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. Kill Your Darlings
    Kill Your Darlings is an undernourished and over-emphatic film.
  2. Enzo Avitabile Music Life
    Demme has crafted yet another superb document of musicians at work, one as much about creation—and the sources of inspiration—as it is about performance. A wonderful film, as in, it's full of wonders.
  3. The Fifth Estate
    The issues at play here are fascinating, but Condon and Singer never let any argument about journalism or the philosophy of free information last longer than a couple ping-ponged lines between master (Assange) and student (Domscheit-Berg).
  4. Capital
    A tacky corporate noir that makes you long for the leanness of Margin Call, or even the clumsy theatrics of Arbitrage.
  5. Camille Claudel 1915
    One of the year's thorniest releases.
  6. Blood Brother
    There are undoubtedly several moving moments in the film, and the kids are gorgeous and heartbreaking, but none of that is strong enough to balance Braat's galling and enabled narcissism, which pervades the film.
  7. Big Ass Spider!
    This is squirmy, hilarious fun.
  8. All Is Lost
    A genuine nail-biter, scrupulously made and fully involving, elemental in its simplicity.
  9. 2 Jacks
    False gravity weighs down 2 Jacks, a father-son drama less interested in exploring familial relations than in tut-tutting the millennials.
  10. 12 Years a Slave
    12 Years a Slave works so hard to be noble, but it doesn't have to: Ejiofor is there to do all the heavy lifting.
  11. I Will Follow You Into the Dark
    The scare tactics are rather ho-hum—suffocation nightmares, disappearing necklaces, loud noises—and the ending is incongruously sentimental. You'll be more frightened walking through a graveyard at dusk.
  12. We Came Home
    This is a boutique production that suffers a bad case of POV syndrome, sloppily following the blueprint of what documentaries about families and important issues are supposed be.
  13. Silent City
    Roothooft, for her part, gives one of the more nuanced and vulnerable performances in recent memory; she maximizes nearly every scene's potential without overplaying a single one.
  14. Romeo & Juliet
    It’s all rote, dashed through, and somewhat detestable.
  15. Cassadaga
    Like the Saw franchise, Cassadaga, directed by Anthony DiBlasi, attempts to leverage the horror genre in the service of inducing epiphanies, but keeps tripping over its confused tangle of genres.
  16. Réquiem NN
    [A] quiet, somber film.
  17. Zero Charisma
    The comic scenes arc into bleakness, and the bleak ones often collapse back into comedy.
  18. Symphony of the Soil
    Despite director Deborah Koons Garcia's mighty effort to create a stimulating and visually engaging product, Symphony plays mostly like a taped lecture.
  19. Sweetwater
    That Sweetwater is so generic doesn't prevent it from being intermittently entertaining.
  20. Snow Queen
    Snow Queen proves both visually cruddy and narratively muddled.
    • 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.
  22. The Institute
    Complaints that there's too little here about how the Jejune Institute was hatched or what it all may have meant matter little in the face of the one great thing The Institute does offer: a record of the mad invention of the game's masterminds.
  23. The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete
    Tillman is clumsy in his handling of a few scenes, and considering what these kids are up against—junkie moms, drug-dealing pimp neighbors—the ending might be a little too implausibly upbeat. But Tillman seems to know that we need to go home feeling hope for Mister and Pete, who, it turns out, aren't so easily defeated.
  24. God Loves Uganda
    Kudos to the filmmakers for so adeptly laying out the history of American evangelicals' Ugandan mission, and for noting that HIV infection rates there have gone up since the abstinence-only education started.
  25. Ghost Team One
    Thanks to the shakiest of shaky-cams, you don't know whether to wince or lose your lunch.
  26. Escape from Tomorrow
    While Escape is filled with inspired touches... Moore lacks the off-kilter psychological nuances of Lynch, as well as the go-for-broke storytelling skills and visual élan. It doesn't help that the cast is largely competent at best.
