Village Voice's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. The School of Flesh
    Predicated as it is on Huppert's pensive, provocative blankness, the action moves a bit slowly, although, as is often the case with Jacquot, events make more sense after the movie is over.
  2. Adanggaman
    Ostensibly factual, helplessly self-conscious -- Adanggaman is being touted as the continent's first film about slavery as it was experienced on African soil—where the victims and enslavers were both native peoples.
  3. Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski
    A first-person doc assembled largely from footage taken in the course of the five features they made, being madmen together.
  4. Pieces of April
    Manipulative and cloying, Pieces of April turns into something altogether creepier, even pathological, whenever first-time filmmaker Peter Hedges (screenwriter of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" and "About a Boy") brings up race.
  5. Bad Santa
    Bad Santa is a one-joke film; to his credit, Thornton embodies that joke with vicious, vaguely insane conviction.
  6. Waking Sleeping Beauty
    Tying it all together is Hahn's transparent love for the art of animation and for Disney--its history and once geek-heavy in-house culture. Hahn balances that love with a critical eye that allows him to sing the praises of unsung heroes while letting the a--holes hang themselves.
  7. It Might Get Loud
    It's Page, a joyful instructor and natural storyteller, who steals the spotlight (Robert who? More, please.) Only real complaint: The movie's not loud enough. They should have turned that f***er up to 11.
  8. Killing Them Safely
    Footage of the now-wealthy Smiths being deposed is damning, the brothers' legal jiujitsu is appalling, and the stories of deaths are heartbreaking.
  9. The Nile Hilton Incident
    The Nile Hilton Incident, despite a stylish, seedy coating, fails to even come close to the canon of greats that have influenced it.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    District B13
    Spread the word: This delirious import is the most (maybe the only) fun action movie of the summer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Warlords
    Chan's old-fashioned, highly watchable mega-production comes complete with God's-eye surveys of mass carnage, the moist sounds of sword-skewering, and little or no discernible CGI.
  12. Double Lover
    It’s a buffet of psychosexual delicacies, borrowed and otherwise, all staged with hot-blooded, straight-faced vigor.
  13. Berlin Syndrome
    As Berlin Syndrome proceeds, however, we start to feel like we’re drowning in atmosphere, and it gets harder and harder to stay interested in what happens next.
  14. Fearless
    This is an action movie, and people don't come to be preached to; the "Terminator" flicks also favored world peace but didn't pause the action for nearly an hour to rub it in.
  15. I.O.U.S.A.
    Both a handy election primer and a bowel-rattling cry of fiscal doom.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Cantor's Tale
    With its outlandish stories, obsession with masculine ego, and focus on an absurd, forgotten subculture, A Cantor's Tale is the stuff Ben Stiller movies are made of: All that's missing is the part for Owen Wilson.
  17. East Side Sushi
    This lovely debut film contains all the ingredients of a culture-clash drama, which Lucero handles with a light touch.
  18. Portrait of a Garden
    Meditative in its slowness and exquisite beauty, Portrait of a Garden is more than a fine documentary — it's a balm for the soul.
  19. Sled Dogs
    Levitt’s film assembles a devastating case against the practices of dog racers and trainers, who often conceive of their animals as tools to be discarded (read: shot) when no longer useful.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Farewell, My Lovely
    By simply rack-focusing Mitchum in an occasional close-up, Richards evokes an entire biography, a sense of weariness and reflection. [25 Aug 1975, p.66]
    • Village Voice
  21. Louder Than Bombs
    The tale isn't new, nor are the characters, but director Joachim Trier's stylistic and narrative dexterity demands attention: He possesses that rare ability to deconstruct his material without denying us the simple beauties of a well-told story.
  22. Cedar Rapids
    A mild comedy of embarrassment.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    At the Edge of the World
    By turns stupendously beautiful and grimly terrifying, and best appreciated in a movie theater.
  24. Cocote
    Getting one’s bearings isn’t impossible; it’s like divining the trick of a Sunday crossword. But Cocote isn’t purely academic. It’s alternately clinical and sensual.
  25. Paulina
    The film is ultimately frustrating for the unending opacity of Paulina’s psychology.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Who Gets to Call It Art?
