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. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
    Spitzer, whose tireless efforts to redeem himself led to his cooperation in this doc, receives an entirely sympathetic-yet thoroughly researched-treatment from Gibney.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Detropia
    The filmmakers pay elegy to the Detroit of the Motown era, with its thriving middle class supported by manufacturing. At the same time, they're honest about the fact that the version of Detroit local partisans yearn for is long gone and most likely not coming back.
  3. Why We Fight
    Jarecki's film forcefully argues that the much abused word FREEDOM cannot paper over the conflicts between capitalism and democracy.
  4. Tales from the Golden Age
    Sardonic as it may be, Tales From the Golden Age is basically affirmative - its true subject is resilience. Romania suffered under a regime of dangerous stupidity. Drawing on popular memory, Mungiu has orchestrated a contribution to local folklore, a suite of stories in which those rendered witless by oppression were compelled by circumstance to live off their wits.
  5. Anita
    Too much of the movie feels like notes toward a portrait rather than the portrait itself, and Mock's failure to nail down the Thomas case drains the power from the victory-lap scenes of Hill addressing adoring crowds.
  6. The Lesson
    It's a tough, gripping watch made emotionally rewarding through trenchant plotting and Gosheva's tight-lipped expressiveness.
  7. Active Measures
    Active Measures is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the mind. By coming on so strong, so fevered, Bryan achieves the dubious feat of making his host of documented facts, reasonable inferences, and alarming subjects for further research all seem seem less persuasive than if they had been presented more soberly.
  8. Down Terrace
    Down Terrace has frequently been appreciated as "The Sopranos meets Mike Leigh." But a more fruitful comparison might be to last year's stand-out British satire "In the Loop": In both films, verbal aggression makes for the biggest laughs and the surest signs of moral decay.
  9. Journey to the West
    The camera swoops and whooshes about but never generates any compelling energy — Chow's film proves endlessly manic but devoid of much mirth.
  10. My King
    The tears and recriminations, eruptions and reconciliations hold a begrudging fascination for about an hour.... After that, though, the volume is never turned down and these characters are never less than the most unendurable company.
  11. Stations of the Cross
    The ending's a touch too cute, but the best scenes here stand as potent, empathetic, well-observed broadsides against fundamentalism.
  12. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
    As tight as the parallel homo sapiens storylines are lax, Caesar's prison conversion to charismatic pan-ape revolutionist is near-silent filmmaking, with simple and precise images illustrating Caesar's General-like divining of personalities and his organization of a group from chaos to order. All of this is shown in absorbing, propulsive style, as Caesar broodingly bides his time like a king in disguise awaiting restoration.
  13. With God on Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right in America
    Certainly not as incredulous or mocking as it might have been. If anything, the mood is apprehensive. But it's depressing that--Carter aside--the filmmakers failed to find even one liberal believer.
  14. Theeviravaathi: The Terrorist
    The movie's bold visual and psychological patterns, as well as its heavy immersion in the natural world, imbue Malli's journey with a folktale quality.
  15. Son of the Bride
    In its details, though, Juan José Campanella's movie works beautifully: The actors are all superb when the florid demands of the story allow them elbowroom.
  16. The Black Balloon
    Within its resolutely mainstream parameters, The Black Balloon courses with a firsthand feel for languorous Aussie summers, the shifting scales of love and hate in sibling relationships, and the earned wit that helps families cope with difficult situations.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Timecrimes
    Modestly diverting.
  18. Friends with Money
    As its title jokingly implies, this is a more grown-up version of Aniston's long- running TV vehicle--complete with the star herself as eternal ingenue.
  19. My Friend Dahmer
    My Friend Dahmer is both sensitive and fascinating, distinguished by a stellar, mouth-breathing performance of insecurity from Lynch.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mad Detective
    Apart from its inventive depiction of the weaknesses that tough guys try to hide, Mad Detective is a slight work from the wildly prolific To.
  21. Bethlehem
    Refusing to take sides or vilify his characters, Adler finds the humanity in all parties.
  22. Sex and Broadcasting
    Sex and Broadcasting is at once heartfelt, gritty, and informative, and you don’t really want it to end.
  23. Jesús
    The tense final act...investigates its moral quandaries with a rigor this kind of bad-seed street-teen movie usually can’t manage.
  24. X2: X-Men United
    Funny, reasonably crazy, and unpretentiously faithful to its source.
