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. Restless
    Gus Van Sant's latest - a middle-class hetero teen romance, no less - walks the line between mainstream sentimentality and dark art-house humor so effectively that it seems noncommittal.
  2. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
    There’s no mystery, and the action is thoroughly disposable, but what works this time around are the interactions between Reacher and Turner, mostly thanks to the efforts of Smulders, who brings an impassioned frustration to her character.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Flyboys
    Here is the War to End All Wars seen from on high--as it was way back when, in "Wings" or the Howard Hughes "Hell's Angels"--a world apart from the grim, futile slaughterhouses of Verdun and the Marne. Among these combatants, you won't find much "All Quiet on the Western Front"–style despair, and the paths of glory are unsullied by doubt or disillusionment.
  4. The Dressmaker
    Unfortunately, The Dressmaker does not deliver on this early promise.
  5. Young Ones
    Young Ones is an old-fashioned, worthwhile curio down to the closing credits.
  6. Pushing Tin
    Pushing Tin pivots on our dubious fascination with professional erection duels, which are a sad substitute for dramatic conflict.
  7. Choke
    They explain and explain again the genesis of Victor's demons, to the point where the novel and movie play almost like parodies of novels and movies in which a character has to get in touch with his feelings in order to become a better man.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Novo
    Limosin's elliptical narrative, meant to correlate with his protagonist's blank-slate mind, instead plays as desultory and just plain confused.
  9. Home
    While Close's testimony is sufficiently terrifying, moving toward an apocalyptic vision of climate-change catastrophe, the urgency of her tone is belied by the placidity of the film's visuals.
  10. Cargo
    With the certainty of bad melodrama, Cargo moves gradually into superficial moral complexity, an inevitable display of heroics, and the perfunctory title card ensuring us that sex slavery is indeed a real-life problem.
  11. All In: The Poker Movie
    Instead of sustaining a significant cultural story, at almost two hours, All In feels like an energetic but overlong highlight reel.
  12. Kabbalah Me
    [A] sweetly odd documentary.
  13. Alumbrones
    Alumbrones's creators talk up their work's restorative value, but never go into great detail about the world beyond their canvases. Donnelly's vague, circuitous questioning is to blame.
  14. Where the Truth Lies
    This showbiz Rashomon has continuity, as well as credibility, problems.
  15. The Trouble with Men and Women
    The mostly unknown actors are charming, and while the story is formulaic, it never feels blatantly contrived.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Next Big Thing
    Posner's dishearteningly unsophisticated treatment itself rings false.
  17. The Shipping News
    In lieu of vaporous message-mongering, the languid, episodic narrative -- centering on hapless sadsack Quoyle (Spacey) -- streams along by the gentle force of a convincing melancholic undertow, a dejection and longing that's not so much surmounted as sustained.
  18. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    More mushy than mystical.
  19. The Hidden Wars of Desert Storm
    Pegged to the 10th anniversary of the Gulf War victory celebration, a fiesta that lasted nearly three times longer than the fighting itself.
  20. The Last Shot
    Planned inanity never gets mad mad mad mad enough.
    • 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.
  22. 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.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Shall We Dance
    While Suo's original was hardly a masterpiece, it featured a subtle performance from Koji Yakusho. Gere doesn't even compare, playing the part of a despondent lawyer with the empathy of a mannequin.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Reno 911!: Miami
    The TV show excels with its short squad-car bursts of random inanity; here, the plot -- stretched out to 84 minutes -- feels like a dime bag tossed aside by a fleeing perp.
  25. The Lost City
    Garcia's tale bemoans the loss of easy wealth for a precious few. Poor people are absolutely absent; Garcia and Infante seem to have thought that peasant revolutions happen for no particular reason--or at least no reason the moneyed 1 percent should have to worry about.
  26. I Saw the Light
    I Saw the Light ignores Williams's composing, denies us his voice, and is too spooked by sentimentality to show us just what his music touches off in people.
  27. Parked
    Elegant, engaging meditation on displacement and the modern man.
  28. The Hitman's Bodyguard
    It’s exactly the movie it promises to be, but more so. It’s wilder, more hilarious, more giddily irresponsible — it’s the hard R action comedy that kids sneaking into it might imagine it’s going to be, minus Seventies- and Eighties-style nudity.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Wild
    Under Steve "Spaz" Williams' direction, the animation is exquisitely detailed, down to the lions' individually moving whiskers--but when's the last time you enjoyed a cartoon for its realism?
  30. Poltergeist
    The remake grows less interesting as it goes, with final scares dipping into surprising lameness.
  31. The Day After Tomorrow
    Needless to say, the movie fails as a cautionary tale. But it fulfills its summer air-conditioning duties with flippant ease, and its enjoyably cloddish attempts at political relevance add a fascinating layer of incongruity.
  32. Puerto Ricans in Paris
    Ian Edelman's comedy Puerto Ricans in Paris is a much sweeter film than its Snakes on a Plane–caliber title would suggest.
  33. Hercules
    Johnson is genuinely talented. He's often the best thing in bad movies, and Ratner's Hercules is, at the very least, pretty good.
