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 Salt of the Earth
    The movie Wenders and Juliano have made is a tribute that feels both grand and modest in scale: Just as Salgado's photographs do, it extends the notion of friends and family to include every citizen of the world.
  2. The Riot Club
    Director Lone Scherfig’s stagings of these suspenseful set pieces are masterful, but the rest of the thriller is a fairly predictable manifesto against Britain’s de facto oligarchy.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. A Girl Like Her
    A Girl Like Her focuses on the characters' emotional traumas while eschewing moral panic about how Kids These Days are so wrapped up in their phones and the internet.
  6. Cupcakes
    This musical comedy is sugary and sincere.
  7. 52 Tuesdays
    Grippingly plotted and exquisitely thoughtful, 52 Tuesdays is a poignant reminder that neither confusion nor crisis is doomed to be calamitous.
  8. Get Hard
    Get Hard is most comfortable — and funny — when Cohen gets back to skewering class warfare.
  9. Ghoul
    Ghoul rewards attention for much of its running time with subtle scares and growing unease, before squandering it in a shaky chase through twisted corridors that goes nowhere unexpected.
  10. Sword of Vengeance
    The film hits its mark of being a popcorn action flick just fine.
  11. Secret of Water
    It's laugh-out-loud silly if you're in the mood, but mostly embarrassing. Science could certainly use more philosophy, but not at the expense of dignity, never mind common sense.
  12. Zombeavers
    Director Jordan Rubin and the cast know the material is ridiculous, but calibrate the tone so that the dangers still feel dangerous.
  13. The Walking Deceased
    There's no more disposable type of comedy than the genre spoof, and no greater example of its general creative worthlessness than The Walking Deceased, an interminable 90-minute goof-off propped up by references to popular zombie-apocalypse fiction.
  14. Metalhead
    The film deftly marries the essence of the music to a moving coming-of-age framework.
  15. La Sapienza
    A picture that balances heart and mind with nuance.
  16. Growing Up and Other Lies
    The seriocomic Growing Up and Other Lies, written and directed by Jacobs and Darren Grodsky (Humboldt County), offers strained male bonding from a quartet sorely out of tune.
  17. 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.
  18. Can't Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police
    A staid rock 'n' roll museum piece.
  19. The Divergent Series: Insurgent
    Insurgent is so vapid it seems impossible that there's enough story left for another sequel.
  20. Tracers
    Tracers is a tedious, clichéd slog from start to finish, and only briefly enlivened by two prolonged chases in which handheld cameras maintain intense proximity to their subjects.
  21. Spring
    The suspense and pleasure of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's talking-and-tentacles horror romance Spring lies in discovering what shape the film is going to take.
  22. She's Lost Control
    Marquardt works many threads... but, while individually interesting, they're never woven into a truly compelling whole.
  23. Jauja
    Even beyond its charismatic star, Jauja is captivating, not least because of Alonso's ability to capture the cruel beauty of the natural landscape — you can almost see the earth itself refusing to accept European imperialism blithely.
  24. Backcountry
    Writer-director Adam MacDonald's direction creates an ominous sense of rural-nowhere isolation, and his script avoids contrived banter while shrewdly suggesting it's headed toward horror before unexpectedly veering into survival-story territory. Nonetheless, such misdirection can't compensate for hopelessly routine action.
  25. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
    A deranged pseudo-feminist fable, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter takes its tedious time getting to its unrewarding destination.
  26. Amour Fou
    Henriette's last thought will forever be a mystery, but the grandeur of Romanticism is tartly, pleasingly demystified.
  27. The Gunman
    Penn’s vanity — both in the way he shows off his bod and in the way he drives home the nobility of the once-wayward Terrier — is either the most deeply annoying thing about The Gunman, or the one thing in it that actually works. I’m leaning toward the latter.
  28. The Wrecking Crew
    The crew's recollections and occasional demonstrations, on their instruments, are revealing and delightful, but the film itself could use more of their professionalism and chops; the editing's haphazard, and it's not always clear why one segment follows another.
