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. See You Next Tuesday
    Tobia approaches comedy in the same way that John Cassavetes did, which is to say that he embraces the absurdity of human behavior at the same time that he recoils from it.
  2. Nan Goldin: I Remember Your Face
    Nan Goldin: I Remember Your Face conjures the aura of Goldin's halcyon days with the ease of diaristic reminiscence, and for that it proves a valuable record. But on the subject of her cultural significance the film remains oddly quiet.
  3. Witching and Bitching
    A major achievement in sunny wretchedness, Álex de la Iglesia's splatter-comedy Witching & Bitching projectile pukes its outrages at you with a gusto recalling the early days of those (sadly) reformed upchuckers Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson.
  4. Violette
    Provost's film, like its heroine, is full of active, sparking nerves.
  5. The Signal
    The persuasive power of individual moments suggests that director William Eubank has a bright future — and could push himself harder when writing his scripts.
  6. The Rover
    The Rover might not be about anything at all, but the dust it stirs up sticks to you after you leave the theater.
  7. Policeman
    Lapid is so unconcerned with crafting a conventional crime drama that merely titling his film Policeman reads as a minor subversion, a way of defining the narrative in relation to a genre it hardly fits into.
  8. A Coffee In Berlin
    Gerster and Schilling are more successful when they allow Niko's behavior to be their main subject.
  9. Lullaby
    Rarely has the terminal seemed as interminable as it does in Lullaby.
  10. Ivory Tower
    What the film does accomplish is making you think, especially about how universities are spending their ever-increasing tuition on top-notch campus amenities and their own disastrous loans, and how state governments and federal agencies are similarly passing off their education cuts onto the young people who they expect to one day run the economy and society.
  11. Hellion
    Hellion offers Paul his most adult screen role so far, and he's very fine, but the movie belongs to Wiggins, a newcomer whose innate gifts are a perfect echo of Paul's.
  12. Heli
    A dead-eyed, lyrical art film that kicks you in the throat.
  13. Evergreen: The Road to Legalization
    Because the battle for legalization is still being fought in most other states, the lack of an up-to-date perspective is frustrating.
  14. The Amazing Catfish
    Claudia Sainte-Luce's semi-autobiographical indie has a knack for subverting stereotypes without making a big deal about it.
  15. How to Train Your Dragon 2
    The plot is needlessly busy, and much of the action is more manic and indistinct. But How to Train Your Dragon 2 cuts deeper than the first picture — it will be particularly resonant for anyone who has ever worked with or adopted rescue animals — and there are a few sequences of cartoon grandeur.
  16. All Cheerleaders Die
    You could call it Bring It On meets The Craft and stop right there with considerable accuracy. But why would you, when All Cheerleaders Die actually delivers as much trashy, gory fun as a movie with such a title suggests?
  17. Burning Bush
    For all the hurtling plot, and its occasional workaday scenecraft, Burning Bush proves an engrossing historical drama, low-key but in its final moments devastating.
  18. 22 Jump Street
    22 Jump Street isn't uncharitable or mean-spirited; at worst, it's just confused. Tatum is, predictably, adorable. His Jenko is a pumped-up naïf bumbling through life with a crooked smile, and Hill again makes a great sparring partner.
  19. The Hornet's Nest
    An important film despite some baffling presentational choices.
  20. Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago
    Driving both the filmmaker and her subjects is wonder and wanderlust. Their enthusiasm for the Camino is contagious, and it might make you drop everything and head for Spain.
  21. Small Small Thing
    There are many reasons to see this very difficult film, not least to face the grim realities in Liberia, and to wonder what more could be done to save lives and preserve the human spirit when it is so clearly yearning to burn bright given any small small chance.
  22. The Sacrament
    Restaging the 1978 Jonestown massacre for a present-day suspense movie is by most definitions tasteless, although The Sacrament infuses the past with ghoulish immediacy.
  23. The Only Real Game
    This film is like another work in the canon of baseball poetry.
