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. 10 on Ten
    10 on Ten is less illuminating than pedantic, as well as tediously self-absorbed.
  2. The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai
    Expanded by a half-hour from its prior incarnation as a pinku eiga, the formerly titled "Horny Home Tutor: Teacher's Love Juice" is now an apocalyptic political satire.
  3. Reversion
    Like many similarly twisty tales, Reversion's narrative logic is undermined by its characters' irrational behavior.
  4. A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps
    Great achievements don't guarantee great documentary - or, as A Journey in My Mother's Footsteps proves, they don't even secure a mediocre one.
  5. New Jerusalem
    While New Jerusalem's rigid formalism will surely be off-putting to some, there's beauty to be found in the film's sheen of placid grime.
  6. Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola
    Save for a couple of visually engaging dance numbers, mostly shot with hand-held digital cameras, MKBKM is dishearteningly banal.
  7. Xingu
    The white saviors are flat, 2D manifestations of virtue... And the film's Indians? They aren't characters at all.
  8. Horns
    Most oppressively, every inch of Horns is choked in religious metaphor that strangles the fun from the film. Aja clutters the movie with golden crosses and Garden of Eden snakes, but doesn't dare wrestle with the theology behind them — this is a snapshot of a steak, not a full meal.
  9. The Houses October Built
    [An] uneven but intriguing found-footage horror flick.
  10. A Small Section of the World
    It can be unsettling, for regular documentary viewers, to take in a film so relentlessly optimistic, communal, and lacking in nostalgia, but those qualities were key to the success of the women of Biolley.
  11. Intrepido: A Lonely Hero
    Amelio might just be trifling around, and sometimes that's how the film feels — rudderless and unsure of its own purpose. If fuzzy thematic thrust doesn't bug you, however, the essence of Albanese as a shrugging everyman for post-debt-crisis Europe may be its own reward.
  12. The True Cost
    Even if, like me, you agree with the points that it's fumbling toward, The True Cost will likely read as dopey and insulting.
  13. Mountain Men
    Writer-director Cameron Labine seems to want to prove the obsolescence of the lovable-slacker stereotype even as he flogs it for entertainment value.
  14. The Free World
    Jason Lew's lost-soul drama The Free World offers a modest exploration of innocence and guilt, with occasional interludes of both violence and romance
  15. The Meg
    Turteltaub is too buoyant for horror — the deaths and danger never sink in.
  16. Generation Startup
    It looks like the recruitment appeal that it is; it will probably be pretty effective on campuses.
  17. Is That You?
    This is a maudlin, manipulative film, and while it's never aggressively annoying, that's only because it severely lacks energy. It registers like a pesky little sister who's doped out on Vicodin.
  18. Speech & Debate
    Director Dan Harris (Imaginary Heroes) structures Speech & Debate like a musical comedy that's building up to a cathartic final number, but scene after scene just falls flat.
  19. Project X
    "There's a midget in the oven!" is about as inspired as the dialogue and set pieces get in this queasy-making entertainment.
  20. Another Happy Day
    Hoping to distract us from the zero ideas found in his film, Levinson demands that his cast act loudly and unbearably, a task for which Demi Moore, as the second wife of Ellen's first husband, is perfectly suited.
  21. Rambo
    A sort of parody "Apocalypse Now," complete with listless coochie dancers entertaining the Burmese troops, the movie finds its own heart of darkness once Rambo drops the doctors in Burma.
  22. American Mary
    This Canadian film seems to be trying to make some points about body dysphoria or modern fame, but the one point it's absolutely sure of is that [Katharine] Isabelle is a startlingly beautiful woman with a well-proportioned (and exploitable) body.
  23. Beyond Skyline
    Beyond Skyline is pretty fun, even if it’s completely nonsensical.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Break-Up
    Faced with a long and miserable road on which they make each other sorry or crazy, both Brooke (Aniston) and Gary (Vaughn) dig in hard on the least appealing parts of their stock characters.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Touch of Pink
    Presumably writer-director Ian Iqbal Rashid chose Grant because Bogie's been done, but that didn't stop him from lifting Touch of Pink's plot wholesale from "The Wedding Banquet."
