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. Get On Up
    Get On Up isn't a perfect-picture; there are moments of awkwardness, little gambles that don't quite pay off. But it's one of those experiments that's both flawed and amazing, a mainstream movie (with Mick Jagger as one of its producers) that fulfills old-fashioned, entertainment-value requirements, even as it throws off flashes of insight.
  2. Hercules
    Johnson is genuinely talented. He's often the best thing in bad movies, and Ratner's Hercules is, at the very least, pretty good.
  3. And So It Goes
    The result is a lumbering attempt at sweet-and-saucy romance, all affected emotion and strained bad-boy humor.
  4. The Killer Inside Me
    This withholding actor's (Affleck) impish smile and mild, pale-eyed stare--not to mention the Clintonesque hoarseness with which he spins his convoluted lies--are sufficiently convincing to keep The Killer Inside Me from being just a steamy, stylish, punishing bloodbath.
  5. Without Shepherds
    Without Shepherds is all sprawl, a loose mélange of talking heads and landscape b-roll.
  6. Under the Electric Sky
    Under the Electric Sky manages to be amusing even while it’s annoying you.
  7. A Letter to Momo
    The bickering goblins make a boffo comedy team, and while there's a recurring fart joke, it borders on classy. That's the power of good anime.
  8. Lucy
    There's enough mumbo jumbo about space and time and cellular division to allow Lucy to feign depth, but what lingers is Besson's regressive belief that even the most intelligent woman on earth can't figure out how to get her way without a miniskirt and a gun.
  9. Ironclad: Battle for Blood
    Co-writer/director Jonathan English ups the viscera and nudity at the expense of a compelling narrative, which was hardly the original’s strong suit (if indeed it had one) anyway.
  10. Happy Christmas
    The movie's packed with minor incidents, all fresh, compelling, and funny. It also boasts two lengthy scenes that are touched with something greater.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cannibal
    Despite the film's leisurely pace, nothing is wasted -- no word, no image, no sound. Every element is blended together to create individual scenes that come to feel like stand-alone photographs, leaving viewers both captivated and even ultimately feeling compassion for the anti-hero.
  12. The Kill Team
    The emotional disconnect between a soldier's perception of reality and reality itself is the subject of this documentary, which finds drama in evenhanded storytelling that is the inverse of its characters' emotional shakiness.
  13. Come Back to Me
    The film's clumsy script elicits groans, but it's the plot that infuriates.
  14. Beneath
    Beneath exhausts the appeal of its thinly sketched characters almost as soon as they're trapped together in the mine's emergency bunker, and it isn't long before Ketai, tiring of human drama, turns instead toward the supernatural.
  15. A Master Builder
    Demme, following in the footsteps of the late Louis Malle, takes a spare, direct approach to the material -- his economy pays off in quiet eloquence.
  16. Very Good Girls
    Very Good Girls is a film one wants to like but can't. It just doesn't work.
  17. A Most Wanted Man
    A Most Wanted Man is simply a complex tale superbly told, with time for nuance and to soak in its mysteries.
  18. Sex Tape
    Sex Tape is warmer and more amusing than its ads would lead one to believe. In fact, it’s almost good enough, leaning a little too hard on the innate likability of stars Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel.
  19. The Purge: Anarchy
    It's better than the first.
  20. Magic in the Moonlight
    The story feels shapeless, un-tailored, defiantly off the rack.
  21. Alive Inside
    Practically guaranteed to elicit tears within its first five minutes, Alive Inside... is nonetheless more than just a tearjerker.
  22. Fanny
    Fanny has a stagy sensibility, but Auteuil displays flashes of genuine, old-school craft.
  23. K Missing Kings
    The film looks great; the animation is detailed, fluid in action and meticulously designed, and the action sequences are meticulously mapped out. But K Missing Kings is really for diehards who have not only embraced the series but also the handful of manga it spawned.
  24. Wish I Was Here
    Wish I Was Here is at least stretching toward something, and even if its reach exceeds its grasp, Braff's earnest determination as a filmmaker and performer helps smooth out some of the awkward bumps.
