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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  1. The Prosecution of an American President
    So unabashedly one-sided that the documentary is problematic even when the facts and figures check out.
  2. Bitter Seeds
    Although temperamentally dissimilar, Peled's film complements Anusha Rizvi's 2010 feature debut, Peepli (Live), which responded to the same crisis with a flawed but nervy satire. Bitter Seeds doesn't fool around, not while the enormity persists.
  3. Sheer
    This modest crime drama is infused with the joy and expectation that only comes from young filmmakers instinctively awed by their urban surroundings.
  4. Dinotasia
    If they're never fully convincing as photo-realistic figures, they're certainly as much good gory fun to watch as any old-school monster kids had to stick with dreary first acts to see.
  5. The American Scream
    Though not must-see cinema, it is entertaining and affecting.
  6. Deep Dark Canyon
    The film depletes itself with inter-location crosscutting, presumably intended to stoke suspense, and it all approximates the feel of an early Billy Bob Thornton script but lacks the full investment. Still, Levine commands every scene he's in with great support from a subtle and soulful Martin Starr as his conflicted deputy.
  7. Dust Up
    Billy Jack meets Rob Zombie meets John Waters in this trippy, gory, not-as-fun-as-it-should-be genre mash-up from writer-director Ward Roberts.
  8. The Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling - Ireland 1965
    Charlie Is My Darling captures the quintet at their most impossibly vernal and beautiful.
  9. Here I Learned to Love
    A slight but powerful entry in the family-history-as-world-history archives.
  10. Shady Lady
    Too many Wiki-worthy info dumps and not enough character-enriching detail stops Shady Lady, a docudrama about a team of World War II Australian bombardiers, from cohering into a compelling fiction-documentary hybrid.
  11. Ingenious
    In truth, the film belongs more to the always superb Roberts, but it's fitting that Renner's good fortune has trickled to a movie about two guys who always expect lightning to strike twice.
  12. The Mystical Laws
    The Mystical Laws is an (un)holy mess, a religious tract masquerading as a paint-by-numbers hero's journey.
  13. The Normals
    When everybody finally accepts that they've been experiencing a prolonged, semi-self-inflicted meltdown, Ciancimino and director Kevin Patrick Connors's lone gag pays off. Too bad the joke is only funny in retrospect.
  14. The Loving Story
    Well-timed and well crafted in equal measures, The Loving Story is a thoughtful, terrifically intimate account of the case that dismantled this country's anti-miscegenation laws 100 years after the abolition of slavery.
  15. Sahkanaga
    What Summerour doesn't capture as well are the panic and emotional upheaval that Paul's poems and tentative interactions with Lyla only hint at - one of the reasons the film feels flimsy rather than delicate, lacking strong performances or psychological nuance.
  16. Lost Angels: Skid Row Is My Home
    The film would have been more powerful if it also included a man or woman who wasn't lovable once you got to know him or her--maybe one of the young crack or meth addicts whose violent demeanors, as explained by an old-timer, have considerably shifted the dynamics of street life.
  17. Dabangg 2
    Mostly likable thanks to its creators' preference for light-hearted mugging over self-serious teeth-gnashing.
  18. Mumbai Mirror
    Mumbai Mirror might not be consistently exciting, but it is mostly irresistible.
  19. David
    Thankfully, as David's ostentatious subplot-hopping becomes routine, Nambiar's stylistic experiment coalesces into a moving set of faith-based confrontations. It's thrilling to watch Nambiar futz around with tone and style for the sake of establishing a thematic progression.
  20. The Lost Medallion
    The first in a projected series of four values-encouraging family films, The Lost Medallion is so corny that even the most conservative parent might beat a hasty retreat.
  21. Special 26
    The film is superficially tense throughout, but director Pandey doesn't know what to emphasize when.
  22. Northeast
    A bland aimlesssness characterizes both Northeast's lead character and the film itself.
  23. Doctor Bello
    The worst thing about Doctor Bello's tacky, pseudo-spiritual proceedings isn't how bad the soap opera melodramatics are (Tyler Perry would blush!), but rather how lazily sketched out its story of one man's road to self-actualization is.