  26. The Last Days on Mars
    It's just zombies versus an international research station on the wastes of the Red Planet, with all that such a premise promises.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Knight and Day
    There's never been a particularly crisp line between intense, SUPER-AWESOME Tom Cruise and the characters he plays. In Knight and Day, his age-old cool curdles into motormouthed neediness.
  28. The Magic of Belle Isle
    With graceless melodramatist Rob Reiner at the helm, it's predictably ironic that The Magic of Belle Isle champions the unparalleled power of imagination while displaying absolutely none of its own.
  29. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
    Derrickson's flick can sour your stomach with piety, which is a shame -- its moments of jolt wattage rate with many J-horrors.
  30. Must Love Dogs
    With a character this dull--so dull that we're told over and over how smart and special she is--the resulting glut of date-ad losers seems like just deserts.
  31. Zardoz
    Zardoz quickly degenerates from a voyage through a labyrinth into an ego trip round and round the inside of a goldfish bowl. [28 Feb 1974, p.62]
    • Village Voice
  32. The Queen of Spain
    Sumptuous production and costume design coupled with José Luis Alcaine’s expert cinematography make it a feast for the eyes…but there’s not much more substance.
  33. Wolves
    There's real turmoil in Freundlich's script (abuse, a crumbling marriage, pregnancy) but the problems sometimes seem tacked on for added crisis.
  34. The In-Laws
    A walking-talking affront to every middle-class middle-ager it intends to sucker, this remake of the 1979 accidental-classic screwball hits every wrong note and trips on every chair leg.
  35. Catfish in Black Bean Sauce
    A progressive but not very funny comedy of manners.
  36. All Over the Guy
    A painfully earnest case of generic romance spiced with queerness.
  37. Venus Boyz
    Baur's doc earnestly -- if not altogether adroitly -- examines masculinity as a performance, demonstrating that biology is not destiny.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Grand Theft Parsons
    Neither a satisfying exploration of ’70s culture, nor a madcap "Weekend at Bernie’s" caper, nor an informative paean to Parsons's legacy, Grand Theft stumbles toward all three possibilities, backpedals, then stalls, left to coast as an insipid road movie.
  39. Every Secret Thing
    A cheerless and nonsensical thriller.
  40. Stung
    Though quite silly, none of this feels self-reflexive or -satisfied. It delights in its own stupidity the way a dog rolls in dirt, but is nearly as difficult to get mad at after it muddies up the rug.
  41. Fun Mom Dinner
    A perfectly enjoyable way to spend 81 minutes.
  42. El cantante
    Focusing almost solely on Lavoe's addictions (drugs and women, ho and hum), El Cantante is a garish, dispiriting bit of work--a mountain of biopic clichés snorted through the lens of a fidgety camera that never pauses long enough for us to get to like (or even know) the man responsible for making the Nuyorican sound a mainstream American commodity in the 1970s and early '80s.
  43. Yes Man
    Yes Man is nothing more than warmed-over holiday seconds, a repackaged best-of for those who already own the hits.
  44. U.N. Me
    Unfortunately, mocking jibes and cutaways to Team America and Wonder Woman (among other movies and TV shows) establish a jokey attitude that weakens the overall case.
  45. The Oregonian
    Reeder has stated that he intends for The Oregonian to be "an art film" and not the horror movie it appears to be on the surface, but he's not above upping the gross-out factor in the final reel or creating scream-filled aural landscapes so piercing that one's spine ripples. Artfully.
  46. Killing Bono
    The migraine of a story arc needed sharp comedy reflexes or, at least, a live-wire/slummy star turn and got neither.
  47. Destination Wedding
    Levin at times seems rather too taken with the verbosity of his own dialogue, but here and there, his quips and situations match perfectly with his actors’ sensibilities.
  48. The Dukes
    How, though, to resent a work of such deliberate inconsequence?
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Cheaper by the Dozen
    Solidifying his funnyman rep, Ashton Kutcher appears as oldest child Piper Perabo's model-actor boyfriend, a delightfully brainless narcissist.