  29. Walter
    Walter's self-conscious efforts at quirkiness...and cartoonishly drawn characters...try too hard while falling far short of their marks.
  30. Muck
    Muck pairs a repellent concept with amateurish dialogue, acting, editing, lighting, and pacing.
  31. The Lovers
    Bring a notebook and some tissues — the mission to protect the queen becomes a tangle of shifting alliances between local and British forces that might require visual aids, while the snail-slow realization of gloomy prophecies may well tear you up in boredom.
  32. Like Sunday, Like Rain
    When Reggie advises Eleanor, a former cornet prodigy, to protect her artistic "gift," Like Sunday, Like Rain finally achieves maximum phoniness.
  33. Home Sweet Hell
    Home Sweet Hell is a pleasantly unpleasant dark comedy, one that gives new meaning to "detached and subdivided" in the mass production zone.
  34. Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
    Augmenting his talking heads with animation and inspired stock footage, Gibney dignifies Hubbard with the capacity to conjure feelings of connection and magnificence, never losing sight of what brings people into the fold, which makes their attempts to escape it all the more harrowing. Still, the richness of detail of Wright's book is lost.
  35. 3 Hearts
    The film is so unabashed in showing the place of passion in a bourgeois world, how a missed connection can screw up a life forever, that plot implausibilities are forgiven.
  36. Treading Water
    Analeine Cal y Mayor's bland, faux-quirky dramedy's most distinguishing set piece is a kitschy historic house museum dedicated to an erstwhile Mexican crooner named Guillermo Garibai.
  37. Of Horses and Men
    Of Horses and Men is often sprightly, and almost every shot is an eyeful.
  38. 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.
  39. Cymbeline
    This Cymbeline is brash and inventive and more than a little wild. Perhaps we've been wrong about this play all along.
  40. The Cobbler
    The Cobbler has invented a new category of terrible: cruel schmaltz.
  41. Champs
    There's nothing especially new or vital to these familiar scenes; ditto a late excursion into the realm of concussions — undoubtedly an epidemic for athletes of all stripes, but one that further muddles an already unfocused film.
  42. It Follows
    Mitchell's unwillingness to define the parameters of the specter haunting Jay leads to a finale that's muddled and confusing, and definitely not scary.
  43. Cinderella
    Like all of Branagh's films, even some of the bad ones, Cinderella is practically Wagnerian in its ambitions — it's so swaggering in its confidence that at times it almost commands us to like it. But it's also unexpectedly delicate in all the right ways, and uncompromisingly beautiful to look at.
  44. The Lesson
    It's a tough, gripping watch made emotionally rewarding through trenchant plotting and Gosheva's tight-lipped expressiveness.
  45. Chappie
    There's something fearlessly uncool about the film, which suffers mostly from being made 30 years too late.
  46. Remarkable Shades of Gay
    Politically simplistic (if not naive) and aesthetically sterile.
  47. An Honest Liar
    The film's heart, like Randi's, is in the penetration of illusion, rather than its manufacture.
  48. Hacker's Game
    The acting is community-theater-level, and the sets look phony, but there's unintentional humor in counting the clichés as they mount.
  49. Avenged
    Avenged is an action-horror mash-up that's very silly, quite gruesome, and a whole lot of fun.
  50. Allure
    At times there's no way to be sure whether what's on screen is scripted or candid, a formal tension that keeps the film on its toes while also underscoring that it's more effective as an experiential mood piece than it is as a drama.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Straight Outta Tompkins
    Straight Outta Tompkins is rarely boring, but neither does it come close to attaining the hard-hitting moral force its creator is clearly striving for.
  52. Two Men in Town
    Blethyn is wonderful as an all-too-rare character, a middle-aged woman who holds her own in a position of authority over violent men.
  53. These Final Hours
    Hilditch's approach to this end-of-days scenario can be heavy-handed... But Hilditch gets good mileage out of his cast.
