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. Megamind
    If nothing else, I found my son's Kryptonite: boring superhero rip-offs voiced by check-cashing actors. At least Steve Carell used an accent.
  2. The Green Hornet
    The Green Hornet provides a half-hour's worth of mildly entertaining travesty before collapsing in a clamor of bombastic action sequences and lame wisecracks.
  3. Prince of Broadway
    It's not the freshest scenario, and Baker lets Lucky sputter and moan about his fate for so long that we wonder, as his sensible girlfriend does, why we're bothering with such undiluted dickness.
  4. The Freebie
    None of the dialogue, presumably arrived at through improvisation, is either funny or memorable.
  5. Casino Jack
    In the grand finale, Abramoff fantasizes about using a Senate hearing to blow the whistle on the entire corrupt establishment. His rant offers a clue to how this otherwise pointlessly manic movie might have honed its political edge.
  6. Leaving
    In any language, the actress (Kristin Scott Thomas) does what she can to best serve her scripts, even when they're hopelessly beneath her.
  7. Red Dawn
    Single-mindedly action-oriented to the point where Milius's film seems relatively ruminative.
  8. Miral
    Miral is a very flat, fuddled movie, an at-odds-with-itself partisan work, its convictions diffused in a warm soak of style.
  9. The Tempest
    The film lacks a pulse. There's sound and fury, but the result is more drizzle than tempest.
  10. The Tourist
    A different kind of surveillance thriller - an expensive, star-gazing Hollywood one.
  11. All Good Things
    All Good Things patina of fictionalization has not prevented the cagey Durst Organization from threatening a lawsuit. They need not worry, though. The film succeeds only in indicting its authors.
  12. Eichmann
    Young's well-intentioned dramatic re-enactment of their encounters is burdened by sepia-period accessorizing, laborious flashbacks, spurious comparisons between the two men's domestic lives, and the downright bizarre casting of Franka Potente as Less's ailing wife and Stephen Fry as an Israeli pol who wants the case wrapped up in five minutes or less.
  13. Outside the Law
    The production design is nice enough, but Bouchareb's four-country co-production isn't an epic-it's just long.
  14. Red Hill
    It's clear that Hughes knows his Midnight Oil, but he's ignorant of the craft of economic action filmmaking. However arguably noble his film's intent to redress historical grievance, a poorly filmed shoot-out is never more than exactly that.
  15. A Small Act
    Arnold just expects her audience to accept that Mburu's doing the best he can and revere him for it.
  16. The Rite
    Michael's motivations remain arbitrary and inscrutable, right down to his entry into the seminary. This is brought up by a number of characters, who interpret his implausible career decision as A Sign. It is-of bad writing.
  17. Sucker Punch
    His (Snyder) mash-up set pieces ("Call of Duty" meets "Castlevania," etc.) blend into so-awesome-they're-awful slo-mo monotony, and the awful sisterhood stuff in between makes you anticipate the action as though waiting for the bus.
  18. Willets Point
    A jarring fusion of blue-collar lament and the-more-you-know medical drama.
  19. I Am Secretly an Important Man
    Sillen ennobles the havoc of his life with a measure of down-and-out romance, but no moments really puncture a viewer, and the darkness is all too easily shaken off.
  20. Summer Wars
    It's hard to appreciate things like the character detail amid the insufferably squealy voicing and arbitrary suspense.
  21. Americatown
    The vibe rarely expands beyond dozy Comedy Central skits sprinkled with ironic cliches rather than jokes, 99 percent earnest slo-mo quirk and 1 percent funky non sequitur (the characters sport brand names, like Plymouth Ray-Ban), most of it explained rather than performed.
  22. Sacrifice
    Chen's attention to character over spectacle pays minimal dividends and is compounded by the fact that his battles - full of standard-issue slow motion and hacked-off limbs - are as dull as an overused blade.
  23. Hall Pass
    The crazy-barista melodrama-slapstick collision seems not like a nimble twist, but tone-deaf blundering-what once came naturally now seems like trying too hard, as the Farrellys face their own mid-life crisis.
  24. Soul Surfer
    Soul Surfer offers a ghastlier sight than your wildest "127 Hours"–meets-"Jaws" nightmare: barefaced Christian pandering that pretends it isn't.
  25. Friends with Kids
    Just as Friends With Kids compares unfavorably to Westfeldt's earlier effort, her cast members' previous projects further highlight this film's shortcomings.
  26. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
    As the seductive and conniving Angelica, Cruz is luminous, albeit not enough to compensate for Marshall shrouding virtually every major set piece in nighttime fogginess.
