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. Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater
    It's less interesting watching them do what they both feel they have to do -- talk about their craft -- especially as both give off the prickly energy of artists who would rather create than explain. They're more comfortable asking one another questions, even though the answers are shrugged off humbly.
  2. The Strange Little Cat
    This odd little wonder captures the delicate textures and shadowy half-secrets of family life, mapping them out in a mosaic of fragmented dialogue and half-poetic, half-prosaic images.
  3. The Dog
    What makes The Dog so compelling isn't Wojtowicz's cinematic imprint but the place in history that was very likely denied him by chance and his own irascibility.
  4. Cheatin'
    The early scenes, of the couple falling for each other, offer more inspired gorgeous wonder than late Malick films, and the emotions are more piercing.
  5. Mission Blue
    It helps that Earle and her oceanographer colleague at the Smithsonian Institute, Jeremy Jackson, are both scientists with unusual abilities to speak not just in understandable terms but also in eloquent ones. And it helps, too, that the music, images, storytelling, and editing are all so tight, and so enjoyable.
  6. Keep On Keepin' On
    It's part Live at Birdland, part Boy in the Plastic Bubble, all warmly thrilling.
  7. Pride
    Pride hits some bumpy patches when it switches gears between comedy and gentle pathos, which it does often. But its spirit is bold enough to power through the rough spots. It’s easy to find fault with Pride, but it’s not so easy to resist it.
  8. Patema Inverted
    Yoshiura keeps the story fairly linear, while playing with perspective and composing many stunning, vertiginous images that consider the different possibilities of being at war with gravity.
  9. 99 Homes
    The film is more closing argument than portrait of life in the downturn, but it's thrillingly vigorous in its damning.
  10. Life of Riley
    Resnais's lightheartedness is infectious as he dispenses with the cinematic "reality" he never quite trusted, shooting the six-person farce on obvious sets, with curtains for doors and flat theatrical lighting.
  11. Once Upon a Time Verônica
    Guedes's complex performance leaves no doubt regarding the fragility of Veronica's psyche.
  12. The Humbling
    Levinson and Pacino's willingness to explore the creakier end of life isn't a drawback; it's what gives The Humbling its bittersweet vitality.
  13. Good Kill
    It's immediate and vital, and it doesn’t leave you feeling like you’ve got all the right answers.
  14. Born to Fly
    There's much in Born to Fly to thrill to, dream with, flinch from: dancers leaping from a great whirling wheel and smacking onto mats far below; dancers ducking and leaping a wickedly spinning I-beam or cinderblock.
  15. John Wick
    Reeves is wonderful here, a marvel of physicality and stern determination — he moves with the grace of an old-school swashbuckler.
  16. The Last Five Years
    From moment to moment, this Last Five Years is a robust entertainment, often stirring, sad, and funny.
  17. Beloved Sisters
    Although there's nothing sensationalistic about his approach, [Graf] treats the characters' tentative, often problematic bohemianism as a wild, brave, and precious thing, and the lead actors — restrained where it counts and bold where it matters — are a pleasure to watch.
  18. Stop the Pounding Heart
    Nothing wrenching happens, just unforgettable moments of piercing isolation and sadness.
  19. Actress
    Greene seems fascinated by the contradictory identities — each a kind of real-life performance — that Burre endeavors to reconcile, and he is profoundly sensitive to the emotional truth these performances describe.
  20. Hollidaysburg
    Martemucci intertwines these stories gracefully, and with the charm and charisma of her cast, makes clever banter and script contrivances seem completely natural and unaffected.
  21. 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.
  22. It Was You Charlie
    Shirinian has made a swift, moody film, with impeccable art design — Abner's diorama of the car wreck is a kooky marvel — a scarily convincing feel for recurring panic, and a thunderous, heart-rending performance at its center.
  23. The Heart Machine
    An exemplary mystery, a paranoid thriller rooted in contemporary technology but not crafted to denounce it.
  24. Copenhagen
    [An] exquisitely beautiful feature debut.
  25. Deepwater Horizon
    [Berg] keeps things simple, tight and taut, and does right by the folks who were there for the real thing. He’s made them the heroes of a genuinely exciting action movie.
