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. Brotherhood of the Wolf
    It's easily the most disarming and inventive movie made for genre geeks in years.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let It Be
    Let It Be is a very lovely spectacle--a film to make you smile, and with its .16mm tawny colors and pastels, one that invites repeated viewings. [11 Jun 1970, p.55]
    • Village Voice
  3. Streit's: Matzo and the American Dream
    This gripping documentary about unleavened bread and the people who need it asks us to consider what we in the world owe one another — and demands that we do better.
  4. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
    Jackson's adaptation is certainly successful on its own terms.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Morning Sun
    Gripping, relentlessly tragic retelling of life in revolutionary times.
  6. The Oath
    Early in Laura Poitras's outstanding documentary The Oath, we learn that one of its subjects, Abu Jandal, a cabdriver living in Yemen, was Osama bin Laden's bodyguard in Afghanistan.
  7. The Ruins of Lifta
    Grounded in the art of listening, The Ruins of Lifta builds a powerful, personal, political conversation between Palestinians and Israelis looking to live differently.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Witnesses
    The Witnesses forms a magnificent trilogy with "Son Frère" (2003), Patrice Chéreau's devastating account of fraternal devotion in the face of death, and the amazing, acerbic "Before I Forget," a brooding and bitter tale of survival coming soon from Jacques Nolot, here lending an iconic cameo as the proprietor of Manu's hooker hotel.
  9. Pray for Japan
    Filmed over a period of six weeks and supplemented with animated music sequences and chilling news footage of the terrifying deluge, Pray is both an elegy and a love letter.
  10. Homme Less
    The film is an adventure, a reason to despair, a chance to hang out with a great talker, and an often beautiful portrait of this city's promise and cruelty.
  11. As Tears Go By (1988)
    Ostensibly a conventional tale of triad loyalty, As Tears Go By announced the presence of a genuine Hong Kong new wave—as well as an ambitious cineaste.
  12. Mademoiselle Chambon
    Discretely drawn and elegantly photographed, Mademoiselle Chambon gives a French, working-class love triangle the "Brief Encounter" treatment.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Neil Young: Heart of Gold
    Recaps and effectively mythologizes this nugget of modern folklore in brief interviews with Young and a band of old reliables, including Spooner Oldham, Grant Boatwright, and Ben Keith.
  14. Fracture
    Gosling is the kind of actor who makes other actors look lazy. He is Brando at the time of "Streetcar," or Nicholson in "Five Easy Pieces," and altogether one of the more remarkable happenings at the movies today.
  15. Li'l Quinquin
    A Dumont film that paints its small-town milieu with as much humor as violence (though there's a fair dose of that, too) and finds some tenderness in life's absurdities.
  16. The Secret World of Arrietty
    It's pure magic.
  17. Red Cliff
    Red Cliff exudes a physical grandiosity that few movies of the past 20 years have attempted--no matter that Woo, even at his best, is still more at ease with down-and-dirty action than epic pageantry.
  18. Pervert Park
    Pervert Park reveals a linked chain of incidents; we are all connected whether we admit it or not. What if we all lived in communities where the people around us agreed to help us get better, rather than blaming and shaming us for our transgressions?
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Terri
    Humanistic without being moralistic, and very funny, Terri is a measured, observational examination of the stratification of teenage loser-dom.
  20. Billy Elliot
    By setting this intimate conflict against a wider social drama, Daldry makes his portrait of a dancer all the more compelling.
  21. Sand Storm
    In short, Zexer's film — scraped of sentiment but still coursing with feeling — is an ethnographic melodrama, rich in cultural specifics but also universal longings.
  22. Tomboy
    Tomboy astutely explores the freedom, however brief, of being untethered to the highly rule-bound world of gender codes.
  23. Good Luck
    As often in Russell’s films, Good Luck splits the interest between observer and observed, between the lives that Russell and crew capture in their painstaking long takes and the very process of composing and shooting those takes.
  24. The Jewish Cardinal
    The Jewish Cardinal uses the luscious pleasures of the everyday to underscore and endure the big questions of identity, humanity, and home.
  25. The Last Detail
    The Last Detail is the first good honest-to-goodness American movie of 1974.
  26. We Are Kings
    This movie is only 75 minutes long, so it's too bad that Hubner rushes the finale -- too much triumph, too little emotion -- but when the grooves are this rich, all is forgiven.