  27. Design Is One
    Good design rests at the intersection of function and beauty. Design Is One, alas, has far too little of the latter.
  28. Cooper and Hemingway: The True Gen
    If Mulholland made The True Gen half as aesthetically pleasing as it is informative, the film would be remarkable.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    CBGB
    CBGB's biggest problem is that it's taken such electrifying source material and done absolutely zilch with it.
  30. Broadway Idiot
    It contains more praise than insights, and, chopped into several sections, the documentary could easily become a series of featurettes in the "Extras" section of an American Idiot DVD. Yet Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong still commands the screen.
  31. As I Lay Dying
    Franco adapted a book that often reads like joyless homework into a film that feels the same way.
  32. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
    Neither disposable nor a long-lost masterpiece, she might not be loved by all the boys, but she's still worth a Friday night date.
  33. Machete Kills
    Kills tops the 2010 original by not giving a mierda about logic or character.
  34. Captain Phillips
    Even if Captain Phillips treads into some ideologically rough waters, there's one thing that's hard to find fault with: Hanks gives a performance that goes from good (through the first 124 minutes) to extraordinary (in the last 10).
  35. Walter: Lessons from the World's Oldest People
    Though the filmmakers undoubtedly had good intentions, their ultimate point—that a long life is the result of moral rectitude—is offensive and imbecilic.
  36. A River Changes Course
    For the most part, the narrative here feels generational, representative, rather than invested in the specific incidents of specific lives.
  37. Vikingdom
    Vikingdom trembles with great dumb joy even before we meet the apparently handcrafted hell-dragon that looks like a set of windup chattering teeth combined with a homecoming float.
  38. A Touch of Sin
    In A Touch of Sin, Jia is attuned to, and saddened by, the violence he sees creeping through his country, caused at least partly by the ever-widening disparity between rich and poor. He ends on a note that's more haunting than hopeful.
  39. The Summit
    The Summit is at its most powerful when the filmmakers simply tell the tale, which gradually develops the unsettling suspense of a horror movie, with K2 cast as the implacable killer.
  40. Running Wild: The Life of Dayton O. Hyde
    Through photos and family lore, but mostly through Dayton's own eloquence, Mitchell assembles a biographical portrait that's inspiring in the best possible way.
  41. Nothing Left to Fear
    Any sensible person would gun it right out of the theater.
  42. Parkland
    It's in the film's second half that Parkland goes all Tony Romo and fumbles. Instead of becoming truly engrossing, it threatens to descend into unreserved melodrama.
  43. Linsanity
    Linsanity doesn't—and shouldn't—hide its star's religious beliefs. But the doc should have the courage to explore them.
  44. Let the Fire Burn
    There's never enough information.
  45. The Last Day of August
    The film's delivery system sets itself up for failure.
  46. Morning
    It's a mannered, over-the-top approximation of real anguish and hopelessness that's so phony that it's borderline insulting to those who've truly experienced such tragedy.
  47. I Used to Be Darker
    The film exhibits a contemplative quiet and attentiveness to detail that enhances its issues of regret, bitterness, and confusion, many of which are rooted in thorny parent-child relations.
  48. Five Dances
    If only verisimilitude equaled quality. But unfortunately, schmaltzy music and drab melodrama drag down the otherwise graceful moves of Five Dances.
  49. Dislecksia: The Movie
    Dislecksia: The Movie is an exuberantly didactic documentary, and director Harvey Hubbell has done his homework.
  50. The Dirties
    Matthew Johnson's The Dirties explores high school violence from a refreshingly original angle.
  51. Argento's Dracula 3D
    Unfortunately, Argento never acknowledges he's in on the joke, nor is the film quite ridiculous enough for us to coast enjoyably on derision. When it comes to B-movies, sometimes anything less than way too much isn't nearly enough.
  52. Concussion
    Its characters are all too easily determined but never specific—or memorable.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Cleaver's Destiny
    [An] underwhelming little film entirely ill-equipped to deal with its serious and important themes.