  25. Video Games: The Movie
    More problematic than its lack of a compellingly laid-out time line is the film's habit of hopping between points of interest, so that every one of its chosen topics...is treated with a few catchy sound bites.
  26. Mood Indigo
    Mood Indigo is bitter candy, a heartbreaker that uses sugar as a trap.
  27. I Origins
    The story proceeds with all the flighty unreality of a film unconcerned with real-world scientific rigor... but Cahill manufactures enough conspiracies, coincidences, and extraordinary turns of plot to keep his thinking audience too busy to care.
  28. A Five Star Life
    Nice to look at but tedious to endure, A Five Star Life boasts a muted classiness that doesn't mitigate its phoniness.
  29. Among Ravens
    Among Ravens wants to be the The Big Chill with Gen-X assholes, a weird ambition.
  30. Aftermath
    The apocalypse is no fun for anyone, but the dreariest possible scenario probably entails being stuck in a house without a functioning toilet and with nine of the dullest people left alive.
  31. Planes: Fire & Rescue
    A time-killing kid-flick whose title is an exact summary of its plot.
  32. 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.
  33. Lost Persons Area
    It's the gestures that elevate the film: What Strubbe's handheld and intimate approach lacks in originality it makes up for in specific and spontaneous tactility.
  34. Audrey
    Billed as a comedy but nothing more than a shallow and exasperating portrait of female self-loathing, Dean Pollack's Audrey puts its protagonist through hell -- and its audience along with her.
  35. The Battered Bastards of Baseball
    That Battered Bastards is practically a hagiography doesn't negate the fact that it has more anti-establishment joie de vivre in any given scene than most talking-head docs about previously unheralded mensches contain in their entire run times.
  36. A Long Way Down
    The group's surprising anchor is Maureen, the single mother of an adult son with cerebral palsy; her fierce love and stifling isolation are contained by careful routine. Collette wears that armor, and cracks it, to devastating effect.
  37. Honour
    Khan’s orchestration of suspense impresses.
  38. As It Is in Heaven
    Overbay's palette is carefully lyrical, at a benumbed Martha Marcy May Marlene pitch, he pays attention to the verdant landscape and keeps his cast at a pensive and watchful low boil.
  39. Affluenza
    The film is dragged down by its awkwardly paradoxical story, which tries too hard to care too little.
  40. Underwater Dreams
    The film is dismayingly formless, every point is made too many times, and there's too little drama or revelation here.
  41. The Girl on the Train
    There's no bite to the criminality, the motives, the acting, or filmmaking to make us care.
  42. Road to Paloma
    This film is numbingly dull.
  43. Rage
    You may feel some anger if you pay to watch this. Or you may not, as Rage offers exactly what you think a Nic Cage movie called Rage would, except maybe for continually inspired lunacy.
  44. Marius
    Auteuil doesn't distance himself enough from the era to allow room for critique. As a result, the old-fashioned attitudes on display are accepted with open arms rather than reckoned with.
  45. Made in America
    There's no type of documentary as shallow as those covering modern music festivals, a fact reconfirmed by Made in America.
  46. Land Ho!
    Land Ho! feints toward pathos and perversity, only to decide that it's better off giving us abridged, postcard emotions.
  47. The Empty Hours
    Full of long takes and matter-of-fact performances, melancholy low-contrast cinematography and desolate vistas suffused with acute loneliness, The Empty Hours captures the feeling of idling away the time, waiting for something to arrive.
  48. Cinemanovels
    Equally seductive as it is inert, Terry Miles' Cinemanovels manages to cast an alluring spell, despite not amounting to much. It sticks in the memory, mostly due to the playful lead performance by Lauren Lee Smith.
  49. Closed Curtain
    Possibly the Iranian new wave's last meta-man, Panahi is in an ideal position to make the unique methodology of his filmmaking merge with its substance. But he's always been fascinated by how a film's bell-jar bubble can be punctured, leaving a viscous interface between real and cinematic.
  50. Boyhood
    Boyhood had the curious effect of making me feel lost, uneasy, a little alone in the inexorable march forward — and also totally, emphatically alive.