  25. Red Obsession
    The doc affords us a look into a world rarely seen by the lumpenproletariat, though we could have done with fewer aerial/time-lapse shots and more history.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
    For those who have let the war drift into the background noise of talking heads, Iraq for Sale is a much needed reminder of the criminal negligence of those who led the troops into this mess and those who have gotten rich off of it.
  27. Delirious
    Agently attitudinous, generally zippy urban fairy tale about pop stars and the hangers-on who coddle (or prey upon) them, Tom DiCillo's Delirious is a mild "Midnight Cowboy," a minor "King of Comedy," and mainly a vehicle for Steve Buscemi as a lower Manhattan–based paparazzo.
  28. Big River Man
    The real drama lies in the sweetly twisted symbiosis between this likable, infuriating wreck of a man and his devoted son and publicist, Borut.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Theater of War
    Walter's doc can't decide whether it wants to be about Brecht, Streep, or Mother Courage herself.
  30. We the Parents
    We the Parents is a must-see civics lesson, an example of the power of grassroots organizing and of having a good lawyer, and of how seemingly small ideas can make big waves.
  31. Kisses
    The movie's ending may be less satisfying than that of "Slumdog Millionaire"--a film you can love for its infectiously wishful exuberance, but never fully believe in--but Kisses is truer to the tragedy of a generation of children whom we have utterly failed. If they're anything like Kylie and Dylan, they'll be back to let us know.
  32. The Double
    The Double, with its inviting alienation, nails a curious mood that's been too long absent from contemporary film: the anxious admission that the world might be weighted against the plucky individual, and that prickling you feel just before such thoughts make a sweat break out.
  33. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
    A deranged pseudo-feminist fable, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter takes its tedious time getting to its unrewarding destination.
  34. The Beauty Academy of Kabul
    The idea isn't as odd as it might first appear, since running a salon is one of the few socially acceptable means for a woman in Afghanistan to earn an income. The execution, however, evokes a particularly outlandish Christopher Guest mockumentary.
  35. I Remember Me
    Some of the testimonials are underedited, but as a work of passionate advocacy, I Remember Me can't be faulted.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Etoiles: Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet
    Among the many pleasures are the lively intelligence of the artists and their perceptiveness about their own situations.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Memories of Tomorrow
    Of course, it's no surprise that a melodrama would be melodramatic. But that doesn't mean it has to be graceless--as "Away From Her" shows--and grace, that virtue most characteristic of Japanese film, is what Memories of Tomorrow completely lacks.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Method
    Too clever by half, the plot contrivances deliver flippant satisfactions, and the agile performances keep the twists compelling, if less than credible.
  39. The Place Beyond the Pines
    The Place Beyond the Pines is a much bigger canvas, and scene by scene it can be riveting...But the disparate pieces never quite jell; the movie is all trees and no forest.
  40. Notting Hill
    It is not, the filmmakers stress, a sequel to "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (which writer Richard Curtis was also responsible for), but it fits the latter-day Hollywood definition of the term -- same movie, only worse.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lust for Life
    The bold and vivid colors of the paintings themselves and the sets and landscapes contribute heavily to the film's dramatic impact. [10 Jul 1957, p.8]
    • Village Voice
  42. Woodpeckers
    An uncharacteristically melodramatic final act...betrays how grounded (and true to real life) the rest of the movie is.
  43. Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times
    Opens with a montage of the press in full operational mode, spewing out newspapers all but automatically for a fleet of waiting delivery trucks. It's a system at once efficient and cumbersome, ultra-modern yet quaint, that suggests nothing so much as a herd of dinosaurs, oblivious to the threat of impending extinction.
  44. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
    A movie as laconic as its hero, Ghost Dog is nonetheless diminished by its most un-Zen-like attachment to this underlying sentimentality.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Cool School
    All told, and well told, this is essential history.
  46. Beatriz at Dinner
    Beatriz, a person committed to doing good in the world, can be obtuse in reading social cues and fatiguingly sanctimonious, her wearisome traits finely calibrated by Hayek.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
    Even setting aside the clumsy inconsistency of its interior logic, Sith is an underachievement of escapist entertainment.
  48. Paris
    At a 124-minute runtime, though, the writer-director has stretched a wide canvas, and only sporadically found anything worth filling it with.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fratricide
    A well-wrought, beautifully lensed but ultimately hopeless tale, Fratricide provides a less than optimistic allegory for the intractability of human conflicts: Even far away and decades later, old wars bring fresh miseries.