  27. Wonder Wheel
    The camerawork in Allen’s customary long takes is fluid, even arresting, but Winslet’s performance would benefit from the kind of editing these long takes don’t allow. Rather than loose, the ensemble often seems underrehearsed, and too many of Winslet’s lines have little impact.
  28. Triad Election
    To's take on the plight of the modern gangste is inspired.
  29. Zarafa
    Beautifully animated and often moving.
  30. Yves Saint Laurent
    Jalil Lespert's Yves Saint Laurent tries to sweep the evanescent butterfly Yves into its net: The movie isn't enough, but it's something.
  31. Call Me Lucky
    Call Me Lucky is a loving but fair portrait of the artist as a heroic hothead.
  32. Silicon Cowboys
    Director Jason Cohen (the Oscar-nominated short Facing Fear) wants his documentary history of Compaq computers to be fun — and indeed, compared to the overly earnest clips of Halt and Catch Fire inserted for contrast, the real slow-talking Texans in the tale are a hoot.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cold Fish
    Cold Fish is wild, head-turning, stomach-churning stuff, and it makes a bracing addition to the overstuffed canon of serial-killer cinema.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    So Much So Fast
    The film is no maudlin pity-fest: It's an absorbing account of fraternal love and obsession, as Stephen's brother assembles a "guerrilla science" foundation to find a cure when no one else will.
  35. What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy
    Despite a melodramatic title, the film is keen and measured. Drama builds in the small moments.
  36. Waltz with Bashir
    Ari Folman's broodingly original Waltz With Bashir -- one of the highlights of the last New York Film Festival -- is a documentary that seems only possible, not to mention bearable, as an animated feature.
  37. Medicine for Melancholy
    Tender, smart, soulful.
  38. Honey
    With striking compositions and cuts that reveal a deep appreciation of cinema's possibilities, Valeria Golino's Honey could be about anything at all and still demand and hold your attention; that the narrative is as moving as the film is aesthetically precise is an added delight.
  39. Joe
    Joe is Cage's periodic reminder that he's one of his generation's great talents.
  40. Mateo
    Incisively intimate, it's a small but stirring snapshot of a gifted, hopelessly lonely soul.
  41. The Good Girl
    Like "Chuck & Buck," The Good Girl is a droll, well-acted, character-driven comedy with unexpected deposits of feeling.
  42. Sunset Boulevard
    What's not recognized enough is the indelible, self-sickened performance of William Holden as Desmond's boy-toy/hired hack.
  43. The Endless
    The film’s fast-slow-fast pacing not only gives psychological weight to Benson’s unabashedly pulpy scenario but also constantly keeps viewers on their toes.
  44. Revanche
    Revanche gets its hooks into you early and leaves them there.
  45. Good Night, and Good Luck.
    Good Night, and Good Luck's primary handicap is history itself -- the toe-to-toe televised dialogue between McCarthy and Murrow was, however arguably vital to the Wisconsin senator's eventual retreat, brief and less than epochal. Even so, the wonderfully mustered context wins out.
  46. Coco
    Yes, Coco thrills with its of-the-moment visual invention, but its core elements — dead relatives, family photos, the power of loving memory — couldn’t be more timeless. When Pixar made me cry this time, it wasn’t just for the characters on the screen. It was for the people I remember, and the ones I hope will remember me.
  47. The Pinochet Case
    Because stateside newspapers aren't enough, "The Battle of Chile" (possibly the most riveting and vital historical document ever put on celluloid) should be a prerequisite to Guzmán's new doc, The Pinochet Case.
  48. Bad 25
    Spike Lee has given the world the first tribute that fully measures up to Jackson the artist. Come on get your sham on.
  49. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
    Moshe relates his tale of can-do vengeance with an unfussy clarity and an obvious fondness for the oaters of yesterday’s Hollywood — an affection that, as in Burden, imparts a winning sincerity.
  50. The Party
    Potter isn’t what you’d call subtle, but she also knows not to overstay her welcome, and this pithy comedy is a masterclass in all that a filmmaker can squeeze from the most basic theatrical concept: Put a bunch of characters with opposing motivations in a room and see what happens.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Santo Domingo Blues
    Wolfe's anecdotal musicology succeeds precisely because of its bare-bones, bawdy yet beautiful approach--just like the music Vargas makes.
  52. The Rape of Recy Taylor
    The film is a haunting, damning unpacking of history that also reminds us how little progress we’ve made.
