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 7.5 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
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  1. The Homesman
    Glendon Swarthout’s 1988 novel offered a rare approach to those Old West stories by shifting the focus to the women and children who often bore its brunt the worst, and Jones has — for the most part — successfully captured this, often in devastating fashion.
  2. Henry Fool
    Henry Fool, which runs a leisurely and ultimately tiresome 138 minutes, is so self-conscious it feels uncomfortable in its own skin. [23 Jun 1998]
    • Village Voice
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    We Need to Talk About Kevin
    By treating Kevin's evil as a mystery to be solved, Ramsay only succeeds in making what was once allusive banal.
  4. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
    This "Last Waltz"–like doc is almost funereal, full of reverent banalities spliced between overly folksy takes on melancholic Leonard Cohen bombshells.
  5. Watermark
    Watermark is a documentary filled with images both beautiful and wrenching, yet the film as a whole is a disappointment.
  6. Early Man
    Aardman Animations (Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep) generally invests a great deal of care and precision into its storytelling, but this picture is somehow both simple and nonsensical. Early Man is the convoluted, caveman-populated skewering of FIFA that nobody asked for.
  7. The East
    For all its empathy and equilibrium, The East has nowhere to go after the script backs itself into a corner.
  8. Monster House
    The coolest thing about Monster House is that Kathleen Turner's face was actually motion-captured to create the house's movements, but actual human beings on-screen might have ratcheted up the tension, of which there is none.
  9. Black Mass
    Black Mass is a tightly wound piece of work, and Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) keeps its many small parts moving with ease. He's skillful at merging telling, minute details with bigger, looping schemes.
  10. The Edukators
    The Edukators smiles indulgently as the kids rage belatedly against the dying of the SDS light.
  11. Off and Running
    A tactful but probing and richly satisfying study of an entire family thrown into self-doubt by a teenager venturing into risky territory as she struggles to find her way.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mule Skinner Blues
    Earnhart's auteurs are better adjusted, integrating their art into the daily routine of their (equally fucked-up) lives.
  13. Family Fundamentals
    Compassionately explores the seemingly irreconcilable situation between conservative Christian parents and their estranged gay and lesbian children.
  14. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (re-release)
    Sargent's whole enterprise doubles as a '70s archaeological dig.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Babí léto
    The reconciliatory finale comes with a sad footnote: Czech New Wave veteran Brodsky killed himself shortly after the film was released in his native country –- an eerie rebuke to the movie's spunky and life-affirming vision of old age.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Shaolin Soccer
    Crammed with wild action, obvious but well-mounted gags, and playful effects, the film is refreshingly silly.
  17. Hearts and Minds (re-release)
    Built to outrage, appall, and indict.
  18. Noi the Albino
    A lightly comic slacker drama that takes the desperation of teenage tedium seriously.
  19. Goodbye Lenin!
    Overlong and a bit tiresome but it's actually about something.
  20. A Trial in Prague
    Justman's A Trial in Prague acts as something of a corrective to the exuberant but oversimplified "Fighter."
  21. War and Peace
    Immersed in popular culture, War and Peace makes it clear that India's nuclear mania appeals not only to religious chauvinism, primitive nationalism, and a desire for modernity but, even more dangerously, to a festering sense of inferiority.
  22. Valley of Tears
    Most of the best moments in Hart Perry's latest documentary can be found in its opening half-hour, a vivid record of a 1979 strike by Mexican American migrant farmworkers in the onion fields of Raymondville, Texas.
  23. Edge Codes.com: The Art of Motion Picture Editing
    Lively, intelligent look at the art of film editing.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Missing Victor Pellerin
    The result is a satire that somehow doesn't feel satirical: comic yet humane.
  25. Ghost Bird
    It's the sort of film that builds up familiar frenzy--newspaper notoriety, tourism uptick, government attention--only to dissolve in a what-just-happened daze.
  26. Brotherhood
    Sounds trashy, sounds silly, but first-time director Nicolo Donato, who wrote the screenplay with Rasmus Birch, and a superb ensemble refuse to wink, resulting in a film that constantly subverts expectation.