  34. The Trip
    Steals every trick in the gaysploitation book down to the Alexis Arquette glorified cameo, but the end result -- compulsively horrible and full of unintentional poignant hilarity -- is its own mutant creature.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Full Grown Men
    For better and for worse (at least for a story about a man struggling to behave like an adult), Full Grown Men feels and thinks with the heart and mind of a child.
  36. Tano da morire
    Manically entertaining, Tano may have been a popular hit, but its caricatured world of papier-mâché bad taste fulfills at least one Underground criteria: Save for a big showstopper in the Vucciria market, it all could've been shot in someone's basement.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Inch'Allah
    This film has a lot to say, and it's sometimes affecting, but most of the time feels too understated to really deliver the powerful effect it seems to be going for.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Legend of Zorro
    Most of Mask's cast and crew return, but they forgot to bring the last film's romantic aura and dry sense of humor with them; Anthony Hopkins is deeply missed. Instead, the picture is beset by typical sequel problems like awkward slapstick and allegedly adorable kid sidekicks.
  39. Max
    It's another modest, functional success from a director who used to work on the margins.
  40. 27 Dresses
    A forgettable, formulaic comedy so predictable that seeing it and skipping it are the exact same thing.
  41. Mouth to Mouth
    Murray's story has the no-holds-barred look and feel of a '70s movie, but her digressions into modern dance are a tad unwelcome.
  42. Masterminds
    The film is competent in its framing and editing in a way that most comedies aren’t (compare/contrast with Neighbors 2, which is barely a movie except in the most technical sense) and avoids dead-end-obvious improv.
  43. The Time Traveler's Wife
    Will disappoint anyone looking for transport from a movie--being a time traveler's wife, it turns out, is mostly a drag.
  44. Thunder and the House of Magic
    The story is serviceable enough.
  45. Project Almanac
    Project Almanac could have been fun, but its creators don't seem to know what fun looks like.
  46. Fists of Legend
    The battles are staged with moderate intensity but a dispiriting lack of surprise that's also characteristic of the story in general.
  47. Fort McCoy
    If the film has a major flaw, it's the profusion of subplots in a 100-minute running time. Still, it is a real accomplishment.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Mephisto Waltz
    Paul Wendkos, a director with a cult-following is responsible, and he makes you appreciate Polanski's extraordinary discretion in the handling of similar material. [15 Apr 1971, p.69]
    • Village Voice
  49. Practical Magic
    The title is, to say the least, an understatement. Witchcraft has rarely looked more prosaic and less sexy than it does in Griffin Dunne's Practical Magic.
  50. From the Edge of the City
    The viewer, though unavoidably alert, is before long too numb to care.
  51. Black and White
    Peaks with its opening scene.
    • 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.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Man on Fire
    Intentional or not, Man on Fire's over-the-top evocation of Christian retribution goes a long way to making this otherwise standard revenge fantasy watchable.
  54. Mammuth
    Too limp and scattershot to warrant anything stronger than indifference.
  55. Silver City
    Sayles, it seems, doesn't think much of his audience, and the tone of his discourse is only nominally less pandering than a politician's.
  56. The Ardennes
    In the end, for all the artistry on display, The Ardennes is more admirable than inspiring. It has style, and even suspense, but relatively little imagination.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Herbie Fully Loaded
    Its vibrating crowd scenes and splashy visuals will please the seven-to-12 set.
  58. The Great Gilly Hopkins
    [A] hokey but effective adaptation.
  59. Maniac
    Khalfoun makes the audience privy to Frank's memories, migraines, and jarring hallucinations of his mother's recalled abuses.
  60. The Dry Land
    The Dry Land does slip inside the inescapable, closed-circle logic of despair, and O'Nan's shy, precarious performance keeps you with him to the edge of the abyss.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The General's Daughter
    Plotwise, Daughter is an "aha!"-intensive but thoroughly random mystery.
  62. Open Windows
    The new thriller from Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes) is visually dazzling, but the story starts off silly and ends up a confusing, maddening mess.
  63. Heaven Is for Real
    Unlike many of the features targeted to what Hollywood is calling the "faith audience," the movie is well-acted and shot, often thoughtful and (intentionally) funny.
  64. Ong Bak 2
    While Jaa clearly hasn't lost any of his stamina in the six years since starring as a different underdog in the original, his first outing as a director is confusing, with distractingly muddy storytelling and wildly varying styles from scene to scene.
  65. Monogamy
    The film's final plot twist is easy to spot well before it arrives, but that doesn't detract from its crafty, heartfelt, and surprisingly sound affirmation of getting hitched.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Spring Fever
    For long stretches of this tantalizing, romantic, aggravating film-until just before its extremely satisfying ending, in fact-I wished Lou had caught a little spring fever himself, cranked up the volume, and turned on the lights.
  67. Fanny
    Fanny has a stagy sensibility, but Auteuil displays flashes of genuine, old-school craft.
  68. Blair Witch
    Blair Witch’s comparatively maximalist approach shows too much and scares too little.
  69. The Skeleton Key
    Creaky in its mechanics and numbingly protracted, this is basement B horror that fancies itself a prestige chiller.