    A TV-style compilation of big-name talking heads and occasionally fascinating footage, the film convokes an impressive cast of interviewees—David Hockney, Frank Stella, and Ellsworth Kelly among them--yet seems too dazzled by their luminance to squeeze a substantial analysis of Geldzahler from their pithy testimonials.
  27. 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.
  28. Strayed
    As with Téchiné's best work, Strayed is a peculiar, lingering blend of robustness and delicacy--a movie with hardly a single wasted frame, incongruous word, or false gesture.
  29. Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
    The film is like his life: scabrous, upsetting, kind of moving, funny as hell, alive with hints of how we've become what we are.
  30. Afternoon
    This is not a movie, really, but a back-rub and a cup of tea for Tsai purists, for whom the filmmaker's company, behind or in front of the camera, is all that's required.
  31. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
    Nonchalantly freaky and uncommonly pleasurable, Warm Water may well be the year's best and most unpredictable comedy.
  32. Mohawk
    Mohawk takes its time revealing all its generic elements, but at its high point dares to vault toward something grander and more mythic than action-adventure realism.
  33. Lars and the Real Girl
    Lars and the Real Girl wobbles in a slow, toneless no-man's-land between mawkish and schmaltzy while trafficking shamelessly in heartland stereotypy.
  34. In Pursuit of Silence
    Shen overplays his hand.
  35. Boy
    The abundant charm of first-time actor James Rolleston, playing the 11-year-old of the title in Boy, doesn't quite save the aimless, nostalgia-woozy second feature from Taika Waititi (2007's Eagle vs. Shark).
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tears of the Black Tiger
    Nothing is too crazed, corny, or freakishly florid for Tears of the Black Tiger. The debut of writer-director Wisit Sasanatieng is a delightfully unabashed affair, conceived in such good, giddy spirits it might have been called "Blissfully Yours."
  37. Thumbsucker
    Endearing and well-acted.
  38. The Cruise
    The Cruise is being hailed as a harbinger of a future in which indie film will be liberated by low-cost technology. If this is where we're going, I want off the bus.
  39. Inglourious Basterds
    Energetic, inventive, swaggering fun, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is a consummate Hollywood entertainment--rich in fantasy and blithely amoral.
  40. The Mermaid
    For all its aspirations toward movie magic with an activist bent, The Mermaid’s potential implications for the film industry are ultimately more noteworthy than the movie itself.
  41. Never Let Me Go
    The surface blandness does not efface, and might even amplify, its disturbing qualities. Never Let Me Go is not a movie about death but, more painfully, about the consciousness of death.
  42. In Another Country
    The cumulative impression is of figures being lightly traced in the sand only to be inevitably washed away, intentionally ephemeral and quite charming for it.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Babel
    Puzzle master Arriaga may be the Will Shortz of globalized hand-wringing, but the by-now-predictable jigsawing of his scripts reeks of desperation.
  44. 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.
  45. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
    Instead of plumbing the depths of spiritual degradation, Herzog's movie is--largely due to Cage's performance--almost fun.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Unstoppable
    It's like a mashup of classic commercials for Ford pickup trucks, Bud Lite, and Hooters (where, God help us, Frank's daughters are working their way through college).
  47. Brave
    The animation studio's first film with a female protagonist, a defiant lass who acts as a much-welcome corrective to retrograde Disney heroines of the past and the company's unstoppable pink-princess merchandising.
  48. Wetlands Preserved: The Story of an Activist Nightclub
    An appropriately mellow chronicle of a Tribeca nightclub's lifespan.
  49. Viva
    Despite its gorgeous views and a pair of strong turns from veteran Cuban actors Perugorría and García, the film doesn't connect to the heart of its central character.
  50. The Birth of Saké
    [Shirai] indulges his subjects' lack of introspection and focuses on the ephemeral beauty of the brewery's centuries-old sake-making method.
  51. Rabin in His Own Words
    The documentary briefly veers into tired territory when Rabin’s voice disappears and triumphal singers fill the screen, but Rabin’s consistent, thoughtful self-criticism and colorful storytelling animate what might otherwise be a pat, or at least familiar, history of Israel in the 20th century.
