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. XX/XY
    A movie that's two-thirds flashback (and could have been called "Ex, Ex, Ex, Why?").
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Better Luck Tomorrow
    Seeing BLT has been positioned as a political act. Alas: The film in question seems hardly worth the fuss.
  3. Ghosts of the Abyss
    "Check this out, bro," James Cameron says as he returns to the site of the real Titanic, armed with robots, a 3-D Imax camera, and the same colossal hubris that necessitated a call for silence as he accepted his Oscar on behalf of those who perished.
  4. Anger Management
    Consistently wacky and sometimes nearly surreal.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    House of 1000 Corpses
    Straining to put his own stamp on this stale-from-the-crypt material, Zombie falls back on the twitchy visual grammar of his videos, splicing in dream sequences and grainy porno-snippets apparently purchased at Bob Crane's estate sale. The violence eventually becomes more inhuman than human.
  6. Marion Bridge
    A scrupulous and impeccably acted account of the fallout from a family secret.
  7. DysFunktional Family
    It's nauseating, unfunny stuff, unmitigated by the revelation that Griffin's mom physically abused him.
  8. The Man Without a Past
    This may not be Kaurismäki's masterpiece, but it is a movie of sustained stylistic integrity -- and it has the power to make you laugh.
  9. Phone Booth
    Best appreciated as hilarious pulp metaphor, which, not coincidentally, happens to be one of the screenwriter's specialties.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Manna from Heaven
    It's shot like a Lifetime-influenced student film, and the overall artlessness makes the spoony dialogue all the more glaring.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion [re-release]
    Petri's visually flamboyant film turns into a heady mix of Marx, Freud, Wilhelm Reich, and Brecht, with a bit of Dashiell Hammett thrown into the blender.
    • 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.
  13. Levity
    First-time director Ed Solomon, a comedy writer (MIB, both Bill and Ted movies), clots up Levity with symbols -- empty chairs, reflections, winter slush -- and achy, tastefully drawn characters.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    A Man Apart
    As limited as Diesel's movie persona may be, the actor has been notable for projecting a certain gentleness and warmth. That, along with logic and any sense of urgency, gets lost here amid the longueurs of a tired vengeance plot.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cowboy Bebop the Movie: Knockin' on Heaven's Door
    Americanized through western showdowns, shadowy film noir, gangster shootings, sci-fi, Bruckheimer explosions, slapstick, and soaps, Bebop aims to transcend its own genre by emulating all genres, and it falls short only in the melodrama.
  16. Cet amour-là
    May worship heedlessly at Duras's memory, but it's a testament to Moreau alone.
  17. Fellini: I'm a Born Liar
    How enlightening you find Damian Pettigrew's obsessive film depends on whether you're as adoring of Fellini as he was of himself; for the devoted, it's a gold mine.
  18. The Good Thief
    His movie (Jordan's) winnows the original's existentialist fable into a busy caper thriller, copping plot devices from Soderbergh's "Ocean's 11" and even straining to Wong Kar-wai its camera's way around the fleshpots of Nice. It's all pizzazz, and the pizzazz is all borrowed.
  19. Stevie
    Foreigners often comment on the peculiar American combination of superficial friendliness and profound indifference. Stevie epitomizes a related national trait -- the belief in the curative powers of publicity.
  20. Assassination Tango
    Dramatically lopsided, Assassination Tango is a spontaneous life-slice in which John J. (standing in for Duvall) fumbles like a besotted granddad toward empathic connections. That it doesn't "work" is a measure of its sincerity.
  21. 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.
  22. Raising Victor Vargas
    Tender and funny.
  23. Night and the City (re-release)
    However defined, the movie's a moody piece of Wellesian chiaroscuro (shot by Max Greene, né Mutz Greenbaum) and an occasionally discomfiting underworld plunge, particularly when the mob-controlled wrestling milieu explodes into a kidney-punching donnybrook.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 10 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Basic
    Such confusion makes the script-flipping finale something of a respite, as it gives one an excuse to forget everything that's happened.
  25. Unknown Pleasures
    Unknown Pleasures suggests a coolly formalist reinvention of neorealism. The film is both distanced and immediate -- a fiction with the force of documentary.
  26. Chuen jik sat sau
    There's plenty to enjoy -- in no small part thanks to Lau.
  27. Down and Out with the Dolls
    With no irony and no plot beyond Girls Have Band, Voss reduces Kali and Fauna to earnest Janus faces of Hole's schizo aesthetic.
  28. Boat Trip
    The movie improves immeasurably if you visualize a looming iceberg in the corner of the frame.
  29. Gaudi Afternoon
    The trumped-up alley-to-plaza intrigue could use more smoke and less mirrors.
  30. View from the Top
    The film, meanwhile, goes for that choppy, air-pocket sensation, veteran helmer Bruno Barreto directing like he's never made a movie before, and never wants to again.
  31. One Swallow Brought Spring
    The script offers neither a sustained narrative arc nor strong characterizations.
