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. Ghost Ship
    Despite a couple of inventive CGI effects (one involving mass evisceration), the results are more predictable and less frightening than a Con Ed bill in mid August.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jackass: The Movie
    Shrewdly, the Jackass gang didn't mess with their established formula in the transition to the big screen.
  3. Derrida
    The movie is ultimately about the philosopher's personality -- if you loved "Lingua Franca" (and what lumpen academoid did not?), you'll certainly dig Derrida.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fidel
    The tone is doting, but not cloying.
  5. Le bossu
    de Broca's efficient fencing-mania melodrama brings little that's original to the table.
  6. The Business of Fancydancing
    Seymour returns to the Spokane Indian Reservation after a 16-year absence for a friend's funeral. The predictable conflicts ensue, often in histrionic dialogue declaimed through clenched teeth.
  7. Naqoyqatsi
    Despite some rocking bombast by Philip Glass and reliably wicked cello saws from Yo-Yo Ma, the whole thing plays like a tired Tyco ad.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Real Women Have Curves
    The film stakes out a self-affirming Atkins-free zone that seems unobjectionable in theory, but its speechifying tendencies and familiar familial tensions overwhelm the more delicate scenes.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Abandon
    Hardly a nuanced portrait of a young woman's breakdown, the film nevertheless works up a few scares, particularly a tense call-number hunt in the library stacks.
  10. The Grey Zone
    "No poetry after Auschwitz," Theodor Adorno proclaimed. One sometimes wishes he'd added, "And no big-name cinema either."
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Goyangileul butaghae
    As rich in incidental detail as it is narratively diffuse.
  12. Auto Focus
    Auto Focus doesn't really go anywhere, but then neither does any form of obsessive-compulsive behavior -- which may be Schrader's point.
  13. The Ring
    Requiring an enormous amount of suspended disbelief, the original Rings may be a culture-specific phenom; despite strenuous efforts to Americanize Nakata's field of bad dreams, the preview audience did a lot of cackling.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Formula 51
    Emily Mortimer and Robert Carlyle generate heat as criminal lovers, but most of the cast just engages in embarrassing scenery-gnawing.
  15. Blink of an Eye
    If you're in prison, it's best to stay there. 'Cause if you don't, as Blink of an Eye makes clear, you're fucked -- Outside the safety of your cell, a vicious world of cliché lies in wait to claim you.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stealing the Fire
    Placing blame sorta misses the point in a world of matrixed self-interest where all is equally just and unjust.
  17. Comedian
    Seinfeld's cool professionalism is almost cruelly juxtaposed with the tortured narcissism of heel-nipping tyro Orny Adams, who illustrates the mirror-image view from below. Comedy is pain, whether you're top- or underdog.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Brown Sugar
    Draws a belabored association between romance and hip-hop, and it's hard not to wish the parallel lines would hurry up and converge.
  19. Family Fundamentals
    Compassionately explores the seemingly irreconcilable situation between conservative Christian parents and their estranged gay and lesbian children.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 10 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Knockaround Guys
    The only drama is in waiting to hear how John Malkovich's reedy consigliere will pronounce his next line.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Below
    Though the genre collisions (horror/WWII submarine/undersea Macbeth) are as jarring as the sound design, the cumulative effect is one of claustrophobic creepiness.
  22. The Rules of Attraction
    Roger Avary's crisp adaptation imbues the copious bad sex and general befuddlement of Bret Easton Ellis's solemn, echt '80s Bennington novel with a playfully obnoxious energy that is often funny and -- almost fun.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Transporter
    Kills time between car chases and martial-arts bouts with random scuba-diving footage apparently culled from producer–co-writer Luc Besson's "The Big Blue."
  24. Ash Wednesday
    Russell Fine's kinetic camerawork outperforms the plot.
  25. Punch-Drunk Love
    As elegantly crafted as it often is, Anderson's movie is essentially a one-trick pony that, hampered by an undeveloped script, ultimately pulls up lame.
