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. Snowtime!
    Co-directors Jean-François Pouliot and François Brisson progressively heighten the scale of the battles, but the emotional tenor is pitched at innocence and fun. The filmmakers attempt a transition toward a more bitter rivalry, but they just don't have the heart to make this children's war ugly.
  2. A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
    With neither the moral bite of satire nor a voluptuary surrender that really basks in shallowness, this is a vague, unsatisfying work.
  3. 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.
  4. Raging Dove
    Raging Dove can't avoid the biodoc pitfall of fixating on its subject's personal saga to the virtual exclusion of all else; by the end it's essentially blaming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Abu Lashin's professional demise.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Legend of Zorro
    Most of Mask's cast and crew return, but they forgot to bring the last film's romantic aura and dry sense of humor with them; Anthony Hopkins is deeply missed. Instead, the picture is beset by typical sequel problems like awkward slapstick and allegedly adorable kid sidekicks.
  6. L'autre monde
    It's too bad that Allouache's insurgent Islamists, into whose clutches Yasmine falls for a time, come off like Indiana Jones villains.
  7. 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.
  8. Reversion
    Like many similarly twisty tales, Reversion's narrative logic is undermined by its characters' irrational behavior.
  9. Christine
    By the end of Christine — and of Christine — the reporter is at once burdened with too many signifiers (is Chubbuck a tragic heroine of second-wave feminism? of our current macabre newsscape? of untreated depression?) and a cipher. As with most biopics that resort to maximalism, more is less.
  10. Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death & Technology
    Like Shlain's hand-written diagram in which lines twist and knot while linking various subjects, the film resembles not a coherent thesis but a tangle of semi-related ideas.
  11. The Young Victoria
    Man, British heritage cinema can be dull when assembly-lined for the export market.
  12. Isn't She Great
    Aspires to be both stylish and coarse, camp and vulgar -- which is pretty much how Bette Midler plays it.
  13. The Hills Have Eyes
    The net effect would be doze-inducing if in fact the Dolby didn't attempt to wake the dead.
  14. Are We Done Yet?
    Fans of the first film can rest assured that a change in the director's chair has done little to curb the overall tone of slapstick desperation.
  15. Outlaws and Angels
    Despite worthy performances from the entire cast, this movie’s a prime example of a director admiring some great movies but only having a cursory, superficial understanding of what it was that made them work.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mean Machine
    The most off-key notes here are the sentimental ones: When David Kelly shows up, reprising the wise-trustee role he had in the horticulture-behind-bars movie "Greenfingers," it's as though some twee script gremlin sneaked in and meddled with the Guy Ritchie schematics.
  17. What Women Want
    Gibson has never lacked chemistry with his leading ladies, from Sigourney Weaver in "The Year of Living Dangerously" to Julia Roberts in "Conspiracy Theory," but faced with the awkward Hunt -- Hollywood's bland antidote to the Lolita syndrome -- he doesn't even try.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Kids in America
    Nicole Richie loyalists are sure to be confounded (along with the rest of us) by Kids in America, the weirdly anti-Bush high school "satire" that is also Richie's big-screen debut.
  19. I Am Not a Hipster
    The film's energy is frequently low, befitting that of its main character, a stalled, self-loathing, San Diego–based indie musician named Brook (Dominic Bogart), breathing contempt for anyone asking him personal questions.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Gypsy 83
    A surprisingly pragmatic take on the joys and perils of diva worship, Gypsy 83 has as many emotional ups and downs as its protagonists' road trip: Emerging love interests threaten to disrupt the delicate goth boy/fag hag balance, only to fade after the glitter.
  21. Toro negro
    As his story emerges-rape, assault, manslaughter, prison, and torrential self- destruction-it becomes clear that Pacheco is some kind of sociopath, and the movie evolves into a monstrous portrait of economic annihilation on the outskirts of the global village.
  22. Touch the Wall
    Content to stay on the surface, it's a puff piece posing as a real documentary.
  23. Loitering with Intent
    This is an indifferently filmed, sloppily conceived story that finds infrequent life through resourceful production design (Gigi's house is strewn with Modelo, Red Bull, and scribbled-on note cards) and on-edge work from Tomei and Rockwell.
