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. The Reception
    A fresh and uncompromising account of emotional self-immolation and romantic flux. And it has a happy ending to boot.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Warrior
    Visual grandiloquence more than makes up for the bare-bones dialogue. But while high on mysticism and vast in scale, The Warrior seems more poised than poetic, and ultimately landscape proves to be the film's real grabber.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror
    Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror gives muckraking journalism a bad name. Gerard Ungerman and Audrey Brohy's DV assemblage of talking heads and footage shot in Iraq after the cessation of primary hostilities is low-rent Michael Moore, a poorly argued piece of agitprop.
  4. On the Outs
    Most importantly, the environment feels real: the accents, the snaps, the working moms and warehouse crack nooks, every dilapidated stairwell, every bodega and lovingly appointed teenage bedroom sanctuary.
  5. Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
    Florida-born folksinger Jim White serves as guide on this musical tour of the rural South, conceptualized less as a state of mind than as an atmosphere.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Return to the Land of Wonders
    As she revisits the formative people and places of her childhood, Pachachi achieves vérité lyricism, illuminating a host of lives shattered by both a ruthless dictator and the Western hegemon that replaced him.
  7. Murderball
    What keeps Murderball from devolving into redemptive drivel is its insistence on treating the players it profiles as jocks first and disabled men second.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dark Water
    It fails to deliver the narrative thrill twists its origins would promise.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Fantastic Four
    The action sequences reek of drudgery rather than adventure, and with the exception of Chiklis's remarkably soulful performance beneath 60 pounds of orange Thing makeup, all of the characters are flatter than their two-dimensional counterparts.
  10. Saraband
    Saraband doesn't ask to be considered prime-cut Bergman, and it isn't, although its slightness may not matter to the art-film starving class.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Chronicles
    Leguizamo finds the right mute for his trumpet, modulating his expenditure of emotion to the requirements of the scenario rather than overengaging his capable Mambo Mouth.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Steve + Sky
    Sporadically entertaining and utterly shallow, Steve + Sky answers the age-old question of whether a star's blinding beauty can justify an otherwise bland movie.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Doing Time, Doing Vipassana
    It's a stunning sight inside this notorious jail compound, which is better known for violence and corruption.
  14. A Sidewalk Astronomer
    An unenlightening recitation of lay science and salad bar spirituality that could only resonate with those audiences who last year actually flocked to a movie called "What the Bleep Do We Know!?"
  15. Rebound
    Surprisingly bearable family comedy.
  16. The Beat That My Heart Skipped
    As it is, Duris, capable and dull, is no Keitel, 2005 is no 1978, and The Beat That My Heart Skipped is no "Fingers."
  17. Undead
    Watching it is a smidgen like listening to the same monkey-walks-into-a-bar joke for the 105th time, but for the Spierig brothers, it is clearly a demonstration of fast-cheap capabilities and a one-way ticket straight out of Queensland.
  18. The World
    On a first viewing, the movie seemed a dilution of the formal strategies Jia had perfected-at once less dispassionate and less empathetic. After a repeat viewing, it still strikes me as Jia's fourth-best film (that it's one of the year's best says plenty about the level at which he's working), but it's more apparent that The Worl d's muffled emotional impact should be understood as a function of its setting.
  19. Twist of Faith
    Director Kirby Dick (Derrida) shapes the movie in such a way as to leave everyone flummoxed.
  20. War of the Worlds
    Although it's thoroughly retooled, H.G. Wells's scenario doesn't allow for many soft landings, and the extreme respect for havoc on view quite properly keeps the Spielbergian cutesies to a minimum.
  21. Tropical Malady
    Like "Blissfully Yours" and Apichatpong's first feature, the exquisite-corpse road movie "Mysterious Object at Noon" (2000), Tropical Malady promotes new ways of seeing.
  22. This Revolution
    A clever but aesthetically murky remake of Haskell Wexler's scorching McLuhan pastiche "Medium Cool" (1969).
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Decent Factory
    A Decent Factory is just as much about the motives of the people asking the questions as those of the people avoiding the answers.
  24. Bewitched
    To spend even 10 minutes in the movie's universe is to experience the Sartrean nausea of an utterly hollow head and heart.
  25. Land of the Dead
    Romero's fourth-grade dialogue doesn't help matters, but anyone seeking out the latest achievements in cranial ruptures, spewing-blood gouts, and ground-beef spillage need look no further.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rize
    Highly entertaining but underdeveloped documentary.
  27. Yes
    Potter's anachronistic rhyme schemes tumble forth with an out-damned-spot verve that rages against irrelevance.
  28. Dallas 362
    As a director (Caan) occasionally falls prey to the rookie mistake of excessive crosscutting, fragmenting the dramatic momentum created by his fine cast.
  29. Lila Says
    A misguided tale of sentimental education.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Last Mogul
    Avrich's Wasserman is less a man than a list of accomplishments, a Kane without a hint of a Rosebud and nary a whiff of significant criticism.
  31. Memories of Murder
    By the time the spellbinding and mysterious final shot rolls around, we’re left with this thought, the sad, mad truth of an authoritarian world: Nobody’s innocent, and everybody’s a victim.