  32. Dreamcatcher
    If hopeless literalist Kasdan could have decided on a tone this could have been a gynophobe's "Independence Day."
  33. Decasia
    A fierce dance of destruction. Its flame-like, roiling black-and-white inspires trembling and gratitude.
  34. Japan
    A notably confident and achieved debut.
  35. Zhantai
    One of the richest films of the past decade.
  36. Willard
    In a culture clogged with appropriated effluvia and remake cop-outs, Willard is wittier and nastier than we deserve.
  37. Journeys with George
    Although largely devoid of dramatic interest, Journeys With George does convincingly document the horror of life within the campaign "bubble."
  38. Under the City's Skin
    Bani-Etemad's generational melodrama observes a blue-collar dynastic collapse worthy of Lillian Hellman, but stays steadfastly fixed on the quotidian of Tehran life.
  39. The Hunted
    Essentially a reheating of 1982's "First Blood" -- a psychologically wounded warrior-vet pits himself against civilized America -- but the fallout this time is simultaneously more ruthless, less emotional, and duller.
  40. Spun
    The traumatized critic must struggle to avoid capital letters in urging patrons to steer clear of the colorfully cast but unbearable Spun.
  41. Bend It Like Beckham
    Only silent Becks himself rises unstained from this reheated ethno-niche stew.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Short Eyes (re-release)
    Confrontational for its time yet paltry next to any episode of "Oz," Piñero's slim moral quandary is stocked with glib sermonizing and unfocused characterizations, but Robert M. Young's firmly anchored direction creates an appropriate chamber ambience.
  43. Laurel Canyon
    The spectacle of pretty people floating languidly across the screen notwithstanding, Laurel Canyon is short on conviction and long on contrivance. McDormand, however, has a ball.
  44. Nowhere in Africa
    A straightforward epic, almost alarmingly quaint in the telling.
  45. The Safety of Objects
    Though agile edits keep things moving, in braiding several tales into one tight suburban tangle, character development takes more shortcuts than "Short Cuts."
  46. Irreversible
    From the end to the beginning--or is it from the inadvertently ridiculous to the would-be sublime?--Noé's stunt is an exploitation movie with a gimmick, not to mention a vacuous philosophy.
  47. Tears of the Sun
    This "Black Hawk Down" theft is a trial by cliché until the climax, which suggests a dress rehearsal for the torching of Baghdad.
  48. Chaos
    Naturally, the worm turns again and again in this demi-Hitchcockian death trap, and Nakata knows how to shoot scenes of breath-holding paranoia: from a distance, simply, in real time. (We'll see how the inevitable remake, directed by Jonathan Glazer, measures up.)
  49. Journey to Western Xia Empire
    A reticent, primarily visual experience.
  50. Ten
    Conceptually rigorous, splendidly economical, and radically Bazinian.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Cradle 2 the Grave
    Li barely has enough lines to qualify for a SAG card.
  52. Horns and Halos
    What emerges is not only an Underdog v. Simon Bar Sinister saga but a fascinating character study.
    • 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.
  54. Foreign Sister
    Offers an incisive glimpse into one woman's inner transformation -- her secret sense of loss in the midst of plenty and her sudden perception of a world of suffering lying just beyond her home.
    • 14 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Dischord
    Writer-director Mark Wilkinson gracefully elides backstories while arranging his converging narratives into a neat fugue, but the overall preciousness of his conception is suffocating.
  56. Bolivia
    Virtually plot-free, the movie's organic cultivation of Argentina's economic tension and ethnophobic woes is smooth as silk.
  57. Open Hearts
    However schematic, the movie percolates with immediacy and genuine warmth.
  58. Tales of Erotica
    Whittled down from a series of 36 short films commissioned by a German television network between 1996 and 2000, Erotic Tales leaves you only to ponder the horror of the 33 that didn't make the cut.
  59. Till Human Voices Wake Us
    Another mystery that gives up its secrets all too quickly, Till Human Voices Wake Us is named for a T.S. Eliot line -- and it proves a woefully evocative title for this snoozy supernatural pastoral.
  60. Dark Blue
    However misjudged and evidently cobbled together in the editing room, Dark Blue does have the nerve to drive right through the riots with Russell's saber-toothed bigot, implicitly linking the two phenomena and not being shy about the suffering on either side of the combat.
  61. Lawless Heart
    Like grieving itself, the film is awkward, messily honest, and sometimes darkly funny.
  62. Gods and Generals
    Shot with the TV-movie blahs, the film itself is nothing more than an elaborate reenactment, perfectly mating box-of-rocks acting (bring rotten fruit for Mia Dillon's Southern matriarch) and repetitious dialogue so scripturally florid Maxwell might qualify for a Comedy Screenplay Golden Globe next January.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Old School
    A flatland of lowest-common-denominated retro-collegiate wackiness.
  64. The Life of David Gale
    Going through the motions of a liberal-Hollywood polemic with the sweaty, mounting hysteria of a bad liar, The Life of David Gale is foremost an overheating gotcha machine, scripted by first-timer Charles Randolph with seams showing and red herrings stinking up the joint.