  24. DSKNECTD
    It's an over-the-top cautionary doc less convincing than the weight-loss ads on Facebook.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Big Gay Love
    It's complicated with superficial obstacles are treated with the subtlety of a hammer hitting a nail.
  26. Willow Creek
    The horror's a long time coming, but Goldthwait and company make the waiting worth it.
  27. Trust Me
    The film isn't as biting as The Player or Swimming with Sharks, and neither Howard's struggles nor Lydia's mystery is a match for the electricity of the supporting actresses in their brief roles.
  28. Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
    Spry, if sprawling, Supermensch warmheartedly affirms the Gordonian style of karmic contemplation.
  29. Rigor Mortis
    The resulting creep show has some frantic action scenes, but never quite enough spring in its step.
  30. Ping Pong Summer
    It's a throwback film in both style and sentiment, and what it lacks in depth, it make up for with warmth.
  31. Obvious Child
    Obvious Child is perfect for those who want more honesty in fiction.
  32. The Moment
    What's fresh is Weinstock's interweaving of flashbacks, slightly altered versions of flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, so that viewers must work as hard as Lee to determine past from present.
  33. Master of the Universe
    Bauder's film is a diagnosis of a system that is hopelessly sick and not being treated. Bring a stress ball to squish up as you watch.
  34. Dormant Beauty
    Subtle emotional intelligence has always distinguished Bellocchio's filmmaking, and Dormant Beauty is constructed from fine-grained layers of it, the filmmaker's equivalent of a master cabinetmaker's craft.
  35. Citizen Koch
    Carl Deal and Tia Lessin's scattershot agitprop doc takes the perfidy of the billionaire Koch brothers as its given, offering up montages of Tea Party screamers rather than investigative reporting or rigorous argumentation.
  36. The Case Against 8
    The stirring new documentary The Case Against 8, showcasing the lawyers and plaintiffs who challenged California's 2008 gay marriage ban, is the best kind of popular history, a film that trembles with tears and hope, and I dare you to get through it without bawling some yourself.
  37. Burt's Buzz
    Shapiro seems far more invested than his subject in telling the story, which sometimes makes the film feel a bit underhanded.
  38. Life is Strange
    Hertz hasn't framed his subjects' stories into a singular, compelling narrative.
  39. Brick Mansions
    This is an almost scene-for-scene remake — but not a shot-for-shot remake, which likely would have been more enjoyable.
  40. Burning Blue
    Honorable in intent but risible in execution.
  41. Borgman
    Van Warmerdam keeps such a calm, firm hold on the material that he practically hypnotizes you into following along to the end. The craftsmanship is precise; the result is enigmatic.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anna
    Taissa Farmiga (sister of Vera) is a marvel in the title role.
  43. 2 Autumns, 3 Winters
    Despite this gender imbalance, 2 Autumns, 3 Winters extends tremendous compassion to all of its characters, gently exploring their hopes and anxieties as they try to settle into adulthood.
  44. The Fault in Our Stars
    The Fault in Our Stars doesn't quite capture the discreetly twisted humor, or the muted anger, of Green's book, and its problems can be attributed to a constellation of little annoyances rather than any one serious, North Star–size flaw.
  45. Edge of Tomorrow
    The Wile E. Coyote fatalities are fun, but it's that repetitive moment of horror that holds this bipolar stunt together: Cruise, bug-eyed and gasping for breath as he shakes off his fear and grimly prepares for the next suicide mission.
  46. Before You Know It
    Before You Know It is a chronicle of the challenges facing an aging portion of the population, but it doubles as something more universal: a means of cutting through isolation and societal expectation, and finding a stronger self on the other side.
  47. The Odd Way Home
    Superficiality and cliché mark the film's notions of family, dysfunction, and even survival.
  48. We Are the Best!
    Brash and sweet, We Are the Best! captures perfectly the aimlessness of adolescence, the waiting to become something that's so often intertwined with the desire to make something, to leave your mark on the world in some small way.
  49. Gebo and the Shadow
    Gebo and the Shadow is a film about concrete, hard, and material things, as well as one about illusions.
