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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    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Berlin
    A concert film by technicality, a cinematic trance in practicality.
  2. Cash Only
    Cash Only features many familiar action movie markers, but it's distinguished by a raw energy and strong sense of place.
  3. The Great Gatsby
    It's an expressionist work, a story reinvented to the point of total self-invention, polished to a handsome sheen and possessing no class or taste beyond the kind you can buy. And those are the reasons to love it.
  4. Archaeology of a Woman
    Sharon Greytak's Archaeology of a Woman is a decidedly well-made, unnerving film.
  5. The Two Faces of January
    Mortensen is a pro at the slow burn, and he adds genuinely frightening layers of impulsiveness to this tempest-in-a-teapot scenario. The freshest twist is that each man has a notable advantage over the other.
  6. I don't feel at home in this world anymore.
    Lynskey’s shivering rage and Wood’s Zen incompetence play off beautifully against each other, and Blair deftly juggles the suspense, humor and social overtones of his script. Until, that is, the film’s final 30 or 40 minutes, when he settles for genre schlock and the revelatory film we thought we were watching devolves into a less interesting, more familiar one.
  7. 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.
  8. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
    Everything about this berserk, essentially static procedural is just crazy enough to be true. In any case, Herzog has gone beyond Good and Evil to reinvent himself as a candidate for the wiggiest director of comedy in America today.
  9. Jesus People
    Director Jason Naumann treats the characters with genuine affection and a portrayal of faith that actually has integrity.
  10. Playing It Cool
    Proving that its chosen genre is best when its tropes are treated with a balance of sincere sweetness and wink-wink absurdity, Playing It Cool thrives through sheer liveliness, as well as the chemistry of its perfectly paired stars.
  11. The Great Dance: A Hunter's Story
    A grassroots refutation of Discovery Channel/National Geographic dispassion, The Great Dance: A Hunter's Story is hot and sweaty with fetching curves.
  12. Altered States of Plaine
    Altered States of Plaine, like indies Pi and Primer, harbors ambition that towers over its super-saver discount budget.
  13. Elemental
    Elemental isn't essential, but it's a fascinating if limited portrait of the diversity of eco-warriordom today.
  14. The Thomas Crown Affair
    A sealskin-slick, cat-and-mouse romance-caper trifle with a hard-on for wealth that feels downright Trumpian.
  15. Curling
    In Curling, his (Cote) interest in individuals with "one foot outside of society" continues with a crisp portrait of a Québécois solitary man and his cloistered preteen daughter.
  16. Siddharth
    The photography fascinates even when the story flags, and the film bristles with small revelations.
  17. The Incredible Jessica James
    The Incredible Jessica James strikes me as little more than an extended sketch – somewhat formless and repetitive. But its saving grace is that, unlike a lot of sketch movies, it doesn’t rely on shtick or wink-wink contrivance.
  18. Anesthesia
    Anesthesia doesn't cast judgment. Instead, Nelson slowly reveals awful things about his characters after we've decided to like them. I admire the film's vigor, even if at times it feels like a cruel, clumsy trick.
  19. 'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris
    What kept Paris from the top? The answers provided rarely qualify as revelation, but this affectionate portrait distinguishes itself from the ongoing epidemic of musician docs by mere virtue of staking out ground that hasn't already been thoroughly tilled.
  20. Red Flag
    Some genuinely tender moments—especially the final scene, which at this admittedly early point in 2013 qualifies as one of the best of the year—offset the occasional dramatic misfire.
  21. Chappie
    There's something fearlessly uncool about the film, which suffers mostly from being made 30 years too late.
  22. Tangerines
    Interior scenes focus theater-like on the dining room table-as-vortex: Threats and insults whip about, but, finally, so do forays of friendship.
  23. Venus and Serena
    What Venus and Serena does extraordinarily well is capture the work ethic and undersung smarts of the sisters while taking viewers deep into their enviably close relationship.
  24. Land and Shade
    You might not want to live here, but the imagery makes for a nice postcard.
