, but there are so many excellent opportunities here for poignant cringe comedy that more often than not I Feel Pretty feels like a missed opportunity — and a slow, ponderous one at that.
  4. Yelling to the Sky
    Little more than a résumé film for all involved, it certainly feels more Park City than Bushwick.
  5. Morning
    It's a mannered, over-the-top approximation of real anguish and hopelessness that's so phony that it's borderline insulting to those who've truly experienced such tragedy.
  6. The Sweeney
    The Sweeney—a new British police drama—feels a lot like an American-made cop movie circa 1990.
  7. The Mountain Between Us
    Despite some frightening (and effective) scenes of slippery slopes and aggravated wildlife, the film’s heart lies in watching these characters discover in themselves and each other the will to press on.
  8. The Great Raid
    The Great Raid is ultimately scotched by History Channel–worthy nostalgia.
  9. Rememory
    Palansky had the good sense to let the performances elevate the material, never letting this turn into another cheesy, predictably twisty yarn.
  10. Night at the Museum
    The first half-hour's too slow; the last half-hour's too manic, as if to compensate. But at least it entertains, thanks in large measure to the buddy-pic relationship between Owen Wilson's miniature cowpoke and his Roman pal Steve Coogan.
  11. En kærlighedshistorie
    Another in a line of Dogme half-wits whose madness is posited as a state of tortured grace, the young wife in Kira's Reason is a woman well past the verge.
  12. Condo Painting
    This is more than self-amused irony; this is kitsch as religion.
  13. High Strung
    What it loses in thematic richness, the uncynical High Strung makes up for in pure joy.
  14. 17 Again
    If this is one small step for the actor (Efron) toward becoming a leading man, it is, for Hollywood movies, one more giant leap into infantilism.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Adam & Steve
    Lighthearted and funny, it falters only in the rare moments when it takes itself too seriously.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Thing About My Folks
    Falk isn't given anything funny to say or do, but his performance is littered with beautiful touches, tiny oases of brilliance in an entertainment desert.
  17. The Proposal
    You know every tinny beat and false note by heart, from the implausible setup to the sprint-to-the-airport finish.
  18. Jayne Mansfield's Car
    Although Thornton and co-writer Tom Epperson are clearly trying to get to some essential truth about the ways in which machismo hinders love, their insights are scattered and pedestrian.
  19. The Strangers: Prey at Night
    The Strangers: Prey at Night, co-written by Bertino and Ben Ketai and directed by Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down) has a slow and rather grim first half, but then, in the home stretch, takes a welcome turn into the seriously silly.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blue Like Jazz
    One only has so much patience, though, for watching Communion-wafer-thin characters caught in a liberal-arts cartoon.
  21. King Cobra
    The unique setting aside, there's just not much to sink your fangs into.
  22. The Mummy Returns
    First and foremost a trial run for a Universal Studios ride.
  23. xXx
    Diesel himself has the personality of a golem and a knack for dialogue delivery that suggests recent oral surgery.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Shark Tale
    Shark Tale's shallow plot and leagues of padding put it fully in the shadow of last year's animated underwater offering, the nifty, heartfelt "Finding Nemo."
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    A Love Song for Bobby Long
    At least Macht emerges relatively unscathed from the mess, content to brood and mutter self-loathing observations while Johansson and (most painfully) Travolta spoon their Southern accents out of a jar and spread it all over the humid scenery.
  26. To the Arctic
    Arguably a good lesson for kids about preserving our environment, To the Arctic is definitely a threat to our equally endangered good taste.
  27. Yogawoman
    Yogawoman clearly is a fan of yoga and of women. And as it gently reminds us, these two special interests have not always been compatible.
  28. The World Made Straight
    On-the-nose monologues on the cyclical nature of centuries-old blood feuds ultimately feel more like stuffy lectures than living history; ditto the film as a whole.
