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. Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind
    This film seems meant to be more a kind, sweet eulogy than an illumination.
  2. A Gray State
    Friends, family, and reporters offer invaluable insight in interviews, making this the somewhat rare documentary that’s actually as illuminating as good print reporting on the same case.
  3. 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.
  4. The Panic in Needle Park
    Winn pretty much plays it as it lays—her obvious acting works with her character’s weak sense of self. Pacino, however, is a force of nature.
  5. A Woman in Berlin
    One of the best of a new breed of indigenous movies prying open the Pandora's box of German suffering in World War II, A Woman in Berlin takes on the mass rape of German women by victorious Russian soldiers entering the country in 1945.
  6. Gods and Monsters
    The relationship is touching, painful, revealing, and often funny, which is true of the film as a whole as well.
  7. Movement and Location
    Despite its sci-fi hook, Movement and Location turns out to be a surprisingly resonant film about how impossible it is for most people — no matter their cosmic time zone — to carve out a life that's emotionally honest.
  8. Higher Ground
    Even with her beatific face (the actress looks like one of Parmigianino's Madonnas), Farmiga is never wholly believable as a woman shaken by a crisis of belief.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Golden Door
    With dialogue kept to a minimum, cinematographer Agnés Godard confirms her status as one of the most extraordinary visual artists working today.
  10. Stonewall Uprising
    Tellingly, it's not the queers, but a cop--Seymour Pine, the 90-year-old retired NYPD morals inspector who led the raid on the Stonewall Inn--who gets the last word.
  11. The Town
    It's good enough at least that you wish it was better.
  12. Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself
    Directors Tom Bean and Luke Poling never shy away from the possibility that Plimpton at times was more a personality than a serious writer.
  13. Ain't Them Bodies Saints
    Lowery isn't a Malick and he's certainly no Kazan, but he's his own man, and a filmmaker to watch.
  14. The Trials of Muhammad Ali
    The film never lingers too long on any one thing, instead functioning as a survey in which several fascinating cultural moments are vividly evoked, but then left insufficiently probed.
  15. Miss Hokusai
    Keiichi Hara's episodic anime Miss Hokusai is a lovely biopic, even if it never quite picks up and focuses on a single thread. (Then again, neither does life.)
  16. In Darkness
    Another break in the tension is the inescapable fact that every Holocaust movie, however hair-raising, essentially thrums the same self-sacrifice-versus-self-preservation chord. It's not fair, but there it is: We've been here before.
  17. Cyrus
    A freakishly engrossing black comedy about excessively mothered men and the women who enable them.
  18. Liam
    Acting is the strongest element in Stephen Frears's Liam.
  19. A Good Baby
    Made with intelligence and formal sophistication.
  20. Little Otik
    This comic horror story rivals A.I. as the year's creepiest representation of maternal love -- partly because it naturalizes the Frankenstein story in terms of human procreation.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    In the Realms of the Unreal
    Jessica Yu's elegant new doc In the Realms of the Unreal is a spry, creative response to his (Darger's) oceanic talent and claustrophobic life.
  22. Radio Dreams
    The film examines, with wit and patience, the hard work of community-building — and the toll on someone far from home, doing work that’s not his calling.
  23. Ballet 422
    Ballet 422 is more visually sumptuous than most narratives you're likely to see this year, featuring careful compositions that make watching the film an aesthetic experience as much as an intellectual one.
  24. In My Father's House
    This intimate film's creators presume that the audience is familiar with the facts and wants a human story about what it's like to get your dad back.
  25. After Tiller
    As a whole, Martha Shane and Lana Wilson's wrenching, humane film is as convincing a brief as I can imagine in favor of that most controversial of all pregnancy-terminating procedures.
  26. Lost in Paris
    Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel’s signature style blends screwball and romantic comedy with playful fantasy, but Lost in Paris lacks the magical elements of their previous features.
  27. Flame and Citron
    Flame & Citron is the film that the horribly overrated "Black Book" could have been, had Paul Verhoeven not indulged in the puerile reversals of sensitive Nazis and treacherous partisans.