  24. Rhinoceros Eyes
    Live by the meta-movie rules, die by the meta-movie rules: Rhinoceros Eyes is a parable on cine-enchantment that itself fails to enchant.
  25. Silver City
    Sayles, it seems, doesn't think much of his audience, and the tone of his discourse is only nominally less pandering than a politician's.
  26. Boys of Abu Ghraib
    Too by-the-numbers for the emotional impact to resonate as long as it could and should have.
  27. Le bossu
    de Broca's efficient fencing-mania melodrama brings little that's original to the table.
  28. 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.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    When a Stranger Calls
    This version is a thin, protracted study in shifting Hollywood strategies. The original, while dramatically spotty, was an almost experimental concoction of horror and thriller. The 2006 model, in contrast, is straight-up formula.
  30. As I Lay Dying
    Franco adapted a book that often reads like joyless homework into a film that feels the same way.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Flakes
    Despite a few good one-liners, the dialogue is overwritten, and director Michael Lehmann (Heathers, The Truth About Cats & Dogs) is in thrall with the hipness he tries to chronicle.
  32. Let My People Go!
    Mikael Buch's debut feature is silly and sweet, but also paper thin and mostly unimaginative: a series of cartoonish vignettes during which a generically eccentric Jewish clan confronts movie-family problems (adultery, divorce, health scares, tense sibling relationships).
  33. Still Life
    When it's all over, Still Life feels disembodied and perfunctory, like a very respectful eulogy for no one in particular.
  34. The Whole Ten Yards
    An anemic attempt at Coen-style bodies-and-bowling deadpan, The Whole Nine Yards compensated for its comic shortcomings with a casual, uncharacteristically likable performance by Bruce Willis.
  35. In My Sleep
    The biggest problem with Allen Wolf's thriller is that there are so few characters that it's immediately clear what's going on; there's simply no one to suspect besides the obvious.
  36. A Skin So Soft
    Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté holds up a shallow mirror to the world of bodybuilding in the underwhelming experimental documentary A Skin So Soft.
  37. The Girl from the Naked Eye
    There are dozens of better, riskier, more interesting films that go unreleased every year - why this militantly dull effort is taking their place is its only worthwhile mystery.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Unveiled
    An Iranian version of "Boys Don't Cry," Unveiled overflows with sociopolitical outrage even if its portrayal of a gender-confused heroine is ultimately indecisive and laconic.
  39. Sólo con tu pareja
    The film is more stale than crisp, with dialogue that is at least 50 percent old aphorisms, homilies, and clichés.
  40. Baby Boy
    Pretty much a mess, but it also has a couple of long stretches that are extremely daring in that they reveal black family dynamics we've never seen on screen before.
  41. A Convenient Truth
    The film doesn't quite trust its audience, though, and, rather than get in and out with its points, belabors its jokes and its punches, to the point of tedium.
  42. A Wink and a Smile
    The tension between wanting to root for these women and ultimately being faced with what you're rooting for (a pair of pinwheeling boobies) goes completely unresolved.
  43. Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?
    Like its title, Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? purports to ask a question but is only interested in forwarding its predictable agitprop answer.
  44. Henry Fool
    Henry Fool, which runs a leisurely and ultimately tiresome 138 minutes, is so self-conscious it feels uncomfortable in its own skin. [23 Jun 1998]
    • Village Voice
  45. Digging Up the Marrow
    After poking fun at both Green's lack of originality and the hackneyed nature of found-footage shockers, Digging Up the Marrow merely resorts to climactic shaky-cam footage of people running through the pitch-black woods -- thereby becoming the very dull, clichéd thing it mocks.
  46. The Contender
    Graceless writing and shameless plot contrivance.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Rising Place
    Broadway dreamgirl Jennifer Holliday's musical interludes occasionally relieve this mélange of recycled social morality lessons.
  48. Jake Squared
    More enervating than it is ambitious, Jake Squared is partly a romantic comedy and mostly a pseudo-philosophical apology for self-absorption.
  49. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    Jones's documentary, named for the opening song on Foxtrot, is most effective as a poison-pen missive to Corporate Rock.