  25. Star Trek Beyond
    Star Trek Beyond might be the Star Trekkiest film of the new, J.J. Abrams–ified Trek era. That is to say, it's the one that feels the most like a turbo-loaded episode of the original series, and has at least some of that classic spirit of exploration and derring-do.
  26. Price of Gold
    The men's faces often vanish as they go underground, threatened with permanent disappearance: the risk of dynamite bursting early, or of rope breaking and leaving them trapped. The filmmakers find those faces again in private interviews above ground, each miner sitting away from the others to discuss how he feels about the job.
  27. Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?)
    The director doesn't bother to interview the experts-only those who knew the man best.
  28. Edge of Darkness
    Onscreen much of the time, thicker and more creased than you remember, Gibson can make this rather unshapely movie seem taut.
  29. Alex of Venice
    Messina, making his directorial debut, keeps it simple. Alex undergoes a surprising amount of personal maturation in a week, but Winstead never lets the character bog down in excessive navel-gazing.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Goodbye First Love
    Like "Father of My Children," Goodbye First Love loosely fictionalizes lived experience in order to capture the ineffable - in this case, emotional maturation or, as Sullivan phrases it, "becom[ing] a real person."
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das
    Frindel can't rescue Kagel from marginalization as a New Agey preacher man, but he does portray this hippest of all Krishnas as someone who deeply believes in the self-sacrificing mantra he chants, even if the very act of starring in a film seems to threaten it.
  32. Star Trek Into Darkness
    Cumberbatch, a tweedy Brit with an M.A. in Classical Acting and a face like a monstrous Timothy Dalton, has beefed up to become a convincing killer. He's brutal and bold, and the film around him isn't bad either.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Portraits chinois
    The performances are uniformly strong.
  34. The Tenants
    Stilted and gloomy as it sounds (and sometimes is), The Tenants gets by on its nimble approximation of Malamud's robust prose, subtle turns of deadpan humor and gut-tingling menace, and remarkable performances. McDermott does credible work here, but Snoop's casting is a stroke of genius.
  35. Finding Altamira
    Hugh Hudson's Finding Altamira is a rote but engaging historical drama about the eternal debate between truth and mythology.
  36. Lumumba
    As cliché-rich as it is compelling.
  37. Peaches Does Herself
    While it helps to already be a fan, it's imaginative and energetic enough to be entertaining for the uninitiated.
  38. Urbania
    Derails toward the end, becoming platitudinous, not to mention kitschy, but, given the Cheerios wholesomeness of most gay indies, its grief-stricken delirium is a welcome relief.
  39. Speed Sisters
    Although Speed Sisters is not comprehensive, it's vital.
  40. The Town
    It's good enough at least that you wish it was better.
  41. P.S. Jerusalem
    P.S. Jerusalem is as modest as a home movie but profoundly captures the conflict between individual conscience and national identity.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Disco and Atomic War
    If another contemporary nonfiction film makes a better case for the still-controversial tactic of blending scripted scenes into factual footage, I haven't seen it.
  43. Afterimage
    Though Wajda admires this struggle, the artist’s final pursuit never seems redemptive in the depths of Strzemiński’s isolation and misery.
  44. 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.
  45. Hair High
    Too glib to qualify as satire, Hair High nails the high school experience.
  46. Mr. Roosevelt
    Mr. Roosevelt may be slight, but it’s buoyed by Wells’s self-deprecating humor.
  47. Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art
    The film is most illuminating on the prehistory of Land Art.
  48. Amen.
    Costa-Gavras provides a post-war postscript to make clear that honesty is punished; cynicism survives.
  49. Soul Kitchen
    Since the filmmaker's main agenda here is to keep things bumping along, the fraught situations are happily played and funk-scored as crowd-pleasing rather than issue-stroking.