  27. Waiting for Forever
    Strangely unaware of its overt creepiness.
  28. Orgasm Inc.
    Too scattered in its arguments and piecemeal in its sources to weave together a convincing institutional condemnation.
  29. Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son
    John Whitesell's extraordinarily witless movie operates as a checklist for cultural and racial clichés.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Captain America: The First Avenger
    (A) hokey, hacky, two-hour-plus exercise in franchise transition/price gouging, complete with utterly unnecessary post-converted 3-D.
  31. The Lincoln Lawyer
    Undercut by uninspired direction, car-commercial art direction, and a lack of grit that makes the hidebound nature of the genre stand out like an episode of "Matlock" on HBO.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Green Lantern
    The film never rewards the viewer for even trying to keep track of what is going on. So you give up, and instead try to grab on to the small pleasures, which momentarily distract from the fact that the narrative is nonsensical, the characters so boilerplate that their every action seem preordained from the earliest frames, even as the action on-screen is often incoherent.
  33. Take Me Home Tonight
    It's not a total wash. Faris's ample talents are squandered with a should-I-stay-or-should-I-go romantic dilemma, but there's just enough of Demetri Martin doing a prick act, and Fogler excels as a Rabelaisian dynamo.
  34. Mars Needs Moms
    Imagination is in short supply, with rubbery heroes repeatedly plummeting (down chutes, primarily) or hopping and running in slow motion-images that (to state what has now become the obvious) are seldom enhanced by pedestrian IMAX 3-D effects.
  35. Limitless
    Without a complex thought about narcissism, merit, or addiction, Limitless is content to be an empty, one-note, satire-free fairy tale of avarice and corporate-political ambition.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Larry Crowne
    With its eager-to-please congeniality, it almost works, but with a pacing that is at once comfortably assured and frustratingly slack, like holding exactly to the speed limit on a stretch of open road, Larry Crowne never quite comes to life.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Transformers: Dark of the Moon
    Amid the windy speeches, fiery explosions, exposition dumps, and product placements, there are a few treats to help the intelligent moviegoer - drawn to Dark of the Moon by peer pressure or kitsch factor or an insatiable desire for overstimulation - through the ordeal.
  38. The Grace Card
    By refusing to even suggest that racism is a walloping social problem rather than an individual, circumstantial one with an easy fix, it does a rotten job of preaching to the choir.
  39. War Horse
    Since he's (Spielberg) a director largely incapable of understatement, War Horse is served up with a self-aggrandizing, distracting surplus of Norman Rockwell backlighting, aerial landscape shots designed to out-swoop David Lean's, and an aggravated sense of doggone wonderment amplified by the director's dependence on John Williams's bombastic score.
  40. Happy Feet Two
    Really, the movie has absolutely everything except the light touch required for unaffected charm - the mugging is savage - a single piece of memorable original music, or a production number that's celebratory rather than trampling.
  41. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
    The film is endurable owing solely to Johnson, a veteran of bad kids' movies whose sense of when to dial up the charm in such a generic, soulless entertainment remains impeccable.
  42. Paranormal Activity 3
    The further this series drifts into corporate-franchise territory and away from Peli's inventively cheap, slyly psychosexual conception, the more reasons there are to just stay away.
  43. 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.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Horrible Bosses
    This is middling TV material, almost comforting in its bland predictability - the kind of stuff you want on the seat-back screen when there's turbulence on a plane - but rarely actually laugh-out-loud funny, and never truly dark or daring.
  45. This Means War
    The cocky presumption of charm that isn't actually there is precisely the problem with action-comedy This Means War.
  46. Ceremony
    Ceremony is a callow movie: Winkler exhibits no comprehension of the class anxieties he addresses, and extends precocity into adulthood. That callowness is Ceremony's subject scarcely makes it funnier.
  47. Life of Pi
    Life of Pi manages occasional spiritual wonder through its 3-D visuals but otherwise sinks like a stone.
  48. Bereavement
    Bereavement-miraculously as dull as its title-is neither far gone enough to be funny nor well thought-out enough to be disturbing.
  49. I Saw the Devil
    Never good with nuance, Kim is a beast with disarming imagery but has few resonating ideas, leaving the domino-tumble of brutality to become its own tiresome spectacle.
  50. Skateland
    If Skateland is the sort of work Ritchie's future holds, it's proof that some talents are better off staying home.
  51. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
    Anyone who's seen a martial-arts picture expects a certain amount of thumb-twiddling between the big numbers, but director Andrew Lau's handling of exposition is markedly poor, distended with rubbish plotlines, flashy sadism, and overwrought jingo.