  28. The Russian Woodpecker
    The Russian Woodpecker is very much like Fedor himself — eccentric as hell, smart as a whip, and, at the end of the day, a heartbreaker.
  29. After Auschwitz
    The structure of After Auschwitz may be simple (talking heads and archival footage), but the cumulative effect of six women revealing the physical, psychological, and emotional toll taken on Holocaust survivors is a powerful testament to individual humanity emerging from inhuman horrors.
  30. Sully
    There is in Sully — as there is in Sniper — a purposefully conflicted reckoning with the very tenets of American heroism.
  31. Go
    A showy exercise in nervous grit, Go never strays too far from a sense of itself as stunt.
  32. 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.
  33. Into the Abyss
    An egalitarian study of crime and punishment in a small Southern town, Into the Abyss is also an unmistakably Herzogian inquiry into the lawlessness of the human soul.
  34. Interstellar
    Whatever his strengths may be, Nolan lacks the human touch. His movies are numbingly sexless, and by that I don’t mean they need sex scenes or nudity -- those things are rarely really about sex anyway. But in all of Nolan’s films, human connection is such a noble idea that it’s beyond the grasp of flesh-and-blood people.
  35. Harry Benson: Shoot First
    In his singular dedication to brilliant work, Benson was rarely home, even on holidays, but he expresses scorn for people more concerned with others' feelings than their images.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bridge to Terabithia
    Director Gabor Csupo of Rugrats "fame" steer clear of cutesy tween stereotypes, but it's Jess's relationship with his father, played by Robert Patrick, that elevates Terabithia from a good kids movie to a classic contender.
  37. The Attack
    The Attack is most avowedly "about" terrorism. But that's a subject, not the subject. The film, an arresting and upsetting one, is also about love, trauma, and trust, both within one particular marriage and within entire cultures.
  38. The Heart of the Game
    A sweet, engaging journey with the Roosevelt Roughriders, whose kindly coach encourages the girls to snarl like wolves and devour like lions.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Daughters of Darkness
    About the only thing to praise in Daughters is the way Seyrig looks: she is stunning in soft focus, chiffon, and egret. The dialogue and plot demands are unsurmountable burdens even for an actress as accomplished as she is. [01 Jul 1971, p.51]
    • Village Voice
  40. Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
    It's fitting that this film of people making do with what they have should itself look somewhat humble, without lyricism, a work not of beauty but of work-which is the thing that makes it beautiful, no matter who directed it.
  41. The New Girlfriend
    Ozon sacrifices his sharp portrayal of grief and rebirth to clumsy convention.
  42. The Dish
    Harmless and affectionate, The Dish gives its clichés breathing room, and so a few are pleasantly surprising.
  43. Looking for Cheyenne
    A beguiling comedy from a Marxist-inflected thesis that is filled with characters who rage against the machine with pessimism, optimism, and naïveté--sometimes in rotation.
  44. Mauvais Sang
    Bittersweet, haunting, and as original and eccentric as homage movies get.
  45. The Hurricane
    Far too tepid.
  46. Billy Elliot
    By setting this intimate conflict against a wider social drama, Daldry makes his portrait of a dancer all the more compelling.
  47. The Keys to the House
    If the film's redemptive ending is a fairy tale, it's one we willingly embrace.
  48. Ahead of Time
    The unspooling of her life is a truly fascinating yarn of proto-feminist achievement and humbling empathy.
  49. How I Ended This Summer
    Playing an ignoble protagonist, Dobrygin keeps his motives always quietly evident; later, lost in a fog painted red by an emergency flare, he's an abject vision of man in a hell of his own making.
  50. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
    What saves the film—and grandly—is Nance’s wildly ambitious visual imagination. Teetering somewhere between film school precocity and impressively assured audaciousness...It’s almost hypnotic in its style and genre promiscuity.
  51. Running Wild: The Life of Dayton O. Hyde
    Through photos and family lore, but mostly through Dayton's own eloquence, Mitchell assembles a biographical portrait that's inspiring in the best possible way.