  54. Bridegroom
    Without forcing the material into facile uplift, Bloodworth-Thomason still edges it into the realm of inspirational, never overplaying the anguish or soft-pedaling the bigotry at the heart of the story.
  55. Bad Milo!
    Bad Milo! meets your expectations right where you left them.
  56. Babygirl
    [A] small, gentle coming-of-age story, exceedingly well-cast.
  57. All Is Bright
    Maudlin and mirthless, it's a film misbegotten enough to almost make one hate Christmas.
  58. A.K.A. Doc Pomus
    Even if you know this history already, A.K.A. Doc Pomus is vital and endearing, a celebration of a great artist, a great character, and the universality of great pop.
  59. A.C.O.D.
    A.C.O.D. ultimately suffers from a rare affliction: an overkill of editing. Whole scenes—especially the farcical finale—peter out just at the simmering point.
  60. The Trials of Muhammad Ali
    The film never lingers too long on any one thing, instead functioning as a survey in which several fascinating cultural moments are vividly evoked, but then left insufficiently probed.
  61. Winter Nomads
    Von Stürler offers raw footage of the four-month trek itself, which is often mesmerizing in its austere beauty; there's no narration, intertitles, or any other authorial hand-holding to trump up the message the images already convey on their own.
  62. Wedding Palace
    Yoo's broadly drawn characters are less ha-ha funny than endearingly over-the-top, their exaggerated mannerisms rooted in fondness as much as mockery.
  63. We Are What We Are
    It isn't until the ending, which turns the squirm amplifier up to 11 and exceeded even my horrific expectations, that we finally see the story's potential realized.
  64. The Time Is... Now
    Rife with hasty generalizations, tautologies, and false choices, the movie is also tricked out with plenty of visual kitsch.
  65. The Paw Project
    The story of veterinarian Jennifer Conrad's crusade to outlaw declawing of cats is eye-opening and sometimes charming.
  66. The Secret Lives of Dorks
    The Secret Lives of Dorks, starring Jim Belushi, is, well, the Jim Belushi of high-school romantic comedies: indifferent, kind of exhausted.
  67. Out in the Dark
    The movie is involving, the romance affecting, the sex sound, and the catch-as-catch-can handheld camerawork smartly appropriate for the scenario.
  68. On the Job
    Matti sets a brisk pace, utilizing the squalor and desperation of Manila's slums and prisons as well as powerful, against-type performances by Torre and Pascual to give us a familiar yet engaging thriller (with more than a few surprises).
  69. The Network
    Rather than investigating the harrowing circumstances surrounding each day's broadcast, Orner is content to let each inspiring aspect of the network speak for itself.
  70. Muscle Shoals
    Greg "Freddy" Camalier's engaging new doc Muscle Shoals stands as a winning tribute to the coastal Alabama studio, musicians, and engineers who laid down some of the greatest pop tracks of the late '60s and early '70s.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Metallica: Through the Never
    This is a movie made for people who mash themselves up against those steel crowd-control barriers at concerts and still don't think they're close enough.
  72. 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.
  73. Hôtel Normandy
    There isn't a moment in Hôtel Normandy that isn't painfully contrived, yet, worse still, its mix-ups boast all the inspiration and excitement of a weekend getaway at the local mall.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Shepard & Dark
    Despite its unusual beginnings, the friendship doesn't offer much narrative juice.
  75. Baggage Claim
    There are a handful of laughs, but nothing to balance the onslaught of clichés.
  76. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
    The Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs franchise takes its comic cues from The Muppets and Pee Wee's Playhouse, kids' shows that ripen as their audience matures.
  77. Don Jon
    It's a comedy that moves with a sense of purpose, as Gordon-Levitt does in the title role.
  78. Dark Touch
    Dark Touch, like much of the best horror, works the fears that connect to real life.