  53. Trophy
    Don’t let the beauty of its images fool you; it’s a supremely confrontational, even infuriating work. It’s hard to know what to make of Trophy, and something tells me the filmmakers wouldn’t want it any other way.
  54. Madame Satã
    It can feel a bit slight and, given the epic sweep of its subject's life, somewhat underplotted. But there's no denying the incendiary power of Ramos's performance -- he's present in nearly every scene. The movie is as much the story of his transformation into Madame Satã as it is João Francisco's.
  55. Blue Beard
    Psychologically rich, unobtrusively minimalist, at once admirably straightforward and slyly comic, Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard is a lucid retelling and simultaneous explanation of Charles Perrault's nastiest, most un-Disneyfiable nursery story.
  56. Bidder 70
    Tim DeChristopher, proves a fascinating subject for Beth and George Gage's new documentary.
  57. The Day I Became a Woman
    Opens cute and poignant, turns wildly visceral, and ends in a burst of magical realism.
  58. We Own the Night
    The closest thing Gray's done to a commercial actioner, the film also applies his genius for tone (aided by superlative sound work) to set pieces that throb with trauma: a tinnitus-soundtracked shoot-out and a rain-slick car chase set to the tempo of windshield wipers.
  59. Fever Heat [re-release]
    The movie is a superb riff with a boffo finale, a terrific, cynical punch line, and a crazy closing image of Bob's Plymouth on an empty beach.
  60. Shadowman
    [A] heartbreaking doc.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Real Dirt on Farmer John
    At times, the film plays like an extended infomercial for John's new company, Angelic Organics, but the agrarian fantasy is so compelling here that the revitalization of the American family farm begins to seem not just possible, but probable.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Walk on the Moon
    Tony Goldwyn, making his directorial debut, lets his cast do the work for him, and they hold up well.
  63. Frank Serpico
    Most hilarious is the revelation that the first director assigned to the film Lumet eventually made, the manic John G. Avildsen, wanted the eccentric, bearded hipster ex-cop to play himself. On the basis of this exceptional portrait, he very well could have.
  64. Prisoner of Paradise
    A fascinating and painful account of an entertainer trapped not only by his Jewishness but by his overwhelming need to make theater.
  65. The Headless Woman
    As dense and fluid as Martel's movie is, the viewer--like the protagonist--is compelled to live in the moment. And a rich moment it is.
  66. Serpico
    Ought to look pretty dated. Instead, Sidney Lumet's biopic of Frank Serpico, the virtuous cop who exposed a network of graft in the NYPD, feels depressingly relevant.
  67. Amigo
    John Sayles's Amigo aspires more to educate than entertain, but it's no less engrossing for that.
  68. Gosford Park
    As with Altman's best movies, Gosford Park is above all an entrancing hum of atmosphere and texture.
  69. The Girl Is in Trouble
    Sampled old newsreel and security-camera footage flesh out the narrative, and the film's visually arresting, but it's the performances that hold it all together.
  70. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire
    Its title an acknowledgment of the reality of evil, Shake Hands With the Devil touches on the unanswerable hows and whys, but its ultimate subject is the terrible burden of command.
  71. Youth
    Elegantly shot to emphasize the suffocating atmosphere of its believably frightening scenario, the film speaks clearly about generational expectations and the disintegration of the middle class, even when the brothers communicate without using words.
  72. Everybody Knows... Elizabeth Murray
    Zea's sharp eye for detail is evident when Murray speaks of being inspired by rural upstate New York (where she had a second home), and we see the same bright colors in tree trunks and a barn that are in the fractured, turning, twisted pieces that make up Murray's canvases.
  73. Son of Saul
    Nemes does everything he can to connect the audience to Saul's numbness, shielding us as much as possible from the cacophony of human misery that rings in his ears. The chill seeps in regardless, as it should, and Nemes doesn't try to counter it with more than a tiny, stubborn flicker of hope.
  74. Nostalgia
    Keener, as always, is excellent, a shrewd actor adept at revealing what her characters might not realize they’re revealing. Eventually, she must plumb the depths of grief, and the effect is something like watching a member of your actual family collapse and then pull herself together and keep pressing on.
  75. Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back
    In this stylish documentary, Cattelan talks effusively on camera about his career, his work, and his private life in unexpectedly candid interviews.
  76. Child's Pose
    With Child's Pose, the Romanian tide enters its Cassavetes phase, where the thin ice of haute bourgeoisie life cracks and opens wide.