  26. Citizenfour
    Poitras shows us history as it happens, scenes of such intimate momentousness that the movie's a must-see piece of work even if, in its totality, it's underwhelming as argument or cinema.
  27. Logan
    In Logan, we have an example of a superhero story taken to new extremes and a franchise to a spare, sad, apocalyptic finish (or “finish”), with R-rated action scenes that are both rousing and unbearably violent.
  28. Plot for Peace
    The film's editing is masterful, though, and with ample footage from the time and up-to-date storytelling from many key players from the African, Cuban, and U.S. governments, among others, Plot for Peace proves enthralling.
  29. Thor: Ragnarok
    In its own weird little way, Thor: Ragnarok manages to poke fun at the constant churn of myth and entertainment of which the movie itself is a part. It’s a candy-colored cage of delights, but it is a cage nevertheless — and it doesn’t hide that fact.
  30. Ex Machina
    It's a smart film about the shrinking divide between man and robot. It's also a hoot, an anti-comedy where all of the jokes double as threats, and vice versa.
  31. Black Panther
    Written by Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, Black Panther brings grounded history — in Black History Month, no less — to a fantastical story, carefully considering the world in which the characters reside.
  32. West
    Schwochow's intimate, handheld camerawork often feels like surveillance, which transforms mundane events into the menacing moments of a psychological thriller.
  33. Occupy the Farm
    The film is riveting from the start, with its ragtag multiculti heroines and heroes meshing multiple identity markers (activist, academic, refurbished hippie), often within individual selves.
  34. Brahmin Bulls
    Brahmin Bulls focuses on the individual choices made by Ashok and Sid, but just as Gingger Shankar subtly weaves traditional Indian instrumentation throughout her lovely score, Pailoor touches upon how cultural expectations inform their relationship.
  35. Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets
    Habicht has made a lovely film that’s partly about Pulp and partly about Sheffield: It’s hard to know where one leaves off and the other begins.
  36. What We Do in the Shadows
    What We Do in the Shadows is never as self-conscious as you fear it might be, and it has some of the loose, wiggy energy of early Jim Jarmusch, only with more bite. It makes getting poked a pleasure.
  37. Little Hope Was Arson
    Theo Love's mesmerizing documentary Little Hope Was Arson is as evenhanded as it is unsettling.
  38. Flamenco, Flamenco
    Flamenco Flamenco is the most beautifully photographed film in recent memory. Come for the dance, stay for the light.
  39. Danny Collins
    This movie is a narrow character piece that shows Pacino wrestling to reveal layers in a man who's worried he might actually be hollow. He and Fogelman string together dozens of small, perfect moments.
  40. The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness
    Sunada's critical distance makes Kingdom of Dreams and Madness the clear-eyed celebration that Ghibli's artists deserve.
  41. Song of the Sea
    The picture is beautifully rendered in pencils and watercolors, with some CG, giving it an appropriately timeless storybook look, even though it's set in a mostly modern world of buses and 3-D glasses.
  42. Shaun the Sheep Movie
    Like a great amusement park ride, Shaun the Sheep Movie is consistently enjoyable.
  43. Unfriended
    Director Levan Gabriadze is adept at the sinking something's not right creepiness too few horror films dig into. His techniques are certain to be copy-pasted by imitators.
  44. Difret
    Difret is painful but profound, skirting the pitfalls of the inspirational biopic for something more grounded and remarkable. Its authenticity extends beyond its central characters, conveying a very real sense of what is at stake.
  45. 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.
  46. Joy of Man's Desiring
    Undeniably, the rhythms — of clanging machines, of humans at work and repose — seen and heard here are the tempo of the quotidian and the repetitive. Yet even in their mundanity, these factory routines are not without their exalted moments.
  47. Pete's Dragon
    More than anything, this is a slice-of-life tale, whisper-thin but still full of feeling and a generous sense of place. With the world's most adorable dragon at the center of it all.
  48. When Marnie Was There
    At its most beautiful, Yonebayashi's picture is about the magic of female friendship at its purest.
