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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    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    London to Brighton
    LTB offers a fresh (if grimy) contribution to kitchen-sink realism, but little to the tiresome persistence of vicious British gangster chic.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    She's All That
    Amid all the cameos (Anna Paquin, Usher, Lil' Kim), only Prinze, who has the ethereal, gentlemanly quality of a young Anthony Perkins, gets enough screen time to really make an impression.
  3. Reincarnated
    The film is as lightweight as the ganja-puffing is plentiful, little more than a vanity project that allows its subject to wax philosophical on his past triumphs, tragedies, and spiritual development (aided by Louis Farrakhan) from gangland pimp to nonviolent family man.
  4. William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
    What makes the film fascinating is the anguished dance around hagiography performed by two of his daughters, who wrote, directed, and narrated the movie.
  5. Casino Royale
    Things pick up a little bit when Orson Welles, Peter Sellers, and Woody Allen stumble into the scene, but the total experience remains boringly incoherent.
    • 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.
  7. Ted Bundy
    In the end, Ted Bundy's only justification is the director's common but unexplored fascination with the frustrated maniac; there's no larger point, and little social context. "Badlands" this ain't.
  8. Injeong sajeong bol geot eobtda
    Lee's trickery is dazzling in flashes but also monotonously strenuous -- the derangement factor is high but there's little evidence of authentic lunacy.
  9. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
    There's little drama here, but there is a touching sense of reflection.
  10. Mistaken for Strangers
    Mistaken for Strangers doesn't reveal anything about Tom but his own insecurity.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Before the Fall
    The movie is too middlebrow to show us the superman-type sexual heroics they must've engaged in, or even allow the illicit subtext to float to the surface (as Sokurov does in Father and Son)--instead we get tepid moralizing on dehumanization in the military.
  12. The Pact
    A musty ghost story that morphs into a sluggish serial-killer mystery, Nicholas McCarthy's film tries to distinguish itself by minimizing dialogue and settings, a stripped-down approach that extends to sketchy characters and a script rife with convenient, easy-to-assemble clues.
  13. Monster House
    The coolest thing about Monster House is that Kathleen Turner's face was actually motion-captured to create the house's movements, but actual human beings on-screen might have ratcheted up the tension, of which there is none.
  14. The Good German
    However flavorsome though, The Good German is seriously deficient in the stars' star power and narrative excitement. The movie is lovingly framed, carefully lit, and fatally insipid. The direction is slack; the pacing is perfunctory.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Where Do We Go Now?
    Like the hashish-laced pastries the ladies make to sedate the male population, the film feels like it has been dosed with sugar to mask its distressingly bitter taste.
  16. J'aimerais pas crever un dimanche
    It manages to be both ponderous and silly.
  17. Blood
    Blood wants to be a Greek tragedy about family loyalties, guilt, and the fall of a dynasty, but the characters never manage to connect with one another, separated by gulfs of melodramatic angst and the plot demands of a boringly unspooled police procedural.
  18. Keeping Mum
    Obvious, simplistic, and never funny, Johnson's movie may be useful only as real estate porn--Cornwall and the Isle of Man never looked so super cute.
  19. Mountain Men
    Writer-director Cameron Labine seems to want to prove the obsolescence of the lovable-slacker stereotype even as he flogs it for entertainment value.
  20. The Wolf of Wall Street
    There are hints of greatness, one or two artfully constructed scenes that remind you why you look forward to new Scorsese films in the first place. But as a highly detailed portrait of true-life corruption and bad behavior in the financial sector, Wolf is pushy and hollow, too much of a bad thing.
  21. The Rocker
    This is sugary-sweet stuff--pop instead of rock.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Justice
    Though director Oppenheimer has a nice comedic touch, an achronological structure and distracting vignettes thwart the film's emotional designs.
  23. Refuge
    Even at its well-meaning best, Refuge is listless.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    A Knight's Tale
    At best harmless, if not quite fun.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tonight You're Mine
    The authenticity baked into the production doesn't redeem the absurdly improbable premise, the attractive actors don't do anything to make the caricatures they're playing feel real, and the aggressive hipness of the film is queasily dated - it's the cinematic equivalent of the clearance corner at Urban Outfitters.
