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. It's Better to Jump
    Without comments from Akka's Jewish residents or any conflicting voices, the film plays like a propagandistic attempt to reshape historical and contemporary narratives.
  2. Boys of Abu Ghraib
    Too by-the-numbers for the emotional impact to resonate as long as it could and should have.
  3. Point Break
    There are two rules that no version of Point Break should disobey: Don't skimp on surfing and never be boring. That’s two unpardonable strikes against new helmsman Ericson Core, who also photographed this stiff, humorless, tension-free remake in drab 3D.
  4. Undead
    Watching it is a smidgen like listening to the same monkey-walks-into-a-bar joke for the 105th time, but for the Spierig brothers, it is clearly a demonstration of fast-cheap capabilities and a one-way ticket straight out of Queensland.
    • 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.
  6. Town & Country
    Limps into theaters at long last, practically begging, with every arthritic pratfall, to be put out of its misery.
  7. Eulogy
    If the recurring gag about Grandma's suicide attempts doesn't have you rolling in the aisles, there's always the domineering aunt whose husband sits at the kiddie table.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston
    There's a good film to be made about Halston, the dashing man who went from Iowa-born milliner to revered fashion designer to self-popularizing entrepreneur to AIDS-era casualty, but dear Lord, Ultrasuede is not it.
  9. Erased
    A thriller whose storytelling ingredients are so familiar that one could watch it with the sound off and still know what's going on.
  10. Elektra
    The pedestrian Elektra offers no surprises, and whether or not you'll appreciate its modest charms depends entirely on whether you too have been anticipating Garner's new outfit.
  11. Scenic Route
    Kevin and Michael Goetz's direction emphasizes the remoteness of the setting. The howl of the desert wind and the unflagging hammer of the sun are the backdrop for every bad decision, lending them a plausibility they wouldn't have in comfort.
  12. The Mummy
    The Mummy turns out to be a drab, nonsensical affair that squanders its potential for humor, atmosphere and sweep.
  13. Dead & Breakfast
    The blood is raspberry syrup, the gags gag, and the film virtually falls over itself informing us how lame it is.
  14. 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.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Nesting
    Chuldenko doesn't aspire to hard realism, but a lifestyle comedy with hard-to-buy fundamentals and a central couple you can't invest in is a dubious proposition nonetheless.
  16. Emoticon
    Emoticon ;), a vanity project written, directed, starring, and sung by Livia De Paolis, is a grown-up's weird idea of how kids behave.
  17. Vacation
    This new Vacation is hardly an improvement on the old Vacation, and may in fact be worse. Neither of them, to borrow the immortal words of the Go-Go's, is all we ever wanted.
  18. The Lifeguard
    From concept to execution to tone, writer-director Liz W. Garcia's The Lifeguard is a lifeless misfire.
  19. Lost in the Sun
    While his images have been composed with care, Nelson's screenplay is a far less impressive invention.
  20. The Era of Vampires
    The finale is a near-abstract mess (decapitation, impalation, "Alien" birth) -- in an empathic gesture, the filmmakers end it all with a few sticks of TNT.
  21. Collateral Damage
    Intermittently, in attempts to articulate a coherent argument, Collateral Damage shifts from pulse-pounding mode to something more migraine-conducive.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Diamonds
    With its superficial script, toneless direction, and unadmirable intentions...Diamonds is inappropriate for audiences of all ages.
  23. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
    So pandering and pebble-brained you'd guess it had been test-screened on barnyard animals.
  24. Raise Your Voice
    The God-squad answer to Todd Graff's "Camp."
    • 33 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    And Now a Word from Our Sponsor
    The dialogue is unspeakable, the scenes unplayable, the waste of talent unpardonable.
  26. Equilibrium
    As this clueless, bulimic debacle madly regurgitates ideas and iconography from Lang to the brothers Wachowski, Leni Riefenstahl to L. Ron Hubbard, Ray Bradbury to Susan Faludi, it's not just Bale who has a hard time keeping a straight face.