  26. Safe Conduct
    Safe Conduct -- a rangy, irreverent, episodic odyssey through French filmmaking during the Occupation -- is one of the very best movies ever made about the life of moviemaking.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Tuck Everlasting
    Bledel, consigned to corsets and croquet, looks so weepy for much of Tuck Everlasting. The reason might lie in a script that favors the starchy demands of period melodrama over her TV show's fizzy screwball banter -- or maybe it's just William Hurt's embarrassing brogue.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    White Oleander
    Ultimately sacrifices nuance to tidy epiphanies about personal growth.
  29. Bowling for Columbine
    It's poorly structured, a half-hour too long, and devotedly fixated on the filmmaker's persona.
  30. Swept Away
    Merely an indulgent vehicle for Mrs. Ritchie -- and Madonna is so spectacularly convincing as a hateful, self-absorbed, nouveau riche ogress that her character's third-act transformation is as preposterous as her overmuscled physique.
  31. How to Draw a Bunny
    Absorbing documentary portrait.
  32. Heaven
    An art film without the NYFF imprimatur, Heaven is a peculiar amalgam -- a Miramax package (without the hype), directed by German hotshot Tom Tykwer under the eye of Anthony Minghella, from a script with which the late Krzysztof Kieslowski had planned to inaugurate a new trilogy named for the Divine Comedy.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pipe Dream
    The dialogue, by Walsh and Cynthia Kaplan, is sharp and nimble.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Welcome to Collinwood
    An anti-"Rififi" in which nearly everybody loses their cool, not after the big score goes down but repeatedly and neurotically throughout.
  35. Bloody Sunday
    Bloody Sunday doesn't surrender its grip on the viewer even after the action shifts from the streets of Bogside to a local hospital where the weeping masses are still under the guns of the war-painted British soldiers.
  36. Red Dragon
    Red Dragon's formula is so risible and rote by now that the natural reaction to scenes of peril, torture, and suffering is flippant laughter.
  37. Just a Kiss
    A convoluted writing exercise gone horribly wrong.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Tuxedo
    The only possible surprise in The Tuxedo would be an extended demonstration of what was once Chan's trademark, the daffily choreographed kineticism forbidden of late by either his own age or the scruples of story editors.
  39. Skins
    Good intentions or not, ineptitude and cloying sentimentality don't do anybody any favors.
  40. Crazy as Hell
    Uneasy mélange of occult thriller and insane-asylum-as-social-microcosm parable.
  41. Shanghai Ghetto
    The storytelling is eloquent and genuine, but the Manns' unadventurous approach (compared to, for instance, last year's intimate road movie "Fighter") rarely hits emotional pay dirt.
  42. Biggie and Tupac
    This is Oliver Stone country, but Broomfield's self-effacing affect is more Woody Allen,
  43. The Man from Elysian Fields
    Manure of a relatively clover-scented variety, George Hickenlooper's The Man From Elysian Fields is at primal odds with itself.
  44. Captain Pantoja and the Special Services
    Sadly, most of Lombardi's movie is too doggedly mediocre to cut loose, overheated (and quite lovely) cinematography notwithstanding.
  45. Wasabi
    The real charm of this trifle is the deadpan comic face of its star, Jean Reno, who resembles Sly Stallone in a hot sake half-sleep.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Siddhartha (re-release)
    Sven Nykvist's golden-hued cinematography perfectly suits Hesse's mind-expanding narrative of Buddhist enlightenment.
  47. Sweet Home Alabama
    The clunky yee-haw script full of tired bitch/angel oppositions and Witherspoon's school-play petulance cranks the twang to a blare.
  48. Moonlight Mile
    All the shell-shocked wryness, irredeemable remorse, and unaccountable will to survive that the movie attempts to embody are realized in Gyllenhaal, and the actor makes it possible to root for Moonlight Mile despite its flaws.
  49. The Trials of Henry Kissinger
    Circumspect documentary.
  50. 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.
  51. Invincible
    What's more disappointing is how filthy Invincible is with missed opportunities for Herzog to be Herzog.