  26. 31
    Rob Zombie can do better than 31. For proof, just watch any other Rob Zombie movie.
  27. MI-5
    Led by the honorably dour Firth and the charisma-free Harington, MI-5 is convoluted and dull, though Harry's revenge against that dastardly mole is pleasingly diabolical. But it's too little too late.
  28. 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."
  29. Elysium
    Damon is as buff as ever, maybe even more so... But watching him lumber through Elysium's bramble of lofty ideals is no damn fun.
  30. Beyond Vanilla
    The cheerful how-to aspect ("cut and file your nails!") adds to the sense that the whole thing seems to have drifted in from some late-night infomercial netherland.
  31. Burnt
    The movie gets duller and less focused as it wears on.
  32. Paranormal Activity 4
    Screenwriter Christopher Landon, along with co-directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, make a truly lame attempt at establishing a supernatural mythology to explain all this, but their real energies go to amping up the jarring sound cues, darting shadows, and last-shot shocker (so goofily weird this time that you'll laugh out loud) that make this franchise a perennial crowd-pleaser.
  33. The Fountain
    Solemn, flashy, and flabbergasting, The Fountain--adapted by Darren Aronofsky from his own graphic novel--should really be called The Shpritz. The premise is lachrymose, the sets are clammy, and the metaphysics all wet.
  34. Viktor
    Aside from some inspired uses of chiaroscuro lighting, the movie around Depardieu is mostly derivative.
  35. Hot Rod
    Like so many movies from the SNL factory, there are perhaps 10 to 15 minutes of good, gag-worthy material here stretched out to interminable lengths. Or to put it another way: It's a very small dick in an oversized box.
  36. Bicentennial Man
    Amid the complacent self-congratulation...is a bizarre reactionary bent.
  37. The Mystical Laws
    The Mystical Laws is an (un)holy mess, a religious tract masquerading as a paint-by-numbers hero's journey.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Tony N' Tina's Wedding
    The not-exactly-long-awaited movie version is here, trading in stereotypes just as ineptly as the original.
  39. Locker 13
    Locker 13 brings the hurt, and not in a good way.
  40. Saw II
    What's worth noting is how much greater deliberation was given to the marketing than the screenplay of this cursory dud, rushed to theaters exactly a year after its amusing predecessor.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Freeway
    As it is, Witherspoon's sweet-as-peach-pie Southern accent only grates and writer-director Bright's incessant winking at the audience bespeaks a project that was running on empty before shooting started. [22 Oct 1996, p.88]
    • Village Voice
  42. Is Anybody There?
    Even Crowley, who seems to have a knack with overloaded material, can't quite bring the thing in for a safe landing in all the slush.
  43. High Crimes
    Secret trials and buried atrocities are no match for a plucky (and rich, and svelte) young heroine, least of all Ms. Ashley Judd, who eyebrow-cocks her way through Carl Franklin's witless High Crimes.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Zerophilia
    A case of provocative issues at the mercy of unskilled execution, Zerophilia is a psychological-horror comedy that pokes its toe into dangerous sexual waters but then scurries away.
  45. Siberia
    This movie so badly wants to be a sexy thriller, but it is neither sexy nor thrilling.
  46. Badland
    Writer-director Francesco Lucente's overconfident, emotionally forced 160-minute opus offers trite antiwar platitudes--at best--in chronicling the anguished existence of a soldier who can't shake the horrors he experienced in Fallujah.
  47. Take Me
    While the film, to its credit, doesn't become a trite morality play, the ending is thin and contrived nonetheless.
  48. The Possession
    Bornedal's fondness for punctuating abrupt cuts to black with a solitary piano-key note is so pathological that it soon turns risible.
  49. Evelyn
    Every other line is a coy Oirishism, and Brosnan, despite being Irish, isn't any more convincing than twinkly-eyed barmaid Julianna Margulies.
  50. I Will Follow You Into the Dark
    The scare tactics are rather ho-hum—suffocation nightmares, disappearing necklaces, loud noises—and the ending is incongruously sentimental. You'll be more frightened walking through a graveyard at dusk.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Breakin' All the Rules
    The threadbare plot gets considerable padding from alternately psychotic, lecherous, and greedy Caucasians.
