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. Face
    Never really finds a fresh groove.
  2. Gunner Palace
    Floating on the surface of confusion, Gunner Palace has a raw home video quality that's often quite beautiful. Much of the movie is hardly more than an immersion in sights and sounds. Vivid as it is, Gunner Palace is dominated by what isn't shown. It's the human face of Abu Ghraib.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Intimate Stories
    It's a perfectly realized grace note whose lack of any obvious message only reinforces the movie's abundant wisdom and patient humanism.
  4. Walk on Water
    The complex questions Walk on Water raises receive only confused answers.
  5. Whisky
    The film is a model of precision and economy, from the scrupulous framing and editing to the dryly note-perfect performances.
  6. The Best of Youth
    The movie has the addictive episodic intimacy of great TV.
  7. Crazy Legs Conti: Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating
    Lighthearted foray into the world of competitive eating.
  8. The Red Orchestra
    Worth sticking around for: the triumphant end credit sequence of each Red Orchestra mug shot morphing into the next one.
  9. Cursed
    The scariest thing in the movie is a cameo by Scott Baio.
  10. Diary of a Mad Black Woman
    Rote melodrama.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Man of the House
    The movie's not so much bad as it is chillingly uninventive.
  12. Up and Down
    Up and Down is not exactly the toughest movie on the block, but especially compared to most American comedies, it conveys a sense of scrofulous rue.
  13. 10 on Ten
    10 on Ten is less illuminating than pedantic, as well as tediously self-absorbed.
  14. The Other Side of the Street
    Co-writer and first-time director Marcos Bernstein (who also co-scripted the Montenegro-starring Central Station) drowns the film in anesthetizing atmospherics and hot Brazilian bodies, blunting the energy of his septuagenarian star's performance.
  15. Sexual Dependency
    As theory, Sexual Dependency is no worse than a tinny artist's statement, but as moviemaking, it's brutally embarrassing, inexcusable.
  16. Turtles Can Fly
    Amid the muddy scrubbery of the camp and its hinterland surroundings, Ghobadi catches some striking compositions.
  17. Because of Winn-Dixie
    The story seems awkwardly positioned between coming-of-age realism and whimsical fantasy.
  18. Constantine
    Fans of Hellblazer are bound to be disappointed.
  19. Son of the Mask
    At its heart is a deep, unresolved ambivalence about child rearing.
  20. Nabbeun namja
    Bad Guy, one of the seven films in Kim's fascinating back catalog, is another kind of cocktail--simple, bitter, served straight and in an unwashed glass.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Bigger Than the Sky
    At least Sean Astin, as a scene-chewing prima donna, seems to be having a good time--and mom Patty Duke gets to call him a "turd."
  22. Downfall
    Downfall may be grimly self-important and inescapably trivializing. But we should be grateful that German cinema is more inclined to normalize the nation's history than rewrite it.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Naked Fame
    There are many dreadful elements in this chronicle of aging gay male porn star Colton Ford's quest for crossover success in the music industry: sub-amateurish camera work, a maddeningly repetitive score, and a listless narrative.
  24. Schultze Gets the Blues
    Ends up an intricate, becalmed take on a soul adrift.
  25. The Animation Show 2005
    Expertly programmed by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt, the second go-round of The Animation Show features 12 films from five countries.
  26. Cinévardaphoto
    A work of great charm and bold aesthetic impurity, Agnès Varda's Cinévardaphoto is a suite of documentary shorts.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ong Bak
    The ferocious fighting moves (adapted from ancient Muay Thai manuals by veteran Thai martial arts director Phanna Rithikrai) that constitute Ong-Bak's money shots are often truly astonishing.
  28. Bride & Prejudice
    Money can't buy happiness, but as Bride and Prejudice teaches us, it can get patience in bulk from a smart young woman of a practical mind-set.
  29. Hitch
    While far from perfect, Hitch is a rare studio product that earns the goodwill it smugly demands.
  30. Inside Deep Throat
    In a Kafkaesque turn of events, Reems was the fall guy--facing prison, he became a Hollywood cause célèbre. Inside Deep Throat includes footage of him partying with Jack and Warren and debating Roy Cohn on TV.
  31. My Mother's Smile
    "A very odd thriller" is how Italian director Marco Bellocchio describes My Mother's Smile, his uncannily beautiful and deeply humanist exploration of the nightmares that resurface from a Roman atheist's Catholic childhood.
  32. Uncle Nino
    The elderly, violin-toting hero's successful attempt to infiltrate his miscreant nephew's mall-punk garage band is too creepy to fulfill the hipness quotient.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
    Several sharp jolts give the doc its dramatic shape, and one episode in particular, caught with a neighbor's lens, will make you gasp with grief.
  34. Unscrewed
    Even if actorliness sometimes invades the tired faux-doc form, Unscrewed is, in the end, a likable, wrinkly taint of a movie.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Letter: An American Town and the 'Somali Invasion'
    Affecting, straightforward presentation of tightly knit, contrapuntal interviews and crosscut rally footage--Hamzeh's film eschews voice-over to allow the more despicable characters to embarrass themselves with their ludicrously foolish invective.
