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 7.6 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 Final Master
    Xu (The Sword Identity) may not be a household name, but The Final Master proves that he's the next big thing in martial-arts cinema.
  2. Honeyglue
    [An] unintentionally hilarious tragic romance.
  3. The Witness
    As James D. Solomon's compelling and sometimes frustrating doc The Witness makes clear, what the case actually tells us isn't that we live lives of pitilessness or blinkered fear. It's that we're gullible as hell.
  4. The Fits
    For all the film's aestheticism, there's a clarity to this child's dilemma — conveyed ably by Hightower, who is a unique kind of actress.
  5. Approaching the Unknown
    Approaching the Unknown is the best science fiction movie since Gravity, and certainly the most melancholy since Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 Solaris.
  6. Art Bastard
    Victor Kanefsky's documentary nonetheless manages to be as cursory as it is intimate, skimming over so much of Cenedella's life and career that it imparts only a hazy impression of who he is and what he believes.
  7. The Thoughts That Once We Had
    Andersen's restless yet scholarly methods are contagious: He makes you want to become more well-rounded.
  8. The Wailing
    That the film has so many partial reference points only makes the ultimate amalgamation stranger, as the chimeric whole can't be fully explained by its parts. The Wailing enters the world malformed and screaming, as powerless to stop itself as we are.
  9. Time to Choose
    If An Inconvenient Truth served to scare us, then Time to Choose offers hope, presenting what amounts to an hour-and-45-minute commercial for renewable technology that might inspire confidence in scientific progress even as it reminds us that it isn't cheap being green.
  10. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
    When it slows down, when it gives you time to think, Popstar reveals its weaknesses.
  11. The Idol
    Unfortunately, as Mohammed approaches his goal, Abu-Assad goes all in on archival footage.... That backfires.
  12. Presenting Princess Shaw
    It's a mistake, I think, that the movie never addresses the fact that a camera crew is following Shaw around.
  13. Jia Zhangke, A guy from Fenyang
    This is portraiture for the Zhangke-acquainted. Admirers will find much of interest here, as Salles, scrupulously self-effacing, affords Jia the latitude to think and talk at his leisure — to speak at length, and candidly, about his work and what informs it.
  14. Princess
    The sloping plot of the film is all happenstance, loosely connected scenes strung together, a life taking shape.... It's hard to keep watching. Don't stop.
  15. As I AM: The Life and Times of DJ AM
    It would benefit from more focus on the music, but the work stands as an effective (if overly long) portrait of addiction.
  16. Chevalier
    Despite the claustrophobic setting and Tsangari's observational style, Chevalier doesn't register as hermetic or coolly condescending; the film feels loose and agile even amid so much capricious rule-making.
  17. Alice Through the Looking Glass
    It’s so gorgeous you can sometimes forget the train wreck of a story. But only sometimes.
  18. Holy Hell
    Will Allen's sunny gut-punch cult exposé Holy Hell plays like a thriller, all right, with a darkness edging slowly over its swimsuit revelry, but Allen never cheats in the interest of suspense.
  19. A Moment of Silence
    There's a juicy story in here, but Orgnani desiccates his narrative by relying on jargon-laden interviews with political wonks and dry intellectuals, presenting a byzantine account of the events with little context. Sans narrator, timeline, or clear-cut structure, this may have been made for Bolivian political junkies alone.
  20. Kaili Blues
    First-time writer-director Bi Gan and cinematographer Wang Tianxing infuse the imagery with a feeling at once otherworldly and familiar — the kind of thing you can't put a name to but would swear you've already experienced.
  21. Manhattan Night
    Brody does his sturdiest work in years as the morally compromised Porter, and Strahovski makes for a fittingly seductive temptress with ambiguous motives. Manhattan Night's pedestrian style and affected atmosphere, however, make it a routine descent into the black heart of a city and its shady inhabitants.
  22. Welcome to Happiness
    As we plod along, attempting to figure out how the sprawling ensemble players all fit together, the mystery and symbolism of what's truly behind the door grows less profound and more irritating.
  23. Paths of the Soul
    The film is restful and exhausting, inviting us into contemplation: of Tibet's epic-scale natural beauty, which has rarely been filmed with such you-are-there patience and intimacy, each new horizon these pilgrims reach a reward for their perseverance — and yours.