  52. 4 Minute Mile
    The narrative is so formulaic as to feel immediately contrived, with seemingly every plot device taken from another film.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Kill Me Later
    Her every gesture exaggerated, Blair acts as if she's performing in a silent film, but unfortunately, the film itself isn't silent -- the jam-packed alterna-rock soundtrack further emphasizes the obvious.
  54. JeruZalem
    Not much substance is buried beneath the irritating style.
  55. London Has Fallen
    The action never stops once the first car bomb is triggered, but the second half of London Has Fallen takes place mostly in the dark, where nobody can see the budget.
  56. Chocolat
    Airy, pseudo-folkloric gibberish at best.
  57. The Dark Below
    The problem — aside from the movie being simple and gimmicky — is in the execution — Schulze's, not the villain's.
  58. The Players
    An extended riff on marital infidelity, this is the rare omnibus film that isn't just a mixed bag -- it very nearly succeeds at being uniformly bad.
  59. The Book of Life
    The film's rote right-makes-might fantasy wouldn't be so obnoxious if pandering to the lowest common denominator wasn't its default mode.
  60. Johnny English
    Smug with timely zingers like "The only thing the French should be allowed to host is an invasion," the movie's recommended strictly for Bush advisers.
  61. The Strip
    Could Dave Foley prostitute his talent to amuse any further without actually becoming a prostitute? In a plunging step down from emceeing celebrity poker, Foley provides a recognizable face to Jameel Khan's picked-over Goodwill bin of workplace comedy, The Strip.
  62. Life on the Line
    The country songs that play over the credits offer more arresting detail about life on the line than the film manages in 100 minutes.
  63. Revolver
    It's no return to rock, this, but rather Ritchie's soporific, proggy-conceptual Film of Ideas, with Vivaldi interludes, fussbudget set design, recurrent references to chess, and a hit man inexplicably got up as Tati's Mr. Hulot.
  64. K-11
    More like an on-the-nose parody of Lee Daniels directing an episode of Oz, K-11 is a pulpy, tone-deaf mess of confused directorial intent—exploitation laughs one minute, somber tragedy the next.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Waist Deep
    For its ever shifting attitudes toward men, women, and murder, Waist Deep is one of the sloppiest movies ever to reach the screen.
  66. Last Will and Embezzlement
    Mickey Rooney's own ordeal of being swindled by his wife's son gives the material a tiny bit of star power, but his mismatched interview clips merely exacerbate the earnest but graceless documentary's editorial clumsiness, aesthetic flatness, and endless repetition.
  67. The Other Woman
    Though lazily mocking hyper-vigilant parenting, the film treats the moldiest clichés - as gospel.
  68. Daydream Believer
    Eisenstadt has nowhere to go with her catalogue of relaxed urban crazies, and at 79 minutes, the movie is padded out by four song interludes too many.
  69. $pent
    So committed to its by-the-numbers banality you wonder why it isn't part of the fall TV lineup.
  70. By the Sea
    The film doesn't demonstrate belief in much of anything except that audiences must be so desperate for a peek into these stars' private lives that we'll invest energy in their mopey fictional counterparts, who can't even invest in themselves.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Thorns
    Intent on proving that five tough guys in suits walking towards the camera in slow motion really is the coolest thing ever.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Big Bad Mama
    Big Bad Mama is essentially a soft-core porno movie without the courage of Russ Meyer. [02 Dec 1974, p.90]
    • Village Voice
  73. The Middle of the World
    Director Vicente Amorim's dramatic instincts evoke after-school specials (most of the drama entails the clan's brooding teenager chomping at the parental bit), and his visual ideas are restricted to aping "City of God's" fish-eye ambience and hectic editing.
  74. Stolen
    It's uncertain whether or not Taranto and debuting helmer Anders Anderson looked at the "Law & Order: SVU" and "Cold Case" episodes that also used the crime as a plot thread; the sub-televisual incompetence of their film suggests not.
  75. Life, Love, Soul
    Admirable only for its sincere responsibility-over-selfishness message and for giving "The Wire" alums Chad Coleman and Jamie Hector some big-screen work, Life, Love, Soul otherwise proves to be just a low-rent Tyler Perry–style melodrama.
