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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    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    What a Girl Wants
    A culture-shock/daddy-meets-girl romantic comedy, WAGW is a sanitized adventure for the Mary Kate-and-Ashley set.
  2. Girl in Progress
    Unconvincing, flawed matriarch Mendes and junior showboat Ramirez appear to be acting in entirely different movies.
  3. Strangers with Candy
    Strangers With Candy regularly lampoons junkie-reparation melodramas and after-school specials, but with so little focus it's never clear what the film, or even Sedaris's vaudeville buffoon incarnation, is supposed to be parodying. That may be its fascination for some--it's a satire without a baseline, free-floating in its own self-indulgent ether.
  4. Thor: The Dark World
    Lacking Iron Man’s wit, the Hulk’s brains, and the Captain’s ideals, he’s in peril of going poof himself if the franchise doesn’t figure out how to capitalize on its most glorious hero.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mambo italiano
    Old annoying ethnic family stereotypes meet new annoying gay-relationship stereotypes in this candidate for "Kiss Me Guido's" heretofore uncontested niche.
  6. Identity Thief
    McCarthy gets bashed about like a Stooge, and she bashes back with riotous abandon. Sadly, the rest of the movie is a shambles. So, let it be said, this one time only: Here is a comedy that really could use more inter-gender violence.
  7. A Fierce Green Fire
    There's no consistent narrative thread to carry the film from start to finish, and A Fierce Green Fire fails to open any singular intellectual or psychological point of investigation.
  8. Assault on Wall Street
    An hour of these repetitive, predictable disasters should wear down all but the most bailout-hating viewers.
  9. Men in Black III
    Despite such ubiquitous timidity, one can pluck out a few pleasing distractions here.
  10. Windtalkers
    At once chintzy and grandiose, awash in battlefield sentimentality and platoon clichés.
  11. The Ottoman Lieutenant
    This movie's got everything except gravity or a sense of emotional coherence.
  12. W.
    A painful movie to endure.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Katy Perry: Part of Me
    Her savvy for self-presentation, though admirable from a business standpoint, makes for a more boring movie. You never get the sense that the camera was ever allowed to see anything that Perry didn't want it to see.
  14. Coastlines
    For some fans, the taste of on-location color matters most, but Nuñez's idea of the characters' ordinariness translates to flavorlessness.
  15. American Sniper
    The humble Kyle onscreen is Kyle with his flaws written out. We're not watching a biopic. We're watching a drama about an idealized soldier, a patriot beyond reproach, which bolsters Kyle's legend while gutting the man.
  16. Hare Krishna! The Mantra, the Movement and the Swami Who Started It All
    John Griesser’s film about Srila Prabhupada, founder of the Krishna movement, is not so much a documentary as it is a hagiography.
  17. 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.
  18. Kids of Today
    Refraining images of the mind-controlled sleepwalker Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari seem to submit Adrien as a Svengali-like figure to the kids, even as his "Iggy used to say . . ." pickups to fresh-faced scenesters don't seem to pay off.
  19. This Beautiful Fantastic
    There is such a thing as too sweet, and after this film, you'll feel a toothache coming on.
  20. Pontypool
    For a film about the perils of too much talk, there's quite a lot of babbling presented as profundity. The political statements in Pontypool, much like those in another recent Canadian offering, Atom Egoyan's trite terrorism hand-wringer "Adoration," seem all the less provocative for appearing several years too late--McDonald's film might have had more punch if it were released when Bluetooth first rolled out.
  21. McCanick
    [A] numbingly inert series of dirty-cop clichés that abruptly builds to an ephemerally poignant climax.
  22. Tideland
    Gilliam has suffered more than his share of butchered projects, but with this exercise in kamikaze auteurism, he appears to have made exactly the mess he wanted.
  23. Twelve
    Though Crawford's bangs and facial hair are the most art-directed aspect of the movie, he's costumed to look like a member of the Trenchcoat Mafia (Madison Avenue branch).
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Soaked in Bleach
    The problem is, when facing down Love's and Cobain's outsize, junked-up personalities, Grant seems a total naïf.
