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 7.5 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 11162
  2. Mixed: 4,553 out of 11162
  3. Negative: 1,901 out of 11162
11162 movie reviews
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    • 62 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    American History X
    A mess of a film.
  2. Life Is Beautiful
    Life Is Beautiful is funny (kinda) and even tasteful (sorta). But in its fantasy of divine grace, it is also nonsense.
  3. Pleasantville
    Funny for about half an hour, Pleasantville thereafter becomes an increasingly lugubrious, ultimately exasperating mix of technological wonder and ideological idiocy.
  4. Orgazmo
    A ridiculous soft-core kung-fu porn film about a ridiculous hard-core one, Orgazmo is the kind of movie that improves according to the lateness of the hour.
  5. The Cruise
    The Cruise is being hailed as a harbinger of a future in which indie film will be liberated by low-cost technology. If this is where we're going, I want off the bus.
  6. Happiness
    If Hollywood were truly devoted to telling it like it is, Baker would win a special Oscar. To add to the creepiness, Solondz is (as he made clear in Dollhouse) an extremely sensitive director of kids.
  7. 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.
  8. Practical Magic
    The title is, to say the least, an understatement. Witchcraft has rarely looked more prosaic and less sexy than it does in Griffin Dunne's Practical Magic.
  9. The Sentinel
    What’s remarkable—and Kafkaesque—about La Sentinelle is how Desplechin grounds the phantasmagoric aspects of his tale in the details, routines, and conflicts of daily life.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Holy Man
    Holy Man's traipse through the wilds of consumerism and higher purpose must have seemed like a chance for the proverbial stretch, but not even Eddie can save this ill-conceived mess of a movie.
  11. What Dreams May Come
    A bottomless trough of mystic swill, is too confused to even fulfill the paradigm's most basic requirements.
  12. Antz
    Matching their superbly expressive computer-generated counterparts, the actors are all enjoyably hammy, but the real star of Antz is the art direction, a marvel of teeming detail wittier and more sophisticated than the script.
  13. Clay Pigeons
    It's never clear, by the way, why any of this is supposed to be even remotely funny...This is the kind of movie asinine enough to believe that the mere juxtaposition of sadistic violence and a jaunty tune on the soundtrack is, in itself, clever.
  14. Pecker
    If scandal, sleaze, and celebrity worship are our national religion, then John Waters is an American prophet.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Monument Ave.
    Under Ted Demme's accomplished direction, the film unfolds with a kind of ruthless simplicity, observing, rather than stating, the neighborhood's intricate social connections.
  16. One True Thing
    Quindlen's book is wry and deeply sad in its prose, but watching actors run this very simple maze is significantly less entertaining, or convincing.
  17. A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries
    While the acting ensemble is crucial, it's not the only asset here.
  18. Rounders
    An unappealing, conventional, and somnolent piece of work in which, as glumly directed from David Levien and Brian Koppelman's corny script, every scene feels like it's being played for the second time.
  19. Simon Birch
    That Simon Birch is not as maudlin as it might have been is largely due to the intensely thoughtful, prickly performance of 11-year-old Ian Michael Smith, who plays Simon.
  20. Your Friends & Neighbors
    A fascinatingly mean-spirited erotic comedy.
  21. Next Stop Wonderland
    The style of the filmmaking, the freewheeling handheld camera movement, the associative editing, and the buoyant Brazilian score convey Anderson's sense that chance plays a major role in our lives and that what's happening on the periphery is often more important than what's staring us in the face.
  22. The Eel
    This simple, sinuous fable may not be among Imamura’s greatest films–it lacks the crazy libidinal energy of The Pornographers or Eijanaika–but it could hardly have been made by anyone else.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    How Stella Got Her Groove Back
    It's not a very well-made movie, but Stella's many limitations will probably be a side issue among its target audience, irrelevant next to those repeating images of Angela being so rich and beautiful and black.
  24. The Governess
    The Governess is too dirty-minded to fit the Merchant Ivory mold but not salacious enough to qualify as bodice-ripping laff riot. [04 Aug 1998]
    • Village Voice
  25. Lolita
    There's precious few yucks, for one thing, but you can't say you're surprised that the astonishingly humorless Lyne hadn't noticed or cared that the Nabokov original is a droll comedy of errors first and a self-pitying romantic tragedy second.
  26. Henry Fool
    Henry Fool, which runs a leisurely and ultimately tiresome 138 minutes, is so self-conscious it feels uncomfortable in its own skin. [23 Jun 1998]
    • Village Voice
  27. Sliding Doors
    Unduly smug about its flashy conceit and otherwise utterly empty, the film plays like lobotomized Kieslowski, less Blind Chance than dumb luck.
  28. Live Flesh
    A soap opera as convoluted as it is overdetermined. [20 Jan 1998]
    • Village Voice
  29. Happy Together
    Acerbic, moody, and provocatively slight, it's a movie of apparent non sequiturs and privileged moments. [21 Oct 1997]
    • Village Voice
  30. Telling Lies in America
    Guy Ferland directs with close attention to surface detail, but he never gets to the heart of the story - quite possibly because there isn't one to begin with. [21 Oct 1997]
    • Village Voice
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