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. Girl Play
    Greenspan and Harmon's paltry song of themselves concludes with five minutes of outtakes, capping the self-love.
  2. Ass Backwards
    The episodic story and minimal budget result in a small canvas over which these two huge characters dominate.
  3. Flypaper
    Slick, manic, excruciatingly hollow entry in the exhausted subgenre of misfit bank-heist comedies.
  4. 1911
    If the success of epic storytelling were determined by the sheer number of unnecessary on-screen name tags, 1911 would be a masterpiece. But the small matters of characterization, audience identification, and scene-making are entirely absent here.
  5. Inescapable
    Inescapable isn't a terrible movie, but absent its ripped-from-the-headlines setting it's unremarkable.
  6. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
    There's little drama here, but there is a touching sense of reflection.
  7. Aardvark
    Aardvark, the first feature from writer-director Brian Shoaf, is so inane that several times it put this critic into a fugue state. Meandering in message or plot, the film proves to be not just incoherent but excruciatingly boring, quite a feat with a cast that includes Jenny Slate, Jon Hamm, Sheila Vand, and, sure, Zachary Quinto.
  8. Black Out
    A self-aware, borderline self-reflexive action-comedy from the Netherlands, Arne Toonen's Black Out is derivative in a way that undermines its wry sense of self.
  9. Freddy vs. Jason
    About as threadbare as a favorite childhood plushy. What's more, trying to keep the story line of strained meta-sequel Freddy Vs. Jason straight requires too much of a cogitative investment.
  10. Be Cool
    Rock is brave, fully invested in his character, and with a wide-open face and foolish grin, outrageously funny. It's a singular performance achieved without condescension or camp. Who'd a-thunk it?
  11. Gimme Shelter
    Though the arc of the film is as saccharine as a Precious Moments figurine — and it'll play that way for audiences who can't be bothered to look closer — Hudgens is too honest to believe in simple, happy endings.
  12. Burying the Ex
    Dante took what could have been B-movie exploitation, and he turned it into jokes Charlie Sheen would shoot down.
  13. Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer
    The incessant tumult drowns out any real message for the kids - or pleasure for their parents. It's a film so obnoxiously frantic that its most restrained element is a banjo-strumming elementary school teacher played by none other than '90s tween-mugging icon Jaleel "Urkel" White.
  14. Son of God
    Son of God is a narrative shambles, more thudding than thunderous, shot with no spirit or distinction, always feeling like a sprawling TV miniseries cut up to fit into theatrical running time.
  15. The Tourist
    A different kind of surveillance thriller - an expensive, star-gazing Hollywood one.
  16. Dieu est grand, je suis toute petite
    A grating cycle of squabbles, sloppy kissing, and rapprochements.
  17. What's the Worst That Could Happen?
    I'd rather watch a forgotten houseplant dehydrate and die.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Confessions of a Burning Man
    Less sentiment and more peculiarity would have limned a richer, though probably less audition-tape-worthy, reflection of Burning Man's 25,000-strong community of the absurd.
  19. The Living Wake
    From an opening newsreel biography to a climactic Viking funereal ceremony, the film's absurdity proves oppressive, its linguistic cartwheels so mirthless, and its meticulous Wes Anderson–indebted set design and visual compositions so self-conscious, that the ridiculousness feels petrified.
  20. 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.
  21. The Pact 2
    The directors demonstrate confident technique in most of the scare scenes, but their uncertain touch with actors and dialogue makes a cock-up of the climax.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Autumn Lights
    Autumn Lights examines love while embracing that philosophy of melancholia, and it manages to do so without plunging into tragedy or melodrama. Like the remote region of Iceland where it’s set, the film offers a quiet, thoughtful escape.
  23. Domino
    The script, allegedly by "Donnie Darko's" Richard Kelly, throws together tangentially related plots like cats in a sack.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    xXx: State of the Union
    The winking title X Cubed somehow eluded the makers of this sequel, along with plot coherency, character development, or clever explosions of genre convention.
  25. Wrath of the Titans
    What it lacks are the very elements that made the first movie such a surprise: wit and nerve.
  26. The Lone Ranger
    The Lone Ranger has it all, but what you end up with is not much. It's an extravagantly squandered opportunity.
  27. Evan Almighty
    It marks an unfortunate low point in the history of recent American comedy. There goes Steve Carell's perfect game.
  28. The Face of an Angel
    The Face of an Angel may not be like any other whodunit you've seen, but it's also only superficially smarter than the genre it defines itself against.
    • 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.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Seven Days in Utopia
    For a time, the film shoulders its hokum rather well, with Black strutting convincingly and Duvall's mouthy mugging mostly in check. But all those shots of heavenly shafts of light eventually climax in unabashed Christian conversion.
  31. Charlie St. Cloud
    This handsomely shot melodrama has a twist too peculiar to dismiss as some two-bit Nicholas Sparks weepie.
  32. After the Dark
    After the Dark is a shaggy dog story but an intriguing and frequently beautiful one.
