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. Invincible
    Invincible joins "Rocky" or "Hoosiers" or "Breaking Away" as one of the few satisfying sports movies in which the foundation built upon a heap of clichés holds strong.
  2. Hacksaw Ridge
    As a filmmaker, Gibson understands that there is something fundamentally irreconcilable about Doss’ love of peace, his abject and visceral revulsion at battle and a war movie’s embrace of violence. Somehow, the director has made a film that can contain that contradiction — that remains irreducible. He breaks his own movie, and somehow the movie is better for it.
  3. Summer of Blood
    Any 30 minutes of Summer of Blood might have me in hysterics. But the sputtering torrent of Eric's yakking proves wearying over 90: Dude's built for speed-dating.
  4. Molly's Game
    Chastain seems at times to be both the lead and her own supporting actor in this story, as she oscillates between traditionally feminine and masculine modes of behavior, sometimes inhabiting both at once.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In Paris
    Christophe Honoré's Dans Paris is both a floppy, joyful tribute to the French New Wave and an inspired retelling of "Franny and Zooey."
  6. The Taste of Money
    Is there such a thing as "tastefully smutty"? Director Im Sang-soo's moody and semi-Shakespearian The Taste of Money walks that line with some artfully lit humping and cross-generational seduction.
  7. The Pool
    This heightened consciousness of objects and obligations ballasts the drama-light, class-conscious fable with tactile life.
  8. Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
    Celebratory but clear-eyed portrait of Gertrude Berg.
  9. Children of Invention
    The young director Tze Chun is not a flashy filmmaker, but he understands the vulnerability of immigrant workers in the sleazy sub-rosa economies of a floundering 21st-century America.
  10. Antiviral
    Papa Cronenberg must be proud, but be advised: If there's a blood test in your future, book it before seeing this movie.
  11. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    The plot twists are about as venerable as the cast and predictably affecting when performed with such old-hand proficiency.
  12. Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case
    With such a compelling central figure it would be tough for the doc to not stimulate, but stimulation aside, its rather shapeless narrative can feel desultory.
  13. Jurassic World
    Jurassic World is pretty good fun. Especially for a here-today, gone-tomorrow summer blockbuster, the picture is better-crafted than it needs to be: If you ignore some extraneous plot threads, and the stop-the-presses revelation that, in the end, “what really matters is family,” Jurassic World hangs together surprisingly well.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    OC87: The Obsessive Compulsive, Major Depression, Bipolar, Asperger's Movie
    To be sure, there are more artful and focused documentaries, but OC87 still stands as moving evidence that Clayman's trust in the value of the filmmaking process ultimately outweighed the extreme difficulty he says he has making even the smallest decisions.
  15. The Black Dahlia
    Although the action set pieces are impressive, the exposition is sluggish. For all the posh dollies, high angles, and Venetian-blind crisscross patterns, The Black Dahlia rarely achieves the rhapsodic (let alone the delirious).
  16. Alpha Dog
    If nothing else, Alpha Dog's worth a look for the performance of Justin Timberlake, the moral center of a movie sorely in need of some conscience. Already a gifted comic actor--his Saturday Night Live appearances are now anticipated events--he proves himself able to go to a pitch-black place.
  17. The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun
    Unlike far too many human-interest docs today, director Pernille Rose Grønkjær's fantastic little character portrait doesn't rest on the strength of its personality, with prudent attention paid to aesthetic nuances and the growing quasi-love that the titular bickerers have for one another.
  18. Love Hunter
    Love Hunter probably counts as a musical, the film's a sad, gentle valediction for a young artist’s dream.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Margot at the Wedding
    Hard as it may be to imagine a comedy that inflicts all the psychic torment of "Cries and Whispers," Baumbach has pulled off a more psychologically acute--and funnier--version of the Bergman pastiches that Woody Allen attempted 30 years ago, with a jumpy, nerve-rattling rhythm all his own.