  52. The Four Feathers
    Feels both tiresomely old-fashioned and disturbingly topical.
  53. The Banger Sisters
    For a few brief moments, it's the bravest work this Hollywood gargoyle (Hawn) has ever done.
  54. Don't Ask Don't Tell
    The would-be cult classic Don't Ask Don't Tell may be a "refried film," but that's no excuse for stale jokes.
  55. Trapped
    Luis Mandoki's brisk hack job pushes no more buttons than Connie Chung Tonight -- though, for better or worse, it's perverse enough to stage the traumatic event as a spouse swap.
  56. Snipes
    A cockeyed shot all the way.
  57. The Ignorant Fairies
    It's this memory-as-identity obviation that gives Secret Life its intermittent unease, reaffirming that long-held illusions are indeed reality, and that erasing them recasts the self. And it's this existential gerrymandering that's most compelling.
  58. 8 Women
    For all the tumultuous entrances and flouncing exits, the eight principals manage maybe three laughs among them.
  59. Secretary
    The unnecessarily emphatic ending suggests that Secretary's makers are a bit anxious to demonstrate they've whipped a potentially grotesque, spanks-for-the-memories scenario into the season's most romantic love story -- which is, in fact, what they've done.
  60. Spirited Away
    A very nutty fruitcake, Spirited Away is characterized by wonderfully detailed animation, packed with incident and populated by all manner of comic creatures.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Experiment
    After the film's ultraviolent finale (set to the tacky beats of synth-pop volksmusik), one wonders whether this sharp bit of fascinating fascism provides a true analysis of television's new mean streak, or simply an engaging indulgence in same.
  62. Quitting
    Alternately grueling and soporific, Quitting is a movie about addiction that demands the viewer also give something up.
  63. The Children of the Century
    It does best when it leaves behind hothouse literary discussions and closes in on these two legendary behemoths, battling for sexual supremacy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Igby Goes Down
    Culkin broods and freaks out ably, but Igby's snotty, dysfunction-derived malaise remains off-putting, mostly because his lines aren't half as clever or empathic as Steers would believe.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Barbershop
    As hackneyed as they come, but the overall mood is less cynical than affectionate.
  66. Alias Betty
    Infusing Rendell's intrigue with warmth and humor, Miller makes the film's sometimes mechanical and giddy narrative into something grander -- a meditation on maternity as a form of inspired madness.
  67. 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.
  68. The Pinochet Case
    Because stateside newspapers aren't enough, "The Battle of Chile" (possibly the most riveting and vital historical document ever put on celluloid) should be a prerequisite to Guzmán's new doc, The Pinochet Case.
  69. Swimfan
    Nothing plot-wise is worth e-mailing home about. But director John Polson's surging pace, double-flip edits, nu-metal bash-ins, and copious jump-fucks make a sure-handed tempest in this teacup.
  70. City by the Sea
    There's nothing wrong with a little creative license, but the abundance of self-serving fabrication in City by the Sea not only diminishes LaMarca's experience and cheapens McAlary's work, it all but desecrates the memory of the real murder victim.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Execution of Wanda Jean
    Achieves a torturous, race-against-time desperation.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    7 Days in September
    The interviews occasionally veer into it-seemed-like-a-dream cliché, and the eerie soundtrack doesn't help. But at times the unpolished approach earns a rare complexity.
  73. In Praise of Love
    A sustained immersion in gorgeously austere street photography and casual portraiture, the images punctuated by bits of black leader and gnomic intertitles, the action propelled by sweetly pulverized music and an effortlessly layered soundtrack of enigmatic conversations. Poetry is really the only word for it.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Heartbreak Hospital
    Sluggish, tonally uneven -- In fact, it doesn't even rise to the level of 1991's Soapdish, with the feverishly mugging Elisabeth Shue sending up TV's cesspool of sentimentality.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Burning Man: The Burning Sensation
    As predictable as a segment of "MTV Spring Break," which at least doesn't try to hide its voyeurism, Burning looks more like a travel-agency video targeted at people who like to ride bikes topless and roll in the mud than a worthwhile glimpse of independent-community guiding lights.
