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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

67
$9.99
75
24 City
66
Adoration
74
Afghan Star
48
Alien Trespass
56
American Violet
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57
Away We Go
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
62
Big Man Japan
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55
Brothers Bloom, The
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx
Call of the Wild
63
Cheri
62
Cherry Blossoms
63
Dead Snow
65
Departures
18
Downloading Nancy
58
Easy Virtue
70
End of the Line, The
77
Every Little Step
64
Examined Life
80
Food, Inc.
38
Gigantic
56
Girl from Monaco, The
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
87
Gomorrah
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Great Buck Howard, The
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx
Home
82
Hunger
91
Hurt Locker, The
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
81
Il Divo
54
Is Anybody There?
71
Jerichow
58
Julia
74
Lemon Tree
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
40
Limits of Control, The
42
Little Ashes
64
Lymelife
50
Management
57
Merry Gentleman, The
66
Moon
35
New York
62
Not Forgotten
xx
Offshore
78
O'Horten
64
Outrage
40
Paris 36
54
Pontypool
71
Pressure Cooker
52
Quiet Chaos
83
Revanche
67
Rudo y Cursi
86
Seraphine
65
Sex Positive
70
Shall We Kiss?
77
Sin Nombre
59
Sleep Dealer
74
Song of Sparrows, The
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
82
Sugar
84
Summer Hours
61
Sunshine Cleaning
28
Surveillance
42
Tennessee
63
Tetro
64
Throw Down Your Heart
80
Tokyo Sonata
63
Tokyo!
70
Tony Manero
74
Treeless Mountain
88
Tulpan
74
Two Lovers
83
Tyson
83
U2 3D
60
Under Our Skin
69
Unmistaken Child
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
22
What Goes Up
45
Whatever Works
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
91
Hurt Locker, The
89
Goodbye Solo
88
Tulpan
87
Gomorrah
86
Seraphine
84
Summer Hours
83
U2 3D
83
Revanche
83
Tyson
82
Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
82
Sugar
82
Hunger
82
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
81
Il Divo
81
Beaches of Agnes, The
80
Food, Inc.
80
Tokyo Sonata
79
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
78
Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
78
O'Horten
77
Every Little Step
77
Sin Nombre
75
24 City
74
Treeless Mountain
74
Afghan Star
74
Two Lovers
74
Song of Sparrows, The
74
Lemon Tree
71
Pressure Cooker
71
Jerichow
70
Shall We Kiss?
70
Tony Manero
70
End of the Line, The
69
Valentino: The Last Emperor
69
Unmistaken Child
67
$9.99
67
Rudo y Cursi
67
Girlfriend Experience, The
66
Adoration
66
Moon
65
Sex Positive
65
Departures
64
Outrage
64
Examined Life
64
Throw Down Your Heart
64
Lymelife
63
Tokyo!
63
Cheri
63
Dead Snow
63
Tetro
63
Great Buck Howard, The
62
Cherry Blossoms
62
Big Man Japan
62
Not Forgotten
61
Sunshine Cleaning
60
Under Our Skin
59
Sleep Dealer
58
Julia
58
Easy Virtue
57
Away We Go
57
Merry Gentleman, The
57
Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love
56
Girl from Monaco, The
56
American Violet
55
Brothers Bloom, The
54
Is Anybody There?
54
Pontypool
54
Stoning of Soraya M., The
52
Quiet Chaos
50
Management
48
Alien Trespass
45
Whatever Works
42
Little Ashes
42
Tennessee
40
Limits of Control, The
40
Paris 36
38
Gigantic
36
Life is Hot in Cracktown
35
New York
28
Big Shot-Caller, The
28
Surveillance
22
What Goes Up
18
Downloading Nancy
16
I Hate Valentine's Day
xx
Call of the Wild
xx
Home
xx
Offshore
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 246 User Votes
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