  50. Bobby G. Can't Swim
    Montias's script lacks surprises -- Still, the minor figures surrounding him (Bobby) -- from teenage Puerto Rican beauties to a mobster's middle-aged groupie -- form a gritty urban mosaic, and Bobby's wanton energy is utterly convincing.
  51. Greenfingers
    Owen and Mirren are fun to watch, but the film, despite the many shots of gardens in full bloom, lacks visual distinction.
  52. Me Myself I
    A feel-good, fatalist placebo.
  53. Blue Streak
    The contortional physical shtick familiar from Lawrence's sitcom, laden with a dollop of Three Stooges violence, should keep the boys happy.
  54. Chasing Liberty
    Moore's lip-glossed petulance never catches fire with Goode's canned drollery.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Revolution OS
    Less a revolutionary tale than a simple recounting of the recent past -- as staid as the pages in a history book.
  56. Pumpkin
    In its own dimly reckless way, the film is riveting -- not unlike watching a tightrope walker with a bad case of vertigo.
  57. Echoes
    Funahashi's visual mood-making is an object lesson in how to create a sense of intimate anomie with next to nothing.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Firedancer
    Grim headlines aside, FireDancer is hard to recommend, with its haphazard tone, wobbly acting, and cipher-like lead.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ghostlight
    Real history and raunch poke through, but the thirtysomething Move is too vital to be Martha in her dotage. Amusing for insiders, Ghostlight may confuse everyone else.
  60. Flavors
    Unfortunately, the constant cell phone chatter and pervasive split screen do little to prop up a limp, poorly structured screenplay.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    My Mexican Shivah
    Kvetches its way through an insipid vision of cross-cultural conflict.
  62. Come and Find Me
    Most like-minded films spend approximately twenty minutes on the same material covered by the entirety of Come and Find Me — a fact that leaves this mystery from writer/director Zack Whedon (brother of Joss) feeling insufferably drawn out.
  63. The Last of Robin Hood
    It's Kline who anchors the movie, swan-diving into Flynn's complexities without making excuses for him.
  64. The Devil and Father Amorth
    It’s stuck between earnest examination of a case and exploitative hustle — and is unlikely to please the audiences interested in either.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    She's the Man
    Doesn't have an unpredictable moment in it, borrowing heavily from just about every sports movie or teen comedy ever and, oh yeah, "Twelfth Night."
  66. [REC] 3: Genesis
    Giddy shots of the undead slogging through a decimated party-scape materialize the decadence and instability of upper-crust family life, even as groom and (pregnant) bride prepare to give birth to another generation of the Spanish elite.
  67. Tracers
    Tracers is a tedious, clichéd slog from start to finish, and only briefly enlivened by two prolonged chases in which handheld cameras maintain intense proximity to their subjects.
  68. Pain & Gain
    When the story runs off the rails and crashes headfirst into a too-perfect ending, it's because Bay was led astray by the same things that got the Sun Gym Gang into this mess in the first place: superficiality, ambition, and the belief that reality just isn't good enough.
  69. Straw Dogs
    There's no matching the sinister village faces in Peckinpah's cast or the psychological acuity of his scene-making, but Lurie shows himself man enough for the material.
  70. Black or White
    Occasionally, the film rouses into something thoughtful, even daring.
  71. Odd Thomas
    Sommers's script relies on rapid-fire banter between Odd, girlfriend Stormy Llewellyn (Addison Timlin) — yes, that's her real name — and Chief Porter (Dafoe), but occasionally feels forced.
  72. Coldwater
    Coldwater is almost boastfully grim.
  73. The Singing Detective
    The problems come in the shadow world, where everything's a jumble, where Dark's compositional strategy ("all clues and no solutions") eventually becomes wearing, and Gordon's direction can't hold it all together.
  74. Bully
    The script is worse than slack, and despite its lurid premise, Bully doesn't have "Kids" tabloid immediacy.
  75. Club Dread
    The group has a distinctive deadpan style; after you get on their wavelength, it's impossible to quit chuckling.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ayurveda: Art of Being
    For the most part, though, Ayurveda speaks in subtitled Asian cadences to an affluent international audience primed to believe.
  77. The Bone Collector
    So formulaic and predictable that you're bored even when you're scared.