  33. Cold Comes the Night
    Most of the film's major happenings are either illogical or, much more damningly, not especially thrilling.
  34. Miracle at St. Anna
    You may begin to wonder if Lee really initiated this project or if it only fell into his hands after Roberto Benigni proved unavailable.
  35. Bad Company
    Predictably soulless techno-tripe, this Bruckheimer-in-a-can thriller is leavened only by the ludicrous notion of Chris Rock playing separated twins.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Crew
    The humor is even more geriatric than the cast.
  37. Showboy
    So amateurish that its awkward Whoopi Goldberg cameo actually adds a touch of class, Showboy is an ill-conceived, often implausible hybrid of fact and fiction.
  38. Love Don't Cost a Thing
    Even in the teen-flick "Sweet Valley" of 1987, there were few places outside John Hughes's brain where paying somebody to be your girl didn't look like prostitution. Yet somebody made the Slow-Times-at-Clueless-High stinker Can't Buy Me Love.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
    Tremendously savvy in its stupid way, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is as eloquent as "Brokeback Mountain," and even more radical.
  40. The United States of Leland
    The movie's idiotic fascination with the senselessness of its central act is scarily close to a fetish.
  41. Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey
    Smitten with his characters, Sanders takes the elements of teen exploitation films and fashions a simple, placid return to innocence.
  42. The Other Woman
    Though lazily mocking hyper-vigilant parenting, the film treats the moldiest clichés - as gospel.
  43. Are You Here
    Writer-director Matthew Weiner, creator of the magnificent Mad Men, has made a feature film — theoretically a comedy — that's just shy of terrible.
  44. All the King's Men
    Penn goes for larger-than-life, wrapping his pinched frown around an unintelligible Louisiana drawl and swinging his arms like an autistic evangelist... Law is no asset--looking rather sadly like John Ireland (the actor who played the 1949 Jack Burden), he has little control over his accent and zero energy.
  45. Ex-Girlfriends
    The callow behavior that characterizes Ex-Girlfriends' lead would be less maddening had writer/director/star Alexander Poe firmly decided how to portray the bedroom follies of youth.
  46. Fist Fight
    Thanks to that cast, and some savvy direction, you might very well enjoy Fist Fight. But don’t be surprised if it also leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
  47. Heist
    You've seen neo-noirs like this before, but you probably haven't had this much fun with a modern B movie in a while.
  48. Analyze That
    Director Harold Ramis and his cast fetch overchewed shticks, but what's surprising is the incompetent witlessness on exhibit. There's no limit to the botched comedy rhythms and wasted opportunities.
  49. 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.
  50. Sex: The Annabel Chong Story
    Quek is compelling not for her ideas but the tangled path by which she came to them.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fun Size
    The fundamental Schwartz touch applies: In the guise of a narrowly targeted tween flick, he has delivered a smart and emotionally satisfying slice of wish fulfillment, tracing how a threatened family finds harmony.
  52. 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.
  53. Delhi Safari
    Although its message is never subtle, Delhi Safari is fun enough to earn the right to preach.
  54. 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.
  55. The Kid & I
    Qualifies as the most indulgent kind of homemade project, laden with tediously inspirational dialogue and visuals that seem shot through half-fizzled Yuengling. Kudos to Gores, at least, for acquitting himself as an actor.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Going Under
    Just because Rees can play a masochist doesn't mean viewers have to.
  57. The Samaritan
    Weaver's story slowly begins to buckle under the weight of its own self-seriousness and familiarity, concluding with a showdown and resolution marked by one implausible and unsatisfying been-here-done-that twist after another.
  58. Jessabelle
    Greutert's savvy enough to sprinkle some white folks among his houngans and mambos, but Jessabelle still plays out as Haitian traditions ruining the life of a nice-ish white lady.
  59. Shutter
    Ostensibly a remake of a Thai film--by a Japanese director with a Hollywood cast--this plays more like a video copy of "The Ring" that’s been so degraded that all the good bits are no longer visible.
  60. Love Ranch
    Hackford's pacing throughout is continuously off, with scenes extending several beats too long, his two leads adrift and bored.
  61. 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).
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Honey
    If you doubt whether Honey can scrape together the dough, this is probably the movie for you.
  63. The Nut Job
    Good-natured and completely forgettable.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Last Sin Eater
    The miscasting of Fletcher--still a forbidding screen presence--as a kindly grandmother is only one of many missteps that director Michael Landon Jr. (yes, it's his son) makes in The Last Sin Eater.
  65. Battle: Los Angeles
    Not a single arresting image is found amid the sci-fi rubble, though unintentional laughs eventually arrive courtesy of a cornball motivational speech by Eckhart's hero.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Cold Creek Manor
    CCM's dissipated endgame borrows soggily from "The Ring," resulting in something that wouldn't make it past the first script meeting for Scary Movie 4.