  32. March of the Penguins
    The Central Park Zoo is cheaper, you can walk away from the penguins after 10 minutes, and it has snow monkeys and beer.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The War on the War on Drugs
    Ineptitude is so thorough here that War on . . . could only make sense as a sinister governmental smear campaign to justify the war on drugs and total sobriety.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Herbie Fully Loaded
    Its vibrating crowd scenes and splashy visuals will please the seven-to-12 set.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Waging a Living
    Weisberg, whose stripped-down style seems refreshing amid the current spate of super-produced docs, gives you what you want, if what you want are dismally deferred American Dreams and harsh economic realities. And you should.
  36. The Deal
    The thriller plot sputters and the romance between Slater and eco-friendly Harvard MBA Selma Blair is a nonstarter, but the movie's threadbare execution actually enhances its queasy vision of a nation in decline.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Perfect Man
    The result is like a Nike commercial without a shot of the sneakers.
  38. The Great Water
    Despite the choppy script and cartoonishly bad villains, what emerges is a compelling tale of the moral compromises a corrupt system demands of even its most unwilling participants.
  39. Heights
    In this study of keeping up appearances while everything falls apart, the stakes never seem as high as the title suggests.
  40. Me and You and Everyone We Know
    July's witty ode to only-connecting sustains a delicate tone of pensive whimsy.
  41. My Summer of Love
    Slowly evolves into an oddly affecting mood piece.
  42. The Talent Given Us
    Raw, fascinating, often unpleasant film.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Ethan Mao
    An exhausting exercise in genre mixing.
  44. King of the Corner
    An average film starring an average character actor, but maybe that's the point. This is a story about the benefits of just showing up. Even at its most sentimental, Riegert's pet project possesses a lived-in integrity that nearly offsets the staleness of the material.
  45. Batman Begins
    Nolan and his co-screenwriter David Goyer can only press the big buttons so hard—it's still an old-school superhero summer movie, the plotting tortuous, the characters relegated to one-scene-one-emotion simplicity, the digitized action a never ending club mix of chases and mano a manos.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    J.S.A.: Joint Security Area
    Politically, psychologically, and aesthetically schizophrenic.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Wheel of Time
    Patient and fascinated, but never succumbing to abstraction, Wheel of Time can be seen as the middle installment of a trilogy against nature.
  48. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    A tongue-in-cheek allegory on the hazards of harboring secrets in a relationship, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is most entertaining when the Smiths are hell-bent on mutual annihilation.
  49. The Honeymooners
    John Schultz's wan, unfunny The Honeymooners is unlikely to tickle devotees of Jackie Gleason's archetypal yuk-fest.
  50. High Tension
    Manages--before faltering under the weight of its own pretensions--to be pretty scary.
  51. The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D
    Based on characters created by Rodriguez's then-seven-year-old son, Racer Max, the film doesn't belong in wide release. It belongs on a refrigerator door, alongside "100%" spelling tests, old lunch menus, and notices from the PTA.
  52. Howl's Moving Castle
    An organic, childlike wonder, fabulously unpredictable and seethingly inventive.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Slutty Summer
    First-timer Casper Andreas approaches his subject with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. Tired jokes are repeated over and over.
  54. Wild Side
    Lifshitz successfully maneuvers his trio of outcasts toward a state of grace: His vision of misfit utopianism, in its own quiet way, is as defiant as anything in Fassbinder.
  55. The Bridge of San Luis Rey
    An honorable but dull attempt to translate a neglected literary source to the screen.
  56. 5x2
    Deceptively placid and subtly unpredictable drama.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Paternal Instinct
    As intimate as a home movie, Instinct has only one flaw: its length.
  58. Café Lumière
    Exquisitely understated.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cinderella Man
    Despite the tale's dusty pedigree, Ron Howard spins a ticket-worthy two-plus hours of movie-movie entertainment.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lords of Dogtown
    Hardwicke's pop-Cassavetes melodrama nevertheless rides as smoothly as a big-budget after-school special, capturing youth struggles from an appropriately blown-out teen's-eye perspective.
  61. Rock School
    Don Argott's lively documentary, ostensibly a paean to alternative pedagogy, extends its subject a long leash, and he in turn does his damnedest to sabotage the project. Rock School ends up being a movie about just how little fun rock 'n' roll can be.
    • 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!
  63. Deep Blue
    Those looking for a refresher course on the workings of the food chain should be in heaven. All others may yearn for a sushi break.
  64. Milwaukee, Minnesota
    Saddled with an improbable plotline and an incoherent character, Garity demurs on the invitation to overact.
  65. Caterina va in città
    Pitch-perfect performances and a light-handed but razor-sharp script keep this satire brisk and biting.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Story of an African Farm
    A modest tale intermittently well told.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    The multiple story lines can feel choppy, but the dialogue has snap, and the pants' powers never distract from the teenagers' emotions.
  68. The White Diamond
    Having emerged from his new German cinema heyday as one of the world's most guileless and original documentary filmmakers, Herzog has slowly been crafting a four-dimensional fresco of the planet, its most human-resistant landscapes, and our dubious dramas in confronting the chaos.
