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. Max Rose
    Occasionally, Noah, who wrote and directed, hits onto something that feels like life.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mission to Lars
    But the biggest frustration is that the film's abrupt ending fails to show whether Kate and William really did rebuild their relationship with Tom on the Ulrich quest, and, either way, what that outcome means for the rest of us.
  3. The Forest
    Before devolving into the same series of demonic faces and jump-scares we've seen time and again, The Forest is a genuinely unnerving mood piece.
  4. The Caller
    The Caller begins as a multinational corporate thriller more ambiguous and geopolitically senseless than "Demonlover."
  5. Are We There Yet?
    Levant and his screenwriting posse attempt to wring maximum hilarity from this setup, but it's just too schizoid.
  6. The Rider Named Death
    All the same, The Rider Named Death is curiously anemic; rather than passion, outrage, and danger, we're contemplating the sotto voce conspiracy love of a quaintly distant age, when results weren't quite as emotionally important as commitment and camaraderie.
  7. Quitters
    What do you do with a loathsome hero? Noah Pritzker isn't sure. His aimless first feature (co-written with Ben Tarnoff) is built around slippery teenage manipulator Clark Rayman (Ben Konigsberg), who goes from a little Machiavellian to big-time creepy with no rhyme or reason.
  8. 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.
    • 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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The 11th Hour
    A cautionary eco-doc so earnest and moth-eaten it should properly be seen on filmstrip during fourth-period social studies.
  11. Free Fire
    10 minutes early to the Free Fire press screening, I grew restless as “Annie’s Song” played on a continuous loop in the theater; the gimmick filled up my senses with the quickly confirmed fear that Wheatley’s film would rarely rise above the dopey and obvious.
  12. Amateur Night
    Besides the narrative reversal, Montgomery is the only interesting part of the film — smart, obstinate, and ambitious. The gross-out scenes and raunchy banter between the film's sex workers are funny, but its world is pretty small and unsurprising.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Step Up
    Fletcher ably blends ballet and hip-hop, but the filming itself is often clumsy, and Tatum's relentless African American impersonation quickly wears out its welcome.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Unknown
    The pacing is slightly off, with the action switching between the imprisoned men and the police who are trying to find them, and what should be a mounting sense of urgency inside the warehouse (think Reservoir Dogs) falters and goes slack.
  15. Chicken Run
    A combination of "Barnyard Follies" and "Schindler's List."
  16. Stones in the Sun
    Good intentions can be deadly: Benoit runs into the common tripwire of caring more about pitching her cause than she does about movies. Scenes illustrate simple social-injustice points, and the characters are one-dimensional sufferers.
  17. Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times
    Bumrushed onto American screens like late-breaking news, the Japanese TV doc Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times is a relatively thin slice of Chomskiana -- a chapter from any of the man's many interview volumes, or even an hour of his C-SPAN dialogues, has more political substance.
  18. Life of a King
    Life of a King isn't setting out to reinvent cinema, or even a genre, but rather just to be a moderately uplifting tale that makes watching chess interesting.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Beauty and the Beast (re-release)
    Viewers must get in touch with their inner child to fall for Belle's eventual love for Beast. The film seems somewhat aware of this, casting an ambiguous hue on its happily-ever-after conclusion.
  20. 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.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Straight Outta Tompkins
    Straight Outta Tompkins is rarely boring, but neither does it come close to attaining the hard-hitting moral force its creator is clearly striving for.
  22. Love at Times Square
    Anand manages to work in shamelessly exploitative September 11 footage between numbers, but aside from this sequence, Love couldn't be more giddily benign.
  23. Almost Christmas
    Writer-director Talbert similarly follows formula for the overcrowded and overplotted Noel-season movie, ladling out too-generous portions of churchiness, multigenerational dance-off, and Mars vs. Venus sermonizing.
  24. The Nut Job
    Good-natured and completely forgettable.