  52. There Be Dragons
    Its appeal for the rest of us is buoyed by cinematographer Gabriel Beristain's attentiveness to the ravishing Argentinian locations, but the geriatric pacing, flat-footed Old Hollywood pastiche, and Joffé's inexplicable penchant for tear-jerking Catholic mysticism make Dragons more punishing than a hundred Hail Marys.
  53. Shark Night 3D
    Aspires to nothing more or less than carrying along an audience through a string of unremarkable kills, often involving high-jumping fish.
  54. Big Miracle
    While rooting for the marine mammals (and wishing for more footage of them - and even of their animatronic incarnations), your heart will also go out to the cast, stuck even more pitiably in syrupy manufactured crises.
  55. Joyful Noise
    Speaking of camp, the diva battle teased in the trailer for Joyful Noise between its two stars, Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton, flatlines, as do most of the movie's jokes.
  56. Lockout
    Lockout is, not unexpectedly, a potluck of derivative references.
  57. Ex Drummer
    The flashy adaptation of the book by aging Belgian provocateur Herman Brusselmans is as systematically offensive and boisterously vulgar as its degenerate punk protagonists.
  58. Dr. Seuss' The Lorax
    Par for the course in blowout CGI adaptations, a great deal of detail and bustle is gained at the expense of charm - for all the miracles these armies of animators can achieve, they have yet to successfully reproduce a humble artist's line.
  59. Illegal
    Blunt, loud, and showboaty, Illegal suffers even more when compared with another recent Liège-set film about the horrors faced by paperless immigrants: the Dardennes' "Lorna's Silence."
  60. Men in Black III
    Despite such ubiquitous timidity, one can pluck out a few pleasing distractions here.
  61. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
    Possible resulting "fun" is only slightly mitigated by contemplation of the wearisome decadence of American popular culture.
  62. The Dark Knight Rises
    The Dark Knight Rises is a shallow repository of ideas, but as a work of sheer sensation, it has something to recommend.
  63. The Bang Bang Club
    Silver treads around and too heavily on the moral ambiguities involved in documenting atrocities, moving between frantic, poorly explained scenes of African conflict and the equally familiar, benumbing aesthetic of boys making a macho game of war.
  64. The Big Bang
    Though the setup is pure Raymond Chandler (Farewell, My Lovely, specifically), the film's bleary, neon glamour and penchant for the bizarre suggests an attempted-and wayward-homage to David Lynch.
  65. Ted
    It's dispiriting enough to witness Kunis still waiting for a comic lead role worthy of her. But the usually nimble Wahlberg - who at least has one great moment rattling off "white-trash girls' names" - suffers the most, playing second fiddle to a knee-high Gund knockoff.
  66. Here Comes the Boom
    Boom was produced under the auspices of pal Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, which has a tendency toward broad-comic morality tales and multiplex populism that often shades into remedial-level pandering.
  67. Two Gates of Sleep
    As a work of narrative fiction, the film is too little invested in character to make the occasional intrusions of plot meaningful, while its editing is overly elliptical and its actions too perfunctorily observed to make it work as a documentary study of human activity.
  68. Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead
    Virtually every documentary cliché from the past decade finds its way into this account of director Joe Cross's weight-loss odyssey, a retread-reversal of "Super Size Me" right down to the cheesy animation.
  69. An Affirmative Act
    The film veers into the narrow channels of the bare-bulb courtroom melodrama and then the rapids of the lurid conspiracy thriller before washing ashore in pieces.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Our Idiot Brother
    Its roundelay of shallow types (played by beautiful movie stars) treating one another badly, and having whiny conversations about said treatment, is such a whisper-soft version of social critique that it makes the autobiographical films of Nicole Holofcener (Please Give, Friends With Money) look as cutting as the films of Jean Eustache.
  71. My Afternoons with Margueritte
    That so many of the colossal yokel's mental states are literalized, as when the screen fills with thousands of rats while Margueritte reads Camus's "The Plague" aloud to her new pal, typifies the movie's antipathy to nuance.
  72. How to Live Forever
    Suffice it to say, life's too short for such self-indulgent glibness.
  73. The Expendables 2
    Has the parallel between the actor and the mercenary's trade ever been so overt?
  74. Life, Above All
    Life, Above All suggests that ignorance and stigmatization are a problem only in the village, not in the highest office of government.
  75. A Little Help
    The film is as average and forgettable.
  76. Footprints
    Rife with classic-cinema shoutouts, the film is a cutesy, toothless variation on "Mulholland Drive," one whose attempts to pay tribute to movie magic are ultimately undercut by stagey aesthetics and narrative theatricality.