  20. The Freedom to Marry
    Rosenstein makes this a suspenseful legal yarn and an essential history lesson.
  21. The Wedding Ringer
    Hart rants, Gad fidgets, and together this pair barrels through the plot, shaping between them a surprisingly potent friendship.
  22. Looney Tunes: Back in Action
    Dante's masterstroke is to make the movie as visually and narratively unhinged as its source material.
  23. Lake Tahoe
    Eimbcke's droll rhythms are reminiscent of early Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismäki--here stylistically appropriate for a film about social and emotional inertia.
  24. Araby
    A soundtrack of folk/country classics takes the edge off, but make no mistake: This is a beautiful bummer, giving voice to someone who’s barely a number, but only to remind us that most of us are OK not thinking about numbers at all.
  25. Cyber-Seniors
    If there's a film that will make you want to finally accept that friend request from your grandparents, this one is it.
  26. Exit Elena
    Silver locates the ordinary madness bubbling just beneath the surface of his own life, and flickers of lunacy abound.
  27. Young Ones
    Young Ones is an old-fashioned, worthwhile curio down to the closing credits.
  28. My Brooklyn
    As a paean to the sort of vibrant, quickly disappearing community that Brooklyn represents less now than it did in the past, her film works well; as a genuine study, it sometimes falls short.
  29. Roadie
    Eldard, with eyes projecting adolescent vulnerability and a body lost to awkward midlife chub, is enough to redeem Cuesta's indie commonplaces.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Yojimbo
    Kurosawa's imagery is alway exciting. [25 Oct 1962, p.16]
    • Village Voice
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
    Several sharp jolts give the doc its dramatic shape, and one episode in particular, caught with a neighbor's lens, will make you gasp with grief.
  32. Cold Bloom
    The familiar plot shifts through Shiori's expected reactions, yet Cold Bloom proves fresh and evocative in depicting her changing world.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy
    In a way, the porn legend seems to have cut a tragic Faustian deal. He's always wanted to be a mainstream actor.
  34. The Last Family
    The movie sticks in the mind not as a full-on, time-honored biopic but as a queasily warts-and-all peeling back of a family dynamic that happened to involve a figure of cultish renown.
  35. Bra Boys
    Rudimentarily made as documentaries go--and more than a touch self-glorifying at times--Bra Boys is nevertheless intriguing for its insider's perspective of an outsider culture steeped in tradition, male-bonding rituals, and intense localism.
  36. 56 Up
    By now, grandchildren are ever-present, and stasis has set in. Apted's entire project is awesome in scale but subject to inevitable diminishing returns.
  37. In America
    Like a kid playing make-believe, In America is blithely confident of its own contrivances; it only benefits from a certain unselfconscious naïveté. And as with a misjudged Christmas gift or a mawkish sympathy card from a kindly relative, one can hardly doubt its uplifting intentions.
  38. Wakefield
    Swicord turns what could be a dark or one-note premise into a sometimes charming, sometimes heartbreaking meditation on a man’s loss of self after having set out to conquer the job, wife, house, and kids he thought would make him happy.
  39. Up and Down
    Up and Down is not exactly the toughest movie on the block, but especially compared to most American comedies, it conveys a sense of scrofulous rue.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Guys and Balls
    Both totally predictable and unerringly charming, with all of the quirky players, training montages, and father-son drama you'd expect.
  41. A Ciambra
    A Ciambra is at its best when Carpignano captures the textures of everyday life, suggesting the neorealists with his use of nonprofessional actors and on-location shooting.
  42. Have a Nice Day
    The surprisingly vibrant, hand-drawn images of Have a Nice Day revitalize the story’s more tired elements. It may not give us anything new, but Jian Liu’s film looks lovely and, at 77 minutes, doesn’t overstay its welcome. And sometimes that’s enough.
  43. Sunlight Jr.
    Collyer has a keen eye for underrepresented populations, but she'd be better served in the future to scale back on the overstatement.
  44. 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.
