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. Dirty
    Cuba Gooding Jr. and Clifton Collins Jr. (excellent as Perry Smith in "Capote") habitually rise above their clichéd roles.
  2. Things Never Said
    To be fair, the cast is largely good, given the material.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Grey
    There's too much Jack London, and, as they systematically pick off the stragglers, too many CGI wolves go unpunched.
  4. Beloved
    Dutiful as it is, Jonathan Demme's Beloved doesn't succeed so much as it abides…it moves in leisurely fits and--unencumbered by style or narrative complexity--never loses its forward momentum.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Home at the End of the World
    Cunningham's Cliff's Notes adaptation shrinks the character to a monosyllabic man-child with a puppy-dog stare.
  6. The German Doctor
    Puenzo dramatizes her material with an overcooked sense of import that generates scant suspense.
  7. Sin City
    Sin City lacks the human interest, not to be confused with humanism, that "Pulp Fiction" had in abundance. As if to underscore the fact, Tarantino guest-directed a scene. It's readily recognizable as the only one in which the dialogue has the slightest conviction.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dance Party, USA
    Writer-director Aaron Katz has a gift for naturalistic dialogue--that alone allows his film to transcend the micro-budget indie gabfest genre. On the other hand, there's a fine line between naturalistic and dull, and Dance Party occasionally crosses it as its young actors talk about life, or don't talk about life.
  9. The Chronicles of Riddick
    Riddick is a preening outer-space costume drama staged as a backdrop for its leading man's muscles.
  10. Paparazzi
    Cookie-cutter "Cape Fear" knockoff.
  11. The Good, the Bad, the Weird
    Kim's filmmaking is generally cartoonish in a bad sense, as he squanders his set pieces, flashbacks, and other attention-getting with sometimes downright wretched staging.
  12. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
    Bullock manages medium charm, but you gotta feel for King, forced to play dat-bitch-crazy butch to Bullock's untrammeled femme.
  13. The Meg
    Turteltaub is too buoyant for horror — the deaths and danger never sink in.
  14. Tigerland
    In his first major role, the Irish actor Farrell deflects the script's more dubious aspects through sheer magnetic presence.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Date Night
    A jumble of genres, tones, and styles, Date Night ultimately strains to be a serious movie about marriage, with one joke: that, even when surrounded by excitement, Claire and Phil revert to being dull. But in practice, their dullness is just dull.
  16. Off the Hook
    Watstein handily directs and edits around his screenplay's sappier elements.
  17. Short Skin
    However brightened by some fast dick-and-pussy banter and lovely Tuscan scenery, the film's slow boil makes it fairly unconvincing, and Creatini is one of modern European movies' least palatable, and least animated, protagonists.
  18. Jet Lag
    The writerly restraint that confines them to the airport is admirable, though the fairy-tale ending in Acapulco seems like a throwaway.
  19. The Spy Next Door
    Immediately forgettable family entertainment, suitable for release only in the dung-heap month of January.
  20. Dark Shadows
    "Wood" is still by far Depp and Burton's best collaboration, exhibiting the balance of tone between kitsch parody and zealous fantasy that's missing in Dark Shadows, less a resurrection than a clumsy desecration.
  21. Man on the Moon
    The filmmakers don't even attempt to give Kaufman an inner life.
  22. The Woods
    A send-up of a communal project made of vague goals and empty postures that is ultimately indistinguishable from its target.
  23. Guernsey
    Leopold's movie is superbly shot and restrained, but not economical; the brooding and introversions profitlessly pad out what might've been a leveling featurette.
  24. Boy
    The abundant charm of first-time actor James Rolleston, playing the 11-year-old of the title in Boy, doesn't quite save the aimless, nostalgia-woozy second feature from Taika Waititi (2007's Eagle vs. Shark).
  25. I Am Not a Serial Killer
    It's not a riot, though the Midwest textures are sharp (especially for an Irish filmmaker in an entirely Irish production), and the idea of witnessing a killing spree from the p.o.v. of a town's funeral home is full of rich discomfort.
  26. The Motel
    The Motel, Michael Kang's modest Sundance applause reaper, doesn't deserve to be shotgunned for the sins of 30 other movies. But the underwhelming syncopation of make-nice clichés is too familiar.
  27. Running from Crazy
    The possible hereditary nature of suicide in general and of the seven known Hemingway suicides in particular is lazily poked at; decades of research go unmentioned and unexplored.
  28. This Christmas
    The cast has spirit, but the dialogue and situations are phonier than the Yule log on TV.
  29. Standard Operating Procedure
    Since "The Thin Blue Line's" remarkable intervention, Morris's work has grown more public and more problematic--lofty yet snide, a form of know-it-all epistemological inquiry.
  30. Beatocello’s Umbrella
    [A] well-intentioned but terribly clunky film.
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