  49. Involuntary
    Involuntary doesn't simplify its stories into a single point of view or idea; rather, Östlund is merely visiting these high-pressure moments in which Swedish culture frays, melts down, and betrays its ultra-civilized idea of itself.
  50. The Guitar Mongoloid
    Distant, enigmatic, fragmented, and possessing a dead-eyed steeliness in the tradition of Michael Haneke, Tsai Ming-liang, and Ulrich Seidl. The Guitar Mongoloid is a quilt of moments, set pieces, and voyeuristic opportunities building to no specific thematic idea.
  51. Miss Hill: Making Dance Matter
    You need not be a student or scholar of dance to be completely enthralled by Greg Vander Veer's documentary Miss Hill.
  52. Above and Beyond
    It will only be criticized — rightfully — for its skirting over the resulting plight of Palestinian refugees, but Grossman is surely capable of making an equally absorbing, entertaining film on that subject.
  53. Amira & Sam
    Writer-director Sean Mullin gives us some of the usual beats, but he and his performers invest them with rare persuasive power.
  54. The Witch
    The Witch purports, at times, to confront ignorance and hysteria, but in the end, for horror thrills, Eggers's film sides with the preachers and executioners. It literalizes the fevered terrors of our God-mad ancestors — and then brags that it's all steeped in research.
  55. Mississippi Grind
    Bitterly funny gambling comedy Mississippi Grind transcends its generic lovable-losers-on-a-bender plot by foregrounding exceptionally well-developed skid-row protagonists and weirdly charming dive-bar ambiance.
  56. Best of Enemies
    It's fascinating. It's horrible. It's fascinatingly horrible. It's also, as Gladstone points out, a sterling example of the power that television, when it was still a "public square," could have.
  57. City of Gold
    Gold is merely the conduit for the film's real focus: Like his own reviews, City of Gold is a love letter to L.A.
  58. Entertainment
    Entertainment is a painful, poetic watch.
  59. 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.
  60. The Forbidden Room
    The experience is two-thirds thrilling to one-third enervating, a winning ratio for what's essentially a tightly curated anthology film.
  61. On the Way to School
    The film quietly reveals these four small stories as epically heroic and timeless journeys.
  62. Steve Jobs
    This is a swift and searing attempt to pull back the curtain on Jobs and, in the process, investigate the relationship between the myth and the man.
  63. Seymour: An Introduction
    The film Hawke has made — which borrows its title, though little else, from J.D. Salinger — works both as a celebration of Bernstein, whose spirit is at once gentle and boldly generous, and as a way of exploring creativity and the meaning it can have in our lives.
  64. Hot Pursuit
    Hot Pursuit is a quiet triumph of tone and timing. Nearly every scene is cut at just the right point, often topped off with a fantastic kicker of dialogue.
  65. Futuro Beach
    Futuro Beach is as strong on texture as narrative. It's full of sensual images.
  66. Farewell to Hollywood
    [A] bizarre and wonderful doc that's pitched like a home movie but crafted with fine, poignant sensibilities.
  67. The Lesson
    It's a tough, gripping watch made emotionally rewarding through trenchant plotting and Gosheva's tight-lipped expressiveness.
  68. The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq
    Crucially, all four men, plus the ancillary characters who appear throughout the film, prove to be excellent company, holding forth on literature, Europe's future, inner-ear ailments, and side triceps.
  69. Man from Reno
    Though it ticks on too long, watching Fujitani's fascinating sleuth overestimate her skills is as satisfying as a mug of hot matcha on a soul-chilling night.
  70. The Lady in the Van
    It's an honest and incisive and peppery examination of one of his life's strangest but most enduring relationships — and the way that timidity and kindness often work out to being the same thing.
  71. Of Horses and Men
    Of Horses and Men is often sprightly, and almost every shot is an eyeful.
  72. Sunshine Superman
    You may not leave Sunshine Superman wanting to emulate Carl and Jean, but you will feel like you've vicariously bonded with them.
  73. 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.
  74. Manos Sucias
    It's not news, of course, that it's a terrible thing to extinguish a life, but it's a relief, when the shoot-'em-ups of Summer Movie Season are bearing down on us, to see a film that regards killing with pained awe. Wladyka's hands are clean.