  27. The King (2012)
    Beautifully shot, the film is unapologetically a crowd-pleaser whose gentleness of tone flows from its subject.
  28. Ping Pong
    Ping Pong shows us people piquantly aware of the deterioration of their bodies and that they don't have much time left.
  29. Fire in the Blood
    While it's hardly a joy to watch, Fire in the Blood is artful in nearly every frame, perhaps so we don't avert our eyes.
  30. Go Grandriders
    Grandriders mostly, but by no means always, avoids the more cloying or heartwarming aspects of its tale in favor of a frank account of the implications of aging in Taiwan.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    McConkey
    The documentary neatly lays out all the events leading to March 2009 in the Dolomites, from his early days of struggling to find his place in the world to discovering the extreme sports that would shoot him to fame.
  32. Home
    Akinnagbe's embodiment of Jack is the most wholly realized accomplishment in the film. His speech, hesitant and stammering, is matched by defensive body language, his walk and posture as guarded and wary as a bird's. It's a truly physical performance in a film that didn't demand it.
  33. The Hateful Eight
    The film's chatty, ingratiating, and then howlingly mean.
  34. 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.
  35. 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.
  36. Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show
    Unstudied to the point of utilitarianism, the film nonetheless has wide scope, and Doyle effectively gets his arms around this huge, nebulous, weird job.
  37. If You Don't, I Will
    While you may be left craving more emotional fireworks than you get, Fillières's intelligent film is accomplished in its portrayal of a marriage in crisis, the union's last gasps rife with poignant exchanges.
  38. Indian Point
    Even when it's ruining lives, bureaucracy is boring. And Indian Point, Ivy Meeropol's new documentary about a nuclear power plant of that name, is riddled with tiresome bureaucratic wrangling at local and national levels.
  39. The Blackcoat's Daughter
    Few horror debuts unnerve and fascinate as much as this one.
  40. Citizen Soldier
    Paradoxically, this technique both keeps you from getting to know the soldiers better and puts you completely in their boots, understanding directly that (as one character puts it) war is boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
  41. It Had to Be You
    The film takes a few jumps in time and employs some mildly experimental techniques. Unfortunately, most of the humor doesn't stick.
  42. The Sunshine Makers
    For a documentary about two men who were big-time drug dealers back in the day, The Sunshine Makers is a quaint, damn-near-adorable bit of nostalgia.
  43. Frank Serpico
    Most hilarious is the revelation that the first director assigned to the film Lumet eventually made, the manic John G. Avildsen, wanted the eccentric, bearded hipster ex-cop to play himself. On the basis of this exceptional portrait, he very well could have.
  44. Inventing Tomorrow
    We’re privy to the students’ backgrounds and get a tiny glimpse into their futures, but the film skims a lot in favor of showcasing the ISEF gathering. Still, as in the spelling-bee doc, these are moving stories of nerdy children, kids who are pragmatic about the forward march of industry yet believe societies can, and must, find cleaner ways to advance.
  45. Are We Not Cats
    Robin uses well-timed jolts and gross-out moments to awaken his solitary characters from their stupor, to shock them into acknowledging that their existence isn’t confined to the soul’s protective shell.
  46. The Test & The Art of Thinking
    It’s a brutal takedown of a practice now warping K-12 education and should embarrass every school that still requires them.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Breezy
    A love story in which almost everything works and you don't come out of the theatre half hating yourself for succumbing to its charm. [29 Nov 1973, p.86]
    • Village Voice
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Sterile Cuckoo
    The movie has its moments, namely in two expert performances. [13 Nov 1969, p.60]
    • Village Voice
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Illusionist
    Beautifully acted and handsomely mounted, this gorgeous period piece is an intelligent and intriguing exploration of "the dark arts" -- less dependent on mere hocus-pocus than on the convincing journey of the soul undertaken by its hero.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Office Space
    A surprisingly good-natured comedy.
  51. Pulse
    With very few strong characters and a great many middle shots, Pulse sometimes plods--it's the price of Kurosawa's restraint and his indifference to structure.
  52. Una Noche
    The final, moving, nerve-wracking reels are all sea, sky, and desperation.