  52. Love & Taxes
    As a writer, Kornbluth is vivid, funny and skilled at conveying characters, qualities he actually matches in performance.
  53. Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf
    If Five Seasons is the only opportunity viewers have to experience Oudolf’s artistry up close, Piper’s cinematography (whether through a sunny haze or a snowy blanket) and contemplative storytelling have done these gardens justice.
  54. Girlhood
    Despite similar excess, Garbus's follow-up to 2002's "The Execution of Wanda Jean" provides another powerful glimpse inside the American justice system.
  55. Undercover Brother
    Much of Undercover Brother plays as a funnier, if similarly addled, "Bamboozled."
  56. Dung che sai duk
    Wittily, earnestly, gorgeously sets up the paradox he has returned to throughout his career--that of romantic memory as both scourge and succor.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Enter the Void
    A mash-up of the sacred, the profane, and the brain-dead, Enter the Void is addictive.
  58. Eating Animals
    As a work of sustained, thoughtful inquiry, Eating Animals is a bust; as a reminder of what we should all be thinking about, though, it’s searing. After seeing it, pretending not to know is impossible.
  59. Revolutionary Road
    Revolutionary Road isn't a great movie -- it lacks the full, soul-crushing force of the novel -- but what works in it works so well, and is so tricky to pull off, that you can't help but admire it.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Live Free or Die Hard
    Maybe McClane, in '80s action parlance, is too old for this s---.
  61. Up for Grabs
    Wranovics's entertaining documentary feels appropriately detached.
  62. The Beautiful City
    At times resembling an Iranian "Dead Man Walking," Beautiful City goes out of its way to give each character a fair shake-a few patriarchal rages notwithstanding, even the vengeful father is treated sympathetically. But the script, overly laden with red herrings, forces its characters into some improbable dilemmas.
  63. Palo Alto
    The movie perfectly captures the vibe of late high school, in a way that's both of its time and timeless.
  64. Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
    Celebratory but clear-eyed portrait of Gertrude Berg.
  65. Lion
    Commercial filmmaking still fumbles interiority and moral complexity. So it’s fortunate for the filmmakers that Brierley's book also is thick with the kinds of things that crowdpleasers ace.
  66. The September Issue
    Wintour's arctic imperiousness has a way of creating the most masochistic deference, a dynamic that R.J Cutler superficially explores--and becomes prone to--in his documentary The September Issue.
  67. Fresh Dressed
    Fashion is about that clash between commercialism and individuality — how can I stand out while fitting in? — and Sacha Jenkins's streetwear doc Fresh Dressed nods its Kangol hat to that irony.
  68. Beeswax
    Beeswax exemplifies post-mumble maturity. The movie is not only semi-documentary, but also casually thoughtful (or at least self-reflexive)--working with friends is what Bujalski does in creating his own particular Storyville.
  69. Amour Fou
    Henriette's last thought will forever be a mystery, but the grandeur of Romanticism is tartly, pleasingly demystified.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cinderella Man
    Despite the tale's dusty pedigree, Ron Howard spins a ticket-worthy two-plus hours of movie-movie entertainment.
  71. The Last Lions
    Though floridly written and relentlessly scored, the film's dramas are more persuasively framed than many human ones, going so far as to include multiple flashbacks.
  72. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
    In the end, Cameron Post is a damning indictment of institutional Christianity and adults who make it their mission to tamp down kids’ spirits in the name of God.
  73. The Cooler
    First-timer Wayne Kramer brings pathos to Bernie and Shelly's fraught relationship, but his film never amounts to more than a cute idea stretched to poker-chip thinness.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt
    Loving but frank, Brown, by refusing to judge her film's subject, never falls into this trap. Too frequently, however, the side-of-the-road montages that are meant to mesmerize offer only blurry filler instead.
  75. Giorni e nuvole
    Without grounding in specific causes-and-effects, the film is just another dreary wallow in self-pity.
  76. Frontrunners
    Suh shows herself ever-happy to settle for the shallow rewards of pop documentary. Depending on your level of fatigue with The Other Campaign, this may be good enough.
  77. Head Games
    While Head Games does feature a number of articulate and consistently intelligent talking-head interviews, it's ultimately not a satisfying advocacy documentary.
