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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

97
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
83
Alexandra
43
Anamorph
35
Babysitters, The
32
Backseat
80
Band's Visit, The
65
Battle for Haditha
47
Bella
63
Blind Mountain
71
Blindsight
47
Boarding Gate
60
Body of War
58
Bra Boys
70
Caramel
54
Cashback
44
Chaos Theory
32
Chapter 27
69
Chicago 10
xx
Children of Huang Shi, The
83
Chop Shop
46
CJ7
78
Counterfeiters, The
30
Cover
49
Dark Matter
35
Deal
62
Dhamma Brothers, The
92
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
83
Edge of Heaven, The
20
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
58
Fall, The
43
Favor, The
58
First Saturday in May, The
57
Flawless
87
Flight of the Red Balloon, The
xx
From Within
44
Frontier(s)
57
Fugitive Pieces
41
Funny Games
66
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
61
Girls Rock!
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
57
Grand, The
58
Hats Off
68
Honeydripper
xx
Jack and Jill vs. the World
67
Jellyfish
51
Jihad for Love, A
xx
Kiss the Bride
37
Life Before Her Eyes, The
72
Life of Reilly, The
50
Look
65
Married Life
35
Meet Bill
63
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
55
Mister Lonely
52
My Blueberry Nights
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
55
Noise
63
OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83
Paranoid Park
55
Pathology
48
Penelope
90
Persepolis
62
Planet B-Boy
xx
Plumm Summer, A
67
Praying with Lior
46
Previous Engagement, A
72
Priceless
80
Reprise
71
Roman de gare
48
Run, Fat Boy, Run
50
Sangre de mi sangre
85
Savages, The
24
Sex and Death 101
66
Shelter
75
Shotgun Stories
40
Sleepwalking
67
Snow Angels
67
Son of Rambow
71
Standard Operating Procedure
76
Stuff and Dough
68
Surfwise
xx
Tashan
82
Taxi to the Dark Side
57
Teeth
56
Then She Found Me
55
Tracey Fragments, The
55
Turn the River
72
Tuya's Marriage
83
U2 3D
59
Under the Same Moon
76
Unforeseen, The
66
Unsettled
90
Up the Yangtze
55
Vice
79
Visitor, The
xx
War, Inc.
64
Water Lilies
45
Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
57
Without the King
75
Witnesses, The
63
XXY
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75
Young@Heart
45
Zombie Strippers
97
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
92
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
90
Up the Yangtze
90
Persepolis
87
Flight of the Red Balloon, The
85
Savages, The
83
Paranoid Park
83
Chop Shop
83
Alexandra
83
U2 3D
83
Edge of Heaven, The
82
Taxi to the Dark Side
80
Reprise
80
Band's Visit, The
79
Visitor, The
78
Counterfeiters, The
76
Unforeseen, The
76
Stuff and Dough
75
Young@Heart
75
Witnesses, The
75
Shotgun Stories
73
Duchess of Langeais, The
72
Priceless
72
Tuya's Marriage
72
Life of Reilly, The
71
Standard Operating Procedure
71
Roman de gare
71
My Brother Is an Only Child
71
Blindsight
70
Caramel
69
Chicago 10
68
Surfwise
68
Honeydripper
67
Snow Angels
67
Praying with Lior
67
Jellyfish
67
Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
67
Son of Rambow
66
George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead
66
Unsettled
66
Shelter
65
Battle for Haditha
65
Married Life
64
Water Lilies
63
XXY
63
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
63
OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
63
Blind Mountain
62
Planet B-Boy
62
Dhamma Brothers, The
61
Girls Rock!
60
Body of War
59
Under the Same Moon
58
First Saturday in May, The
58
Fall, The
58
Hats Off
58
Bra Boys
57
Flawless
57
Teeth
57
Fugitive Pieces
57
Without the King
57
Grand, The
56
Then She Found Me
55
Vice
55
Turn the River
55
Tracey Fragments, The
55
Mister Lonely
55
Noise
55
Pathology
55
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
54
Cashback
52
My Blueberry Nights
51
Jihad for Love, A
50
Sangre de mi sangre
50
Look
49
Dark Matter
48
Run, Fat Boy, Run
48
Penelope
47
Bella
47
Boarding Gate
46
CJ7
46
Previous Engagement, A
45
Zombie Strippers
45
Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
44
Frontier(s)
44
Chaos Theory
43
Anamorph
43
Favor, The
41
Funny Games
40
Sleepwalking
37
Life Before Her Eyes, The
35
Meet Bill
35
Babysitters, The
35
Deal
32
Backseat
32
Chapter 27
30
Cover
24
Sex and Death 101
20
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
xx
Tashan
xx
Plumm Summer, A
xx
Children of Huang Shi, The
xx
Kiss the Bride
xx
War, Inc.
xx
Jack and Jill vs. the World
xx
From Within
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Village, The
Touchstone Pictures
FILM:
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for scenes of violence and frightening situations
Starring
Bryce Dallas Howard,
Joaquin Phoenix,
Adrien Brody,
William Hurt,
Sigourney Weaver,
Brendan Gleeson,
Cherry Jones, Judy Greer,
and
Celia Weston
The thrilling tale of an isolated village confronting the astonishing truth that lies just outside its borders. (Touchstone Pictures)
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
Horror
|
Suspense/Thriller
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
M. Night Shyamalan
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
M. Night Shyamalan
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: January 11, 2005
Video: January 11, 2005
Theatrical: July 30, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
115 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
80
Empire
Ian Nathan
Made with such elegance, atmosphere and wonderfully mannered performances it will nestle deep inside your head, refusing to budge. The more you ponder it, the better it becomes.