  25. Barefoot in the Park
    Gene Saks directs his first film so clumsily that he even muffs Mike Nichol’s exploitation of the climbing the stairs gag that kept Neil Simon’s feeble farce running for 79 years on Broadway.
  26. Trumbo
    The film fails as a portrait, and it's not much better at drama.
  27. High Fidelity
    It may seem perverse to fault a movie for being too accurate, but when surface accuracy is coupled with tunnel vision about self and society the result is a wee bit irritating.
  28. The Salton Sea
    Eccentric enough to stave off doldrums, Caruso's self-conscious debut is also eminently forgettable.
  29. Billy & Buddy
    Despite a few manic comic episodes, writer-directors Alexandre Charlot and Franck Magnier never again capture the sense of joyous connection that can exist between child and pet.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Justin Bieber's Believe
    This time around, we enter the now 19-year-old's world while he sits behind the piano, hitting a melody that's not nearly as memorable as the focused expression that we will see repeatedly throughout the movie.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dark Streets
    The film has its shallow pleasures, but once it becomes obvious that that's all Dark Streets has going for it, the affected performances and forced tough-guy speak stop feeling playful and start to become oppressive.
  32. Rob the Mob
    The stickups, while plenty funny... lack any sense of dread or danger. And while De Felitta has a knack for slaphappy eroticism — with the feisty Arianda on board, the sex scenes have genuine heat — he also resorts too often to sappy lyricism.
  33. The Concert
    Beyond fans of Mélanie Laurent--who furiously fingers a fiddle and wears flashback wigs--The Concert may appeal to those who delight in stereotypes.
  34. Terminator Genisys
    Genisys is all bullets and bombs, action without pause, as though if the ride stops the whole thing will collapse under its own weight.
  35. Love in the Time of Money
    Mattei is tiresomely grave and long-winded, as if circularity itself indicated profundity.
  36. Spider-Man 2
    As much as I enjoy Spidey's high-flying Cheez-Doodle swoops through the skyscraper canyons of a digitally rearranged midtown Manhattan, I get no kick from his angst, especially since in this incarnation, as opposed to the '60s comic book version, he's more innocuously depressed than defensively paranoid.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Unraveled
    It's a fascinating fishbowl in concept, yet Simon's storytelling is unevenly textured and oddly listless - fatal for a film about a banal document - pushing felon clock-watching to a known outcome.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    [Rec] 2
    Predictably, [REC] 2 is higher-budgeted than its barebones predecessor, which only means that the spectacular degradation of video in scenes where the zombies get in close and start chomping will test the limits of any HDTV. If only [REC] 2's rabid baddies knew how to push [STOP].
  39. Crazy Eyes
    The exuberant editing and puke-into-the-camera edginess indicate a film more interested in boasting of hell-raising than in exorcising it.
  40. Rebel in the Rye
    This thanklessly watchable film, recut since its mixed Sundance premiere, may not warrant Holden Caulfield’s trademark judgment of phoniness — but, like any clichéd writing, deserves rejection.
  41. Europa Report
    Simply put, the care and thoughtfulness that goes into footage-faking has not been applied to the film's script or structure.
  42. Rat Race
    Zucker's frenzied trifle is painless, with a few decent running gags -- and an ocean of bad ones.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Barbershop Punk
    Dovetails with the current Occupy message but still feels rather stale.
  44. Finding Mr. Right
    A pleasant enough way to spend two hours if you're not looking to be surprised.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Onmyoji: The Yin Yang Master
    Succeeds in visual splendor (it was shot on location in Kyoto) but falls flat on characterization.
  46. 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.
  47. Kimjongilia
    Arguably the most dysfunctional culture of the past few centuries, North Korea is a cosmically mad movie waiting to happen. But for now, Heikin's is merely insubstantial.
    • 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."
  49. Mighty Fine
    The mood is generally melodramatic and ends as mushy, aided by the soft-focus cinematography that drenches it all in melancholic nostalgia.
  50. MirrorMask
    The film galumphs along in static panels, prioritizing flash over thought, hyperextending a story that would barely sustain a children's picture book.