  50. Animals and More Animals
    An international cast of curious creatures in their native habitats stars in this charming Gallic duo (Animals and Ice/Sea) of featurettes.
  51. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
    Although not as radically defamiliarizing as Jim Jarmusch's avant-western "Dead Man," Jesse James has the feel of an attic ransacked for abandoned knickknacks.
  52. Fracture
    Gosling is the kind of actor who makes other actors look lazy. He is Brando at the time of "Streetcar," or Nicholson in "Five Easy Pieces," and altogether one of the more remarkable happenings at the movies today.
  53. Departures
    Departures is built for simplicity, and, if nothing else, the appeal to decency and integrity of this sweetly old-fashioned tale make it a must for Bernie Madoff's prison Netflix queue.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Filthy World
    Waters's best bits are nostalgic, as he remembers his late friend and frequent collaborator Divine. Part memoir, part lecture, This Filthy World reaffirms what most of us already know from "The Wire": In a town full of delightful misfits, Waters may be Baltimore's sanest citizen.
  55. Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent
    Just like high-wire showman Philippe Petit, Tower is a brilliant, dedicated artist who has spent most of his life wowing people with his talents — but is ultimately always out there by himself.
  56. Inequality for All
    The testimonials from a few of these people, with the realization they speak for tens of thousands, reinforces Inequality for All's sobering message while at the same time undercutting Reich's optimism.
  57. Ghost Stories
    Equal parts spooky and cheeky, this film nails its black humor and finds a bizarre but satisfying conclusion to manage all the loose ends.
  58. One Life
    Beautiful slo-mo, up-close-and-personal cinematography abounds, as does an aggravating desire to turn its many subjects (and their plights to survive) into reflections of mankind.
  59. Santoalla
    Becker and Mehrer’s film is more about place and silence than it is about tension or psychology.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    El Crimen Perfecto (The Perfect Crime)
    At its most ludicrously self-referential, the film achieves the perfect meta-moment when Toledo, seeking pointers on how to get away with murder, buys a copy of "Dial M for Murder" (released in Spain as Perfect Crime) and notices the title scans incorrectly as Ferpect Crime.
  61. No No: A Dockumentary
    There's enough diamond lore here to please baseball diehards, but Ellis's outsize life will grip even casual fans.
  62. The Valet
    Of all of Francis Veber's farces (The Dinner Game, La Cage Aux Folles, etc.), this is the one that feels most like a sitcom pilot, which is to say it's a farce most forced.
  63. 12 O'Clock Boys
    What lingers in Nathan's documentary isn't the swaggering trails of diesel fumes. It's the sadness of watching Pug narrow his options.
  64. People Places Things
    People Places Things crackles to life whenever the camera turns to one of Will's students, Kat (The Daily Show's Jessica Williams), and her professor mother, Diane (Regina Hall).
  65. Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!
    With Awesome's insistence on professional sound--only a few times do we get sonically dropped into the cavernous, thumping Garden--and cuts to pristine close-ups of things like Mixmaster Mike's admittedly sick scratch detail work, it plays like a hype victory lap rather than a boundary-smashing study of fan curiosity or pathology.
  66. Santitos
    There's no gold dust to be found here, just an awful lot of stick-on glitter.
  67. Reykjavík
    Kormakur's debut feature fulfills the basic requirements of good slacker comedy: It's grounded in quotidian tedium and frustration, and it acknowledges both the humor and pathos of the relevant coping mechanisms (here, lackadaisical flings, porn addiction, amnesia-courting binges).
  68. The Italian Job
    Zesty in a workmanlike sort of way, providing supporting henchmen Jason Statham and Mos Def with pleasingly unsensational characters given to subtle twitches of idiosyncrasy.
  69. The Inheritance
    The Inheritance is most effective in its first half...But the film falters as it moves closer to home and the heart, veering off into melodramatic and quasi-surreal scenarios.
  70. Come Undone
    Come Undone's true subject is, simply enough, the perspective-warping enormity of first love, as preserved in a scrapbook of before-and-after snapshots.
  71. Protagonist
    Yu's rousing, difficult-to-classify exercise in parallel storytelling is surprisingly accessible, and all the more insightful for it.
  72. The New Black
    What emerges is an illuminating look at the ways race, specifically blackness, has been cynically portrayed by the mainstream media, rightwing politicians and religious leaders, and even some white queer activists.
  73. 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.