  51. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a much better and far less silly movie than its predecessor.
  52. Life Itself
    James — the director of Hoop Dreams and The Interrupters — gives us a sense of Ebert as a man who kept reinventing life as he went along — out of necessity, sure, though he also took some pleasure in adapting. It couldn't always have been easy, but that, too, is part of the story.
  53. Han Gong-ju
    The cumulative impact of the delayed story revelations and Chun's startling vulnerability is both an elegant gut-punch and a furious indictment of a society that treats its victims with inexcusable aggression and hostility.
  54. Beyond the Edge
    With the facts so poignant, there's little that needs dramatizing.
  55. Gabrielle
    Archambault is fluent in small, self-contained moments. Even as their guardians are forced into difficult conversations, Gabrielle and Martin's private exchanges ring true.
  56. Wrinkles
    Ignacio Ferreras's traditionally animated Wrinkles is a beautiful, subtle horror movie about the rigors of old age, made all the more horrifying because it will happen to all of us fortunate enough to live a long life.
  57. Premature
    Premature, you will be exhausted to hear, is a teen sex comedy with the plot of Groundhog Day, its supernatural comedy hearkening more to Scott Baio's Zapped! than to Porky's.
  58. Earth to Echo
    Earth to Echo is a slender kiddie flick about a quartet of preteens and their palm-sized alien pal that's at once bland, well-intentioned, and utterly terrifying about the mental development of modern children.
  59. Nothing Bad Can Happen
    Gebbe never asks us to believe in Tore's god, but she asks us to honor his beliefs. She's found an incredible conduit in Feldmeier.
  60. Deliver Us From Evil
    Despite the screaming gore, the movie is so rote that it can’t even rouse us for the de rigueur exorcism.
  61. Tammy
    Falcone’s film is an unsteady mix of broad comedy and indie heart, asking us first to roar at Tammy’s ignorance and outrageousness and then to be moved at this lovable misfit muddling toward love, maturity, and a better life.
  62. Transformers: Age Of Extinction
    There isn't enough visual beauty to forgive the screenplay's ugliness, but Bay does brave a daring new standard in product placement.
  63. 2016: Obama's America
    The only true surprise here is D'Souza's haplessness in constructing both film and argument.
  64. Postman Pat: The Movie
    Postman Pat: The Movie is one of the best family films to come down the pike this year.
  65. Bound by Flesh
    If Bound by Flesh sorely lacks the perspective of the physically atypical community, it's at least a fascinating look at the transformations in the entertainment industry in the last century.
  66. Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton: This Is Stones Throw Records
    The lack of a critical framework means that some of the most intriguing notions the interviewees put forth are never explored.
  67. Radio Free Albemuth
    In an alternate universe, this might be a cult hit; as it is, Albemuth will only be fun for diehards.
  68. Me and You
    Bertolucci, despite his obvious affection for Lorenzo, can't help but seem out of touch, and his hero looks and sounds less like a modern-day teen than an old man's wistful idea of one.
  69. Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger
    Berlinger covers lots of territory, including heartrending accounts from the family members of some of Bulger's victims. The whole exercise is fascinating, if vaguely unsatisfying.
  70. They Came Together
    They Came Together is one joke repeated until you're broken down by the giggles. It shouldn't work as well as it does, and wouldn't if it weren't perfectly cast with America's Comedy Sweethearts.
  71. Snowpiercer
    Even as dystopian dramas go, the picture is arid and lusterless in its more serious moments and unpleasantly kitschy when it tries to soar over the top.
  72. Siddharth
    The photography fascinates even when the story flags, and the film bristles with small revelations.
  73. The Pleasures of Being Out of Step
    The film has its insights, but perhaps its greatest value is in how it offers something of a record of what time with the talkative, tireless Hentoff is like.
  74. Jackpot
    Certainly, a lot of blood is spilled in the name of laughs. There's only one problem with its broad attempts at grotesque comedy: Jackpot simply isn't funny.
  75. The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
    Brian Knappenberger's The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz connects the dots of Swartz's past, assembling a vivid portrait of a sensitive genius with a strong moral sense.