  27. Shadowboxer
    This monumentally ridiculous film doesn't stop at subverting stereotypes; it discombobulates narrative logic and the basic laws of human behavior. Still, there's a certain pleasure to be derived from watching the actors attempt to dig out from under the rubble that William Lipz's screenplay repeatedly dumps on their heads.
  28. 33 Postcards
    The script's programmatic feel-goodery smooths out everything strange and noteworthy about Dean and Mei Mei's relationship into an unmemorable and unconvincing blandness.
  29. Kidnapping Mr. Heineken
    Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, and True Blood's Ryan Kwanten co-star in this glossy, lifelessly paced edition as three of the criminals, though their underwritten personas and motivations are fairly interchangeable.
  30. 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.
  31. Language of a Broken Heart
    Full of familiar tropes, exhausted rhythms, self-conscious references to genre forebears...Language of a Broken Heart, directed by Rocky Powell from a screenplay by Juddy Talt, is pure product.
  32. The Chaperone
    You get a bargain two high-concepts for the price of one in this amiably lame offering from Stephen Herek, who, once upon a time, cooked up an excellent Adventure for Bill and Ted, then veered off into inspirational goo with "Mr. Holland's Opus."
    • 33 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Chasing Papi
    Shamelessly purports to be "the first major studio comedy to reflect the Hispanic cultural experience in America," but the only place you're likely to find such shrill and whitewashed caricatures is in the elitist pages of ¡Hola!
    • 33 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Ghost House
    Beyond the film’s ethnic stereotypes and flat characters, it needs to be scary, and it fails on that front as well.
  35. The Divergent Series: Allegiant
    The actors still give it their all in Allegiant, but there's only so much they can do with such a clunky, verbose script. And on the rare occasion that the film actually quiets its characters down and delivers something resembling action, it's woefully inert.
  36. In My Sleep
    The biggest problem with Allen Wolf's thriller is that there are so few characters that it's immediately clear what's going on; there's simply no one to suspect besides the obvious.
  37. Atomica
    Atomica's slapdash script is a hasty aggregation of screenwriting and science fiction clichés, barely feature-length and possibly written over a single weekend.
  38. Despite the Falling Snow
    So tasteful it’s torturous, Despite the Falling Snow is a Cold War espionage thriller for those who like their period-piece action airless and derivative.
  39. Lies We Tell
    As much as director–co-writer Mitu Misra wants to show the oppression and repression that still have a stranglehold on Muslim communities in Britain, he does what a lot of first-time filmmakers do their first time out — he overplays his hand.
  40. The Only Living Boy in New York
    The boy is but a shell; it’s the men and women around him who truly come to life in this chaotic, awkward, and sporadically moving film.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Detroit Rock City
    There's an awful lot of rocking out going on in Detroit Rock City, but then rocking out is this occasionally clever but lifeless movie's reason for being.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bedtime Stories
    While no one was expecting the live-wire daring of "Punch-Drunk Love" or even "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," the Adam Sandler who shows up in Bedtime Stories is that most unnecessary of movie-star guises: the benign family-comedy guy.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 30 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    House of D
    Marred by a rambling voice-over at one end and a pat therapeutic resolution on the other, the film has a nice half-hour patch somewhere in the middle.
  44. Loving Jezebel
    An oafish wish-fulfillment wankfest.
  45. Welcome to Mooseport
    Closer to Sturges than Capra, the movie means to satirize the TV-fueled carnivalesque nature of American electoral politics but only demonstrates the TV-fueled debasement of American commercial comedy.
  46. Grave Encounters
    True terror needs at least some authenticity. That's perhaps too much to ask of a faked movie about a faked reality show that still can't scare up a fresh idea.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Virginia
    A bonkers tragicomedy that blandly mocks the red-state family-values charade.
  48. Open Grave
    The road to the finale is littered with dead bodies and red herrings, but Open Grave is more notable for its laid-back approach to storytelling than for its plot twists. That's a kind way of saying it's sort of boring.
  49. Programming the Nation?
    The results are irritating, occasionally educational, and frustratingly insight-free.
  50. In Stereo
    In Stereo is not without its merits, but it doesn't really get going until the last ten minutes, which play like the opening of a movie that would be much more interesting than the one that preceded them.