  79. I Spit on Your Grave 2
    The film ultimately plays less as female empowerment than it does a narrative in which the comeuppance doled out is likely to be received as a digestif for those in the audience who got off on the gendered violence in the first place.
  80. +1
    Director Dennis Iliadis doesn't overdwell on the existentialism of the concept; he lets emotional beats strobe against the WTF experience of the temporal doubles, peppering the action with distinct images and events to make the repetition stand out.
  81. Zaytoun
    Alternating abruptly between road-trip comedy and war-through-a-child's-eyes melodrama, the film's tonal inconsistency prevents the story from gelling.
  82. Unacceptable Levels
    Unacceptable Levels wants to scare the biosolids out of you, and it can, but that doesn't mean it's a success.
  83. Thanks for Sharing
    A winsome mix of funny, harrowing, and smart, it's most commendable for making characters who are addicted to bad behavior—and who refuse to blame themselves for it—somehow exceedingly sympathetic.
  84. A Single Shot
    David M. Rosenthal's sturdy, nasty rural noir, based on Matthew F. Jones's novel, is so sharp and rusted through that, after taking it in, you'll likely need a tetanus shot.
  85. The Short Game
    The film works not just because it makes golf enjoyable to watch, but also because, by the end, you get to know these kids. It would be nice to see how they're doing in seven years.
  86. My Lucky Star
    Still, the vibrantly shot Lucky Star could have been a mildly entertaining bit of escapism, were it not for the fact that Sophie isn't naïve so much as infantile, a point driven home by her wardrobe.
  87. The Muslims Are Coming!
    One part stand-up comedy concert film (think Kings of Comedy) to two parts social outreach activism, documentary The Muslims Are Coming! works somewhat better as the latter than the former.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mademoiselle C
    Mademoiselle C, however, shows the reclusive style guru as the antithesis to the infamous fashion queen, and Roitfeld comes across as quite goofy and actually relatable.
  89. Men at Lunch
    Given Men at Lunch's compelling argument that the identity of its anonymous ironworker subjects is beside the point—that mystery is a prime facet of its enduring appeal—the documentary's desire to determine who they really were comes across as unnecessary.
  90. Jewtopia
    It's a movie that thinks it stands for openness and cultural understanding, underneath the poop jokes, when in fact it manages to be offensive to almost everyone, including people who like to laugh at something because it's funny, not just because it makes us uncomfortable.
  91. Ip Man: The Final Fight
    Not quite a biopic, the film presents an overview of Ip's years in Hong Kong; Anthony Wong's dignified performance begins with the grandmaster almost fully formed.
  92. Jayne Mansfield's Car
    Although Thornton and co-writer Tom Epperson are clearly trying to get to some essential truth about the ways in which machismo hinders love, their insights are scattered and pedestrian.
  93. Insidious: Chapter 2
    Insidious Chapter 2 picks up where its predecessor left off-- in abject silliness.
  94. Haute Cuisine
    Writer-director Christian Vincent and co-writer Étienne Comar, aided by Frot's quiet intensity, imbue Hortense's quest to pull off culinary miracles with an urgency that's almost absurdly compelling, and all the more entertaining for it.
  95. Generation Iron
    Yudin pulls lovely philosophical grace notes from his subjects as they illuminate some universal truths from their very specific world.
  96. Arise
    The mother-daughter filmmaking team's doc reads more as a feature-length infomercial for the many organizations it highlights—all of which are more than deserving of the attention—than a probing look at what it means to be at one with our planet in the 21st century.
  97. The Colony
    The Colony has modest rewards: It's decently acted, delivers some well-executed jolts, doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence, and is mercifully free of ironic distance.
  98. 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.
  99. C.O.G.
    What was very funny in print becomes serious and occasionally dour onscreen, with fewer laughs than you would expect from a Sedaris project.
  100. Newlyweeds
    Debut writer-director Shaka King dramatizes her characters' descent into disarray with disarming intimacy.
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