  29. Morgan
    Even if his film's plot is predictable, the younger Scott is returning the ensemble thriller to its roots with something far more important than an airtight story: compelling, well-drawn characters and the talented actors to play them.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Strangers
    Bertino teases with the unknown until he's left no pimple ungoosed. Sometimes avoiding the synapse-raping bad habits of splat packers Eli Roth and Alexandre Aja is its own reward; doing so without also submitting to Michael Haneke–style hand-slapping is nearly monumental.
  31. The Catechism Cataclysm
    Taking the notion of toilet humor literally but incapable of delivering its promised religious satire, The Catechism Cataclysm is more muddled than its tongue-twister title.
  32. Special ID
    All the performers are supremely entertaining while dealing or defying horrible deaths... but Yen unfortunately lacks the kind of charisma that can elevate a genre film to a higher level of satisfaction.
  33. Being Charlie
    If Charlie were just unlikable, it all might be palatable and even fun. But his behavior draws more of an eye-roll than a laugh or a snarl, despite Robinson's confident, believable performance.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hot to Trot
    The cameras caress landscapes, skylines, domesticity, and sequined dancers with equal fervor, but one longs for more of what a competition official calls “a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.”
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Coffee Date
    Writer-director Stewart Wade has gracefully expanded his short film, a festival fave, into a warmhearted tale carried by genuine affection and a charming cast rather than cutting one-liners and turbo-charged plotting.
  36. An Encounter with Simone Weil
    Julia Haslett's absorbing if patchy ode to Weil, an advocate for the rights of the disadvantaged, confronts her subject's ideas of moral responsibility through surprisingly personal and experimental means.
  37. One & Two
    [Palermo] demonstrates an affinity for all things ethereal, even as he occasionally struggles to make space for himself in the long shadow of his estimable influences and reference points.
  38. Memories of the Sword
    Memories of the Sword stands apart from other action films because Park wisely imagines violence as an elemental clash of dispositions.
  39. The April Fools
    There doesn't seem to be enough plot for a minute commercial, much less 100 minutes plus of madcap farce. [12 Jun 1969, p.53]
    • Village Voice
  40. Fun with Dick and Jane
    This Dick & Jane is precisely the kind of social-problem comedy you'd expect from well-intentioned millionaires unaccustomed to putting their money where their mouths are.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bella
    Manages to be utterly predictable without making any sense at all.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dumbstruck
    All are compelling subjects, especially the disarmingly gifted and emotionally relatable Horn. But Goffman's either unwilling or incapable of getting them to move their lips to reveal enough of themselves, or of their artistry, to make the already overly familiar endeavor worth anyone's time.
  43. Accepted
    Accepted is an inspired premise in search of a movie: What starts out as a scabrous takedown of academic bureaucracy ends up yet another modestly rousing underdog story about the little slacker that could.
  44. 3 Generations
    It's not for nothing that generation and generic share a root; the characters scan as vague, of-their-age types, despite having each been dressed up with superficial quirks.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Before the Rains
    Saddled with a predictable lushness--even a streak of blood on a dirty window is aestheticized until it looks like stained glass--and the sensuality here can crowd out the sense. Still, director Santosh Sivan imparts a vastness and a sense of wonder to the film, qualities reminiscent of a Thomas Cole painting.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Josie and the Pussycats
    The excellently irrelevant music is played by excellently irrelevant real-life rockers.
  47. What Women Want
    Gibson has never lacked chemistry with his leading ladies, from Sigourney Weaver in "The Year of Living Dangerously" to Julia Roberts in "Conspiracy Theory," but faced with the awkward Hunt -- Hollywood's bland antidote to the Lolita syndrome -- he doesn't even try.
  48. Borstal Boy
    Sheridan seems terrified of the book's irreverent energy, and scotches most of its élan, humor, bile, and irony. What's left wouldn't have substantiated a memoir of any reputation, much less a movie.
  49. The City of Lost Souls
    The plot is muddy and quite beside the point. The almost meditative mood takes center stage.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Guru
    As a dirtier Deepak, Mistry is blankly sweet, suitable for his role as Subcontinental Rorschach.