75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
A third-generation performer, this daughter of actor-director Ron Howard makes a stunning feature debut.

75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
The Village, even when its step falters, is on to something more provocative than seeing dead people. Its power, unrelated to digital monsters, comes from the tension building inside the characters.

75
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
Spellbinding if ponderous.

75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
For those who like the director's body of work, appreciate "The Twilight Zone," and have a high suspension of disbelief threshold, The Village is likely to satisfy.

70
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
The Village may have finally emptied his usual bag of tricks, but considered on its own merits, its skillful fusion of Grimm fairy-tale horror and pointed social parable find Shyamalan in peak form.

70
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
The Village is a better movie (than Signs) --probably his best since "The Sixth Sense"--but it indulges Shyamalan's penchant for messianic uplift.

67
Entertainment Weekly
Mark Harris
It gives nothing of the plot away to say that there's a fine line between an ''Aha!'' and an ''Oh, brother!'' Whether you feel The Village crosses that line may hinge on whether you think Shyamalan's screenwriting ability is beginning to lag behind his skill as a director.

63
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
A big, creepy dollhouse of a movie--a sometimes engrossing shocker with a surprise ending that isn't especially shocking or surprising.

63
USA Today
Claudia Puig
The Village emerges as a victim of its own ambitions. At one point, Edward advises Ivy: "Do your very best not to scream." That doesn't require much restraint on our part.

63
Baltimore Sun
Chris Kaltenbach
It doesn't take a genius IQ to figure out the movie's final twist far in advance, leaving the attentive viewer to wonder only about how Shyamalan will pull it off and to hope the movie doesn't turn silly.

60
The Hollywood Reporter
Kirk Honeycutt
Unlike "The Sixth Sense," the film's key revelation might be too mild to jolt audiences. Some may even feel cheated.

60
Time
Richard Corliss
The film's payoff raises more questions than it answers, which may be Shyamalan's intent in this political parable of fear.

60
Dallas Observer
Gregory Weinkauf
The result is his (Shyamalan's) most meditative and lovingly rendered offering thus far, if also his least fun.

58
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Paula Nechak
The Village goes up in smoke (and mirrors). It wants to find a profoundness that hints at something deep and dimensional, but it hasn't the courage of conviction to stay on course as an unabashed ode to innocence.

