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. Nocturama
    The film mesmerizes and alienates equally.
  2. The Human Surge
    Surreal and wordlessly unsettling, Eduardo Williams’ globe-crossing feature The Human Surge is intimate and pleasurably inscrutable.
  3. The Age of Shadows
    You may have seen parts of The Age of Shadows before, but they're rarely this well assembled.
  4. Catfight
    In its blunt, inelegant, but surprisingly gripping way, Catfight is the (im)perfect movie for our rotten times.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Daguerrotype
    If the movie doesn’t succeed, per se, as a haunted-house plot of escapist designs, its geologic layering of uncertainties and closed doors produces a chilling effect — all the better to vault past ignoble concerns like screenplay tidiness.
  6. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea
    Sinking Into the Sea is fun, but an hour of just Rudolph and Watts in the recording studio would be no less buoyant.
  7. Tanna
    Subtly visualizing the connection shared between the land and its people (and their interior conditions), Tanna proves rich in both sociological detail and roiling emotions.
  8. The Vessel
    Quintana's emphasis on Jungian dream logic gives his otherwise spartan parable a compelling mythic dimension. The Vessel may bring Malick to mind, but it also feels like a major work by an exciting new talent.
  9. A Family Affair
    It’s a potent psychodrama, pitting Marianne’s reality against the one Fassaert is documenting
  10. The Bad Kids
    Desert flowers can be hard to spot, but are often distinctly beautiful, and The Bad Kids has them in focus.
  11. Oasis: Supersonic
    As a music comedy, this is up there with Popstar, but with better-defined characters. It's thick with tales of brawls, breakups, stage-walkoffs, busted hotel rooms and astonishing rudeness.
  12. The Eyes of My Mother
    I've been watching horror films since I was three years old. They've never given me nightmares. Until now.
  13. Seed: The Untold Story
    It's a wonder of photography, animation, and sound, and it's a testament to its editors that the many interviews with activists and scientists are compelling and informative, sometimes even poetic.
  14. Slash
    It's both funny and enlightening, a nuanced yet strikingly bold look at how teens see themselves, not how adults would like to see them. Parents: Take note. Teens: Relax, you'll figure it out.
  15. My Cousin Rachel
    Tense and at times downright frightening.
  16. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
    While it achieves its goal of being thoroughly unpleasant, Henry could have used a touch more humor (beyond its one knee-slapper about the Chicago Bears). Still, it’s a gruesomely riveting sucker punch of a movie.
  17. The Uncondemned
    The film is a riveting feat of editing considering the material, the legalistic conundrums, and the profusion of detail.
  18. A Stray
    Writer-director Musa Syeed has conjured a drama rich with incident...but most of the turns of plot feel organic, ours to discover, as long as we're paying attention.
  19. Downsizing
    The film’s lead is far and away its least interesting character, and Damon dials back every watt of his charisma or wit.
  20. The Zookeeper's Wife
    True to form, Caro seems unbound by her audience’s expectations of a WWII picture; she delivers a singular, thrilling portrait, filled with surprises and moving performances.
  21. Before I Fall
    Russo-Young gives this teen parable the thriller treatment to ward off any cheese, and watching Deutch learn her lesson with that expressive face of hers is a singular, moving experience.
  22. Ghostland: The View of the Ju/’hoansi
    It's the closest most of us will get to spending time with fellow humans who have extraordinary perspectives on ordinary things — and ordinary perspectives, too.
  23. Kedi
    In its own pleasantly dreamy and lilting way, the film embodies what it preaches: As life gets rougher, people endure not by hardening themselves even further, but by continuing to find the freedom to be kind. In Istanbul, the chaos never really stops. Kedi slyly reminds us that the humanity, too, has always been there.
  24. 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.
  25. The Lovers
    Jacobs lets casually observed details and offhand humor advance the story. There are no grand pronouncements in The Lovers, which smartly communicates its ideas about relationships during its long stretches of silence.