  45. Jajouka, Something Good Comes to You
    The artists prove a motif rather than a resting point, with the film circling around them, then breaking away for further visions.
  46. The Reception
    A fresh and uncompromising account of emotional self-immolation and romantic flux. And it has a happy ending to boot.
  47. Go
    A showy exercise in nervous grit, Go never strays too far from a sense of itself as stunt.
  48. This Film Is Not Yet Rated
    Any investigation into Hollywood inevitably mutates into a noir.
  49. Sexy Baby
    There might be something new to say about sex after all, and it's said in Sexy Baby, a snazzily edited documentary by Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Czech Dream
    Hey, Prague--you got punk'd! In this subversive Central European slice of reality TV, Czech film students Vít Klusák and Filip Remunda protest the kudzu creep of globalization with a stunt worthy of the Yes Men.
  51. Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo
    Recalling other cine-duets, both straight (Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise) and gay (Andrew Haigh's Weekend), Paris 05:59 distinguishes itself by seamlessly including a lesson on HIV post-exposure prophylaxis.
  52. That Awkward Moment
    While it's easy to tease first-time writer-director Tom Gormican's raunchy rom-com, the trio has a shaggy chemistry, and most of the jokes hit.
  53. Bethlehem
    Refusing to take sides or vilify his characters, Adler finds the humanity in all parties.
  54. Whitney
    By the time Whitney winds to an end, that massive talent feels like a dangerously valuable resource, one that even the people who were supposed to protect Houston couldn’t resist exploiting.
  55. Half of a Yellow Sun
    Biyi Bandele's Half of a Yellow Sun strikes an admirable balance between drama and history.
  56. The Deep End
    Swinton provides her own brand of incandescence, doubling as the film's aching heart and its center of gravity.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Last Holiday
    The most surprisingly satisfying Hollywood comedy in ages.
  58. Jindabyne
    Hand it to Lawrence and Christian. Jindabyne is a soberly, if sluggishly, crafted movie in which the bitterness never stops.
  59. Dude, Where's My Car?
    My friend even supplied a blurbable quote: "The best dumbass-buddy comedy I've seen since "Wayne's World!"
  60. Lads & Jockeys
    Director Benjamin Marquet mingles black-and-white footage of students past with that of his current focus - three 14-year-olds in their first year of a jockey apprenticeship - to build a sense of specificity and continuum into a timeless passage.
  61. Role Models
    Wain, Marino, and Rudd pull it off because theirs is a funnier, brainier, bawdier brand of feel-good.
  62. Manifesto
    The actress is equally committed, regardless of whether content and context click, but she soars when they do.
  63. The Face of Love
    Bening and Harris have excellent chemistry.
  64. Free Radicals
    An intelligent, viscerally intellectual exercise in ensemble acting and associative montage, enlivened with some terrific visual and dramatic ideas.
  65. Loot
    The bleakness and resignation running through the film can be gut-wrenching.
  66. 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.
  67. Octubre
    There's a message here regarding loneliness and emotional isolation, but the movie's real miracle is that, however precious its premise, this slow-burning not-quite heart-warmer-never succumbs to cuteness.
  68. Ushpizin
    As directed by Gidi Dar, Ushpizin has a disarming folk quality.
  69. The Lost Key
    At least the filmmakers are Jewish — and in their admirable quest for an understanding of what makes good sex and relationships, they've created a mightily silly but occasionally insightful, and certainly entertaining, film.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Black Sheep
    The cartoonish overkill that often makes Black Sheep a hoot proves wearying over an entire movie: The broad comedy and one-note characters eventually cancel out the horror, leaving elaborate set pieces that are more frantic than funny.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hacia la oscuridad
    Admirably tough-minded if overstuffed, Towards Darkness delivers on its foreboding title.
  72. Misconduct
    The new thriller Misconduct is getting kicked to the curb by its distributor, which is too bad, because director Shintaro Shimosawa's debut feature boasts an elegant visual style and a mystery plot with so many absurd twists that the film becomes enjoyable high melodrama.