  75. Mia Madre
    Mia Madre may be a delicate film, but don't be surprised if, in the end, the cumulative power of its humanity obliterates you.
  76. Youth
    Sorrentino, as always, invests his scenarios with a feeling and beauty that transcends the dreary specifics
  77. Emptying the Skies
    Emptying the Skies performs a grand and aching love by telling its story with a power that enrages.
  78. Gemma Bovery
    Fontaine handles the assignations with sympathetic shorthand — we see what Martin sees, but we see more, too, enough to understand that Gemma's dalliances are vital to her but not overwhelming. She has a handle on them.
  79. The Fate of the Furious
    The biggest show is, naturally, saved for last.... Nothing in all of the Fast & Furious movies has ever felt bigger or more ridiculous — two things F8 rightfully thrives on. It’s exhilarating. Now how will they top this one?
  80. L for Leisure
    What makes L for Leisure more than just a collection of clever, well-photographed jokes is the utter sincerity embedded within the constant sarcasm.
  81. Güeros
    What makes Güeros fascinating, besides the joyous invention of Ruizpalacios's craft, is how the director emphasizes rather than hides his own authorial engagement.
  82. Louder Than Bombs
    The tale isn't new, nor are the characters, but director Joachim Trier's stylistic and narrative dexterity demands attention: He possesses that rare ability to deconstruct his material without denying us the simple beauties of a well-told story.
  83. Hitchcock/Truffaut
    Kent Jones's documentary take on François Truffaut's exhaustive career-survey 1966 interview with Alfred Hitchcock is an arresting précis, sharply edited and generous with its film clips — it's a smashing supplement to Truffaut's classic study.
  84. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
    Valerian is at times so mind-meltingly beautiful and strange that I’m still not sure I didn’t just dream it all.
  85. The Measure of a Man
    A feat of workplace naturalism.
  86. 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.
  87. Dheepan
    Ultimately, Dheepan is the story of three people struggling to maintain their humanity, even as they lose their identities.
  88. We Are Still Here
    Early scenes overplay the shock of these phantasms, but just as you expect Geoghegan to crank up the effects, the film mixes in some subtler scares.
  89. A Murder in the Park
    Directors Shawn Rech and Brandon Kimber piece the story together via fresh interviews, vintage footage, and too many iffy reenactments and close-ups of news stories. But the matter here transcends the artlessness.
  90. Doomsdays
    Doomsdays is winsome because it embraces its narcissistic subjects without asking viewers to forget that they've just befriended a couple of selfish dillholes.
  91. Alléluia
    Sensuous and arresting, Alleluia constantly feels as though a séance or ritual murder is about to be performed; the actual deaths, when they arrive, turn out to be rather unceremonious affairs.
  92. The Wanted 18
    This movie about violence and how it comes into intimate spaces refuses to make even animals only animal. It's beautiful and important and very strange.
  93. Top Spin
    With sleek and informative onscreen graphics and thrilling slow-motion demonstrations of game technique, Top Spin packs a lot of information into its 80-minute running time, arguing that a great table tennis player is one part boxer, one part chess master.
  94. Advantageous
    Challenging viewers this way — denying clean resolutions, chucking out the urgent drama of the first hour of movie — is bound to alienate some audiences. But from its arresting first scenes, Phang's film is as much about why? as it is what next?
  95. Gone Doggy Gone
    The film's sweetness, its story line, and the script's cartoony characters recall Raising Arizona, though Gone Doggy Gone isn't as tightly structured. But, being looser, it has a little more room to breathe.
  96. Breathe
    It's a chilly, elegantly assured little picture, a horror story with its roots not in fantasy but in the reality of hurt feelings.
  97. Zarafa
    Beautifully animated and often moving.
  98. Tap World
    It's rare to find a film that portrays dancers of all shapes, colors, ages, and sizes as beautiful, which they are.
  99. Mateo
    Incisively intimate, it's a small but stirring snapshot of a gifted, hopelessly lonely soul.
  100. Twinsters
    Twinsters is a heartwarming true story that might not have happened without social media, so score one for modern technology.
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