  76. The Big Carnival
    Ace in the Hole is a movie about the fascination of disaster that is itself a fascinating disaster.
  77. Mad Love
    Adroit but finally a trifle flat, Mad Love doesn't galvanize its outrage the way, say, Jane Campion might have done, but at least it possesses some.
  78. 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.
  79. *Corpus Callosum
    The Canadian painter-photographer-filmmaker-musician gives full vent to his genius in this exhilarating perceptual vaudeville, titled for the "central region" of tissue that acts as a conduit between the brain's two hemispheres.
  80. Mother India
    The performances are broad; the comedy is mainly slapstick. The politics are nationalist and vaguely left-wing.
  81. Red Satin
    Noteworthy for its rich characterizations and startling plot twists, including a delightful surprise ending that is both a sexual double entendre and a matriarchal triumph.
  82. Undisputed
    The movie is typical Hill-pulp: modestly scaled and efficiently cheesy.
  83. Little Secrets
    The film's broad performances and heavy-handed moralizing strike a note of condescension sure to be heard by the alienated teenager within us all.
  84. The Isle
    Kim's movie rocks -- I saw it cold a year ago, and I don't think I've been as entranced and appalled by an Asian film since Shinya Tsukamoto's "Iron Man."
  85. Amy's Orgasm
    Davis has energy, but she doesn't bother to make her heroine's book sound convincing, the gender-war ideas original, or the comic scenes fly. Instead, the film is buttressed by song montages and jokey chapter titles.
  86. How I Killed My Father
    A disappointment after the droll, breezy suggestiveness of Fontaine's equally Freudian "Dry Cleaning," How I Killed My Father is rather less than the sum of its underventilated père-fils confrontations.
  87. S1m0ne
    Niccol has no gift for comedy. His ongoing exploration of modern celebrity results in an industry satire that's less funny than half-empty and hyper-designed.
  88. Gibel Otrara
    Enigmatic from the get-go, The Fall of Otrar builds to a series of spectacular battle scenes, but the mood is never less than sardonic.
  89. One Hour Photo
    Romanek's movie is a bit too pat and pleased with its undeniable ambitions, but the setup resonates with quiet desperation. There's not a single vicarious glorch.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Beauty and the Beast (re-release)
    Viewers must get in touch with their inner child to fall for Belle's eventual love for Beast. The film seems somewhat aware of this, casting an ambiguous hue on its happily-ever-after conclusion.
  91. Possession
    Possession suffers from insufficient nastiness.
  92. Mostly Martha
    Handsomely shot, German filmmaker Sandra Nettelbeck's third feature suffers from a certain romantic predictability.
  93. Blue Crush
    Director John Stockwell keeps the proceedings casual, and the film is admirably at ease with its dutifully trite plot and porn-worthy dialogue (most of which vanishes under the crash of a wave or the roar of a jet-ski anyway).
  94. All My Loved Ones
    It traces a sustained and moving portrait of the worldly Sam, whose despair as the society he embraced abandons him is both clear-eyed and devastating.
  95. I'm Going Home
    Restrained, precise, and unobtrusively wry.
  96. The Château
    The raw art of the malapropism has rarely been so extensively honored, but the increasingly strident, slapstick-smacked movie runs out of steam once the culture shock wears off.
  97. Scarlet Diva
    What a world we'd live in if Argento's Hollywood counterparts -- say, Sarah Michelle Gellar, or even Christina Ricci -- had this much imagination and nerve. Few of them, at any rate, have Argento's reserves of lonesome passion and unspigoted woe.
  98. Secret Ballot
    Methodical, measured, and gently tedious in its comedy, Secret Ballot is a purposefully reductive movie—which may be why it's so successful at lodging itself in the brain.
  99. xXx
    Diesel himself has the personality of a golem and a knack for dialogue delivery that suggests recent oral surgery.
  100. The City of Lost Souls
    The plot is muddy and quite beside the point. The almost meditative mood takes center stage.
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