  26. Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds
    Seeing the film now makes you weep for the passing of both actresses, of course. It also drives home the magnitude of losing Carrie Fisher’s hilarious, acerbic, insightful voice at a time when it seems more vital than ever. You leave the movie wanting so much more of her, it hurts.
  27. Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent
    Just like high-wire showman Philippe Petit, Tower is a brilliant, dedicated artist who has spent most of his life wowing people with his talents — but is ultimately always out there by himself.
  28. The Commuter
    The director’s stylistic obsessions (harried close-ups of cell-service signal bars) and thematic integrity (witness the overworked 9-to-5 crowd banding together in solidarity) elevate the cheap-paperback plot without tipping the movie over into pomposity.
  29. 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.
  30. 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.
  31. Donald Cried
    In a bitterly funny performance, Avedisian lets Donald's freak flag fly, a big-toothed grin lighting up his face, framed by a shaggy haircut not deliberate enough to be a mullet.
  32. Icarus
    A real-life absurdist thriller that, in its electric coverage of one Russian scandal, can’t help but illuminate another ongoing one.
  33. The Big Sick
    For the vast majority of its running time, The Big Sick astutely pulls you between the twin poles of agony and glee.
  34. Casting JonBenét
    Green's doc — like the case at its center — defies resolution or easy answers.
  35. Oklahoma City
    Goodman also doesn’t state overtly why the story of the Oklahoma City bombing is so relevant today. He doesn’t have to. His methodical recounting of the rise of white nationalism and fringe movements reverberates with today’s world, in which racist violence and conspiracist lunacy has been emboldened and brought troublingly into the mainstream.
  36. 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.
  37. Anatahan
    A film full of fascinating contradictions.
  38. Headshot
    With Uwais choreographing the insane fights and Indonesian genre vets the Mo Brothers catching every bloody, manic minute, both fists and bullets get dished out with equal, frenetic fury — and the movie offers plenty of "Oh shit!" moments.
  39. Left on Purpose
    An anguished and compassionate chronicle of Schein and Vishner's relationship.
  40. On the Rocks
    Staging multiple sequences as extended Altman-esque tapestries in which overlapping voices uneasily harmonize with the soundtrack's swelling jazz, On the Rocks is like a blood pressure–raising anxiety attack extended to an hour and a half — except funny.
  41. mother!
    What I feel compelled to say, which can get lost in the myriad interpretations we may have of the film’s story or meaning, is that for all its self-indulgences and excess and ghastly sights, I was quickly enamored with Mother! in a way I’ve not been with any other Aronofsky film.
  42. It Comes at Night
    A soul-crushingly dark examination of human nature amid an invisible and unnatural threat.
  43. Alive and Kicking
    The dancers in Alive and Kicking all share a rapturous expression, and Glatzer makes the case for this Depression-era diversion as a modern tonic for isolation.
  44. Logan Lucky
    It’s a relief to watch a commercial movie from a director who trusts you to figure out plot points along the way.
  45. 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.
  46. First They Killed My Father
    This is Jolie’s most accomplished work yet.
  47. Apprentice
    In a finale rife with twisted feelings of resentment, fury, and self-loathing, the film transforms into a grave meditation on the corrosive shadow cast by the decisions, and crimes, of yesterday.
  48. The Women's Balcony
    This light and predictable movie, with its overwhelming box office success, still offers tremendous insight into day-to-day Israeli society.
  49. Love & Taxes
    As a writer, Kornbluth is vivid, funny and skilled at conveying characters, qualities he actually matches in performance.
  50. The Settlers
    What Dotan has to say — in arresting new footage — about today’s Hilltop Youth, a right-wing Jewish Israeli settler organization that unites and mobilizes young people to occupy territory in the West Bank, is crucial and, in the American context, frighteningly familiar.
  51. Who's Crazy? (1966)
    Thomas White's lost-and-found avant-lulu Who's Crazy? pulses with the newly possible.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Canners
    This film shows that canners (he interviews 18 of them, from different backgrounds) are industrious, resourceful and hardworking.