  78. Hannah Arendt
    The writer-philosopher Hannah Arendt is brought to life by a mesmerizing Barbara Sukowa in Margarethe von Trotta's film.
  79. The Little Bedroom
    The screenplay is built of small moments and minute details that gradually gain significance, as should be the case in a good character study.
  80. 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.
  81. Fatima
    Faucon has built his story around very gentle, glancing blows. But this is not the focused austerity of a Robert Bresson; the director’s level distance and jaded eye lead more to lifelessness than a revealing simplicity of expression.
  82. The Little Hours
    This isn’t a laugh-a-minute movie; it’s more a succession of snickers, punctuated by genuine emotion.
  83. Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary
    It’s hard not to wish, as Scheinfeld's restless film hustles along to touch its next base, that we could just sit and listen to more from Shorter, who actually has insight to share. Lord knows the movie won’t make time to let us hear some John Coltrane.
  84. Diamond Island
    Maybe this is a mood more than a movie, but it is a haunting one.
  85. Duplicity
    Comedy seems to have liberated Gilroy, who directs Duplicity with the high gloss and fleet-footed hustle of a golden-age Hollywood craftsman.
  86. The Painted Veil
    Bolstered by a strong ensemble-- "Infamous's" Toby Jones as a deputy commissioner gone native, and a wonderfully wrinkled Diana Rigg as a Mother Superior, speaking up for disillusioned decency--and by the ecstatic cinematography of Stuart Dryburgh, The Painted Veil lifts Maugham's story clear of its prissy, attenuated spirituality, and into genuine passion.
  87. It
    The critic seems less interested in the scares and the suspense — a shame, since IT is filled with them — and more in the kids themselves.
  88. Peepli Live
    It's an unusual taste of mainstream Indian cinema (or, thanks to superstar Aamir Khan's production company, it's a small film given an unusually mainstream push), unexpectedly irreverent with an earthier, folkier soundtrack than the typical Bollywood electro-bounce.
  89. Digging for Fire
    Digging for Fire affably drifts by, bolstered by some strong set pieces.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black Gold
    No mere Western-guilt-inducing harangue, this highly informative documentary by British brothers Marc and Nick Francis is a model of patient storytelling.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cold Souls
    It may be only in the film's last ambiguous, evocative image that Barthes and Parekh finally transcend the material and arrive at something beautiful and ineffable.
  92. Butterfly Tongues
    It's boilerplate Miramax: a sentimental import with lovingly photographed Euro locale.
  93. The Sleeping Beauty
    Though The Sleeping Beauty ends ambiguously, it remains consistent with the logic that Breillat has laid out: A girl's childhood and adolescence are often culturally sanctioned confinements. But the prisoners aren't always victims; the jails can be escaped through the courage to "go alone into the world."
  94. Just Another Love Story
    Danish director Ole Bornedal (Nightwatch) continues a career of laying the groundwork for remakes that will be middling in more familiar, English-language ways.
  95. Life During Wartime
    Todd Solondz is back. Life During Wartime shows the misanthropic moralizer as confounding and trigger-happy as ever, his big clown thumb poised over a garish assortment of hot buttons--race, suicide, autism, sexual misery, self-hatred, Israel, and, his old favorite, pedophilia.
  96. The Girl
    Gorgeously framed by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, the Turner-esque beauty of the landscape at harvest time only adds to the creepiness as the Girl makes do, makes friends, and then unravels in the most creative ways.
  97. Tahrir: Liberation Square
    The variations are many, but the theme is as consistent as the crowd that grows and strengthens throughout Savona's inside, traditional, vérité portrait of the uprising.
  98. A Life in Dirty Movies
    Instead of over-glorifying their shared past, Ericsson pays loving tribute to what remains of his subjects' relationship.
  99. The Unknown Known
    Rumsfeld's impenetrability makes him fascinating, but only to a point.
  100. The Ignorant Fairies
    It's this memory-as-identity obviation that gives Secret Life its intermittent unease, reaffirming that long-held illusions are indeed reality, and that erasing them recasts the self. And it's this existential gerrymandering that's most compelling.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »