Village Voice's Scores

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For 11,163 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 7.5 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 11163
  2. Mixed: 4,554 out of 11163
  3. Negative: 1,901 out of 11163
11163 movie reviews
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  1. Spread
    Spread becomes a sloggy, tepid comeuppance tale.
  2. A Dog's Purpose
    Because we see so much of ourselves in them, it’s nearly impossible not to anthropomorphize dogs. Which the filmmakers know, and exploit in the same way that a dog exploits an unattended burrito on the counter — enthusiastically, with no compunctions and not a thought in its head.
  3. Tank 432
    A last-minute flurry of action and a final plot twist aren't enough to redeem this busy but tedious thriller.
  4. The Grace Card
    By refusing to even suggest that racism is a walloping social problem rather than an individual, circumstantial one with an easy fix, it does a rotten job of preaching to the choir.
  5. Brooklyn's Finest
    Filled with every cop-movie convention since the invention of gunpowder and curse words, Brooklyn's Finest is three movies in one, all of which you've seen before.
  6. The Circle
    Ponsoldt’s film is caught between comedy and paranoid thriller. I fear he half-asses the latter.
  7. America: Freedom to Fascism
    From the tax debate, the documentary suddenly gets scattershot, going after the Patriot Act, laws against vitamin sales, election fraud, and Hurricane Katrina response (apparently a plot to grab people's guns), building to the standard New World Order line, which discredits any valid points Russo may have.
  8. Backtrack
    Between the generic shadowy cinematography and a gothic score that manages to telegraph even the film's jump-scares, there's no tangible tension by which to build an effective climax.
  9. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
    It wouldn't be fair to gripe about the hundreds of plot holes; the whole thing is hole.
  10. The Final Cut
    Pressing on in grimly introverted "One Hour Photo" mode, Williams only stirs nostalgia for his slapstick days (ghastly '90s roles notwithstanding)--he's such a natural-born ham he manages to overdo understatement.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
    Scenes end abruptly, laughs are as rare as yetis, and the overarching question seems to be: Can we turn this into a franchise?
  12. Dealin' with Idiots
    Years of HBO seasoning has given Garlin and his cast a sure touch and great timing...but the whole project is mean-hearted and lazy, and it dawdles in repetition and dead air as if it's got a 14-show TV season to spin out.
  13. Into the Grizzly Maze
    What keeps Maze humming is Hackl's firm sense of narrative tension. He knows character and dialogue are icing in films like this, so it's taut pacing, editing, and sound design that are crucial. (The actors are all fine, playing everything straight, sans irony.) The final showdown is ludicrous and thrilling -- as it should be.
  14. Beach House
    The atmosphere of Jason Saltiel’s debut feature is decidedly chilly despite the summer heat. With icy precision reminiscent of Claude Chabrol, Saltiel captures the social intricacies of affluent leisure.
  15. Donkey Punch
    A workmanlike thriller that works as an (unconscious?) auto-critique of mainstreamed Internet-age hedonism.
  16. D.E.B.S.
    Aims for a mix of "Heathers" wit and "Batman" TV-show camp.
  17. Office Christmas Party
    As dull and impersonal as a sheaf of open-enrollment insurance forms, Office Christmas Party brings together — and underutilizes — several funny performers from TV shows (Silicon Valley, Veep, SNL) that pinpoint what this dim comedy does not: the specifics of workplace environments and their particular pathologies and joys.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
    As the parallel friendships evolve over time, both push and pull between platonic and erotic; it's to the film's credit that it never definitively suggests that love can only be one or the other.
  19. My Father Die
    From homophobic start to misogynistic finish, My Father Die is a parade of thrift-store images and scenarios as dull as they are repugnant.
  20. Whisky Galore!
    Instead of glorifying the amber liquid, Whisky Galore! is a love letter to an isolated community trapped in amber.
  21. The Lovely Bones
    In Jackson's hands, The Lovely Bones is doubly appalling. Part Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," part Fritz Lang's "M," the movie is horrific yet cloying, alternately distended and abrupt, sometimes poignant and often ridiculous.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    G
    One 'hood-rich-meets-blue-blood-rich scene is employed as comedic throwaway; it's also the film's truest. The rest: treacly orchestral swells for the brooding, oh-so-familiar impresario, Summer G, and no green light but the one mistakenly given to start production.
  23. Beside Still Waters
    Lowell hews so close to the reunion-film formula he ends up stifling anything new that may otherwise have resulted.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Bones
    Bones splits the difference between horror and social commentary, with pallid returns.
  25. The Big Bounce
    The best Elmore Leonard adaptations ("Jackie Brown," "Out of Sight") play behind the beat, and although The Big Bounce isn't top-shelf Dutch, the film finds its own pace.
  26. The Time Machine
    If it's remembered at all, it will be as a time capsule of early-21st-century blockbuster cowardice and redundancy.
  27. The Family Man
    It's an easier movie to tolerate than it should be if, like me, you're in love with Téa Leoni, who, as a lithe, lusty, strangely patient firecracker Superwife in a shag, rescues the movie from the tar pit of irrelevance. With some decent lines, she could be the new Myrna Loy.
  28. Wet Hot American Summer
    The film exists in a humid meta-movie ether all its own.
  29. Scumrock
    Gripping, strangely beautiful, and poignant.
  30. Swerve
    The photogenic cast's looks far exceed their featureless performances, and any mood of sunshiny malevolence is undercut by too many studied directorial compositions.
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