  50. The Grand Seduction
    The endearing nature of the characters, especially Gleeson's Murray, provides some pleasure.
  51. Korengal
    The frank honesty of these accounts testifies to the trust Junger and Hetherington cultivated among the Second Platoon in 2008.
  52. The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne
    It's part caper comedy, part revenge tale, and part glorious whopper.
  53. Lucky Them
    Strangely Bechdel Test-failing and as far removed from real life as Middle Earth, Lucky Them nonetheless hits familiar beats in welcome and unexpected ways, and does it by the book.
  54. Night Moves
    That patience of Reichardt's, and her dedication to showing us exclusively the things that we must see, makes the scenes of preparation — boat parking, fertilizer buying — hypnotic and suspenseful and practical all at once.
  55. Maleficent
    With more actual grrrl power, Maleficent would be a bold redo. Instead, it's a beautiful snooze, a story that hints at the darkness underneath our fairy tales and tarnishes the idea of true love without quite daring to say what's really on its mind: that even the best of us might not live happily ever after.
  56. A Million Ways to Die in the West
    Theron proved her comedy chops in the underrated Young Adult, and here she and MacFarlane get along like two eager puppies. If MacFarlane indulges in self-flattery by keeping in all the times this babe bursts into laughter at his jokes, he's forgiven; at least we feel like the characters are actually listening to each other.
  57. Filth
    A self-aware psychopath is a tough character to humanize, especially when he's mired in a stylized jumble of comedy and tragedy.
  58. Emoticon
    Emoticon ;), a vanity project written, directed, starring, and sung by Livia De Paolis, is a grown-up's weird idea of how kids behave.
  59. Elena
    A pained and gorgeous summoning, Petra Costa's haunted doc Elena dances with death, memory, and family, seducing viewers and then breaking their hearts.
  60. Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas
    The feudal revenge drama sacrifices thrills in favor of moral reflection in the unspoiled French countryside, keeping most of its violence at arm's length.
  61. American Jesus
    A restless, sunnily shot, one-thing-after-another travelogue of the peculiarities of American worship and belief.
  62. 50 to 1
    While the film isn't without charming moments -- the Derby sequence is entertaining -- the lack of narrative sophistication grates.
  63. A World Not Ours
    Fleifel gathers the messy detritus of everyday living, laughs at it, then shows the viewer what it means.
  64. Lila Lila
    The appealing performances from Brühl and Herzsprung, as well as the film's surprisingly clean sense of composition...keep Lila, Lila moving. But it ultimately suffers from poor characterization.
  65. Frequencies
    Fisher never subordinates his big ideas to the usual chase scenes or manufactured love conflicts less confident filmmakers use to candy up such material. That's great — too bad that, in the final third, the movie also doesn't subordinate those ideas to its own story, or to its earlier elegance of construction.
  66. Broken
    Jung Jae-young gives a physical, full-bodied performance in the main role.
  67. Wolf
    It's refreshing that director Jim Taihuttu is more interested in the humdrum goings on of those who split their time between illegal and legitimate activities.
  68. Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
    Patient, observational film demands you surrender to it, that you keep your phone in your pocket, which means that movie theaters now sometimes offer a more unmediated look at the world than modern life itself.
  69. The Love Punch
    The Love Punch is too sunny and self-effacing to be truly toxic.
  70. Grand Départ
    The director, Nicolas Mercier, has failed to grasp how repellent his own protagonist seems to us. By the end, he's tipped his hand, and what seemed an incisive portrait is revealed as oddly skewed.
  71. Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia
    It's an admittedly hagiographic film, an unabashed celebration of the man and his work and worldview. The few mild naysayers are largely set up to be knocked down, but as such the film is invigorating.
  72. The Dance of Reality
    The Dance of Reality may be Alejandro Jodorowsky's best film, and certainly, in a filmography top-heavy with freak-show hyperbole and symbology stew, the one most invested in narrative meaning.
  73. Cold in July
    While Hall and Shepard nail their parts, Don Johnson, still magnetic after all these years, steals the film as a sardonic private eye with a vintage cherry-red convertible.