  36. Nobody Knows
    It's a heart-sundering vision of preadolescent helplessness that rivals passages of "Landscape in the Mist" and "Ponette."
  37. Boogeyman
    It's difficult to remember a recent movie with less regard for spatial or temporal coherence. With the bar set so low, one wouldn't think the ending could possibly come as a letdown. Believe me, it does.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Wedding Date
    Clare Kilner's cast frolics in the countryside in an appropriately British-romantic-comedy fashion, and at times the characters trade silly snaps, but Dana Fox's screenplay is structurally shaky.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Emile
    Odd beginning permits viewers to leave after five minutes and know what happens. Those remaining are left with the full tome, its 92-minute length hiding an experience as draining as "Heaven's Gate."
  40. Harry + Max
    A swirl of messy boundaries and loony dialogue.
  41. The Nomi Song
    Made with considerable wit and style, Horn's thoughtful celebration of the era and its most uncanny diva could function as the show's ("East Village USA") supplement.
  42. Rory O'Shea Was Here
    A plea for equality of opportunity, a worthy objective somewhat obscured by non-disabled actors occupying the lead roles. In any case, one imagines Rory himself would prefer a Farrelly disability blooper reel.
  43. Swimming Upstream
    Rush and Davis perform strikingly against type, suffusing an otherwise average genre pic with quiet dignity.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Assisted Living
    There's a finer line between peaceable pothead jocularity and just being a dick--and sometimes it's tough to tell whether Todd is more Jon Stewart or Tucker Carlson.
  45. Daybreak
    A studied, overwrought look into Personal Crisis and Redemption.
  46. Freak Weather
    Kuryla has her prole banter down, and moments like McKenzie's desperate dance on her jalopy hood when Turturro locks her out move beyond literary sting into kinetic and sympathetic gutter picaresque.
  47. Fear X
    Perhaps a radical re-editing of Fear X-like Lynch did on “Mulholland Drive”-could rescue the film's workaday unease from the dread taboo of derivative weirdness. It's half a movie, but a half that hums.
  48. Travelers and Magicians
    In interviews, Norbu has compared the editing process to meditation. While his pacing echoes that of polestars like Ozu and Makhmalbaf, his edits make striking events out of mundane motions like hands moving under running water and mouths meeting cups of butter tea.
  49. Alone in the Dark
    An embarrassingly unscary monster mash, is desperate to frighten its laughing audience any way it can.
  50. Hide and Seek
    Hide and Seek follows no semblance of internal logic--the unveiling of Charlie is a ludicrous cheat, the last reel a unique paroxysm of rancid idiocy.
  51. Aliens of the Deep
    Often thrilling almost-feelie.
  52. Fascination
    Avoiding this lump of low-camp lion poo couldn't be easier, what with MGM dumping it into a lone Manhattan venue, but if you're in the mood for some unscripted belly laughs or a catnap, Fascination should do the trick.
  53. Lost Embrace
    Despite an absurdly melodramatic premise, Lost Embrace is an essentially plotless series of riffs and jokes. It's 20 minutes too long--forgivable in view of Burman's affection for his material.
  54. Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land
    The result may be better suited for classroom viewing than for theatrical exhibition, but that's a tribute to the movie's instructive value.
  55. Army of One
    If you can handle the truth, Sarah Goodman's entropic doc is as exquisite a basic training in banal U.S. Army culture as you're likely to find.
  56. Are We There Yet?
    Levant and his screenwriting posse attempt to wring maximum hilarity from this setup, but it's just too schizoid.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beautiful Boxer
    Those in search of a liberating treatise about empowered sexuality may find too much of the movie's erotic potential sublimated in sports metaphors, while those looking for a martial arts matinee will find its feats of physical prowess shriveled next to a fully engorged genre workout like "Ong-Bak."
  58. Head-On
    Head-On loses its merry mojo once events turn irrevocable and the action switches from Hamburg to Istanbul.
  59. Monsieur N.
    As modest conspiracy-mongering, the movie is perfectly robust, earning its dramatic impact from its classical sense of intrigue and Philippe Torreton's testy performance in the title role.
  60. Watermarks
    Though Zilberman's affection for the women leads to some indulgent digression, the doc's low-key tone (and lack of the stock, timpani-backed Nazi iconography) throws certain anecdotes into powerful relief.
  61. She's One of Us
    Quickly nose-dives into the ridiculous.
  62. Arakimentari
    Admittedly compulsive in both sex and shutterbuggery, Araki has long lived on the art-porn border, though this doc aims to show him as conversant in flowers, kitties, skies, and neorealist kids' faces as he is with bondage.
  63. Assault on Precinct 13
    A surprisingly credible action flick.
  64. Machuca
    Machuca is still a half-measure. Wood is fastidious about period set design, but not much else; rather than burning with experience, the film feels opportunistic.
  65. With God on Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right in America
    Certainly not as incredulous or mocking as it might have been. If anything, the mood is apprehensive. But it's depressing that--Carter aside--the filmmakers failed to find even one liberal believer.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Coach Carter
    Proudly wearing its self-righteousness like a letterman jacket, Coach Carter's just an exasperatingly long "The More You Know" commercial starring one first-stringer and the junior varsity.