  77. Phillip the Fossil
    Donovan's idiosyncratic approach to character develops a compelling rhythm, but the film falters when a dramatic double climax pushes it past its low-key limits.
  78. Hesher
    Still, Hesher finds uncommon sympathy for people at loose ends, and although Hesher himself is sentimentalized and backhandedly inspiring, he never softens into an actual role model.
  79. The First Grader
    Chadwick veers frequently into flashbacks to Maruge's past as a Mau Mau resistance fighter-mostly prolonged scenes of torture and violence that do little to inform or propel the present-day story. Poorly defined tribal lines flare up, and Jane's life is threatened, the point at which the script's Hollywood contrivances open up and swallow this often charming film whole.
  80. The Art of Getting By
    Crafted not to give the slightest offense, The Art of Getting By makes the great - and even the mediocre - teen movies of 30 years ago, like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Fame," and "Foxes," look even more radical in comparison, with their depiction of obnoxious, horny, property-destroying teens.
  81. Trollhunter
    As de-mythologizings go, Trollhunter has neither the wit, nor art, nor social insight to honor the legacy of George A. Romero's "Martin."
  82. Kidnapped
    The long takes and lack of theatrical affect are presumably meant to heighten the realism by dispensing with film - fiction artifice, but in the process, everything that might lure a viewer - the seduction of style and plot or an engagement with characters - is forgotten.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Another Earth
    Unable to organically incorporate their Big Ideas into the narrative, the filmmakers lazily lay them on top, leaving the exposition of Another Earth's structuring fantasy to a blanket of background voiceover.
  84. The Perfect Host
    First-timer Nick Tomnay has expanded his movie from a short, and the point where he ran out of ideas looms like a cliff edge.
  85. When Harry Tries to Marry
    A substandard romantic comedy gussied up in Indian drag.
  86. St. Nick
    Like a child bluffing at knowing a secret, St. Nick teases and frustrates.
  87. Beautiful Darling
    Denied the opportunity to see Candy at her best, simultaneously mocking and paying homage to golden-age glamour, viewers instead get too much of Jeremiah Newton, a close friend of the actress's and guardian of her papers, personal effects, and ashes (and one of Beautiful Darling's producers).
  88. Sarah's Key
    Dutifully follows the template of scores of movies about the Shoah: wringing from atrocity the most unseemly sentimentality.
  89. Life in a Day
    The resulting object is less about the world than about itself, and feels like a hey-that's-neat 90-minute troll through the video-sharing website (which co-presents the project).
  90. Road to Nowhere
    The screenplay is by Variety editor Steven Gaydos, and it combines a working knowledge of on-set dynamics with corny cinephile in-joking, frequently elevated by the fresh evidence of Hellman's craft in the tranquil, largely nocturnal atmosphere, until the closing-credits song ruins everything.
  91. Daydream Nation
    Daydream is decently acted, overwritten, slickly shot, decked out with the requisite indie soundtrack, and propped up with angst-ridden poses and pouting lips. It's also another film in which on-screen teens, especially the nubile femme fatale at the center, are but vessels to showcase the screenwriter's irony-drenched, self-satisfied intellect.
  92. Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
    The overall effect is flattering but shallow, making Murphy's movie the last thing Mockingbird needs-another toothless encomium. No wonder Lee dodges the limelight.
  93. Dirty Girl
    For a film that's supposed to be rooted in such a specific time and place, Sylvia isn't really concerned with details: Costumes, hair, and décor appear to be the work of "That '70s Show" interns; William H. Macy, as Danielle's Mormon soon-to-be stepdad, continuously muffs a Sooner State drawl.
  94. Janie Jones
    Nivola and Breslin sing and perform the original numbers, welcome interludes that provide respite from Rosenthal's lousy script.
  95. 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.
  96. The Five-Year Engagement
    There is exactly one unexpected moment in the otherwise drearily predictable The Five-Year Engagement that, though little more than a throwaway line, at least adds a bit of political reality to puncture Nicholas Stoller's limp, hermetic comedy of deferred nuptials.
  97. Vito Bonafacci
    Factor in the consistently subpar acting and Vito Bonafaccistands as one project better suited to Sunday schools than movie theaters.
  98. Harvest
    This is largely a non-narrative piece, the director employing a slice-of-life-in-crisis approach that only works if the characters or the situations are sharply drawn. Neither are.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The People vs. George Lucas
    It's an exhausting airing of nerd grievances, the monolithic arguments leavened only slightly by counterpoints seemingly inserted for comic relief.
  100. 3
    More willing suspension of disbelief - or suppression of giggles - is required.
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