  50. The Bank
    Polished and visualized with a sharp sense of place, writer-director Robert Connolly's drama is propped up by bogus science (the relationship between stock undulations and the Mandelbrot set is never made plausible), and the characters are paint-by-numbers.
  51. Broadway Idiot
    It contains more praise than insights, and, chopped into several sections, the documentary could easily become a series of featurettes in the "Extras" section of an American Idiot DVD. Yet Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong still commands the screen.
  52. Khadak
    Khadak recedes deeper and deeper into esoterica as it progresses.
  53. (Untitled)
    A film only Hilton Kramer could love, (Untitled) aims wide and misses.
  54. 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.
  55. Agnivarsha: The Fire and the Rain
    Despite its candy-hued costumes, hyperbolic acting, sudden lapses into song, and mystical context (all Bollywood staples), it lacks "Lagaan's" sweep, humor, and colorful characters.
  56. Killer Elite
    Killer Elite is distinguished by one no-mercy, eye-gouging, testicle-punching brawl, and one whoppingly indifferent screenplay.
  57. Den of Thieves
    Between the candy of the Federal Reserve robbery itself — which features a marvelous running bit about the process of delivering Chinese food in a government-surveilled building — and the merry nonsense of Butler chugging Pepto-Bismol during a strategy session, Den of Thieves earns a nice spot in the watch-forty-minutes-on-a-rainy-day canon.
  58. The Man Who Cried
    The Man Who Cried is like a Yiddish generational tearjerker told from the perspective of the lost child rather than that of the bereaved parent.
  59. Lula, the Son of Brazil
    Forget "Son of Brazil": This syrupy origin story/biopic on the nation's beloved reformist president, whose second term ended in 2010, should be titled Mama's Boy.
  60. Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire
    All in all, Hijacking is less a movie than a litany of arguments intended as, or at least only useful as, a brickbat in the discourse, aimed at your neighbor's Republican noggin.
  61. Paper Man
    An artist-in-crisis piece run through a drab but quirk-conscious indie processor, Paper Man is everything a film like "Lost in Translation" fought not to be.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fear and Trembling
    A culture-clash comedy that takes the notion of Japanese otherness to ludicrous extremes.
  63. A Haunted House 2
    It may be a low bar, but Michael Tiddes's A Haunted House 2 is actually an improvement over its predecessor.
  64. The Battle of Pussy Willow Creek
    Despite Civil War homages—hazy vistas, silhouetted cannons, and even the famous Ken Burns pan over still photos—the imaginary heroes never spring to life.
  65. Good Hair
    Breezy, superficial documentary.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hit So Hard
    Unfortunately for Schemel, director P. David Ebersole seems to think these pop-up video footnotes are a substitute for narrative development and, more or less, forgets to edit down the rest of the tediously paced rockumentary.
  67. Orgasm Inc.
    Too scattered in its arguments and piecemeal in its sources to weave together a convincing institutional condemnation.
  68. Diary of a Mad Black Woman
    Rote melodrama.
  69. The Jacket
    A disappointing nosedive into the mainstream for John Maybury, the Derek Jarman acolyte who transitioned successfully from experimental work to features with 1998's hallucinatory Francis Bacon biopic "Love Is the Devil."
  70. Hostage
    Bruce looks hot and underplays handsomely as always, but Hostage is a steaming pile of siege clichés and screaming unlikelihoods.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Nesting
    Chuldenko doesn't aspire to hard realism, but a lifestyle comedy with hard-to-buy fundamentals and a central couple you can't invest in is a dubious proposition nonetheless.
  72. Firewall
    As used cars go, the latest and possibly last Harrison Ford thriller, Firewall, is no deal: It runs rough, stalls frequently, smells like the stale sweat of four dozen older movies, and handles like a blind mule.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Gothika
    Quickly abandoning the psychological for the supernatural, the movie collapses its premise into one painfully derivative pitch.
  74. Wicker Park
    Dippy romantic thriller.
  75. A Birder's Guide to Everything
    While it doesn't quite encompass everything, the film's still a bit too busy for its own good.