  53. White Sun
    Adopting the philosophy of neorealism, Rauniyar reveals the overarching forces (religion, caste, patriarchy) that forge Nepali communities, but his characters are also profoundly shaped by individual decisions.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Uncertain
    Uncertain is a film content to be small, one that knows that every atom is a universe.
  55. 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.
  56. The Survivalist
    Directed with a muted tone but a scenic eye by Brit first-timer Stephen Fingleton, The Survivalist, like most postapocalyptic movies, is both dire and oddly poetic.
  57. All This Panic
    Unconstrained by the need for a neat-and-tidy dramatic arc, All This Panic opts for messy honesty — and, in the process, finds hope for all of its subjects, in ways both big and small.
  58. i hate myself :)
    It's difficult to label Arnow's cinematic voice, and this particular film, or why anyone would even want to watch something so personal, but i hate myself :) is never not fascinating.
  59. 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.
  60. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
    As things spun out of control, getting ever stranger, I started to wonder if the director had merely written himself into a corner and was doubling down on weirdness to get himself out. And yet the film never quite loses its mythic drive. You walk out feeling like you’ve truly had an experience.
  61. Lucky
    Lynch has crafted an almost proudly minor work, a hangout movie whose reason for being is Stanton’s presence.
  62. Let It Fall: L.A. 1982-1992
    In those days after the misbegotten verdict in the trial of the four police officers who kicked and beat Rodney King, these Angelenos discovered what they and their neighbors were capable of. Ridley’s patient, humane approach allows us, over his film’s 145 minutes, to discover it, too.
  63. November
    Above all else, November, shot in gorgeous black-and-white by Mart Taniel, is a smorgasbord of deliciously grotesque imagery.
  64. Bang! The Bert Berns Story
    Blending stock footage, vintage audio, re-creation, and many testimonials from heavy hitters from Ben E. King to Van Morrison, Berns' son Brett keeps things visually lively, and not as morose as may be implied.
  65. Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story
    For an hour and a half, this charming little movie, with its chatty talking heads and its sweet-natured subjects, offers a glimpse into the lives of two fascinating people whom I had never heard of, and who shared an unlikely life filled with achievements and setbacks, wonder and pain.
  66. Rackstraw Downes: A Painter
    Rackstraw Downes: A Painter is glacial and mesmerizing, the documentary equivalent of droning Tibetan singing bowls, a work crafted to induce its audience into the same contemplative state as its subject at work.
  67. Abundant Acreage Available
    After a lifetime of routine punctuated by loss, these aging adults fall back into roles as children and siblings. Treading common ground, they seek comfort in the suffocating succor of family, afraid to release the burdens that grief will unleash.
  68. 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.
  69. The Trip to Spain
    It is at once a desperate echo of long-gone glories and a glory itself.
  70. Spettacolo
    Is this art or is this prophecy? Is there even a difference?
  71. Whitney: Can I Be Me
    We’re fortunate to witness such impassioned consideration of Houston’s art, career, and life from the people who actually knew her. Still, it’s notable that Crawford isn’t interviewed here.
  72. The Divine Order
    Though the story has a predictable ebb and flow, the film includes some stunning moments
  73. Keep the Change
    Keep the Change, despite David’s knack for making offensive jokes, is a charming, sensitive picture that embraces the characters as they are, without mocking them.
  74. Angkor Awakens: A Portrait of Cambodia
    Angkor Awakens: A Portrait of Cambodia is a superbly balanced picture of Cambodia then and now, a nation in a sort of stupor of post traumatic stress syndrome, denial and survivor's' guilt.
  75. The Incomparable Rose Hartman
    The Incomparable Rose Hartman is a gorgeously shot, sharply edited portrait of photographer Hartman.
  76. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
    By focusing on the Sungs, [James] puts real, human faces to this corporation, leaving little doubt they’re the ones to root for.