  53. Queen and Country
    A pleasant old man's movie, in the end, but not one for which Boorman will be remembered.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Charlotte's Web
    Still, with such stellar source material, this Charlotte's Web won't disgrace your childhood memories -- or your child.
  55. The End of the Line
    A free-form splash of jaw-dropping graphs, impressively accredited talking heads, and sumptuously shot portraits of natural beauty and decay, overdramatically scored to symphonic and other intense musical attacks.
  56. Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
    The most exceptional element of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women might actually be its comforting, radical normalcy.
  57. Chuck
    It’s interesting that the most compelling parts of this film are the ones that convey how a taste of Hollywood can destroy a life, since this is yet another Hollywood film about that life.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    For Your Consideration
    It's as weird and whimsical an invention as Guest's "Waiting for Guffman," "Best in Show," or "A Mighty Wind."
  59. The Girl in the Book
    Cohn is clearly on the right track toward making the kind of nuanced grown-up dramas that sadly are no longer in vogue.
  60. The Childhood of a Leader
    Little of what happens will come as a surprise, but Corbet's narrative restraint coupled with his formal daring makes for a gripping experience. It's a slow burn, but the fuse attached had me holding my breath.
  61. Hustle & Flow
    There's something wrong with Hustle. A bad aftertaste, and not just the dry grit of Memphis dust, but something meaner. A feeling that Brewer's sensibility is way off. Aside from Howard's characterization, the most indelible parts of the movie are the demeaning caricatures forced on DJay's women.
  62. A Civil Action
    A slick, shameless job that takes way too long to make its point.
  63. Why Don't You Play in Hell?
    The film's blast of self-mocking overkill can be charming.
  64. Winter Sleepers
    Unfolds in a shroud of nonspecific suggestiveness but never emerges from under it.
  65. Heaven
    An art film without the NYFF imprimatur, Heaven is a peculiar amalgam -- a Miramax package (without the hype), directed by German hotshot Tom Tykwer under the eye of Anthony Minghella, from a script with which the late Krzysztof Kieslowski had planned to inaugurate a new trilogy named for the Divine Comedy.
  66. Bread and Tulips
    A happy ending is never at issue here -- it's clear where she's going, but there's little clue where she's been.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Miracle
    Kurt Russell is terrific as coach Herb Brooks, psychological tactician out to redeem his being cut from the 1960 U.S. squad, the last one to beat the CCCP.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bon voyage
    Relies on its considerable star power to conceal its even more considerable lack of substance.
  69. The Bourne Identity
    Banal big-budget adaptation of Robert Ludlum's 1980 espionage thriller.
  70. American Animals
    Rather than plumb the apparent sociopathy that gripped these young men, Layton toys with unreliable narration and the vagaries of collective memory.
  71. Meet the Fokkens
    Directors Rob Schröder and Gabrielle Provaas capture some un-pretty details of spankings, HJs, and dominance scenarios, but the film is about two old ladies, still cackling despite the sadness that trailed in the wake of the lives into which they were forced.
  72. Abundant Acreage Available
    After a lifetime of routine punctuated by loss, these aging adults fall back into roles as children and siblings. Treading common ground, they seek comfort in the suffocating succor of family, afraid to release the burdens that grief will unleash.
  73. Last Ride
    Newcomer Russell, at once tough and vulnerable, canny and damaged, delivers a performance of nuanced naturalism that starkly conveys the sorrow and sacrifice that sometimes come with learning to achieve self-sufficiency.
  74. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
    When it slows down, when it gives you time to think, Popstar reveals its weaknesses.
  75. Take This Waltz
    There are enough unexpected delights, such as repurposing "Video Killed the Radio Star" during a critical moment between Margot and Daniel, to keep us interested in their drawn-out, teasing, tantalizing courtship.
  76. Bears
    Sincere and unexpectedly good.
  77. Off the Map
    Were it not so soporific, Off the Map could easily drive you off your nut.