  54. Road Hard
    Carolla's stilted screen presence and groan-worthy zingers neuter any humor from Bruce's needy quest to return to the spotlight.
  55. October Gale
    The performances in October Gale subvert genre expectations: Clarkson displays toughness and resolve without turning into Liam Neeson, and the distressed Speedman is as vulnerable as he is determined.
  56. The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest
    What could have been an impossibly bleak viewing is actually made more unnerving through DeFriest's droll humor and acceptance of his fate — rather than being Zen-like, he's prickly and dark, with such dazzlingly high native intelligence that you mourn for potential needlessly wasted.
  57. Merchants of Doubt
    This material might be familiar to Frontline viewers and magazine readers, but Kenner's telling of the stories proves independently dramatic.
  58. The Mafia Only Kills in Summer
    Diliberto has managed to make a political comedy that seems at once tremendously funny and intensely serious — a provocative, and perhaps even important, combination.
  59. The Lazarus Effect
    Death may not be the end in The Lazarus Effect, but it should be.
  60. Kidnapping Mr. Heineken
    Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, and True Blood's Ryan Kwanten co-star in this glossy, lifelessly paced edition as three of the criminals, though their underwritten personas and motivations are fairly interchangeable.
  61. Buzzard
    Potrykus and Burge make this transformation — from funny, oddball character study to darker portrayal of desperation — more naturally than it seems should be possible.
  62. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    In the end, listing this sequel’s flaws and charms is a loser’s game, and I throw up my hands: I just had fun, maybe mostly because watching these actors brings me so much joy. There’s nothing second best about that, or about them.
  63. '71
    [An] excellent, tensely controlled thriller.
  64. Deli Man
    Chinese and Italian cuisines in America recall the traditions of homelands to which their practitioners can return. Not so with the Jewish traditions of Eastern Europe that inform delicatessens; those communities were destroyed in the Holocaust. This is one of the themes of Deli Man.
  65. The Salvation
    Emphasizing action over the spoken word, The Salvation doesn't break new ground, yet its murderous twists of fate are consistently compelling.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Widowmaker
    The Widowmaker is important and terrifying, enough that I became nervously aware of my heartbeat throughout.
  67. Young Bodies Heal Quickly
    Even in its longueurs Young Bodies yields beauty and surprise, and there are inklings of some grand conception, even among scenes that feel haphazardly chosen.
  68. Wild Canaries
    The story Levine spins out of this premise has a rambunctious, woolly quality, though in the end there may be too many stringy loose ends for him to weave in properly. Still, Wild Canaries has its quiet charms.
  69. Out of the Dark
    Stylishly filmed and often scary, Out of the Dark unspools a conclusion as conventional and button-down as a wide tie knot and a pair of wingtips.
  70. My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
    Corfixen celebrates her husband for being open in his work, but never shows us how his real-life concerns translate into commendable creative risk-taking.
  71. Kung Fu Elliot
    Documentary character study Kung Fu Elliot starts off as a cringe-humor portrait of a delusional would-be action star, but gradually transforms into a thoughtful examination of its title character's naïveté.
  72. The Hunting Ground
    A film about individuals who refuse to be silenced could stand to take a few more chances itself.
  73. Futuro Beach
    Futuro Beach is as strong on texture as narrative. It's full of sensual images.
  74. Farewell to Hollywood
    [A] bizarre and wonderful doc that's pitched like a home movie but crafted with fine, poignant sensibilities.
  75. Focus
    There's no honor among thieves, but there is dignity in Focus's ambition. And if the final film is more vodka ad than all-time classic, there's still no shame in pouring another cocktail and rewinding the tape.
  76. Everly
    Everly has the heaving, bloody bosoms of an exploitation flick, yet Hayek gives the character powerful dignity. She's no victim, nor an off-the-shelf "strong woman."
  77. Ejecta
    The whole never makes much sense, and there's entirely too much screaming, but the directors stage the shocks with wicked aplomb.
  78. 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.