  74. Bikes vs Cars
    It's not that anyone is opposed to bikes; they're opposed to anything that might threaten the profits of car manufacturers and oil companies.
  75. Hondros
    In an era when the propaganda machines of conflicts like Syria are imperiling photojournalists’ work all the more, Campbell’s homage to his friend is a thorough look at a straight shooter.
  76. Neighbors
    Nicholas Stoller's hilarious Neighbors splashes into summer with the satisfying swish-plop-hooray of a winning beer pong serve.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    War Dance
    The movie comes across as desperately, even irritatingly contrived, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it overcame my naturally complacent instincts--which would be to watch something (anything) else, to not get haunted by that closing litany of websites for global action.
  78. Noah
    Noah is here not to set the record straight, but to set it on its head. This isn't a lavish work of mad genius, it's a movie designed to be a lavish work of mad genius, and there's a difference.
  79. Small Town Crime
    Every town possesses a history, culture, lineage and language all unto its own, but in the Nelms’s hands, we see none of that. Here’s a half-boiled mystery and boring bad guys, but the film does have a saving grace: Hawkes’s comic timing.
  80. The Nightmare
    Ascher sometimes indulges in jump scares, and there's one unconvincing burst of gore. At first, these horror techniques seemed to me a mistake, but his subjects themselves continually link their experiences to movies they've seen, especially Communion and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
  81. Whip It
    Highlights: Andrew Wilson as the roller girls' coach (ah, so there's the Wilson brother who can act) and the roller-derby vets (played especially well by Juliette Lewis and Kristen Wiig) about whom we learn just enough to wish the movie was focused on them instead.
  82. In the Basement
    Seidl's study reminds us, with each new basement, that the places where we're most ourselves might as well have grown off us like the shells of mollusks.
  83. Z for Zachariah
    The film works on its own terms, capturing, at least, the mournful vibe of O'Brien's book. What's more, Zobel's revision opens up plenty of space for the three actors who inhabit this circumscribed little world, all of whom are terrific.
  84. Go Down Death
    Schimberg, in this debut, demonstrates rare assuredness in shooting and staging scenes, coaxing unexpected but true-feeling flourishes from his cast of mostly amateurs blessed with extraordinary faces.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Praying with Lior
    Trachtman’s movie is not technically accomplished--the camerawork is run-of-the-mill, the structure is rambling--but it’s redeemed by the deliciously complex, practically Balzac-ian family at its center.
  86. The Housemaid
    Despite eccentric touches, like a handheld street-shot overture and Grand Guignol Omen references, there's little difference between this story and soap-opera intrigue.
  87. The President's Last Bang
    From mid-movie on, confusion escalates (along with one's incredulity).
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
    This impressionistic approach eschews traditional biography, instead giving the viewer the feeling of being inside a moment, without necessarily providing all the information we might need to contextualize what we're seeing.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Age of Consequences
    Scott's filmmaking does a smooth job of linking A to B to Z, with slick, studiously understated montage and an effective music score, although some of the arguments made seem a bit of a stretch, as if climate change is being shoehorned into things artificially.
  90. Primer
    Primer unites physics and metaphysics in an ingenious guerrilla reinvention of cinematic science fiction.
  91. The Girl on the Train
    For better or worse, there isn't a human experience that French director André Téchiné can resist lathering into a tone poem.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Four Lions
    He's (Chris Morris) breaking taboos because broken taboos can be hilarious.
  93. 40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie
    Only a monster would begrudge Aronsohn for putting this all together. It doesn’t hurt that Magic Music really do have some chops.
  94. Into Eternity
    It is meant to boggle the mind and inspire awe-and it does.
  95. The Good Thief
    His movie (Jordan's) winnows the original's existentialist fable into a busy caper thriller, copping plot devices from Soderbergh's "Ocean's 11" and even straining to Wong Kar-wai its camera's way around the fleshpots of Nice. It's all pizzazz, and the pizzazz is all borrowed.
  96. 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.
  97. The President
    Makhmalbaf makes you feel the enormity of the president's loss of self even if you don't actually feel for him.
  98. Gladiator
    The digital animation is far more evident here than in "The Phantom Menace."
  99. S#x Acts
    S#x Acts works as a crash course in sexual ethics, but it also fails to transcend its genre trappings as a morality tale about the dangers of low self-esteem.
  100. Bluebird
    For all its piteousness, [it's] often moving, always well acted, and distinguished by rare stillness and beauty.
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