  52. Far From Men
    Its plotting is often a tad too plodding, but with the charismatic Mortensen exuding understated internal crisis (in a French- and Arabic-speaking role), Oelhoffen's film proves a compelling portrait of individuals striving to cope with, and at least somewhat overcome, cultural dislocation.
  53. Of Horses and Men
    Of Horses and Men is often sprightly, and almost every shot is an eyeful.
  54. Something Better to Come
    Perhaps even more disturbing than the Dickensian in extremis ordeal of Svalka life — including her rational yet heartbreaking decision to give up her baby rather than raise it in the dump — is Yula's straightforward acceptance of her situation.
  55. Famous Nathan
    Terrific documentaries are a dime a dozen; ones this multifaceted are to be cherished.
  56. The Creation of Meaning
    Rapisarda Casanova's film shows just how much natural splendor dominates the region, here caught at the height of estival glory.
  57. Harry & Snowman
    The engaging Harry & Snowman shows the impact of a rescue animal on the man who saw his neglected qualities. It's also a succinct demonstration of the difference between a livelihood and a life's work.
  58. Blood on the Mountain
    As consistently depressing as this movie is, it thankfully shows you that before you dismiss the denizens of an entire region as poor white trash, you should listen to their story.
  59. Everybody Loves Somebody
    Everybody Loves Somebody won’t reinvent the (third) wheel, but the knowing dialogue and convincingly human characters are a refreshing break from the norm and worthy of your attention.
  60. Raising Bertie
    Raising Bertie charts nothing less than what it’s like to try to grow up free in the prison capital of the world.
  61. Kung Fu Panda
    Perfectly pleasant, very good-looking, modestly funny, dispiritingly unoriginal variant on the nerd-with-a-dream recipe that's been clobbered to death in animated films for at least a decade now.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Crazy Rich Asians
    For all its carnival-like antics, Crazy Rich Asians is all too aware of its own spectacle.
  63. The History Boys
    The film version of The History Boys is a lesser thing, more fixed in space and time and rendered almost unbearably "cinematic" in patches by Hytner's gymnastic camerawork. Yet the ideas and feelings of the piece remain so rich that it almost doesn't matter.
  64. A Mighty Heart
    Angelina Jolie is the major alienation effect in A Mighty Heart, although she's not the only one. The hectic pizzazz with which hired gun Michael Winterbottom directs this tale of terrifying terrorism is another distraction.
  65. Becoming Traviata
    A spare and ravishing doc.
  66. Fastball
    You wouldn't lose anything watching Fastball on ESPN rather than in the movie theater, but it does stand as further testament to baseball's status as our most chess-like sport, and one that, even when broken down to its tiniest component parts, never loses its magic.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sir! No Sir!
    As it is, this one is compelling enough, a potent mix of outrage, residual anger, and sorrow that speaks not just to the legacy of our misadventures in Vietnam, but to the entire uncertain future of a nation at war.
  68. Place Vendôme
    Inept as a thriller, Place Vendôme nevertheless intrigues.
  69. Invictus
    Like every Eastwood production, Invictus is stately, handsomely mounted, attentive to detail right down to the Marmite adorning the team's breakfast buffet, and relentlessly conventional. As a portrait of a hero, the movie effortlessly brings a lump to the throat (Freeman gives a subtly crafted performance that blends Mandela's physical frailty with his easy charm and cerebral wit); as history, it is borderline daft and selective to the point of distortion.
  70. Herb & Dorothy
    Watching the Vogels mull over art that they don't need to understand only makes their delight more infectious.
  71. Big Hero 6
    Big Hero 6 is easier to admire than to love. It veers from chipper to noisy to dark stretches where it grapples with adult-sized grief.
  72. Bad Hair
    There’s plenty of prickly tenderness, for both mother and son, at the heart of Bad Hair. All children yearn for things beyond their reach, and if they’re honest about it, adults do too. It’s a feeling you never outgrow.
  73. The Italian
    Lured, perhaps, by the promise of international markets, Kravchuk instead opts for routine uplift, and once the heroic journey is set in motion, the rest is ballast.
  74. The Pirogue
    For all the tense interpersonal conflicts and the inevitable, if thrilling, stormy-seas set piece, what proves most striking are the exactly rendered little moments.