  24. White T
    When choosing to unleash seemingly any desperate comedian they could find willing to work for scale, the creators of White T ensured that almost nothing about White T would make sense.
  25. The Attacks of 26/11
    Attacks doesn't establish the severity of a real-life tragedy, it only crassly devalues the loss of human life.
  26. Citizen Hearst
    Sometimes Citizen Hearst feels as breezy and electric as the newsreels Hearst pioneered; other times it feels like the video they'll make you watch during orientation on your first day at 300 West 57th.
  27. Thinly Veiled
    This ludicrous, overlong, pathetically conceived, instant festival rejection might just be sincere enough to rank among laughable drunk-crowd curios like Troll 2, Birdemic and, ye Gods, The Room.
  28. Smyrna: The Destruction of a Cosmopolitan City - 1900-1922
    Filmmaker Maria Ilioú's uninspired flake of talking-head Wikipedia cinema focuses on the forgotten Anatolian port city's post-World War I years.
  29. The Revolutionary
    As a filmmaker, Drasnin should not have relied so singularly on Rittenberg's testimony.
  30. Better Mus' Come
    Uneven acting by the cast and a script that could have used at least one more overhaul to synthesize its elements (the love story is so flimsily mapped out as to be unbelievable) cripple Saulter's ambitions, but the energy of the film pulls you in and holds you through its tragic ending.
  31. Crazy and Thief
    The film's engagement rests on the viewer's interest in observing—and while the kids are wildly charming at first, like a tired babysitter, one may find their antics growing repetitive and trying. Clocking in at just 51 minutes, Crazy and Thief nevertheless could have been a great deal shorter.
  32. Mindless Behavior: All Around the World
    Throughout the film, Mindless Behavior's four interchangeable members only project youthful enthusiasm and PR-friendly love for their fans.
  33. Hamesima X
    The mysticism chokes a bit on its own tail, but is tempered by the underlying human drama.
  34. Mortem
    The initial scenes, thick with creep-show ambiance, promise more fulfilling madness than what actually transpires once the out-of-nowhere second guest reveals who she is.
  35. Himmatwala
    The pseudo-progressivism inherent in Himmatwala, an action-comedy remake of the 1983 Bollywood action-drama of the same name, makes toxic camp of otherwise meaningless kitsch.
  36. Silver Case
    Some movies really are unwatchable, but a reviewer, as an underpaid but loyal public servant, must persevere. Take, for example, Silver Case, the truly terrible debut feature of writer-director Christian Filippella and writer Jason A. White.
  37. Turtle Hill, Brooklyn
    Nothing is forced in Ryan Gielen's deceptively simple story, with the pressures bubbling forth as naturally as the good cheer that defines so much of the film.
  38. The Second Meeting
    The meeting itself is genial but sparkless, with an air of artifice.
  39. Rescue in the Philippines
    A well-crafted if structurally generic documentary.
  40. Tattoo Nation
    The images of the style as it evolves, and especially those that fill the last 15 minutes of "Tattoo", are so beautiful and often majestic that they overshadow the film's small shortcomings.
  41. Thale
    Any initial, intriguing otherworldly atmosphere is negated by answers that are more pedestrian than terrifying.
  42. Chashme Baddoor
    Chashme Baddoor's modest charms dissipate quickly, but they're certainly real.
  43. Nautanki Saala!
    Nautanki Saala's creators spend so much time disinterestedly transitioning from one plot point to the next that they only effectively establish the haphazard nature of RP and Nandini's romance.
  44. The Happy House
    It's hard to be certain whether the film's placidity is an ironic gag, but the modesty at work turns out to be pretty likable, as strange as that sounds.
  45. Triumph of the Wall
    Triumph of the Wall is often painfully boring and rather shapeless, not so much a crafted film as a compendium of one guy's musings. Regardless, in an era when seemingly every documentary is tied to a hot-button issue, making one about a guy building a wall is endearing.
  46. It Takes a Man and a Woman
    The final leg of director Cathy Garcia-Molina's exceptionally broad, partly English-dubbed cockles-warmer of a trilogy outright apes Hollywood rom-com formulas with a personality so affably lobotomized it wouldn't dare frighten delicate tastes.