  78. Mona Lisa Smile
    Mona Lisa Smile's only mysteries are the result of frenzied corner-cutting as Newell & Co. speed through the last reel, an exhausting cram session of hair-trigger speechifying and identity transformations bordering on the science-fictional.
  79. The Boy
    Craig William Macneill's The Boy tries so hard to be ominous that it nearly strains itself in the process.
  80. Evening
    Parked uneasily between sensitive indie and studio chick-flick, Lajos Koltai's Evening makes star-studded hash of Susan Minot's beautifully written, if emotionally constricted, novel.
  81. The Protector 2
    Director Prachya Pinkaew's hectic editing and breakneck pacing turns the action spastic, and his lack of interest in anything approaching coherent drama renders the proceedings one long showcase for its lead's Muay Thai combat skills. Luckily, those are considerable.
  82. Close Your Eyes
    Willing's confused procedural -- derived from a novel by Madison Smartt Bell -- is a hasty throwback to the sado-medieval Exorcist descendants of the turn of the millennium (Stigmata, Stir of Echoes, Lost Souls). The somnolent cast can't keep the faith.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Factory Girl
    Poor little girl, chewed up in the Factory machinery. It was inevitable, perhaps, that a biopic of the Pop princess would stick to pop psychology, but did it have to feel as flat as a silkscreen? With its hackneyed party scenes and jet-set montages, Factory Girl fails even at frivolity.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Wayward Cloud
    The Wayward Cloud fails as allegory, human story, anti-porn screed, postmodern musical, and even formal delight (Tsai's emptied-out aesthetic has never felt so empty, his mannerisms so pointlessly mannered), but it seems to have worked well enough as a necessary purge.
  85. Pretty Persuasion
    A high school send-up more gleefully incorrect than "Heathers" and considerably less articulate than "Election," Pretty Persuasion is a hand grenade lobbed at no place in particular.
  86. Dragonball: Evolution
    Far more entertaining than it deserves to be, unless you're a 10-year-old boy, in which case it's only the greatest movie ever made.
  87. Still Life
    When it's all over, Still Life feels disembodied and perfunctory, like a very respectful eulogy for no one in particular.
  88. Happythankyoumoreplease
    "Arrested Development's" Tony Hale nearly overcomes the gently worthless script, playing Annie's dork suitor, and convincingly transforming himself from toad to prince.
  89. Whatever Works
    Blown opportunity.
  90. End of the Spear
    Spear has all the earmarks of a middling Indiewood product, from its competent second-tier cast (including "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" hunklet Chad Allen in a dual role as a slain missionary and his grown son) to its earnest plotting and leaden pacing.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hoodwinked!
    Sluggishly paced and stiffly animated, Hoodwinked pulls out all the stops to keep its attention-deficient audience occupied, but the snowboarding, skiing, hang-gliding, and kung fu sequences will still be a lot more fun in the Hoodwinked video game.
  92. Extraordinary Measures
    Fraser is open and appealing, and Ford, his acting mostly isolated in the right corner of his mouth, does well enough with a secondary part.
  93. Girl in Progress
    Unconvincing, flawed matriarch Mendes and junior showboat Ramirez appear to be acting in entirely different movies.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Girl from Monday
    A monotonous, unenlightening experience.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Into the Blue
    Granted, the cast has a certain rumpy charm, and setting four-fifths of the movie underwater keeps the pesky surfer-speak to a minimum, but the film is less about thrills than punishing the wicked.
  96. The Weight of Water
    Lovingly detailed but unaccountably clumsy, obviously ambitious, and unfortunately chintzy. It's also genuinely anachronistic.
  97. The Three Marias
    He's (director Abranches) so focused on creating a strikingly mannerist visual style that he forgets to flesh out his plot and characters.
  98. King of the Jungle
    Rosenfeld's film doesn't have much of a story to tell and tells it rather routinely.
  99. The Sum of All Fears
    The jerry-rigged result is a trite espionage thriller without the thrills but with a lingering measure of nausea.
  100. How to Deal
    As Mom, Allison Janney easily dominates every scene she graces, as does Morning Zoo jock papa Peter Gallagher.
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