  69. Or
    The scoreless Or (My Treasure) consists solely of stationary shots that, while sometimes awkwardly composed, build in organic momentum and bracing detail.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Invisible
    It disposes with social concerns and lets the individuals speak for themselves--and the regrets, rationalizations, and jerry-rigged morality they express are often fascinating.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Longest Yard
    Future analysts of American culture...will no doubt ponder why an incarceration-crazy society ends up rooting for the objects of its own control anxiety as comedic underdogs.
  72. Madagascar
    Madagascar's relaxed density is a relief given the DreamWorks tendency to overbear, overblast, and overcaricaturize.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bomb the System
    A needlessly circuitous plot twist leaves a bitter taste, but not before the film's scruffy charm does its work.
  74. The Ninth Day
    Plays best as a dry exercise in historical doublespeak and rationalization.
  75. A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
    Christopher Browne's entertaining A League of Ordinary Gentlemen goes behind the scenes of the Professional Bowlers Association's comeback bid following the league's 2000 sale (for a mere $5 million) to a trio of retired Microsoft execs.
  76. The Fearless Freaks
    An all-access fan's valentine as artfully scrappy and likably wide-eyed as its subjects.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Saving Face
    Despite a fairly explicit lesbian boobfest (projected attendance just went up!), the film is more good-natured than provocative.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Common Thread
    Sequins hinges on its performances and newcomer Naymark is a marvel of quiet intelligence, endowing Claire with a complex mix of virginal purity and hormonal rage.
  79. Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
    The film will come to share the video store shelf with Harlin's infinitely stupider rendition soon enough, but it's a shame they couldn't have been released theatrically head-to-head -- a death match-cum-clinical trial that might've supplied some objective stats on how much condescension the American moviegoer actually enjoys.
  80. Second Best
    An ugly, amateurish film that champions mediocrity in a meta-attempt to justify its own ineptitude.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    2009: Lost Memories
    Why not travel back in time and not make this movie?
  82. 6ixtynin9
    Though overlong at two hours, 6ixtynin9—only the director's second outing (after 1997's spoofy" Fun Bar Karaoke')—is impressive for the tonal control Ratanaruang applies to his swerving scenario.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Sex, Politics & Cocktails
    Overwhelmingly poor camerawork helps obscure the deficiencies in the dialogue but can't conceal a sparse plot stretched to feature length by an endless parade of lame sketches.
  84. Stolen Childhoods
    So well-intentioned it almost renders critical examination frivolous.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
    Even setting aside the clumsy inconsistency of its interior logic, Sith is an underachievement of escapist entertainment.
  86. Mojados: Through the Night
    Davis strives to keep himself out of the film, favoring a harrowing yet compassionate you-are-there aesthetic that underscores the hardship of the migrant workers' struggles.
  87. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire
    Its title an acknowledgment of the reality of evil, Shake Hands With the Devil touches on the unanswerable hows and whys, but its ultimate subject is the terrible burden of command.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Mindhunters
    In an era of wall-to-wall "CSI," Mindhunters' ghoulish forensic hubbub not only feels tiring but hopelessly redundant.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kicking & Screaming
    Even the intermittent laughs undermine Kicking and its winning-isn't-everything message.
  90. Monster-in-Law
    "Legally Blonde" director Robert Luketic bumbles along with typically clumsy blocking and framing, and the misogyny inherent in the three-ring spectacle of bitch slaps, barbiturate covert ops, and wedding plan hysteria does rankle.
  91. Unleashed
    Cloying dreck.
  92. Mad Hot Ballroom
    Like "Spellbound's" glimpse of the darker side of childhood competition, Mad Hot Ballroom--a look at New York City schools' fifth-grade ballroom dance program--is best when exploring issues of class and gender and definitions of success.
  93. My Mother
    Can't transcend its own suffocating milieu.
  94. Layer Cake
    What's abundantly clear is how far this kind of moviemaking has come from any knowledge of real criminal life; it's a geek's ineffectual daydream of mayhem.
  95. Kings & Queen
    This extravagant family melodrama, one of the highlights of last year's New York Film Festival, runs two and a half hours and never lags, so moment-to-moment enthralling are Desplechin's narrative gambits, as well as his reckless eccentricity.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Modigliani
    Sadly, instead of situating the l'amour fou in the artistic ferment of the period (1917-1920), Davis twists the period to fit the story.
  97. Tell Them Who You Are
    Busting with clips from films Haskell Wexler shot and directed, the doc is a rare thing: an ingenuous portrait of a thoroughly Four-Square Artist, Assembled With Love And Rockets Inside A Family's Spite-Tainted Gates.
  98. Crash
    Full of well-observed supporting riffs, Crash might've accumulated more frisson had it cast a clearer eye on how social tension actually plays.
  99. House of Wax
    Only a nominal remake...Nevertheless, for gore aficionados (and probably no one else) the murders are worth the wait.
  100. Kingdom of Heaven
    The movie does what any self-respecting politician would do: sidestep the issues, soft-pedal mortal costs, talk a fat game, and divert your attention away from history with exercises in spectacle and power.
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