  77. State 194
    The best part of State 194 is its domesticity, its low-key approach to a conflict that has been widely sensationalized in the media.
  78. Corpo Celeste
    Rohrwacher almost overplays her metaphors, but her understated characterizations, cinematographer Hélène Louvart's rapturous range, and especially Vianello's eerie grace combine to make Corpo Celeste the ideal cinematic antidote to the summer doldrums.
  79. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
    The kind of movie fans will be quoting for the rest of their lives, Shoot Me, from director-producer Chiemi Karasawa, is as much a playdate as portrait, a jumble of salty highlights attesting to the pleasure of her company.
  80. Shadow Dancer
    The film rests on the desperate chemistry of a paunchy, weathered Owen and a tense, quietly ferocious Riseborough.
  81. 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.
  82. Family Portrait in Black and White
    The film's emotional and psychological textures suffer for those losses, but Family is still riveting viewing.
  83. Julieta
    While Almodóvar may move his characters around like a god (or at least a moralist), his attention to detail and his fondness for unexpected bits of tenderness give these people shape and dimension and keep the narrative from becoming schematic.
  84. My Brother the Devil
    Despite its moral seriousness, the film's a crowd-pleaser, boasting tense set pieces, a raucous polyglot of voices and accents, beauty-in-poverty streetscapes, and two warm, brawling, big-hearted leads.
  85. Alamar (To the Sea)
    Alamar provides a nearly hypnotic immersion in the brilliantly aqua, impossibly tranquil Caribbean--a Paradise Regained not just for Natan, but for everyone
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dial M for Murder
    If the things here are homelier and less loved than, say, Marnie's neon yellow purse or Cary Grant's glowing glass of milk, and the film itself no one's idea of major Hitch, it remains a fascinating investigation of a stillborn process from one of cinema's most dedicated inquisitors of structure.
  87. Osama
    Its sluggish, amateur-Kiarostami character would be off-putting if the material weren't so powerful.
  88. A Monster with a Thousand Heads
    Raluy, a Mexican TV and stage star making her movie debut, is captivating as a woman whose terror at her own behavior is matched only by her bewilderment at the system around her.... But the real star here is Plá, with his total control of the frame.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Laughing Policeman
    A fine, sharp movie nonetheless, "The Laughing Policeman" is the raunchiest--and no doubt the best--floor show in town. [31 Jan 1974, p.79]
    • Village Voice
  90. Hannah Arendt
    The writer-philosopher Hannah Arendt is brought to life by a mesmerizing Barbara Sukowa in Margarethe von Trotta's film.
  91. Warrior
    Old line-gargler Nolte remains an effortlessly moving presence, while Hardy and Edgerton embody their archetypes and handle the physical demands.
  92. The Insider
    May be pumped-up, but it's rarely boring
  93. The Bad Kids
    Desert flowers can be hard to spot, but are often distinctly beautiful, and The Bad Kids has them in focus.
  94. Red Satin
    Noteworthy for its rich characterizations and startling plot twists, including a delightful surprise ending that is both a sexual double entendre and a matriarchal triumph.
  95. Never Let Me Go
    The surface blandness does not efface, and might even amplify, its disturbing qualities. Never Let Me Go is not a movie about death but, more painfully, about the consciousness of death.
  96. Pandas
    The unexpectedly impressive nature documentary Pandas is so visually dynamic that even the most pedantic (think Neil deGrasse Tyson level) skeptics will probably not mind listening to narrator Kristen Bell — speaking for writer–co-director Drew Fellman — rattle off 43 minutes’ worth of cutesy panda trivia.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Facing the Music
    In a meticulous style that often appears offhanded, the directors chronicle Boyd's journey step-by-step, pausing to eavesdrop on the teacher talking to herself.
  98. The Light of the Moon
    The frank ways in which Thompson and Beatriz channel Bonnie make it clear that there’s a lot of respect for this complex character navigating life-altering trauma.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Willow Tree
    There's very little explicit exposition here; instead, Majidi presents us with a series of glistening tone poems.
  100. Still Life
    As usual, Jia's people tend toward the opaque--one of the movie's most enthusiastic conversations is conducted with ringtones. But his compositions have their own eloquence. Everything's despoiled and yet--as rendered in cinematographer Yu Lik-wai's rich, impossibly crisp HD images--everything is beautiful.
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