  51. The Ringer
    An uncomfortable intermingling of message movie and gross-out comedy, a sporadically funny vehicle that indicts its audience for laughing.
  52. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
    Curiously drab and airless, tinted to a distracting bluish miasma that suggests an advertisement for antidepressants, Peter Landesman’s Mark Felt is the wrong movie at the right time.
  53. Little Birds
    The dialogue is as stock as the characters, and James's visual palette never surpasses the adequate.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    They Might Be Giants
    The wit turns into Christmas Card cuteness, and the film winds up, in the blinding bathos of the last scene, in a veritable miasma of mush. [24 Jun 1971, p.60]
    • Village Voice
  55. Rape Me
    Wit is in short supply -- although this journey to the end of the night derives a certain amount of punkish energy from its crude editing, cruddy-looking close-ups, strident soundtrack, and overall volatility.
  56. Five Dances
    If only verisimilitude equaled quality. But unfortunately, schmaltzy music and drab melodrama drag down the otherwise graceful moves of Five Dances.
  57. After.Life
    Somewhere in Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's awkward debut feature is a macabre and almost quaint Gothic mystery begging to be left alone.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Shall We Dance
    While Suo's original was hardly a masterpiece, it featured a subtle performance from Koji Yakusho. Gere doesn't even compare, playing the part of a despondent lawyer with the empathy of a mannequin.
  59. King of the Jungle
    Rosenfeld's film doesn't have much of a story to tell and tells it rather routinely.
  60. Redlegs
    The trio's mourning feels more like immature self-absorption.
  61. Hot Summer Nights
    Elijah Bynum’s messy debut film is only bearable thanks to Chalamet’s charisma.
  62. 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.
  63. Backwards
    Subplots are introduced only to be resolved within minutes, characters jettisoned at a moment's notice. Those who can't do, teach; those who settle apparently end up pretty happy.
  64. Drive Hard
    If you’re not expecting too much, Drive Hard is mindlessly entertaining, but it lacks that spark of madness that might have made it truly fun. At least Cusack is able to shed some of his usual overseriousness.
  65. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
    It's this strategy (however unconscious), and not simply a lack of directing talent, that makes Hedwig so relentlessly assaultive, heavy-handed, and emotionally monochromatic.
  66. Northern Borders
    It's easy to get lost in the natural beauty of Vermont, and Mosher (who worked on the film with several students as part of a Marlboro College program) clearly takes joy in doing so. The liveliest counterpart to that striking landscape isn't Dern, but rather Jessica Hecht as his wayward daughter, who hits all the grace notes the rest of the film tends to miss.
  67. The Bridge of San Luis Rey
    An honorable but dull attempt to translate a neglected literary source to the screen.
  68. Shadow World
    The director posits that the world is now shaped by clandestine arms deals conducted, often illegally, by the U.S. and Great Britain, but Shadow World sells its argument about the West's criminality not with reporting but through paranoid propaganda.
  69. Special Forces
    For a while Degan's serious charisma also kind of makes Islamic extremist fundamentalism look cool and badass, which could have been hilariously subversive if director Stéphane Rybojad had pushed it further.
  70. Nature Calls
    The unmitigated disaster of the camping trip just stays disastrous, the story never really finding its way from adversity to heroic redemption.
  71. Nine Queens
    Has a customarily jovial air but a deficit of flim-flam inventiveness.
  72. Smart People
    It's like the entire season of a sitcom whittled down to a single episode. There's no time for characterization, no room for emotion, no interest in anything other than moving the story forward. It's all action, no reaction. One minute they're miserable; 90 minutes later, aww better.
  73. Old Goats
    [An] eager-to-please but creaky and shambling movie.
  74. 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.
  75. Adorenarin doraibu
    Little more than a cartoon, and not a funny one at that.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Lynch
    Much of this is tedious--no more or less exciting than surveillance-cam footage of a regional sales manager, even if this one's desk offers a glimpse at one point of a legless baby doll.
  77. That Demon Within
    Rock-dumb Hong Kong thriller That Demon Within is exhausting, and only sometimes batshit enough to be engaging.