  75. Mommy
    Mommy is first and foremost a mother-and-son story, but it's also a surprisingly delicate exploration of lonely lives, and the temporary islands of companionship that make them bearable.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Duchess of Langeais
    Rivette is teasing his way, thinking afresh, playing a game but tweaking its rules, telling a story, but only sort of--making, in short, not simply a movie, but that ineffable magic called cinema.
  77. The Golden Dream
    For all its heart and strong performances, there's little new here. Still, the ending is perfect, triumphant and heartbreaking all at once, demonstrating that Quemada-Diez gets the reality of U.S. life.
  78. Starlet
    Director Sean Baker, co-writing his fourth feature with Chris Bergoch, does some deft balancing of his own: His genuine admiration for these two women extends to their idiosyncrasies, yet they never become fools, whores, saints, or coots.
  79. Eastern Boys
    What a relief to watch this small, expert film — a pane of glass in a concrete wall — that whispers, that dares to stand still and witness ordinary human pain.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    My Kid Could Paint That
    What began as a human-interest story for filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev led down stranger paths than the Duchampian conundrums of modern art.
  81. Two Lovers
    Touching in its absurdity, the movie is what the French, if they didn't love Gray so much, might term agréablement ridicule.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    As I Open My Eyes
    This debut feature earns its grown-up wisdom without selling out its youthful idealism.
  83. Cosmos
    Everyone's reeling from dreads and reveries they can't quite comprehend, and Zulawski's daft incidents, comic sketches, and stabs of profundity will likely put you into a similar awed stupor.
  84. Sin City
    Sin City lacks the human interest, not to be confused with humanism, that "Pulp Fiction" had in abundance. As if to underscore the fact, Tarantino guest-directed a scene. It's readily recognizable as the only one in which the dialogue has the slightest conviction.
  85. Neil Young Journeys
    Teaming with the Canadian legend again, Demme and five other camera operators expertly capture an intense, pared-down 2011 solo show at Toronto's Massey Hall in the absorbing new Neil Young Journeys.
  86. Old Dog
    Old Dog has the look and feel of a documentary, which adds senses of urgency and immediacy to a tale that moves at a languid, but never boring, pace.
  87. Land and Shade
    You might not want to live here, but the imagery makes for a nice postcard.
  88. My Country, My Country
    It seems easily the most valuable piece of film to emerge about the war in all of its three-plus years.
  89. Creep
    Superior found-footage horror film Creep tellingly loses steam after it stops being a rote but tense game of chicken between a normcore derangoid (he likes hikes, hugs, and pancakes) and his wary victim.
  90. A Matter of Taste
    A Matter of Taste's largest handicap is restraint: It's too tasteful. The climactic crisis is a broken leg, and the off-screen denouement is unimaginative.
  91. The Nazi Officer's Wife
    A powerful account of living in isolation and constant terror.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    7 Days in September
    The interviews occasionally veer into it-seemed-like-a-dream cliché, and the eerie soundtrack doesn't help. But at times the unpolished approach earns a rare complexity.
  93. Such a Long Journey
    The filmmaking is fresh and unemphatic, and the acting is generally gripping.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    Much of Monster is just a two-and-a-half-hour puff piece about how "important" Metallica are and, worse, how much "integrity" they have.
  95. Shower
    It's far too soggy a confection for my taste.
  96. Het ondergrondse orkest
    A world-beat city symphony.
  97. Source Code
    A propulsive ride worth your popcorn dollar, not for its preposterous genre tinkering but for its refreshingly humanist take on a high-concept gimmick.
  98. Beast
    Revisiting Beast may prove more satisfying than just visiting once. The first time through, the film simply proves too successful at capturing the listless ennui it’s depicting.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oklahoma!
    The songs, the somewhat corny Western dialogue, the zest, and especially the integrated dance patterns of Agnes DeMille are all a delight. [02 Jan 1957, p.6]
    • Village Voice
  100. Joe
    Joe is Cage's periodic reminder that he's one of his generation's great talents.
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