  76. Yves Saint Laurent
    Jalil Lespert's Yves Saint Laurent tries to sweep the evanescent butterfly Yves into its net: The movie isn't enough, but it's something.
  77. Begin Again
    All that prickly inner conflict Ruffalo is so adept at suggesting? Cheery Begin Again wants none of it, offering instead lots of scenes of two characters we don't believe could ever exist arguing about authenticity in pop music.
  78. A Picture of You
    Sensitive and understated, J.P. Chan's A Picture of You balances humor and sentiment with an instinctive hand, skillfully unearthing honest, unexpected laughs amid intense grief.
  79. Fonzy
    The comic plot of Fonzy is outrageous, but to writer-director Isabelle Doval, it's just an armature that supports its gently funny characters and its themes of emotional and filial connections.
  80. Think Like a Man Too
    Returning director Tim Story lays out the narrative wares with all the subtlety of a neon sign on the Strip, not that the screenplay from Keith Merryman and David A. Newman (who also co-wrote the first one) gives him much to work with.
  81. A Summer's Tale
    The Rohmer touch consists of nonchalance and effortless sensuality, not just in the people, but also in the landscape, somehow even in the air.
  82. No Tears for the Dead
    There are more tears than the title lets on, and even more blood, but it's a reason to truly be invested that's missing from No Tears for the Dead, which is rarely any better or worse than serviceable.
  83. Murder101
    It's the very definition of direct-to-video schlock.
  84. The Homestretch
    The Homestretch is ultimately a humane accomplishment.
  85. Venus in Fur
    Polanski orchestrates this cat-and-mouse game with devilish delight, dancing around Ives's play as if it were a pagan bonfire, jabbing at it with his figurative pitchfork.
  86. Third Person
    When the head-scratching impossibilities are more irritating than intriguing, does the last-second explanation outweigh the two hours we've spent rolling our eyes?
  87. Norte, the End of History
    Norte tells a big story on a grand scale, but its emphasis, moment by moment, is on the quotidian. It's simplicity that resonates most deeply of all.
  88. The Last Sentence
    This attention to the personal crises of Segerstedt comes at the expense of a broader and more elusive subject, namely, the war. We know what Segerstedt did, and Troell tries to ask why. What he ignores are the implications.
  89. Exhibition
    A film that's all airy, abstract pretentiousness.
  90. Miss Lovely
    Rife with jealousy, treachery, and violence, it's a stylish portrait of the tangled relationship between cinematic and real-world sleaze.
  91. Le Chef
    Daniel Cohen's Le Chef does little more than illuminate the superficiality of the restaurant business.
  92. Code Black
    What will pull viewers in is the empathy of the healthcare workers who battle to retain their idealism in the face of staggering obstacles.
  93. Coherence
    The Rod Serling tension Byrkit is angling for never quite arrives, nor does any real Borgesian frisson. But thanks to its social setting, it does offer a vivid and perhaps intentional satirical portrait of L.A. culture.
  94. Jersey Boys
    Eastwood may never show us his boys discovering themselves under that street lamp, but he gives us a clutch of moments worth treasuring — and mostly without overdoing it.
  95. Northern Light
    [A] strange, singular heartbreaker of a film about life still flourishing in the most inhospitable conditions.
  96. The World Famous Kid Detective
    The World Famous Kid Detective is a poorly written, acted, and directed kid flick with one cool idea: It's chock full of snippets from old detective noir flicks.
  97. The Human Race
    One test for movies like this is whether they bemoan the inevitable gore or revel in it; The Human Race too often falls into the latter, amplifying and focusing on the bloodshed.
  98. Test
    When Frankie, an understudy in a small dance company, is given his chance to perform, he, and Test itself, come to life.
  99. Manuscripts Don't Burn
    The film, while wrenching and audacious, is crafted with that humane and observational mastery of great Iranian cinema of recent decades.
  100. I Am I
    I Am I is a remarkably assured debut for director Towne, especially since she's onscreen the majority of the time, and her script eschews the rules of the standard Hollywood amnesia plot, instead following its own internal logic while not shying away from the darker implications of its premise.
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