  24. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
    The complexity of feminism for young girls today is displayed with rare hilarity and insight.
  25. 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?
  26. The Other Side
    It's all shocking, of course, but it also often looks staged and performed rather than merely observed.
  27. Maggie's Plan
    Maggie's Plan is a fun light comedy with memorable characters, from a writer-director who lives up to her lineage (Arthur Miller's her dad), but it relies heavily on Gerwig's predictable charm and sometimes seems more Woody Allen than Rebecca Miller.
  28. Almost Holy
    Steve Hoover's film (which was executive-produced by Terrence Malick) doesn't feel dishonest in its behind-the-scenes glimpse at its subject.
  29. The Nice Guys
    As an action comedy, R-rated division, The Nice Guys is hard to beat. Black knows how to pace and escalate a fight and a film, and he springs wicked surprises all along — scene after scene dances around trapdoors that the audience falls into.
  30. The BFG
    The film suffers from the one thing that Spielberg films almost never suffer from — stasis. He’s made, essentially, a "hangout" movie, one in which we’re supposed to luxuriate among the characters, but Spielberg isn’t a director who thrives in that kind of environment.
  31. Weiner
    Weiner is about as entertaining as a film about someone destroying a life and career can be. You can't turn away from the car wreck, and Weiner himself can't stop commenting on it.
  32. Money Monster
    As generic and impersonal as a new credit card offer, Jodie Foster’s Money Monster is the latest big-studio production to try to cash in on populist outrage over Wall Street abuses and New Gilded Age inequality.
  33. Los Sures (1984)
    Echeverria [has a] gift for capturing detail-dense moments in the most casual way.
  34. What We Become
    Undead fare has to break new ground to stand out from the ravenous crowd, something What We Become never attempts. What might have been the best zombie movie of 2004 can't help looking a little sickly in 2016.
  35. Cash Only
    Cash Only features many familiar action movie markers, but it's distinguished by a raw energy and strong sense of place.
  36. Kill Zone 2
    Dizzily entertaining when the knives, bullets, and feet are flying, and sometimes painfully melodramatic during the interim exposition.
  37. Pelé: Birth of a Legend
    Co-directors Jeff and Michael Zimbalist stick to the playbook throughout, from typical moments of uplift to a Pelé cameo only slightly less fan-serving than Stan Lee's Marvel spots.
  38. The Lobster
    Lanthimos's consistently hilarious, borderline anti-humor slowly gives way to a romantic streak of surprising warmth.
  39. 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.
  40. Dragon Inn (1967)
    The slow build of the action is deceptive, as at first the martial arts are all in the editing.
  41. The Offering
    The Offering leaves few horror devices unused.
  42. Bourek
    Bourek begins semi-promisingly with a banker who believes the apocalypse is coming and that the only safe place in the world is the island of Khronos in Greece, but the movie soon abandons that angle almost entirely.
  43. Rabin in His Own Words
    The documentary briefly veers into tired territory when Rabin’s voice disappears and triumphal singers fill the screen, but Rabin’s consistent, thoughtful self-criticism and colorful storytelling animate what might otherwise be a pat, or at least familiar, history of Israel in the 20th century.
  44. Last Days in the Desert
    Last Days is weighty and somber, familiar and strange, in the way of Bible stories but not of contemporary faith-based filmmaking, which eschews mystery and paradox for homily.
  45. High-Rise
    Ben Wheatley's muddled adaptation of the dystopian 1975 novel High-Rise — one of many Ballard books that examine the pathologizing effects of modern technology and convenience — suffers from being both too literal and too obtuse in its alterations.
  46. Love & Friendship
    With the plotting and the epigrams taken care of, Stillman seems liberated as a craftsman: Never before has one of his films been so crisp, so tart, so laugh-out-loud funny.
  47. The Trust
    In The Trust, the stylish new heist film from Alex and Benjamin Brewer, we get a brief, satisfying, darkly comic peek at everyday Vegas life as lived by low-level LVPD officers. Then the film quickly loses focus and forgets the quirky characters that make the city — and the story — special.
  48. X-Men: Apocalypse
    This film nimbly mixes narrative exuberance and emotional depth, flamboyant displays of power with quietly terrifying exchanges. It zips along, combining the highs and lows of a real comic book – all the feeling, color, and wonder, even some of the dopiness – with gloriously cinematic storytelling.