    • 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."
  52. Easy
    The romantic woes of one attractive, privileged, intellectually overreaching acupuncture enthusiast don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
  53. Brother
    If nothing else, Brother confirms Kitano's stature as the most original purveyor of on-screen mayhem since Sam Peckinpah.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Private Archives of Pablo Escovar
    Hits just the right balance of pop and political. Though flat by cinematic standards, Beaufort's TV aesthetics--sonorous Telemundo-style narrator, black-backgrounded talking heads, and gaudy titles--nevertheless befit the story.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Muhammad: The Last Prophet
    Though noble in its intent to portray Islam as a peace-loving faith, the narrative flow remains compromised by its catechistic asides and displaced hero.
  56. La mission
    As subtle as a face-punch, La Mission nobly continues a necessary conversation about homophobia, but paves the way to hell with its own good intentions.
  57. In the Cut
    Aggressively grim and gory.
  58. Dancing Across Borders
    We get white folks ruminating lyrically on the peasant Asian's role as a kind of grand jeté bridge between East and West, and long performance sequences that are dazzling to behold but quite troubling to contemplate.
  59. MI-5
    Led by the honorably dour Firth and the charisma-free Harington, MI-5 is convoluted and dull, though Harry's revenge against that dastardly mole is pleasingly diabolical. But it's too little too late.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Good Year
    Scott can do mayhem, dystopia, and the rampaging alien (extraterrestrial, android, Somali, Demi Moore) with the best of them, but the breezy touch is not his forte.
  61. The Box
    The new Richard Kelly movie is basically a sock of coal for Christmas.
  62. RED 2
    Red 2, disappointing in so many ways, isn't torture to watch, in part because Mirren has even more to do than she did in the first installment.
  63. MIS Human Secret Weapon
    When one MIS vet refers to "American soldiers" and doesn't include himself, his son-in-law corrects him, but even after all of his service to his country, the man still feels excluded, a sense that the film powerfully communicates throughout.
  64. Railroad Tigers
    With heart, humor and some breathtaking special effects, Ding Sheng’s Railroad Tigers charms and thrills.
  65. Boarding Gate
    There's basically only one reason to see Olivier Assayas's self-consciously hypermodern, meta-sleazy, English-French-Chinese-language globo-thriller Boarding Gate, and her name is Asia Argento.
  66. Failure to Launch
    Failure to Launch has all the gravitas of a midseason-replacement sitcom.
  67. Simon Magus
    Though Hopkins lovingly re-creates the surfaces of shtetl life, its deep spirituality seems to elude him.
  68. What to Do in Case of Fire
    A blitz of anti-authoritarian poses so feel-good you'd think someone was selling you sneakers.
  69. WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3
    A competent if overlong blend of policier, sci-fi conspiracy thriller, daikaiju eiga (giant monster) stompfest, and tragic romance. It's also anime (short for "cheaper than live-action").
  70. Hotel
    As usual, Figgis coaxes moon-shooting performances, but all the furious improv lacks any sort of map.
  71. 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?
  72. Tales from Earthsea
    Earthsea seems to be a stupendously dull place. It would try the patience of any kid.
  73. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
    The third installment, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb may be the best, and even the generally wound-too-tight Ben Stiller — once again playing a bemused Museum of Natural History guard — is easy to tolerate.
  74. He's Just Not That Into You
    If all you ask for is a few gay jokes, a perky score, pretty shots of Baltimore, and some clever but callow observations of sexual mores in the city, He's Just Not That Into You is an amiable enough night out.
  75. The Matrix Revolutions
    No less than the rankest demagogue, The Matrix Revolutions insists on the primacy of faith over knowledge. Once it locks and loads, however, the triumphant visuals short-circuit anything resembling abstract thought.
  76. Noma: My Perfect Storm
    Deschamps never ventures below the surface of Redzepi's wildly successful experiment, and while the pictures are pretty, no one judges food on appearance alone.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In the Land of Women
    Maudlin, formulaic affair.