  25. Mansome
    While making a priority of squeezing in every usable bit of celebrity face-time, Mansome passes by potentially interesting digressions without more than a wayward glance.
  26. Random Hearts
    Everyone in the film is a walking cliché.
  27. King Cobra
    The unique setting aside, there's just not much to sink your fangs into.
  28. Frank & Lola
    The film's success depends upon the tension between Frank and Lola, and even this cast can't overcome what feels like an essential disconnect in the central relationship.
  29. Reservation Road
    Reservation Road itself may twist and turn into the New England night, but emotionally and dramatically, the movie that bears its name is a dead end.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    New in Town
    The movie wrong-foots Zellweger from the start. She's not enough the ice queen, like Sigourney Weaver in "Working Girl," for us to accept her transition into adorable Melanie Griffith.
  31. Welcome
    Heavy ironies like that drop regularly, undermining both the film's intentions and the drama.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    White Squall
    Despite a rousing fourth act (out of five), this disappointing adventure movie plays more like: "Dead Poets Goes to Sea." [06 Feb 1996]
    • Village Voice
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Reckoning
    Emphatically acted, ponderous, and ultimately a little silly.
  34. Legion
    This wan rebooting of the Christ tale has decent acting, serviceable if familiar visual effects, a few jump-in-your-seat moments, and the always crowd-pleasing gimmick of a senior citizen cussing up a storm. But the down time between action scenes is deadly dull and the film's hoary cinematic shorthand (i.e., a young Black man enters the film to the sound of hip-hop and fights with his baby mama) is more terrifying than anything else served up.
  35. Godspeed
    The tone fits the material and the performances are surprisingly measured, but Saitzyk's sappy pontifications on loss, redemption, and zealotry don't register as headily as they're meant to (every character gets at least one melodramatic speech), and the spirituality invoked feels about as sincere as the Christian who only attends Christmas mass.
  36. Bachelorette
    The trajectory for all four characters is toward acknowledgment of the emptiness their indulgences can't fill. It's kind of heartening that Becky has that all worked out, pretty much, even if the film doesn't quite get there.
  37. Hotel
    As usual, Figgis coaxes moon-shooting performances, but all the furious improv lacks any sort of map.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    War Dance
    The movie comes across as desperately, even irritatingly contrived, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it overcame my naturally complacent instincts--which would be to watch something (anything) else, to not get haunted by that closing litany of websites for global action.
  39. Eye in the Sky
    The problem with movies depicting the banality of anything, of course, is that they tend to be pretty banal themselves; in setting out to be the exception to that rule, Eye in the Sky only proves it.
  40. Kaena: The Prophecy
    No "Triplets of Belleville," this French animated feature was hatched as an idea for a video game, and it shows.
  41. First Daughter
    First Daughter is less amusing than Jenna and Barb at the RNC, and dumb enough to make last January's presidential scion, Mandy Moore, look electable.
  42. What the Bleep!?: Down the Rabbit Hole
    The movie is a sloppy amalgamation of animated instruction, dramatic vignettes (starring actualization-starved single gal Marlee Matlin), and talking-heads interviews.
  43. Chasing Madoff
    Too bad Prosserman can't trust his material: Overloading the screen with aesthetic dross, the director offers up tiresome symbolic imagery of blood-soaked hands, burning money, and out-of-focus documents. Rather than amping up the intensity, these fast-cut sequences prove disastrously distracting.
  44. Clerks II
    Clerks II can't bear the strain of its amateur-hour theatrics, no matter how big its heart or how many crocodile tears it manages to squirt. The dramatic moments become melodramatic; the bawdy moments turn icky. The fans will eat it up.
  45. Big Game
    Predictably ridiculous.
  46. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
    Possible resulting "fun" is only slightly mitigated by contemplation of the wearisome decadence of American popular culture.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Tortilla Soup
    Tortilla Soup feels instantly dated, distinguishable from EDMW only by some attractive close-ups of avocado.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Home
    Home's improvisatory aura proves more believable than "The Anniversary Party's" annoying contrivances, but it does little to hide the obvious fact that watching a rather dull party can be, well, rather dull.