  47. Holla II
    Dumb as they're written, even Holla II's characters are smart enough to want to exit this clunker as fast as they can.
  48. G-Dog
    Once the stakes are raised in the final third, Mock allows her camera to roam over its subjects’ faces and let their story tell itself—a wise choice, made not a moment too soon.
  49. Occupy Love
    The photography is beautiful, the scenes of crowds and their signs arresting, and the interviews with individual protesters...are often inspiring.
  50. Aroused
    Aspires to be a consciousness-raising documentary but is only as deep as a tube of lipstick.
  51. How Sweet It Is
    An extraordinarily undistinguished comedy from director Brian Herzlinger.
  52. Shootout at Wadala
    No amount of hyper-stylized, Guy Ritchie–inspired posturing can save a film whose lead antihero is so unrepentantly vile.
  53. The Fruit Hunters
    The filmmakers' focus is fleeting. Factoids about the origins of names like Haas avocados, Macintosh apples, Clementines and Bing cherries feel like patches of solid ground, while interludes of terrible acting to illustrate fruit-related historical moments leave a bitter taste.
  54. Charge
    There's no dearth of adrenaline as engineering teams face challenges every bit as bumpy, winding, perilous and exhilarating as the famous course itself.
  55. Go Goa Gone
    Most jokes don't translate very well in Go Goa Gone, a Bollywood horror comedy influenced by Shaun of the Dead.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Finding Joy
    Carlo De Rosa's comedy bears some resemblance to Garden State, although it's a little less depressing and more random in its oddities.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Free China: The Courage to Believe
    Free China, with its aggressive narration, haunting music, and disturbing photographic evidence of crimes against humanity, wants you to walk away outraged at the injustice of it all, and most likely, you will.
  58. I Send You This Place
    Even at a lean 68 minutes, it's a vanity project that's the very definition of insufferable.
  59. Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire
    A surprisingly thoughtful, well-researched attempt to give both sides of the argument respect while illuminating the long history of tensions surrounding gun ownership in America.
  60. Compulsion
    The game of wills that ensues between the two women isn't terribly interesting, much less suspenseful, and in fact, it's not clear that director Egidio Coccimiglio and screenwriter Floyd Byars ever settled on whether they were making a thriller or a satire about food and celebrity.
  61. L.A. Superheroes
    It's a movie by people who lifted almost all their ideas from much better movies, and lean too heavily on "based on a true story" to pave over their film's weaknesses.
  62. Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth
    This picture may not have the structure of a more practiced documentary, but what it lacks in delivery it compensates for with fervency.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Magic Camp
    Real drama, from a storytelling perspective, is scarce, but that's as it should be.
  64. Under the Bed
    The real bogeyman is incomprehensible plotting in director Steven C. Miller's Under the Bed, which matches narrative incoherence with one of the most over-the-top portentous scores in horror-cinema history.
  65. Centro Histórico
    A rich, artful quartet of shorts mirroring the diverse idiosyncrasies of four significant auteurs.
  66. Cavedigger
    The line between creative ambition and risky obsession is sharply drawn—or rather, carved out of New Mexico sandstone—in the life and work of wholly motivated artist Ra Paulette.
  67. Neander-Jin: The Return of the Neanderthal Man
    Director-producer Florian Steinbiss's German-set, largely German-cast comedy mixes genres with all the quality control of a fourth-grader dispensing every soda flavor into one cup.
  68. Jajouka, Something Good Comes to You
    The artists prove a motif rather than a resting point, with the film circling around them, then breaking away for further visions.
  69. Implanted
    Writer-director Thomas Verrette's thriller grapples with the foundational relationship between memory and self-identity. It's a well-trod path of exploration, and Verrette-- largely competent, often pedestrian-- doesn't bring much new to the investigative process.
  70. Pig Death Machine
    Too madcap or not self-serious enough to be called transgressive, Moritsugu's degenerate romp splits the tonal difference between Nick Zedd and John Waters.
  71. The United States of Autism
    The United States of Autism is an example of a well-meaning documentary that may do more harm than good.