  50. Fear(s) of the Dark
    Though multi-director projects are patchy by definition, Fear(s) of the Dark hits with an all-star batting average.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Clearing
    Kidnapping movies invariably crescendo to a fever pitch of procedural complexity. At a terse 91 minutes, The Clearing offers the reverse, a movie that only grows more conceptually minimal as the clock ticks down.
  52. Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders
    The doctors' motivations remain somewhat enigmatic, even as the two veterans emerge as more fully drawn characters.
  53. Sabotage
    This is the disreputable, even disgusting diversion the Expendables pictures should've been.
  54. Charlie's Country
    Whether laughing, crying, mumbling to himself, or projecting a valiant stoicism, Gulpilil — beneath a white beard and a blanket of shaggy hair — commands the screen in close-ups liable to run for minutes at a time.
  55. Holy Smoke
    Filled with flashy sight gags, overwrought performances, and madly overlapping dialogue.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wake in Fright (1971)
    A road movie using undeveloped land as a blank screen on which to project a dark deconstruction of masculinity and manifest destiny.
  57. Woman on the Beach
    Albeit not as textured as Hong's past few films, Woman on the Beach is no less engrossing--a rueful tale of karmic irony, self-deceived desire, squandered second chances, and unforeseen abandonment.
  58. Hideaway (Le refuge)
    Though the psychological layering and thematic ambition of the screenplay do not quite result in the depth intended, Hideaway's unsentimental performances will hook you.
  59. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
    If the M:I films are immune to the tarnish on the Cruise brand, it's precisely because their spectacle requires us to be impressed by Ethan Hunt, not to like him.
  60. Blue Gate Crossing
    Set largely in empty public spaces late at night, Blue Gate Crossing supplements its slender narrative with disarming performances and plangent atmosphere.
  61. Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey
    It’s a moving tale made more so because even after he’s “won,” Pineda maintains a clear-eyed pragmatism about what living a fairy tale costs.
  62. Veronica Mars
    If you've never seen the show, it's a great excuse for binge-watching. And if you loved the show, the movie is a welcome homecoming. It has the feeling of a story that has been, against all odds, loved into existence. Probably because that's exactly what it is.
  63. An Affair of Love
    This sweet, pensive gabfest is neither conventionally romantic nor pornographic.
  64. The Trench
    The acting, by a large cast of little-known young Brits chewing on South London accents like dog bones, is uniformly splendiferous.
  65. To Be Takei
    To Be Takei is never less than joyful — much like the man himself.
  66. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
    The drama is mostly interior, and Washington’s quiet performance tends to reveal the jittery surface rather than the tortured soul. Neither it nor the script is incisive enough to make Israel’s abandonment of his principles fascinating.
  67. Wuthering Heights
    Heathcliff does not get the revenge he wants because he wants to escape the specific traumas of his adolescent past, shown in the film's first half. And because Arnold traps her viewers with Heathcliff's murky version of events. There's no room for enriching subtext in this version of Wuthering Heights because all the information we need is inscribed on the film's glassy surface.
  68. The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai
    Expanded by a half-hour from its prior incarnation as a pinku eiga, the formerly titled "Horny Home Tutor: Teacher's Love Juice" is now an apocalyptic political satire.
  69. City of God
    Nothing if not confrontational.
  70. Antarctic Edge: 70° South
    Informative and workmanlike, Antarctic Edge is more a bad-news rundown than one of the meditative masterpieces of the genre
  71. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    Moody, pretentious, but potent.
  72. 13 Assassins
    Perhaps something important was spirited away with the 20 minutes of footage shorn for this U.S. release, but the combatants are scarcely distinguishable here even before disappearing under layers of mud and guts.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Story of an African Farm
    A modest tale intermittently well told.
  74. Beautiful Creatures
    Dorothy and Petula leave a bloodier trail than Thelma and Louise did.
  75. The House I Live In
    What's riveting and attention grabbing in Jarecki's recapitulations of failed policy are some of the talking heads he has assembled, including "The Wire" creator David Simon and historian Richard Lawrence Miller.