  49. The Stand Up
    For a film about a stand-up comedian to be mirthless is dispiriting; more problematic, however, is that The Stand Up doesn't make up for that absence of humor with any legitimate drama.
  50. Head of State
    Shows Rock suffering from premature Robin Williams syndrome. He's yet to express the full ferocity of his comic talent on the screen and he's already doing penance by going for the warm and fuzzy.
  51. Millennium Actress
    Flashbacks integrate with scenes from her films, and it becomes difficult to discern between the two -- cinema is equated with memory. Unfortunately, the trippy disorientation ultimately devolves into outright confusion.
  52. Ghost Town
    If it sounds all so pale and predictable, it is.
  53. 3rd Street Blackout
    Much of the humor depends on Redleaf and Farsad coaxing relatable, Apatow-ian comedy out of their relationship; unfortunately, they're so bland that there's little to relate to.
  54. Mary Shelley
    Mary Shelley marshals its evidence without revealing more, without connecting to the soul of the matter. Its Mary Shelley may walk and talk, kiss and rage, but she has no more of the true spark of life than that specimen in that lab.
  55. 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.
  56. Down a Dark Hall
    Ultimately, Down a Dark Hall falls victim to familiar teen horror tropes: a brooding lead with a heart of gold, predictable jump scares, wincingly bad romantic tension, and obvious villains.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Proper Violence
    Scrappy college-age filmmakers Chris Faulisi and Matt Robinson do a commendable job of establishing tone and tension in their debut feature, but things fall apart when words and feelings start to flow.
  58. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    Roughly splits the difference between "Six Days, Seven Nights" and "9 1/2 Weeks." Which is something like the nth-order derivative of an infinite regression.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Love Me If You Dare
    The movie's hyperactivity eventually yields to such revelations as Life Isn't a Game and The Biggest Dare Is Love, but the ultimate measure of its conventionality is its soundtrack.
  60. Sacrifice
    This watered-down throwback to The Wicker Man never really heats up.
    • 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.
  62. Two for the Money
    In keeping with his apparent ambition to play each character more berserk than the last, Pacino can't discuss wine choice without sounding on the brink of aneurysm.
  63. No Tears for the Dead
    There are more tears than the title lets on, and even more blood, but it's a reason to truly be invested that's missing from No Tears for the Dead, which is rarely any better or worse than serviceable.
  64. The Family Tree
    Thin as it is, Family Tree is no slog - the droll, attentive performances by Davis and Mulroney are endearing, and the extraneous guest-star bits (including Christina Hendricks as a secretary, no less) and rambling B stories aren't overly distracting.
  65. The Mermaid
    For all its aspirations toward movie magic with an activist bent, The Mermaid’s potential implications for the film industry are ultimately more noteworthy than the movie itself.
  66. Don Peyote
    At its best, this descent into madness plays out like a millennial stoner's take on Jacob's Ladder. More often, it recalls a sobering truth: Nobody likes listening to someone ramble while high.
  67. Filth
    A self-aware psychopath is a tough character to humanize, especially when he's mired in a stylized jumble of comedy and tragedy.
  68. The Hot Flashes
    The raunchy, feminist-revenge jokes are the best part of this feel-good, you-go-ladies sports comedy.
  69. Reversion
    Though mildly engaging, this Reversion doesn't delve deep enough to distinguish itself.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Spider-Man 3
    Given that Spider-Man 2 was twice as fun as the first, it's triply disappointing what an overwrought bore S3 turns out to be.
  71. The Forgotten
    The resolution is as surprise-free as it is improbably sunny.
  72. Bubble
    The three stars are all perfectly naturalistic, but their roles are too bloodless and their patter too dry.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Silent Hill
    Stuffed with cheap effects and devoid of tension, this French-Japanese-U.S. co-production contributes exactly zilch to the rich film history of those three nations; the most horror-crazed teen may be hard-pressed to find any authentic thrills here.