  51. War of the Worlds: Goliath
    Like a feature-length Saturday morning cartoon with dashes of violence so graphic you'd swear you'd just stepped into Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. Which isn't to say that Goliath is good so much as compellingly weird on occasion.
  52. State Property 2
    When this flick is honest about its pimping, it has that Rat Pack charm. But attempts at real ruggish posturing--like that de rigueur sideways-gatted, full-body-exposure firing stance--are just plain laughable.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Losing Control
    The blue rom-com then takes a frenzied late turn into espionage territory, an attempt to gather momentum that only makes the film more tiresome.
  54. Free the Nipple
    It's too rare for movies to depict women working together as friends to effect political change, and this one makes it seem righteous, loud, and fun as a rock concert. Free the Nipple won't change the conversation, but it might help start one.
  55. The Hero of Color City
    Frank Gladstone's animated kids' movie The Hero of Color City is a perfectly pleasant pastiche of other movies, the most obvious antecedent being the Toy Story films.
  56. Air
    Walking Dead isn't the model, here — it's Lost, specifically the business involving that buried bunker with the outdated tech and the mystery button that must be mashed every time a Rolodex-style flip-clock counts down to zero. All of that has been copy-pasted into Air, which, sadly, doesn't even improve on Lost's resolutions.
  57. A Haunting in Cawdor
    Although the film attempts to be both a ghastly giallo mood piece and a bloodless teen ghost story, its themes of evolving identity and mental health care elevate it past some of its shock-and-awe trappings.
  58. Sucker Punch
    His (Snyder) mash-up set pieces ("Call of Duty" meets "Castlevania," etc.) blend into so-awesome-they're-awful slo-mo monotony, and the awful sisterhood stuff in between makes you anticipate the action as though waiting for the bus.
  59. The Baytown Outlaws
    A stew of cartoon stereotypes, violence, and "Freebird" cast in a skuzzy "Sons of Anarchy" mold.
  60. There Be Dragons
    Its appeal for the rest of us is buoyed by cinematographer Gabriel Beristain's attentiveness to the ravishing Argentinian locations, but the geriatric pacing, flat-footed Old Hollywood pastiche, and Joffé's inexplicable penchant for tear-jerking Catholic mysticism make Dragons more punishing than a hundred Hail Marys.
  61. Colonia
    Rather than a grand buildup, Colonia just gives the sense of one thing happening, and then another thing happening.
  62. Crazy as Hell
    Uneasy mélange of occult thriller and insane-asylum-as-social-microcosm parable.
  63. Catch That Kid
    A stale, overbudgeted, child-empowerment fantasy that's every bit as excruciating as the director's previous work.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    RV
    The result is a workmanlike family comedy with enough pratfalls and poo jokes for tykes and enough sentimentality for parents.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Shadow: Dead Riot
    The conceptual underpinnings are sketchy to say the least, and with its quantity-over-quality approach to violence and nudity, S:DR wears out its welcome faster than you can say "group shower."
  66. The Last Song
    I can’t recall ever squirming as much as I did during Ronnie and Will’s first kiss; shiny, buff Hemsworth looks like he’s locking lips with an Andy Hardy–era Mickey Rooney in a wig.
  67. Amnesiac
    The plot develops confidently (if unsurprisingly), abetted by coincidence and shoddy police work, but it's the tone that grates.
  68. Annie
    It presumes that children care a great deal about cellphone towers, political campaigns, and Twitter. Still, Quvenzhané Wallis, as Annie, is raw, charismatic, alive, and unpredictable.
  69. Out of the Dark
    Stylishly filmed and often scary, Out of the Dark unspools a conclusion as conventional and button-down as a wide tie knot and a pair of wingtips.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Amityville Horror
    A Xerox so tattered and faded that it's impossible to determine who's to blame for the overproduced mediocrity before our eyes.
  71. 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.
  72. Original Sin
    Doesn't even have earnestness going for it -- a tepid, blindly assembled post-noir.
    • 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.
  74. Uptown Girls
    Less "Freaky Friday" than just plain freaky.