  79. Bluebird
    For all its piteousness, [it's] often moving, always well acted, and distinguished by rare stillness and beauty.
  80. Ana Maria in Novela Land
    Ganem and her talented co-stars work hard, but Riedel's pacing is always a beat or two behind their mad energy, making for a film that's enormously appealing, but not quite addicting.
  81. Maps to the Stars
    The fact that Cronenberg directed almost works against Maps to the Stars: We expect greatness from him, not just proficiency, and he doesn't exactly have a gift for comedy, not even the black kind. But the movie still has the darkly glittering Cronenberg touch, even if it's just a light brushing.
  82. Hot Tub Time Machine 2
    Like a hot tub itself, it looks inviting, but all too soon you've had enough.
  83. The Business of Disease
    The brisk, informative film wants to press the urgency of this perfect storm of capitalistic opportunism but is weakened by a frequently overwrought score and cheap graphics that often give Business something of a histrionic undertone.
  84. All the Wilderness
    In spite of the tatty "coming of age" familiarity, Johnson's vision seems fresh and vibrant.
  85. Digging Up the Marrow
    After poking fun at both Green's lack of originality and the hackneyed nature of found-footage shockers, Digging Up the Marrow merely resorts to climactic shaky-cam footage of people running through the pitch-black woods -- thereby becoming the very dull, clichéd thing it mocks.
  86. A Convenient Truth
    The film doesn't quite trust its audience, though, and, rather than get in and out with its points, belabors its jokes and its punches, to the point of tedium.
  87. Queen and Country
    A pleasant old man's movie, in the end, but not one for which Boorman will be remembered.
  88. Approaching the Elephant
    The faults and merits of the free-school movement are elucidated with a steely, journalistic rigor. More surprising is that this candid glimpse plays as exhilarating drama.
  89. McFarland USA
    It works, kind of, despite its broadness, its obviousness, and its howlingly awful opening.
  90. Wild Tales
    Wild Tales is loose-limbed, rowdy, and exhilarating — in its vibrant lunacy, and with its cartoonishly brash violence, it's a little bit Almodóvar, a little bit Tarantino.
  91. The DUFF
    There's freedom in facing the truth. There would be even more freedom in a heroine finishing the film in her favorite ugly overalls, but we haven't gotten there yet.
  92. The Rewrite
    Amid much talk about character, story structure, and theme, Grant delivers his usual rakish-charmer routine in a role that’s as hackneyed as the script’s portrait of women, the movie industry, and Star Wars fanatics is one-note.
  93. Hits
    Cross, who also wrote the script, is content to come across like a grumpy old man. His comedy is one-note, furious, and fun-enough.
  94. Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead
    Fans will clamor for Wyrmwood 2; the brothers have the talent to aim higher.
  95. White Rabbit
    Unfortunately, White Rabbit's grave, problematic conclusion attempts to broaden the movie's scope in a way that ultimately feels more unwarranted and distasteful than it does organic to the material.
  96. Da Sweet Blood of Jesus
    Jesus, meanwhile, exhibits all of Lee's weaknesses — clashing tones, careless pacing, the straightest dude's hand-in-pants idea of lesbianism — but also just enough of his might and madness that the Lee-minded shouldn't miss it.
  97. 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.
  98. The Last Five Years
    From moment to moment, this Last Five Years is a robust entertainment, often stirring, sad, and funny.
  99. Kingsman: The Secret Service
    Those more devoted to the genre can debate whether Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman is the best comic-book movie of the last few years. What's beyond argument, however, is that Vaughn has whipped up the most interesting one, the only to make ferocious, unsettling art out of the great contradiction of superheroic fantasy: jolly do-goodism and its brutalizing sadism.
  100. Fifty Shades of Grey
    The film strips Fifty Shades of Grey to its essentials: a confident man, an awkward girl, and a red room rimmed with leather handcuffs. From there, Taylor-Johnson rebuilds. She constructs an erotic dramedy that takes its romance seriously even as it admits that Christian Grey's very existence is absurd.
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