  78. Heartbeat Detector
    Here, knowledge and understanding raise more questions than they answer, and the film ends not in closure, but in openness. It is precisely those qualities that give Heartbeat Detector its epic sense of humanity. Take them away and you'd be left with a leaner but markedly less compelling workaday workplace thriller: "Michael Clayton" with Nazis instead of lawyers.
  79. Land Ho!
    Land Ho! feints toward pathos and perversity, only to decide that it's better off giving us abridged, postcard emotions.
  80. Songs My Brothers Taught Me
    The performances are undeniably authentic, the cinematography could make Terrence Malick stand to give a slow clap, and sometimes a sensitive mood and evocative milieu are enough to sustain when there's barely a plot.
  81. Thank You for Your Service
    It’s not always effective drama, but as an example for thousands of struggling American families, it’s a serious breakthrough.
  82. To Die Like a Man
    A mysterious, fabulously sad fable.
  83. Europa Report
    Simply put, the care and thoughtfulness that goes into footage-faking has not been applied to the film's script or structure.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Romántico
    Following a hardworking, goodhearted man as life beats the hell out of him, this documentary is moving almost to the point of exploitation.
  85. Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press
    There’s no self-reflexive media criticism in Nobody Speak, only the simple plea for Americans to resolutely support journalism, in both principle and practice.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Last Mogul
    Avrich's Wasserman is less a man than a list of accomplishments, a Kane without a hint of a Rosebud and nary a whiff of significant criticism.
  87. The Secret Life of Words
    In due course skeletons will march out of closets, but the movie yields up its secrets with slow reluctance.
  88. Fort Bliss
    [Michelle Monaghan's] at her best as Army medic/staff sergeant Maggie Swann in writer-director Claudia Myers's Fort Bliss.
  89. Shanghai Ghetto
    The storytelling is eloquent and genuine, but the Manns' unadventurous approach (compared to, for instance, last year's intimate road movie "Fighter") rarely hits emotional pay dirt.
  90. Vision: From the Life of Hildegard Von Bingen
    Vision is more immediate and immersive when dealing in the jealous attachments among sisters; when circumstance and politics tear Richardis from Hildegard, Sukowa's performance rears to towering heights of abjection.
  91. Avengers: Infinity War
    The Russos and the hundreds of craftspeople who worked on this film have dreamed up marvelous battles — especially the one where a motley assortment of heroes take their cracks at the purportedly unstoppable Thanos. But only once here did an intergalactic vista catch my breath the way a splash page in a Silver Surfer comic might.
  92. Maps to the Stars
    The fact that Cronenberg directed almost works against Maps to the Stars: We expect greatness from him, not just proficiency, and he doesn't exactly have a gift for comedy, not even the black kind. But the movie still has the darkly glittering Cronenberg touch, even if it's just a light brushing.
  93. Girl Model
    The radiant sadness of its two subjects - one a soulfully impassive stripling, one a symmetrical husk - forms the center of Girl Model, and that is enough.
  94. Boom Bust Boom
    Jones presents a stark picture of a bifurcated economic system: the real one, in which ordinary citizens struggle; and the financial economy, in which the livelihoods of citizens are leveraged by the wealthy for speculative bets.
  95. John Wick
    Reeves is wonderful here, a marvel of physicality and stern determination — he moves with the grace of an old-school swashbuckler.
  96. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
    The film creates a conflicting impression: Here’s a committed wonk and public servant seizing every opportunity he can to combat what appears to be the greatest danger facing our planet. But here’s also a man who would sign off on a movie that so often sets aside his message so that we might admire him and his work.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Way, Way Back
    The Way, Way Back is a crowd-pleasing summer treat, predictable in its sweetness but satisfying all the same.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Americanization of Emily
    Garner plays the scales of cynicism so gracefully in this anti-war gem, he makes them sound like a symphony.
  99. The Desert Bride
    The story works largely on the level of metaphor, but it’s never overbearing or suffocating; there’s life here. A lot of credit should go to the actors, particularly the lead. As the film moves along, García’s face seems to change dramatically.
  100. Chef
    Chef is so charmingly middlebrow that it's exactly the cinematic comfort food it mocks: Favreau has made not a game-changing meal to remember, but a perfect chocolate lava cake.
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