  76. After Tiller
    As a whole, Martha Shane and Lana Wilson's wrenching, humane film is as convincing a brief as I can imagine in favor of that most controversial of all pregnancy-terminating procedures.
  77. Big Hero 6
    Big Hero 6 is easier to admire than to love. It veers from chipper to noisy to dark stretches where it grapples with adult-sized grief.
  78. Koch
    It's an effective primer on a voluble and charismatic mayor who embodied the spirit of the city he loved.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hanna
    Despite its handsome presentation and cinematic ingenuity, the film never really goes beyond superficial pleasures.
  80. City of Life and Death
    City of Life and Death is far more convincing as a spectacle of mass atrocity than a drama of individual conscience.
  81. Of Gods and Men
    Beauvois's film is cool while Denis's is hot-but the main difference is that where "White Material" is knowingly postcolonial, Of Gods and Men aspires to the timeless.
  82. 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Through the Fire
    It's slickly shot and structured like a Bruckheimer sports weepie, but director Jonathan Hock also shows the image-production of Telfair as star.
  84. Kepler's Dream
    Kepler’s Dream is a study in family dynamics that’s sweet without being too saccharine.
  85. Lovely, Still
    Call Lovely, Still life-affirming if you must, but its uplift is designed less to reassure than to honor the difficult process of how we deal when faced with the loss of those we have loved.
  86. Tommy
    Tommy is turning out to be the kind of movie most people probably like more than they care to admit. Modest charm and unpretentiousness are hardly the qualities that I ever thought I would associate with Ken Russell, but there you are, and there Tommy is. [31 Mar 1975, p.68]
    • Village Voice
  87. Le Week-End
    The great insight in director Roger Michell's fourth collaboration with writer Hanif Kureishi is its vision of Paris as an arena equally amenable to romantic comedy and sulking tragedy.
  88. American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
    American Radical shows--albeit with great reluctance--how a formidable intellect partnered with an absolutist disposition can get you absolutely nowhere.
  89. Love at First Fight
    Rejuvenating the romantic comedy through its unusual premise — in which training for an elite army unit releases a flood of pheromones — Cailley's film is also buoyed by its enormously appealing leads, Kévin Azaïs and Adèle Haenel.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sir! No Sir!
    As it is, this one is compelling enough, a potent mix of outrage, residual anger, and sorrow that speaks not just to the legacy of our misadventures in Vietnam, but to the entire uncertain future of a nation at war.
  91. Meet the Patels
    Meet the Patels is a good-natured documentary that plays like a romantic comedy.
  92. Rock Star
    Raking over the same clichés as "Almost Famous," Rock Star is far less reverential -- it isn't burdened by generational nostalgia and doesn't take itself too seriously.
  93. Mr 3000
    The real news is that Mac has finally found a movie that taps into the dark side displayed in his best stand-up work. A hilarious elementary-school scene plays off the comedian's ambivalence toward kids.
  94. City Island
    An affectionate portrait of a lower-middle-class, outer-borough clan, City Island works best as an actor's showcase, with Margulies's aggrieved, simmering wife the stand-out.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    In the Realms of the Unreal
    Jessica Yu's elegant new doc In the Realms of the Unreal is a spry, creative response to his (Darger's) oceanic talent and claustrophobic life.
  96. The Harder They Come
    The definitive postcolonial cult-movie musical.
  97. 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?
  98. Sound It Out
    Finlay's handheld style is as casually intimate as her subjects, and the film stirringly posits music as a path to communal bliss.
  99. Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone
    A love letter to the group. Packed with fantastic performance footage, it solidly makes the case that, throughout the '80s and early '90s, Fishbone was one of rock's best live acts ever - furiously energetic, innovative, leaping multiple genres in a single song.
  100. Washington Heights
    One-upping Latino immigrant movies like "Luminarias" and "Tortilla Soup," Washington Heights zeroes in on go-getters (mostly of Dominican lineage) whose ambitions are transformed by familial demands.
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