  49. Belladonna of Sadness (1973)
    You can fully enjoy Belladonna of Sadness if you either overlook or participate in the objectification of a gorgeous victim.
  50. Being Charlie
    If Charlie were just unlikable, it all might be palatable and even fun. But his behavior draws more of an eye-roll than a laugh or a snarl, despite Robinson's confident, believable performance.
  51. Dark Horse
    The villagers, excitable everyday folks, make for capital interview subjects, and the filmmakers wring poignancy from re-enactments your brain knows are a little much but your heart may thrum to anyway.
  52. Mother's Day
    By far the highest concentration of actual humor comes during the blooper reel over the end credits; free of the script’s saccharine constraints, the performers immediately demonstrate their chops.
  53. Keanu
    Key and Peele have a special kind of magic they’ve brought to their first feature, but it’s also a crazy-simple formula: Keep saving that damn cat.
  54. Those People
    Instead of the clinical detachment implied by the title Those People, writer-director Joey Kuhn bathes his first feature in warm compassion.
  55. Beautiful Something
    Writer-director Joseph Graham isn't solely interested in hookups, and he uses the encounters between these men (both carnal and cerebral) to construct a compassionate romantic drama.
  56. Elstree 1976
    The most interesting part of Elstree 1976 comes when these actors express ambivalence about their odd celebrity.
  57. Sin Alas
    Sin Alas matches the half-awake feeling evoked by Luis's ruminations — on love, on Cuba's history, and on himself — well enough to feel authentic even when it meanders too far from what makes it most compelling.
  58. Mad Tiger
    Yet another documentary paean to an unsung musical act whose fringe staying power is as remarkable as its lack of mainstream coverage.
  59. Dheepan
    Ultimately, Dheepan is the story of three people struggling to maintain their humanity, even as they lose their identities.
  60. A Bigger Splash
    Guadagnino inserts a plot thread indicting Europe's response to the migrant crisis, shoehorning an issue of utmost gravity into a pulpy sex thriller. Not even this flamboyant project, however satisfying in its excesses otherwise, can accommodate the inept civics lesson.
  61. Captain America: Civil War
    I never found myself genuinely wondering what was going to happen next; the moves are too familiar. Even the big fight, entertaining as it is, feels like it's there not because of dramatic inevitability, but because somebody behind a desk decided it had to be. It's just a bunch of stuff.
  62. L'Attesa (The Wait)
    Binoche's hushed histrionics, though, are of a piece with the fruity portentousness of L'Attesa.
  63. Sacrifice
    This watered-down throwback to The Wicker Man never really heats up.
  64. 3rd Street Blackout
    Much of the humor depends on Redleaf and Farsad coaxing relatable, Apatow-ian comedy out of their relationship; unfortunately, they're so bland that there's little to relate to.
  65. Viktoria
    Bulgarian filmmaker Maya Vitkova's feature debut, Viktoria, is an impressive display of stylistic control and directorial vision, even if it doesn't always hold together.
  66. Viva
    Despite its gorgeous views and a pair of strong turns from veteran Cuban actors Perugorría and García, the film doesn't connect to the heart of its central character.
  67. The American Side
    While The American Side may not quite achieve the classic thriller tone to which it aspires, it does create an enjoyably hard-boiled world.
  68. Papa: Hemingway in Cuba
    The script is based on screenwriter Denne Bart Petitclerc's actual experience befriending the author, but words that might have lived in real life here die on the screen.
  69. Pali Road
    Chen's full-bodied commitment to her role adds something new to this familiar scenario, which also benefits from its idyllic island setting; psychodrama and Hawaii pair surprisingly well.
  70. Dough
    A mirthful, edgeless dramedy.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Congressman
    The Congressman's politics and morals are childishly simple, featuring archvillains suffering buffoonish pratfalls and love stories that start up abruptly and quickly fizzle.
  72. Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands
    Thomsen culls wisely from Fassbinder's filmography to illustrate the kino-giant's abiding themes, patricide and masochism among them.