  75. The Battle of Shaker Heights
    The characters talk like smart, unpredictable people, and Kelly Ernswiler is one of a kind.
  76. My Brother
    Writer-director Anthony Lover takes such a kid-gloves approach to his handicapped co-star that he achieves the opposite of the intended effect: Every time Scott enters a scene, it's as if someone just told the entire cast "Whatever you do, don't say 'retard.' "
    • 33 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Repo Chick
    Goofy-funny, fluffy yet sharp, for all its flaws Repo Chick is a midnight-movie blast.
  78. Hamlet
    Peter Wingfield delivers an engagingly oily Claudius, and Lara Gilchrist's Ophelia is radiant. But Ramsay's Hamlet's madness never really overcomes the character's traditional emo temperament.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Mindhunters
    In an era of wall-to-wall "CSI," Mindhunters' ghoulish forensic hubbub not only feels tiring but hopelessly redundant.
  80. My Lucky Star
    Still, the vibrantly shot Lucky Star could have been a mildly entertaining bit of escapism, were it not for the fact that Sophie isn't naïve so much as infantile, a point driven home by her wardrobe.
  81. The Valley
    In her feature debut, Kariat has touched upon important themes — the immigrant experience, ageism in tech, the performance of traditional family roles, and the toll of depression — but the way she has combined them too often feels slapdash.
  82. Fifty Shades Darker
    Despite the nonstop banality, Johnson remains the sole source of allure: Her sleepy eyes suggest nights devoted to pleasure inconceivable to James.
  83. Just Go with It
    As in many a Sandler picture, Just Go With It is a tale of both escalating lies that finally give way to truth and of childish behavior eventually corrected strung along by lowbrow jokes that hit and miss in roughly even number.
  84. Hanging Up
    So hackneyed and so condescending to its potential audience (adult women) that even Lifetime might hesitate before running it.
  85. Very Annie Mary
    Leaks treacle from every pore.
  86. Trash Humpers
    Trash Humpers projects a cranky resignation to the world as it is; still, it's picturesque.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Elite Squad
    This latest pounding slice-of-thug-life thriller from Brazil packs the same cinematic firepower as "City of God," only on the other side of the law.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
    Centipede plays on the notion that the only thing more frightening than death is a state bridging life and death, in which, though one's body is no longer his own to control, the mind remains conscious.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    About Cherry
    Setting out to reassure that certain decisions do not necessarily have fatal consequences for one's sexual morality, though, About Cherry only manages to seem inconsequential.
  90. Dear Wendy
    Especially in the climactic, clumsily staged gunfight, the prevailing mode is wide-eyed idiocy--which might be the point, since von Trier's satirical target is the hypocrisy of (news flash!) America's eagerness to enforce stability and security with all guns blazing.
  91. After Earth
    Jaden is fine at running, jumping, fearful trembling, and affecting steely resolution. He doesn't yet have his father's charisma; perhaps to help him out, dad opted not to bring that charisma to the set.
  92. The Haunting in Connecticut
    In the realm of domestic horror, The Haunting in Connecticut is about as scary as a shower that suddenly changes temperature when someone flushes the toilet.
  93. Big Momma's House
    Ends up waddling its way toward gentler, mistier climes, stopping just shy of "Doubtfire" country. It doesn't run out of smelly steam so much as downshift and become a different movie.
  94. The Wedding Planner
    The Wedding Planner achieves the dubious but perversely impressive feat, for its 90-minute duration, of neutering Jennifer Lopez.
  95. The Caller
    The Caller begins as a multinational corporate thriller more ambiguous and geopolitically senseless than "Demonlover."
  96. 37
    For all its postures of humanism, the film is remarkably cold toward the victim herself, who appears only briefly.
  97. Very Bad Things
    Very Bad Things is a guy film, and, as such, it's a dog. The gross-out humor lacks edge, the guilt never kicks in, and the outrages are predictable. It's one flat brewski.
  98. 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.
  99. The Man
    Fuu . . . cryin' out loud, this movie's dumb.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Dukes of Hazzard
    Dukes insults not "family values," as the original Cooter claims, just general intelligence. Yee. Haw.
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