  67. Suspect Zero
    None of the principals is remotely likable--although Kingsley does appear to enjoy swanning around the great Southwest like a low-rent Anthony Hopkins.
  68. Last Party 2000
    Hoffman has no particular argument to make, and neither does the movie -- just befuddled disgust with The System in general and the right wing in particular.
  69. Allegiance
    Without its topical pretext and overzealous patriotism, Allegiance would be just another generic action film.
  70. 50 to 1
    While the film isn't without charming moments -- the Derby sequence is entertaining -- the lack of narrative sophistication grates.
  71. The Bye Bye Man
    If you miss the slasher icons of old and have little patience for the reboot attempts they get periodically, it's nice to see at least a worthy attempt to add to that pantheon.
  72. Wetlands
    A suitably haunted Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje can’t reconcile Babs’s impulsive actions with the character’s implied moral core.
  73. Wolves
    If you're in the bag for werewolves (or have a thing for hairy dudes smoking distinctive pipes), Wolves is a beckoning howl in the night. As an action movie, however, it's surprisingly tame.
  74. The Double
    The Double, Michael Brandt's post–Cold War spy film, is grade-B hokum, but it's not without its occasional generic thrills.
  75. 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.
  76. Caught in the Web
    Amid much overacting, Kaige addresses the subjectivity and unreliability of images through this-isn't-what-it-looks-like scenarios that would make Jack Tripper groan.
  77. Only God Forgives
    Refn may be taking himself too seriously or not taking anything seriously enough—it's hard to tell. But Only God Forgives, so brazen in its double-scorpion-bowl vision, is at least good for a giggle or two. Its sins are many, but after a while, it's not even worth keeping count.
  78. The Frozen Ground
    The climactic interrogation wraps up neatly and just in time, much more like a story "based on actual events" than the events themselves.
  79. The Country Bears
    The unaddressed incongruities are as stupefying as the music.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Story of Us
    Maudlin, irritating marital drama.
  81. Crush
    Manipulative tragedy, muddled motivations, incongruous reconciliations, deranged cuteness, all of it directed with a tin ear and laden with a score that evokes the experience of a conditioned lab rat.
  82. 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.
  83. Speed Racer
    Gaudier than a Hindu-temple roof, louder than the Las Vegas night, Speed Racer is a cathedral of glitz.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    W.E.
    Certainly, W.E. is the work of a woman who apparently hasn't spent time with normal human beings in a while. But Madonna's anachronistic use of music is the least of her movie's problems. It's basic storytelling that stymies her.
  85. Seven Pounds
    Dispiritingly obvious and phony from top to bottom.
  86. 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.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Friends and Family
    First-timer Coury's fast pace can't outrun Joseph Triebwasser's predictable script, saddled with mobster clichés and queer stereotypes.
  88. The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle
    Hardly a project worthy of grown men and women.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Poolhall Junkies
    A movie that, in its unconditional embrace of an all-male subculture, amounts to little more than a rote circle jerk.
  90. Steal This Movie
    At once simple-mindedly didactic and utterly chaotic, Steal This Movie! is interspersed with fake headlines and botched history.
  91. Little Black Book
    A mondo product placement in search of a screenplay, the conscious "Working Girl" homage Little Black Book makes the mistake of banking on Brittany Murphy, a Melanie Griffith look-alike with none of Griffith's gawky charms.
  92. Big Significant Things
    Reisberg assumes we'll believe that in "real life" (as in, when he's not deceiving anyone about his whereabouts) Craig isn't this selfish, but watching him lie, cheat on his girlfriend, and enthusiastically provide beer to teenagers says otherwise.
  93. Paris-Manhattan
    Shallow, witless but pretty enough French ode to Woody Allen.
  94. Bravetown
    Aside from a showy opening (a tracking shot that snakes through a club, cribbing freely from Carlito's Way, Boogie Nights, etc.), the movie satisfies mainly due to its affecting ensemble and considerable emotional intelligence.
  95. Rebound
    Surprisingly bearable family comedy.
  96. After.Life
    Somewhere in Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's awkward debut feature is a macabre and almost quaint Gothic mystery begging to be left alone.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tooth Fairy
    Johnson seems perfectly happy coasting through bland mediocrities. It used to be that his former career as a wrestler was his biggest obstacle to becoming a Hollywood star--now, it appears to be laziness.
  98. Æon Flux
    Gone are Chung's willfully irrational non sequitur surrealisms, vertiginous designs, dry humor, and physiological weirdness; now we have Charlize Theron trying to look icy, leaping about in resistance to a future dystopia that looks a lot like an overlandscaped European Union industrial park.
  99. Days and Nights
    At 92 minutes, Days and Nights feels choppy and hurried, pushing the narrative toward inevitable tragedy rather than exploring how these dispirited people got there.
  100. Flock of Dudes
    Lifeless bromantic comedy Flock of Dudes has all the celebrity cameos and latent sexism of Judd Apatow's adult coming-of-age stories but none of the lowbrow wit and sensitivity.
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