  73. Eva Hesse
    Eva Hesse relies too heavily on ventriloquism to recapitulate the high and low points of the artist
  74. The Man Who Knew Infinity
    In the end, The Man Who Knew Infinity never allows itself to transcend the sad irony of such biopics — that people known for thinking outside the box are always given film portraits that refuse to do so.
  75. The Family Fang
    Bateman is nimble in handling a tricky mix of flashbacks and pranks, genres and tones. As you might expect from such a gifted ensemble performer, he's also an actor's director.
  76. Love Thy Nature
    Though the heavy-handed score is emotionally manipulative, Rokab alternates between hopeful and grim prognoses, mercifully providing a measure of hope and possibility that many films of this ilk do not.
  77. We the People: The Market Basket Effect
    In his rousing — if at times syrupy — documentary, director Tommy Reid captures this stranger-than-fiction feel-good tale and bottles it in rosy glass.
  78. Nina
    The filmmakers have denied us their subject's voice and then sunk their lead by adding distancing layers between the audience and her chief instrument, her face. Even the script exhibits little confidence in this Nina's ability to communicate to us what matters.
  79. How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change
    After speaking to several environmental experts, hiking for hours through the Amazon, and discovering just how momentous the threat of climate change is to humanity as we know it, documentarian Josh Fox made a film about himself.
  80. Men & Chicken
    Mikkelsen, blessed with the rare ability to class up a joint while also being the most menacing guy in the room, is cast against type as a mustachioed philanderer; based on the evidence, his estimable talents are better suited to Hannibal.
  81. Sworn Virgin
    Cutting between present, childhood, and recent past, Bispuri constructs a subtle, richly emotional collage.
  82. Tale of Tales
    Tale of Tales is the most faithful and creatively rendered fairytale onscreen to date, bizarrely satisfying and totally worth a patient, focused viewing.
  83. Colonia
    Rather than a grand buildup, Colonia just gives the sense of one thing happening, and then another thing happening.
  84. Hockney
    Hockney is a little work of art of its own, even if it's so very nice and happy about everything.
  85. The Huntsman: Winter's War
    The film absolutely delivers on the scenery-chewing front. And yet the movie is still hollow and joyless.
  86. 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.
  87. A Hologram for the King
    Tykwer sublimates what Eggers made explicit: the joblessness, the debt, the isolation. He knows the power of an image, a gesture, a brief exchange, so he captures those social themes in flashes, which ironically gives them new power.
  88. Elvis & Nixon
    Outside of Shannon's performance, Elvis & Nixon is enough to make you long for the nuance of Kissin' Cousins.
  89. Be Here Now
    Foster makes it deeper, using an observational style to reveal the intricacies of a progressive disease and candid interviews with Andy and Vashti to strip away the veneer of celebrity implacability.
  90. The Measure of a Man
    A feat of workplace naturalism.
  91. 13 Cameras
    Mild schadenfreude aside, however, the film inspires almost no feeling at all — even the Friday the 13th movies bother giving the bad guy a backstory.
  92. Sing Street
    Sing Street pleases, all right, and even occasionally hits on truth.
  93. The First Monday in May
    Rossi provides an attractive overview of the exhibition for those who did not attend it, but we are left feeling something like Wong, seeing a lot of pretty things surrounded by vapidity.
  94. The Adderall Diaries
    Franco seems the ideal interpreter of The Adderall Diaries, but he's reduced the memoirist's tough introspection to misery porn.
  95. Green Room
    Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room is an impeccably crafted cinematic torture machine — in the best possible way.
  96. Echo Park
    Echo Park doesn't circumvent expectations, but it's worth a watch for those small moments of two humans relating to each other on a realistic plane. Just don't expect to learn anything about Echo Park, its residents, or how people deal with gentrification.
  97. Sky
    Fabienne Berthaud's Sky is a road movie that never quite makes the right turns.
  98. Wedding Doll
    Gilady never treats her heroine as a prop in someone else's redemption arc, and Rosenblatt's performance will have you looking for her work in other films.
  99. Our Last Tango
    Viewers will sense that the history of these compelling figures entails more frustration and complexity than can be examined in a short running time.
  100. Rio, I Love You
    Even more than in Paris, Je T'Aime and New York, I Love You, this latest omnibus in producer Emmanuel Benbihy's "Cities of Love" franchise might leave viewers wondering whether these needed to be set in Rio de Janeiro at all.
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