58
Portland Oregonian
Karen Karbo
Thriller is hardly the word for this tedious exercise in clue-hiding.

50
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
The Village yields a trick ending quite lame, quite tame and quite old; Rod Serling thought of it 40 years ago and he did it better.

50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Liam Lacey
Not only is The Village not credible, its shallowness makes it dislikable, a shopworn gothic plot focusing on stereotypical characters with disabilities, with no ambitions beyond playing a simple-minded audience head game.

50
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Shyamalan remains a stilted screenwriter, but Roger Deakins's cinematography is spooky, creepy, eerie all the way.

50
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Pours on creepy atmosphere, but this dud is too intent on delivering its liberal "message" to actually deliver the kinds of scares it promises in the terrific trailer.

50
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
The Village is Shyamalan's weakest story, and its ending - whether or not you're surprised by it - is a genuine clinker.

50
Variety
Brian Lowry
A watchable film for awhile that unravels in a muddled last act likely to send many opening-weekend filmgoers home head-scratching and grumbling.

50
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
I will tell you what The Village is not: It is not scary. It is not all that interesting. It isn't even much of a movie.

50
Premiere
Aaron Hillis
When the secret is finally divulged, its such a letdown that it feels unfairly manipulative to have sat through such agonizing tedium.

50
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
Shyamalan remains as coolly unstirred by sex as he was in his previous movies--an astounding indifference, given the historical entwining of eros and fright. Even more bizarre is the gradual draining of humor from his work; the anatomy of horror demands a tongue in the cheek to go with the baring of teeth, but much of The Village is a proud and sullen affair.

40
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
The film's ridiculousness would not be so irksome if Mr. Shyamalan did not take his sleight of hand so seriously, if he did not insist on dressing this scary, silly, moderately clever fairy tale in a somber cloak of allegory.

40
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
This undeniably talented writer-director has been repeating himself with steadily decreasing potency ever since the wonderful "The Sixth Sense," and his latest excursion does nothing to buck the trend.

40
Film Threat
Chad Bixby
Everyone here sounds trapped in a high school staging of The Crucible, and after about an hour, this high-toned creature feature wears out its welcome and starts to seem rather boring and pretentious, the two greatest sins any movie can commit.

40
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
The film's gotcha! payoff doesn't justify the gloomy journey.

40
Newsweek
David Ansen
The entire solemn, portentous edifice that is The Village collapses of its own fake weight. Just about everything that makes Shyamalan special misfires here.

30
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
The real mystery at the heart of M. Night Shyamalan's latest: How does he persuade actors like Sigourney Weaver and Adrien Brody to act in his supremely lame movies?

30
Village Voice
Michael Atkinson
The screwiest yarn yet from Shyamalan's metaphysical-Limburger career project, a non-horror horror film.

30
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
It's exasperating watching so much top-drawer talent wasted in a film that wraps itself up with one of the most preposterous (not to mention obvious) endings the genre has ever seen.

30
Slate
David Edelstein
The photography is excellent! the music is striking! the movie is a stinker!

30
Chicago Reader
Hank Sartin
Every eerily tranquil shot, weirdly elliptical scene, and peculiar line reading contributes to a mood of detachment rather than creeping dread.

30
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
For the most part, the film's a bewildering disappointment.

30
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Thomas
It's tedious instead of provocative and so unconvincing as to be preposterous.

25
San Francisco Chronicle
Mick LaSalle
The Village seems poised to become as cheesy in its effects as a low-budget horror film. Shyamalan's gracefulness keeps his movie just out of that abyss.

25
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
A colossal miscalculation, a movie based on a premise that cannot support it, a premise so transparent it would be laughable were the movie not so deadly solemn. It's a flimsy excuse for a plot, with characters who move below the one-dimensional and enter Flatland.

20
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
It's bad enough to make parable a four-letter word.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.6 (out of 10) based on 240 User Votes
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