  65. From the Other Side
    Akerman's characteristically patient, pensive approach elegantly accommodates her reportorial responsibilities.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony
    Hirsch edits segments together to merge disparate voices, showing how for this movement, music was no universal language -- it was specific, pointed, and almost paranormal in its power.
  67. The Ballad of Bering Strait
    Echoes the trajectory of the post-Communist-bloc region itself, unmoored and at the mercy of pitiless capitalist forces.
  68. Ordinary Sinner
    As technically amateurish as it is narratively ludicrous.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Painted Fire
    Succeeds as the rehumanizing of a near mythical figure.
  70. 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.
  71. The Jungle Book 2
    The new tunes sound like Buster Poindexter mainlining Sweet 'n Low, and at a critically song-starved moment, John Goodman's Baloo admits, "King Louie? He split!" Before the third defibrillation of "Bare Necessities," you and your kids might too.
  72. Gerry
    Exercise in existential tedium that it is, Gerry isn't without devotees.
  73. He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not
    Baggy and overbroad, He Loves Me is notable only as a corrective to cinema's promiscuity with fabulous destinies.
  74. All the Real Girls
    This earnest love story is borderline insufferable, and yet there are moments that, in their bold incoherence, have a startling emotional truth.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 20 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Daredevil
    Affleck and impressively amazonian Alias star Jennifer Garner (as the ninjitsu-savvy daughter of a wealthy tycoon) are lankier than "Spider-Man's" Maguire and Dunst, which is good if you like lanky, but their relationship substitutes cliché for chemistry.
  76. Stone Reader
    I've never seen a movie that paid more heartfelt tribute to the power of artistic invention.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    America So Beautiful
    As much as the film would like to blow the lid off immigrant misery, it deals only in caricatures.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Zus & zo
    As a study in sororal emasculation, Zus & Zo ("This and That") is neither funny nor particularly punch-drunk.
  79. Deliver Us from Eva
    As wrathful health inspector, possessed choir director, and general castrating angel, Union wrecks store with a slew of ass-chapping teardowns that would make Cam'ron curdle.
  80. Kedma
    Mesmerizingly bad filmmaking.
  81. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
    With a premise this screwy, nobody has any choice but to follow the savvy lead of Bebe Neuwirth, who, as Hudson's "Composure" editor, hams her queen-bitch-mother-hen role to glazed perfection.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Shanghai Knights
    The adventure-book pace and topsy-turvy English setting evoke the feel of Stephen Sommers's "Mummy" films.
  83. May
    The flavor is textbook '90s indie -- self-regarding quirk with an occasional spasm of Solondzian incorrectness.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Biker Boyz
    Too bad that when the filmmakers aren't busy accommodating cameo models and comedians, they seem to be dozing off at the handlebars. Luckily, we're watching from a different side of the highway.
  85. Lost in La Mancha
    The movie neither inspires us to pine for what might've been nor makes Gilliam-style filmmaking seem like a noble pursuit.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Guru
    As a dirtier Deepak, Mistry is blankly sweet, suitable for his role as Subcontinental Rorschach.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Final Destination 2
    This risible thriller is merely a sadistic series of misread premonitions and vile murders.
  88. The Recruit
    Cliché-density aside, Roger Donaldson's perfectly rote movie is childishly naive about the reality of the CIA as it stands in the official record and in the public mindset.
  89. Chaos
    Fast-paced feminist thriller and witty black comedy.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Darkness Falls
    This is horror-flick boo-ya at its most rote.
  91. Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary
    That unexpected rage is the movie's most powerful emotional truth.
  92. Amen.
    Costa-Gavras provides a post-war postscript to make clear that honesty is punished; cynicism survives.
  93. In the Mirror of Maya Deren
    Annotating excerpts from the movies with oral history, Kudlacek's film is a well-wrought introduction not just to Deren but an under-leveraged chunk of the art world.
  94. En kærlighedshistorie
    Another in a line of Dogme half-wits whose madness is posited as a state of tortured grace, the young wife in Kira's Reason is a woman well past the verge.
  95. Divine Intervention
    A movie of long, expressive silences, Divine Intervention articulates things that have never been articulated, at least on the screen.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    P.S. Your Cat Is Dead!
    Intermittently engaging and moving, P.S. has gathered a bit of dust over the years. Still, it's nicely acted by the small cast.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Guy Thing
    In her role as Becky the half-assed tiki girl, Stiles's left-footedness can finally be named, only one of the many pleasures tugging this girl-snatches-guy-from-altar comedy a notch above standard.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    National Security
    As the two cop manqués overcome their dearth of common sense to save the day, the film achieves a comic playfulness.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Kangaroo Jack
    Virtually every shot of the kangaroo was digitally created, and perhaps that was an insurance policy masterstroke. Forcing a real live one to act opposite these co-stars could have easily constituted animal cruelty.
  100. City of God
    Nothing if not confrontational.
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