  76. No Such Thing
    Thematic muddle aside, the film's appeal lies in Burke's ranting charisma, Julie Christie's thankless turn as a sympathetic doctor, and Michael Spiller's radiant cinematography, which frequently captures the mythic grandeur that eludes Hartley's narrative grasp.
  77. Prime
    Not quite a romance by numbers, Prime is nevertheless a movie we need like a hole in the head.
  78. The Expendables 2
    Has the parallel between the actor and the mercenary's trade ever been so overt?
  79. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Benjamin Button is to the first half of the 20th century what "Gump" was to the second -- a panorama of the American experience as seen from the perspective of a wide-eyed Candide. Here as there, Roth reduces our complex times to a parade of shockingly straight-faced kitsch.
  80. I'm Not Scared
    The upshot is a general fog of two-dimensional characterization, slowly churning plot gearwork, and an ineffective air of forced lyricism.
  81. Willets Point
    A jarring fusion of blue-collar lament and the-more-you-know medical drama.
  82. The Lady
    Impersonally directed by cinéma du look pioneer Luc Besson, The Lady was written by first-timer Rebecca Frayn, whose script has all the elegance and nuance of Google Translate.
  83. 3, 2, 1... Frankie Go Boom
    Less inept than its worst-of-the-year title suggests, 3, 2, 1 . . . Frankie Go Boom nonetheless proves too ramshackle and aimless to ever achieve true absurdity.
  84. All the Light in the Sky
    [A] tediously naturalistic and fairly pointless no-budget indie about the compromises of middle-aged femininity.
  85. 24 Exposures
    Swanberg has made an inspiring career out of rejecting the aesthetic crimes of Hollywood. It's dispiriting, then, that he so doggedly indulges in its tradition of male gazing.
  86. All I Wish
    The jump-skip format renders the chemistry between Senna and Adam so incoherent that by the time you watch them have their big first kiss, then break up, then get back together again, it plays less like a real movie and instead one of those memory slideshows your iPhone photo album generates for you.
  87. Dreaming of Joseph Lees
    The last scene reads like an admission of defeat.
  88. Little Manhattan
    Who is this movie's target audience, anyway? Preteens will be bored stupid, while adults are unlikely to want to revisit puppy love in such grueling detail. The lingering, soft-focus, slo-mo shots of Rosemary that punctuate the action suggest a constituency I'd rather not contemplate.
  89. The Odd Life of Timothy Green
    What follows is a film as odd as its title character. Timothy flings grown-up ideas at the viewer but rips the teeth from them rather than risk our discomfort.
  90. This Time
    Tantalizing snippets from their combative history and rotating membership are tossed to the sidelines; the members' personality clashes and mutual psychoanalyzing hint at a much better story left untold.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Harsh Times
    Whatever political statement Ayer intended to make with his Gulf War veteran turned human time bomb is swamped by the movie's obnoxious badass envy, and Bale's gloating display of American-psycho fireworks, the kind of vein-popping show-boating that might as well be performed in a mirror.
  92. Father of Invention
    The rather unappealing character of Axel is indulged with every opportunity for redemption, as Spacey is indulged with every opportunity to showboat.
  93. Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
    A glorified informercial, complete with enough blandly upbeat guitar-cues to power all 22 seasons of "Real World" intros.
  94. Desert Wind
    Nicely rendered moments of casual intimacy between the men attest to the trip's therapeutic value, but very little of it transfers to the audience. The dull large-group scenes consist mostly of old standbys like writing problems on slips of paper and burning them.
  95. True Wolf
    Spongy with equanimity and stronger on introspection than exposition, the movie amounts to a crude assembly of sincere testimony, somehow too long at 76 minutes and maybe actually a job for Werner Herzog instead.
  96. Over the Hedge
    "Lady and the Tramp" all by its lonesome is worth a dozen of these meat-grinders -- crude commodities, plush toys and product placements in search of a story from which to hang their price tags.
  97. 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.
  98. The Secret Life of Words
    In due course skeletons will march out of closets, but the movie yields up its secrets with slow reluctance.
  99. Scary Movie
    A big, stupid bull with bodacious tits, but that's not to say it doesn't dish out some lite hardy-hars.
  100. Bread and Roses
    A genuine consciousness-raiser, but it's less a social-realist narrative than a high-volume rally.
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