  73. 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.
  74. Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys
    Code Unknown is Haneke's most expansive and, oddly, hopeful work -- not a gaze into the void, but a fierce attempt to scramble out of it.
  75. Realive
    Realive’s greatest strength is that it takes its premise so seriously, engaging with its moral and spiritual questions.
  76. Iraq in Fragments
    Whether or not James Longley's boldly stylized reportage breaches public indifference, its enduring value is assured: When the war is long gone, this deft construction will persist in relevance, if not for what it says about the mess we once made, then as a model of canny cinematic construction.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In Between Days
    Instantly compelling.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee
    Fight footage is kept to a minimum; in this film, the boxer's best one-two's don't hit inside the ring. Clay's ingenious hype-baiting moxie drives the first half, cut to a nouvelle pop beat.
  79. The Void
    The twisty story and imaginative monsters are enough to overcome the relatively humdrum leads.
  80. What Haunts Us
    It’s a painfully familiar story in the era of #MeToo and the Catholic Church’s abuse scandal, with the added agony that parents, teachers, and school officials were, to varying degrees, complicit.
  81. 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.
  82. To the Bone
    Though To the Bone isn’t quite enjoyable to watch, it’s acted well and is, in its depiction of this all-too-pervasive disorder, essential.
  83. Look at Me
    Little in a Jaoui film is particularly original, but it's all perfectly convincing.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ways to Live Forever
    A cute kid dying of cancer is usually a surefire way for filmmakers to get the tears flowing, but despite a few powerful moments, this children's-book-turned-movie isn't designed to make its audience cry.
  85. The Decay of Fiction
    The Decay of Fiction is less a narrative than a monument. In its abstract movie-ness, this 74-minute carnival of souls exudes a wistful longing to connect, not so much with Hollywood history as with the history of that history.
  86. The Pied Piper
    More affecting than affected.
  87. The Taste of Tea
    Warm and fantastical family portrait.
  88. The American Nurse
    Watching these nurses confront our mortality in all its bloody, pussy, festering, and thoroughly unglamorous forms stirs new appreciation for the profession.
  89. A Short History of Decay
    For the most part, A Short History of Decay triumphs over its pretensions.
  90. Mad Hot Ballroom
    Like "Spellbound's" glimpse of the darker side of childhood competition, Mad Hot Ballroom--a look at New York City schools' fifth-grade ballroom dance program--is best when exploring issues of class and gender and definitions of success.
  91. The Adventures of Felix
    A wafer-thin, sweetly sentimental picaresque with semiserious overtones.
  92. Thumbsucker
    Endearing and well-acted.
  93. Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow
    The Weeping Meadow shares the awed sense of solemn apocalypse with his (Angelopoulos) signature films, but it's lighter, more musical and folktale-ish.
  94. Home Again
    Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s cheeringly low-key debut, Home Again, offers proof that someone making movies understands what Hollywood has in Reese Witherspoon. I hope this star and this new writer-director make a habit of pairing up.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    ATL
    It's entertainment with ambition, but I can't front though; the soundtrack is pretty fly too.
  96. Suddenly
    A humane, unassumingly quirky rumination on chance and caprice.
  97. House at the End of the Street
    Working from a story by all-around genre specialist Jonathan Mostow, director Mark Tonderai steers the story cleanly around its queasy hairpin turns, perversely toying with one of pop cinema's most cherished clichés: the audience's inculcated desire to side with the underdog.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Dead Girl
    Moncrieff's glum, somber film is something of a needed corrective at the moment, when horror movies are turning into weightless exercises in morally sanctioned sadism.
  99. Question One
    Curiously, the most sympathetic figure in Question One might be the co-chairman of the "Yes on 1" campaign. He knows he's on the wrong side of history and is miserable about being ordered by his diocese to fight this horrible fight, but he lacks the courage to say no to them.
  100. Camille Claudel 1915
    One of the year's thorniest releases.
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