  78. In the Heart of the Sea
    Howard is great at capturing the timbre of the ship, the creaks and snaps and the whir of the hemp lines, and the sonar clicks of the whales strategizing below. All his sound and fury has a befuddling purpose. His emotional climax is about, well, disaster insurance.
  79. Jennifer's Body
    This is the sophomore production from "Juno" screenwriter Diablo Cody, similarly told through ultra-stylized slangy teen dialogue, which is cool, in theory, in the way it respects the verbal resourcefulness of idle flyover kids, but is excruciating to listen to in actual fact.
  80. The Network
    Rather than investigating the harrowing circumstances surrounding each day's broadcast, Orner is content to let each inspiring aspect of the network speak for itself.
  81. The M Word
    In The M Word, Jaglom smartly sees a parallel between midlife hormone upheaval and sudden workplace superfluousness, but his unstructured-gabfest approach makes rather a mess of it.
  82. Funny Bunny
    Funny Bunny may be effectively alienating, but never in a commendable way.
  83. All the Rage (Saved by Sarno)
    Celebrity testimonials drown out the scientists, and Galinsky’s haphazard exploration of his own back pain is a major distraction.
  84. Convoy
    Sam Peckinpah's Convoy is not merely a bad movie, but a terrible movie. Anyone can make a bad movie--only a misguided talent can manage to be terrible. [17 July 1978, p.44]
    • Village Voice
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bad Teacher
    In a role hardly larger than a cameo despite the fact that he's ostensibly the male romantic lead, Segel never tries to hide that he's only here to pay his mortgage - which makes him the most likeable presence on-screen
  86. The Little Traitor
    Terminally mild, ill-structured adaptation of Amos Oz's novel "Panther in the Basement."
  87. Frankie & Alice
    It's occasionally imaginative, and, most importantly, never boring.
  88. The Doorman
    Not until the goofy closing credits does the film hit its tonal stride and nail what could have been its saving, salient theme: the absurd lines that fancy people draw (and obey) to make themselves feel special on a Saturday night.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fat Girls
    This film goes to some lengths not to be another high-school movie, which means prom stinks and no one can sing. Given Fat Girls' honesty, and its delicately drawn examples of social hopelessness, the sudden, sugary, puzzling finale feels out of character. It's as though the film forgot how to talk to us.
  90. Lions for Lambs
    The movie is awful--and also oddly touching, even adorable in its dogged sense of responsibility, its stubborn refusal of style.
  91. The Architect
    In her (Viola Davis) umpteenth turn as a strong ghetto mother, she is the life force that lifts Matt Tauber's workaday movie The Architect into an experience to savor.
  92. Lies
    At once distanced and heedless, Lies manages to be lighter and less pretentious than any description suggests. The movie's playful aspect can't be denied.
  93. Bittersweet Motel
    As homey as old sweats.
  94. By Hook or by Crook
    Long, inchoate scenes are burdened by overwrought plotlines -- But the film is buoyed by moments of pleasure, too.
  95. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    A movie of many stupid pet tricks and one basic joke: As in the original, Elle's intelligence is consistently -- if understandably -- underestimated.
  96. Heartbreakers
    Heartbreakers gives redemption a bad name, but gives conniving misanthropy a worse one.
  97. Flight of the Phoenix
    This Phoenix screams hack job.
  98. Ladder 49
    Not as snort-worthy as "Backdraft," Ladder 49 is a serviceable testament to the firemen who would bravely risk their lives to protect the safety of others.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Burlesque
    What you remember when it's over is the impact of Aguilera's voice, but not what she's singing; montages of body parts, but not the choreography; and Aguilera's face, music-video-trained to hold a close-up so emotionally exaggerated, you might even call it a burlesque.
  100. A Cure for Wellness
    The director conjures some chills with a cold plunge into an enchanting and frightful world — the imagery’s straight out of a Kubrick and Lynch nightmare — but the story unravels as he tries to overexplain his evil doctor’s devilish plot.
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