  72. Skinwalker Ranch
    Fixed cameras lend themselves well to dimly lit effects and shrewd obfuscation, and McGinn proves a fine hand at stock-horror misdirection.
  73. Abandoned Mine
    Haunted houses come in many shapes and sizes, and the title location in Abandoned Mine is the only fresh coat of paint this one gets.
  74. Dead Before Dawn 3D
    Dead Before Dawn's best jokes are grounded in the warm, believable camaraderie between Casper and his friends, but Mullen is less confident with crowds. The zemon-horde attack scenes are a visual jumble.
  75. TV Man: The Search for the Last Independent Dealer
    [Kosareff] backburners what's most fascinating (stories of former titans of the industry; segments discussing how shifting social mores impacted said industry, the key roles of women in the factories) and squanders a chance to discuss the larger implications.
  76. Two: The Story of Roman & Nyro
    A vanity project riding the waves of a socio-political moment, Two confirms just as many stereotypes as it attempts to dismantle.
  77. Hawking
    Finnigan wisely seizes on the gentle strength and charisma of Hawking's first wife, Jane Wilde. She imprints on the film as fully as her former husband.
  78. Naked As We Came
    Naked plays like a gay-themed August: Osage County without all the histrionics.
  79. Unacceptable Levels
    Unacceptable Levels wants to scare the biosolids out of you, and it can, but that doesn't mean it's a success.
  80. I Spit on Your Grave 2
    The film ultimately plays less as female empowerment than it does a narrative in which the comeuppance doled out is likely to be received as a digestif for those in the audience who got off on the gendered violence in the first place.
  81. The Paw Project
    The story of veterinarian Jennifer Conrad's crusade to outlaw declawing of cats is eye-opening and sometimes charming.
  82. The Time Is... Now
    Rife with hasty generalizations, tautologies, and false choices, the movie is also tricked out with plenty of visual kitsch.
  83. We Came Home
    This is a boutique production that suffers a bad case of POV syndrome, sloppily following the blueprint of what documentaries about families and important issues are supposed be.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Cleaver's Destiny
    [An] underwhelming little film entirely ill-equipped to deal with its serious and important themes.
  85. Babygirl
    [A] small, gentle coming-of-age story, exceedingly well-cast.
  86. Snow Queen
    Snow Queen proves both visually cruddy and narratively muddled.
  87. Silent City
    Roothooft, for her part, gives one of the more nuanced and vulnerable performances in recent memory; she maximizes nearly every scene's potential without overplaying a single one.
  88. Réquiem NN
    [A] quiet, somber film.
  89. DSKNECTD
    It's an over-the-top cautionary doc less convincing than the weight-loss ads on Facebook.
  90. Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird
    In this entertaining documentary, the coolest kids in town sing the praises of cartoonist Gahan Wilson, whose work is a brilliant fusion of the personal and the political.
  91. Cut to Black
    While Eberle's execution falls short, the scale of his ambition can't help but stir admiration.
  92. Out Loud
    Out Loud is too clumsily put together to give its subject the weight it needs to feel both grounded and moving.
  93. Bridging the Gap
    Bridging the Gap is gorgeous and weird.
  94. Behind the Blue Veil
    What we're presented with is a scattering of scenes amid an overpowering backdrop of geopolitical and anthropological explanation, and nothing resembling drama.
  95. Fighting for Freedom
    None of these TV-movie trappings does Freedom's topical subject any favors, but they do confirm that those most passionate about something often require some sort of creative filter when making art about it.
  96. The Impaler
    The cell phone reception in Dracula's castle is pretty bad, but it can't be as frustrating as trying to fathom the plot of this woefully muddled horror film.
  97. The legend of Sarila
    A vibrant color scheme and the deliciously evil cackle of Christopher Plummer elevate this kid-friendly animated adventure from Canada.
  98. Tough as Iron
    Far better as a family drama than as a gangster picture, the film's muddled attempt at marrying the two distracts from its emotional center.
  99. Sake-Bomb
    A dismal road trip saga.
  100. People of a Feather
    Heath never puts together a larger narrative about the decline of Inuit culture and offers little political history of the situation.
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