  74. The David Dance
    Scimé and Adkins have real chemistry, but the script is forever cutting back to quirky, talkative Katie, and any chance of exploring the complexities of a relationship between two men, one of whom is intractable, is lost.
  75. Swim Little Fish Swim
    The performances often enliven the stale material... But the script's naïveté is galling.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Daddy's Little Girls
    Perry's indifferent direction flattens everything out: You might fall asleep if his heavy-mitted music cues didn't keep cattle-prodding your ass.
  77. The Business of Fancydancing
    Seymour returns to the Spokane Indian Reservation after a 16-year absence for a friend's funeral. The predictable conflicts ensue, often in histrionic dialogue declaimed through clenched teeth.
  78. Laredoans Speak: Voices on Immigration
    The movie's argument only occasionally transcends its oozy nonspecificity and feel-good bleeding-heart vibe.
  79. Cloud Atlas
    Each segment feels more like an extended trailer for itself than a sound narrative unit. Maybe this incompletion is purposeful, but it's a problem when what's invariably elided or taken for granted is the very human connection and commiseration that is supposedly the most vital force in the universe.
  80. 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.
    • 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.
  82. Whiteboyz
    Not a movie that can afford to take itself seriously.
  83. Because I Said So
    Like nearly all of Lehmann's post- "Heathers" work, it's lazy and disinterested--a hack-for-hire job any number of film-school grads could have put through its uninspired paces.
  84. Jump
    [A] clever but emotionally unengaging movie.
  85. Hamlet
    Peter Wingfield delivers an engagingly oily Claudius, and Lara Gilchrist's Ophelia is radiant. But Ramsay's Hamlet's madness never really overcomes the character's traditional emo temperament.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Cinderella Story
    The film lacks the guiltily pleasurable panache (and punch) of other recent chickadee flicks posited as protofeminist fairy tales.
  87. 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.
  88. Maleficent
    With more actual grrrl power, Maleficent would be a bold redo. Instead, it's a beautiful snooze, a story that hints at the darkness underneath our fairy tales and tarnishes the idea of true love without quite daring to say what's really on its mind: that even the best of us might not live happily ever after.
  89. Woman on Top
    Too flimsily built and baldly unfunny to bolster Cruz's charms, but Almodóvar's blessed Virgin is, as usual, winning and guilelessly seductive.
  90. The April Fools
    There doesn't seem to be enough plot for a minute commercial, much less 100 minutes plus of madcap farce. [12 Jun 1969, p.53]
    • Village Voice
  91. Le petit lieutenant
    Beauvois, who co-wrote, seems hellbent on making the most realistic cop film of all time, shruggingly consumed with downtime, small talk, minor incident, and dead ends, and he's succeeded--the narrative wouldn't have cut it in a Kojak story meeting.
  92. 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.
  93. Andron
    The movie gets wilder and weirder as it goes.... But then, at some point, it all gets ponderous, especially all the vague political machinations.
  94. 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.
  95. All the Rage (Saved by Sarno)
    Celebrity testimonials drown out the scientists, and Galinsky’s haphazard exploration of his own back pain is a major distraction.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Derailroaded
    Wild Man Fischer's music is disarmingly honest and heartfelt, but even its charms can't save Derailroaded from ending up a train wreck.
  97. The Life Before Her Eyes
    Moviegoers may mistake The Life Before Her Eyes for an unduly long L'Oreal commercial featuring softly lit film stars moving languidly with swinging hair through overbearingly premonitory weather.
    • 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.
  99. Life's a Breeze
    The film's surface naturalism and visual grit simply cover up a screenplay that's as full of crap as the average recent Hollywood comedy.
  100. Janie Jones
    Nivola and Breslin sing and perform the original numbers, welcome interludes that provide respite from Rosenthal's lousy script.
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