  78. My Wife Is an Actress
    Gainsbourg is virtually incidental to her mate's screeching navel-serenade, which maintains a stranglehold on the declarative first-person mode of its title.
  79. Night of Henna
    Hobbles a likable cast with dialogue flatter than Bollywood's cheesiest.
  80. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
    Most of the gags in this pandering spoof are about their own schematic nature — they’re jokes about how you’re smarter than the jokes.
  81. Hey, Happy!
    Gonick's visceral impulses have drawn comparisons with John Waters, but the starry-eyed collision of gross-out gags and candy-sweet sentiment owes as much of a debt to the Farrellys as Bruce LaBruce.
  82. The Stepford Wives
    Almost desperate to show it gets its own point. What's funny is that the joke--"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" reconfigured as anti-feminist backlash--was scarcely fresh when Bryan Forbes shot the first movie version nearly 30 years ago.
  83. Ramchand Pakistani
    In the end, however, Ramchand Pakistani sadly negates its intentions with frequent TV producer Jabbar's soapy storytelling and too-clean production values.
  84. The Color Wheel
    The Color Wheel is funny, but it has a dark streak that takes it into increasingly creepy territory as the siblings face down a procession of people who are even more screwed-up than they are.
  85. Set Fire to the Stars
    An energetic, well-acted, handsomely mounted b&w literary tell-all whose script would be laughed out of the room by its famous subjects.
  86. The Motel Life
    The Motel Life too often revisits the same emotions and sentiments, leaving us with a portrait that feels frustratingly simple.
  87. Bring It On
    She (Dunst) provides the only major element of Bring It On that plays as tweaking parody rather than slick, strident, body-slam churlishness.
  88. A Bird of the Air
    The cast detracts, too: Fiona, a flighty loner in the book, is a grating twit in Nichols's hands, and Hurst, while likeable, is flat and too hunky. The bird's got more charisma, which in a better movie would've been the point.
  89. Even Money
    The problem with ensemble films, and this one in particular, is that they often flit instead of float between story arcs. With deep lags in momentum, it is this lack of cohesion that nearly cancels out what can be great about ensemble films: the performances.
  90. Eyes Wide Shut
    Feels like a rough draft at best.
  91. 5 Star Day
    Gigandet fills every close-up with flirtatious face wrinkles, embarrassed smiles, and anything else he can think of, to the point where Jake seems downright spastic; although not terribly good at acting, Gigandet seeks to compensate for this fact by doing a lot of it.
  92. The Greening of Whitney Brown
    This is intended as one of those kid's comeuppance stories, in which a new maturity is won through contact with salt-of-the-earth types and honest labor but is done with an almost total lack of charm.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Standing Up
    The execution lacks the whimsical charm and nuance of similarly plotted Moonrise Kingdom as well as the power and clarity of 2011 documentary Bully.
  94. Brimstone
    The filmmaker isn't as nimble as he is ambitious, though, and you'll feel all 148 minutes of Brimstone's runtime — just maybe not in the way Koolhoven wants you to.
  95. Bottle Shock
    The movie should have been more like Rickman: sparkling and light, with just a hint of acid. Instead, it's a huge gulp of vinegar.
  96. Looking for Kitty
    It might be the most maturely conceived role in Burns's films, but the plot around it is flimsy, the visual storytelling simpleminded, and the general ideas for character one-note. At 78 minutes, the movie says howdy, rewards little, and does not test its welcome.
  97. The Liberator
    Bolivar is eye-rollingly romanticized as a wonderful lover and an even better fighter in Alberto Arvelo's lushly produced, dully reverential The Liberator.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Pianomania
    Directors Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis fail to plumb their subject's frustrations or any other insightful biographical details.
  99. Songs from the Second Floor
    Despite some deadpan, Jacques Tati-like orchestration and occasional sight gags, there's no real pleasure in the game -- Songs From the Second Floor is more absurd than funny.
  100. A Novel Romance
    Cohabitation "commandments" and talk of "chick flicks" further send the material into a cutesy tailspin, with the script's low point an egregious scene featuring Nate sneaking a peek at a silhouette of Jenny undressing behind a curtain.
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