  77. Legion of Brothers
    It’s clear in their eyes that they’ve seen some shit—and this doc not only gives us a glimpse of it too, but adds valuable context in a way not many others do.
  78. Blade of the Immortal
    Come for the gory swordplay, stay for the half-serious melodrama.
  79. Hermia & Helena
    There are a few different potential films within Hermia & Helena — a Shakespeare adaptation, a tale of romantic relationships, a tale of family — but the totality proves a sunny and affable literary collage.
  80. Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc
    There’s no hint of irony in this film (I don’t think it would work if there were); in fact, Jeannette succeeds in its earnestness, adapting its words from Charles Peguy’s works, but countering it with the pure, joyous silliness of its presentation.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    12 Angry Men
    The great merits and great defects of the age-old Anglo-American jury system are examined with conscientiousness and considerable drama. [22 May 1957, p.6]
    • Village Voice
  82. Young Frankenstein
    Longer on charm and cheer than on humor of knee-pounding hilarity...the funniest film of the season by default.
  83. Columbus
    An outwardly chilly, resolutely static film that nevertheless finds poignancy in the most surprising places, Kogonada’s directorial debut does a couple of important things so well that I can’t help but forgive the things it doesn’t.
  84. Miss Kiet's Children
    Much like a day at elementary school, this vérité wonder called Miss Kiet’s Children is exhausting, heartening, raucous, tender, occasionally dull, sometimes tearful, and ultimately a vital public good.
  85. 500 Years
    Yates’s films, like the world itself, have no template — they’re messy, rich with feeling, liberated from simple theatrical structures, always honest about what is possible. That one of hers ends with hope is a gift.
  86. Night School
    As an introduction to its arresting, charismatic subjects, Night School is invaluable.
  87. En el Séptimo Día (On the Seventh Day)
    Through his efforts, McKay captures a genuine sense of the bittersweet reality of the American dream and the people who give up their only weekly day of rest just to keep it alive.
  88. Nowhere to Hide
    Both Sharif and Ahmed make sure audiences leave Nowhere to Hide well aware that Iraq remains a war zone — one where innocent people remain caught in the crossfire.
  89. Love After Love
    The cast is intoxicating.
  90. The Last Detail
    The Last Detail is the first good honest-to-goodness American movie of 1974.
  91. Mister Universo
    His endeavor is one not of major strife but of minor flashes of magic.
  92. Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
    The most exceptional element of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women might actually be its comforting, radical normalcy.
  93. Loving Vincent
    An engrossing exploration of the artist’s final days rendered in his signature painting style.
  94. It's Not Yet Dark
    It’s Not Yet Dark is an uplifting portrait of a debilitated man driven to excel by a relentless desire to live life and love those who surround him.
  95. 4 Days in France
    Reybaud’s film similarly serves as a tonic lesson in physical specifics, each location populated with richly idiosyncratic conversation partners.
  96. Annihilation
    It’s often inspired in its cutting and composition, and Garland (Ex Machina) has crafted sequences of strange splendor, including a too-short cosmic light show.
  97. Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
    Recognition (and compensation) proved elusive in Lamarr’s lifetime, but in this marvelous documentary, a brilliant woman — “I’m a very simple, complicated person” — finally gets her due.
  98. Kill Me Please
    Here adolescent wanderlust, powered by the characters’ persistent and confused arousal, continually edges against comedy and terror. Scariest as an examination of what fascinates us, this debut feature will annoy and alienate many, but it’s the work of a dynamic new talent.
  99. Downhill Racer
    The film is intelligently realistic about all the interlocking hypocrisies of the amateur code, and there is nothing fakey-humanistic about the sexual encounters with a ski-manufacturer's secretary (Camilla Sparv) and the unbilled but unforgettable girl back home always ready, willing, and able to hope in the back seat for auld lang syne.
  100. Jesús
    The tense final act...investigates its moral quandaries with a rigor this kind of bad-seed street-teen movie usually can’t manage.
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