  67. Elektra
    The pedestrian Elektra offers no surprises, and whether or not you'll appreciate its modest charms depends entirely on whether you too have been anticipating Garner's new outfit.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Racing Stripes
    The film shares a problem with its hero: identity crisis.
  69. The Chorus
    The cinematic equivalent of filtered water, The Chorus is all smooth, nutrient-free clichés. This shamelessly globalized French Oscar submission even opens with a shot of an American flag--perhaps an unconscious declaration of defeat for importable Gallic cinema.
  70. Appleseed
    Much of the movie is dull, and as it has been dubbed into English, the blah-blah is impossible to ignore.
  71. Short Cut to Nirvana: Kumbh Mela
    A free-for-all doc that, like its subject, seems on several planes at once.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    White Noise
    White Noise vigorously pushes the supernatural line throughout, but unfortunately its final movement is so incoherent that the whole thing collapses.
  73. Murder-Set-Pieces
    Depraved, disgusting, misogynistic, ugly, and interminable, Murder-Set-Pieces is the lowest form of cinematic life, a movie so utterly degenerate it makes you wish that indie filmmakers had to prove a basic standard of decency in order to buy a camera.
  74. Wall Street: A Wondering Trip
    Surprisingly lacking in depth and overall political perspective.
    • 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.
    • 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.
  77. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    Moody, pretentious, but potent.
  78. The Merchant of Venice
    Pacino simply wipes the cobblestones with the rest of the cast: His beautifully calibrated performance is lucid, commanding, and genuinely tragic.
  79. In Good Company
    The scenario is stale but the actors are faultless.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Fat Albert
    The animated scenes conjure aromas of the stilted "Clifford," and the overall approach is to throw preordained movie sequences (rap number, shopping spree) together and hope for the best.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Darkness
    Rarely has a film's tagline been more fitting: "Some secrets should never come to light."
  82. Donkey Skin (re-release)
    Seasonally it's more appropriate as a May Day bacchanal, but in any month Demy's movie makes for an evocative globe-paperweight tableau of its place and time, and a concise demonstration of the disquietude inherent in classic fairy tales.
  83. The Woodsman
    An engrossing study of a protagonist who variously inspires pity, clinical interest, fondness, and revulsion-sometimes all at once.
  84. The Keys to the House
    If the film's redemptive ending is a fairy tale, it's one we willingly embrace.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    In the Realms of the Unreal
    Jessica Yu's elegant new doc In the Realms of the Unreal is a spry, creative response to his (Darger's) oceanic talent and claustrophobic life.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Phantom of the Opera
    This Phantom's an overblown mess of ostentatious razzmatazz. Sure, all the ingredients of camp are there (oh, the hubris!), but this isn't a so-bad-it's-good classic. It's worse.
  87. Meet the Fockers
    For a Ben Stiller rom-com, there's remarkably little pain and humiliation. Which, for the most part, is not a good thing.
  88. Hotel Rwanda
    It's a gut-twisting story handled, largely and predictably, with asbestos mitts.
  89. Imaginary Heroes
    Despite Weaver's wise instincts for the thoughtful pause, we're stuck with yet another ass-kicking female actor struggling to shade in the contours of a wispy sketch.
  90. Open My Heart
    Those looking for a smarter précis on sex and shame with one-thirtieth the running time are encouraged to seek out the other Madonna's "Open Your Heart" video on VH1.
  91. Beyond the Sea
    By the end of this wholly disorienting experience (this must be what it's like to be held captive in a Long Island supper club and force-fed hallucinogens), there's only one thing we damn well know, and it's that Kevin Spacey sure as hell believes he was born to play Bobby Darin.
  92. Flight of the Phoenix
    This Phoenix screams hack job.
  93. The Sea Inside
    Unfortunately, Bardem is confined by more than Ramón's paralysis. He also must work within the limits of a partially numbed script.
  94. The Life: What's Your Pleasure?
    The subjects can be amusing, chilling, or tragic -- but in the end, they offer few surprises.
  95. Spanglish
    The beauty of Sandler's performance -- a superbly modulated suite of crestfallen groans and grimaces -- is he often seems to be reacting not just to his crazy wife but also to the dismal movie he's stuck in.
  96. The Aviator
    The Aviator could've been a "Raging Bull" brother film, given that masterpiece's crystalline purity of purpose and humiliated courage. But it brakes far short.
  97. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
    In time, Carrey's monkeyshines, Jude Law's silhouetted reappearances as Snicket, and the inevitable descent of Beverly Hills pathos blunt the movie's fastidious dark-carnival humor.
  98. Million Dollar Baby
    All the same, Eastwood's point of view has been seasoned enough to locate poignancy and respect for his protagonists where you least expect -- saying it's an old man's movie is a serious compliment.
  99. Santa Smokes
    Overall the acting is sound, the missteps few, and the murky digicam smash-and-grab sheen entirely apt for the cacophonous Christmas crush.
  100. A Talking Picture
    Still astonishingly vital at 96, the Portuguese maestro Manoel de Oliveira here takes a becalmed trip through stormy waters.
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