  74. The Angriest Man in Brooklyn
    Much has changed in the two decades since the release of Joel Schumacher's Falling Down, but, as The Angriest Man in Brooklyn flatly reminds us, the grievances of America's petulant middle-class men apparently have not.
  75. Words and Pictures
    Owen and Binoche's vigorous, battle-scarred performances, prop up Words and Pictures even when its plotting resorts to unbelievable devices.
  76. X-Men: Days of Future Past
    Future Past starts fast and never slows down. There's not a line of dialogue that isn't exposition... What fun there is slips in through director Bryan Singer's visuals.
  77. The Discoverers
    The dysfunction may be perfunctory, but in this gorgeous natural setting — Schwarz makes full use of the stunning woods — it feels like new territory.
  78. Godzilla
    Godzilla is one of those generic, omnipresent blockbusters that's undone by the very spectacle it strives to dazzle us with: Everything is so gargantuan, so momentous, that nothing has any weight.
  79. Wolf Creek 2
    Wolf Creek 2 merely offers more of the same casual brutality. The only shocking (and depressing) part is how inured to it moviegoers have become.
  80. A Short History of Decay
    For the most part, A Short History of Decay triumphs over its pretensions.
  81. A People Uncounted
    What Yeger stirs up is profoundly unsettling and deeply moving.
  82. The Immigrant
    Gray has a knack for wrapping big themes into an intimate embrace, and The Immigrant feels both epic and fine-grained.
  83. Horses of God
    Director Nabil Ayouch depicts the sprawling, ramshackle Sidi Moumen slums with fluid camera movements... He finds the humanity and the hopelessness in its narrow streets, its fields of rubble, monstrous trash dumps, and grim marketplaces.
  84. Half of a Yellow Sun
    Biyi Bandele's Half of a Yellow Sun strikes an admirable balance between drama and history.
  85. 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.
  86. Cold Bloom
    The familiar plot shifts through Shiori's expected reactions, yet Cold Bloom proves fresh and evocative in depicting her changing world.
  87. 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.
  88. 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.
  89. Million Dollar Arm
    If the filmmakers had been more daring with perspectives and narrative structure, and afforded their Indian characters the screentime and agency JB enjoys on his adventure, Million Dollar Arm might have distinguished itself.
  90. Still I Strive
    But the directors elevate the picture to a level of emotional genius by filming the children's play as a full-on cinematic adaptation, shot and edited with seriousness and polish.
  91. The Rescuers
    This very serious film sometimes feels like a farce.
  92. Moms' Night Out
    Outrageously enough, the moral of Moms' Night Out seems to be that moms should never get a night out.
  93. Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return
    Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return fails to make us care about the characters or their journeys, and the animation is shoddy and occasionally creepy.
  94. DamNation
    Co-director and narrator Ben Knight interviews activists, officials, social jammers, and scientists, approaching the subject not with outrage, but with humor and optimism.
  95. Clutter
    We get a glimpse of who these people are and what makes them tick, but never know them in a way that helps us truly understand them or become especially invested in finding out what became of them.
  96. Chapman
    Mostly due to the assured polish of cinematographer Sean Stiegemeier, Chapman punches above its featherweight budget, but the punch is ultimately pulled as both strands of the narrative intersect with one last reveal of unresolved melodrama that feels coldly calculated in its cause and effect.
  97. Breastmilk
    Ben-Ari elegantly conveys the crippling social pressures that arise when a woman suggests that she might be allowed agency over her own body and that of her child, without adding any words of her own.
  98. 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.
  99. God's Pocket
    The story... could have worked well as a pitch-black comedy, but first-time director John Slattery (Mad Men's Roger Sterling) takes the material so seriously that the mood never changes much after leaving the funeral home.
  100. Fed Up
    Fed Up is a workmanlike documentary, as undistinguished in style as a PowerPoint slide show. It nonetheless finds traction in its depiction of the food industry's Montgomery Burns–like practices.
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