  70. Hotel Transylvania
    Although it doesn't worry itself with dialectic complexities, Hotel Transylvania succeeds on the level of entertainment.
  71. Rock of Ages
    A cinematic event. It's not every day, after all, that you get to see two great American traditions - guitar/bass/drums rock music and Tin Pan Alley musical theater - so thoroughly, mutually degraded.
  72. A Teacher
    When Diana's fixations begin to take over, Fidell seems ill-prepared to steer the film into strictly psychological territory, resulting in a project that loses its fraught sense of control at the same moment as its embattled protagonist.
  73. The Good Guy
    DePietro is no cynic, and he means well--but he also means to corner the coveted "Dear John" demographic, which, in turn, means that The Good Guy suffers from the dreary want of imagination about the specificity of twentysomething life that has sunk so many other specimens of this battered genre.
  74. Like Mike
    A valueless kiddie paean to pro basketball underwritten by the NBA.
  75. Hollywood Homicide
    Hollywood Homicide knows it's a dog, and it ain't too proud to beg.
  76. Big Trouble
    Cute intentions and shaggy comedy only get you so far when the world is falling down around you.
  77. The Alamo
    As directed by John Lee Hancock, it's dull, talky, and sometimes maudlin.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Marathon
    In its ability to transform the drably mundane into something otherworldly, Marathon offers one of the most inventive reimaginings of the MTA since D.A. Pennebaker's 1953 cine-poem "Daybreak Express."
  79. 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.
  80. The Odd Life of Timothy Green
    What follows is a film as odd as its title character. Timothy flings grown-up ideas at the viewer but rips the teeth from them rather than risk our discomfort.
  81. Semi-Pro
    What at least distinguishes Semi-Pro from its predecessors (not only those starring Ferrell, but also such lesser lights as "Dodgeball" and "Balls of Fury") is that it's a slightly darker movie--one made for grown-ups, hence the R rating.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    15: The Movie
    The collision of neorealist casting with in-your-face visual pyrotechnics is jarring to say the least, and 15 quickly wears down the viewer with its barrage of strobe effects and attention-deficit editing.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Perrier's Bounty
    Ivan Fitzgibbon’s film is so steadfastly blithe that one yearns for a flicker of pretension, some small sign that there’s a guiding principle or purpose.
  84. Lakeview Terrace
    Like a lot of better genre fare, Lakeview Terrace uses its predictable premise to mount a stealth attack on the audience's sensibilities.
  85. The Returned
    The film suffers from a series of unsatisfying endings, but it's nonetheless refreshing to see a zombie movie with brains behind the camera instead of on the menu.
  86. Everybody's Fine
    Robert De Niro's only good at playing a dad in movies starring Ben Stiller? It's all so much raging bull.
  87. Lebanon, Pa.
    Lebanon, Pa. begins as a tale about male, middle-aged self-discovery, but soon becomes something quite different: a clear-eyed if crassly manipulative take on the culture wars.
  88. Slipstream
    Hopkins claims it's a comedy, and perhaps John Turturro's live-action cartoon of a mogul producer suggests so, but what does it all mean? That art can be just as shallow as Hollywood?
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Gypsy 83
    A surprisingly pragmatic take on the joys and perils of diva worship, Gypsy 83 has as many emotional ups and downs as its protagonists' road trip: Emerging love interests threaten to disrupt the delicate goth boy/fag hag balance, only to fade after the glitter.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Justice
    Though director Oppenheimer has a nice comedic touch, an achronological structure and distracting vignettes thwart the film's emotional designs.
  91. Alma
    As fragmented and unresolved as the experiences of mother and daughter, Alma bears witness to a situation for which there are no easy answers.
  92. Interior. Leather Bar.
    It's a particularly risible nothing whose premise alone betrays the paucity of Franco's imagination and wit.
  93. November
    Like a jigsaw that's more fun to assemble before you know how all the pieces fit, Greg Harrison's brain-teasing meta-thriller November is less compelling the more apparent its solution becomes.
  94. Just Like Heaven
    Witherspoon's oft charming perkiness is merely patronizing here, but mid-'90s MTV staple Donal Logue steals every scene he's in as an ethically challenged therapist.
  95. Before I Disappear
    What makes this minefield of sphincter-clenching sassy bons mots even harder to stomach is the uninspired photography, which impassionedly pleads for significance through use of slow motion, bokeh-effect streetlights, and close-ups.
  96. The A-Team
    Convoluted, overstuffed, turned up to 11, and yet, somehow, deadly dull--in other words, white noise.
  97. The Passion of the Christ
    X-ploitative though it may be, the spectacle of a man beaten and tortured to death seeks to be an object of contemplation. Serious questions are raised.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Just Friends
    A refreshingly mean-spirited breeze through both the holiday movie and romantic-comedy checklists.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    24 Hours on Craigslist
    A diverting infomercial.
  100. The Disappearance of Finbar
    [Rhys Meyers] remains trapped in an enervating road movie - shelved so long that Rhys Meyers still appears to have baby fat - summed up when Finbar, who turns up in Finland (natch), asks whey-faced Danny, "You couldn't find anything better to do than to come find me?!"
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