I prefer mplayer—novel-length man page and all—for video, but there’s nothing innately wrong with VLC. I did try it, a very long time ago, but it felt too GUI-oriented for my taste back then.
(I can think of exactly two times mplayer has failled to play a file I presented it with, and in both cases it was my own fault for not compiling in support for that codec. However, the man page is justifiably frightening.)