  76. Last Rampage
    Even though this dusty bit of true crime is limp and flimsy as hell, Last Rampage does give a few seasoned actors the opportunity to chew all the scenery they can in a 93-minute movie.
  77. Child of God
    As it stands, Child of God is brazenly, outstandingly bad, as vague, pretentious, and pointless as its sorry title. But it's certainly memorable, full of inadvertent howlers and destined to create a whole new subgenre of burlesque, audience-torturing cinema.
  78. Programming the Nation?
    The results are irritating, occasionally educational, and frustratingly insight-free.
  79. The Last Time
    Beyond his technical clumsiness, Caleo seems convinced that real men exert power by being A-type jerks and all women are sluts. If nothing else, this film serves as a troubling psychological profile of a filmmaker who feels scornfully cynical toward nothing in particular.
  80. About a Boy
    Since the central odd couple have no rapport, their bond never seems to progress past mutual usury.
  81. Cavemen
    A tiresome film that itself knows nothing but other rom-com plots.
  82. Dressed
    David John Swajeski, who directed, produced, and edited this documentary on the fledgling fashionista, snags his film on clichés, poor pacing, and an unwillingness or inability to push his subject beyond talk-show pop-psych babble when the topic is interior life and wounds.
  83. Assassin's Creed
    The Assassin's Creed movie is about all the parts you might skip in the games.
  84. The Butterfly Effect
    You have to, if not love, at least not mind a movie in which the very act of Ashton Kutcher reading is enough of a cosmic trauma to rip a hole in the fabric of space-time.
  85. Louder Than Words
    Louder Than Words obviously means well, but its brand of cheap uplift is the kind of cheese that actually breeds cynicism.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Flesh for the Beast
    It's all gleefully over the top, but neither particularly campy nor scary. For those who like a little t&a with their blood and gore, however, Flesh for the Beast serves up ample portions of each.
  87. Performance
    Performance seems more like eye candy than castor oil in the brave new world of "Freddy Got Fingered."
  88. The Chameleon
    Screenwriters, take note: Unless your story is a whodunit, it's an unforgivable flaw to telegraph early and often that, sometime during the final act, we should anticipate the proverbial rug to be pulled.
  89. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
    The nomenclature varies slightly, but there's little new or exciting in City of Bones. For strong female role models and unique fantasy settings, stick with The Hunger Games.
  90. Stage Fright
    Stage Fright's lopsided tone wouldn't be so confounding if the horror elements worked or if writer-director Jerome Sable's music, co-composed with Eli Batalion, weren't so forgettable.
  91. Hot Sugar's Cold World
    Over the course of the film, Koenig, a sallow, heavy-lidded youth who looks like he could be aged anywhere between 19 and 36, is revealed to be both an unspiring artist and an odious protagonist.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Red Riding Hood
    RRH veers between monotonous, soapy seriousness and camp.
  93. The Grandfather
    Not only is the dialogue endless...it's like driving behind a 15 mph geezer on a one-way street.
  94. Blue Jasmine
    Blue Jasmine is so relentlessly clueless about the ways real human beings live, and so eager to make the same points about human nature that Allen has made dozens of times before, that it seems like a movie beamed from another planet.
  95. Porto
    All of this is attractive, yet I felt nothing for these people, their pain, or their possible lost future.
  96. Least Among Saints
    There's nothing but skin-deep warmth to Least Among Saints, a film in which any authority figure who can't magically sober up and play surrogate daddy for a spell is treated as either a meddler or a well-meaning, do-nothing skeptic.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    A Marine Story
    The movie becomes a lesbian amalgam of "Walking Tall" and "Billy Jack." Relentlessly clumsy and predictable, A Marine Story is set in late 2008, just as a new political breeze is blowing. But its abrupt, wishful postscript is still just a fairy tale.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Breaking Point
    Breaking Point is so dry you may wish it had the good sense to be a campy hoot.
  99. Romeo Must Die
    The wall-to-wall rap score is as kinetic as the acrobatic fight choreography, and nothing else matters.
  100. And So It Goes
    The result is a lumbering attempt at sweet-and-saucy romance, all affected emotion and strained bad-boy humor.
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