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. Genius on Hold
    One marvel of the film is how it conveys so much information so quickly, and with such accessibility.
  2. 500 Years
    Yates’s films, like the world itself, have no template — they’re messy, rich with feeling, liberated from simple theatrical structures, always honest about what is possible. That one of hers ends with hope is a gift.
  3. Survivors Guide to Prison
    Thankfully, Cooke crams in so much persuasively appalling information — especially during a tangential aside on mentally ill patients’ high death rates — that it’s easy to forgive him for seemingly trying to push all viewers’ proverbial buttons at once.
  4. The Heart of Nuba
    If Catena has flaws, filmmaker Kenneth Carlson declines to feature them, perhaps because they’ve been friends since their Brown University days thirty years ago. Still, the doctor has earned the adulation, and a visit to a leper colony shows why.
  5. King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen
    Mitchell’s documentary style isn’t flashy or refined, but it is economical. The director does his homework and almost cross-examines the film’s subjects.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Diary of the Dead
    Visually, Romero's ersatz-DIY experiment isn't as suave as Brian De Palma's similar effort in the recent and risible "Redacted," nor as exactingly engineered as the video convulsions of "Cloverfield," but its scrappy, ultra-low-budget edges are part of its charm.
  7. Yossi
    For many of the film's brisk 84 minutes, Fox eclipses his earlier work-and several other same-sex tragedies-by immersing us in his protagonist's quiet turmoil.
  8. Alan Partridge
    An often funny workplace hostage comedy that doesn't demand prior knowledge of the character.
  9. Innocent Voices
    For more than an hour, schmaltzmeister Luis Mandoki (Message in a Bottle) directs as if on assignment for Miramax.
  10. Afterschool
    Afterschool, the almost frighteningly accomplished first feature made by Antonio Campos when he was 24, is high school as horror show.
  11. Me You Them
    Me You Them can't find a rhythm or a consistent tone.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Stuart Little 2
    The summer's most romantic interspecies love story.
  13. Beyond the Clouds
    It's not easy to endure, despite -- or due to the embarrassment of -- an all-star cast.
  14. Bolivia
    Virtually plot-free, the movie's organic cultivation of Argentina's economic tension and ethnophobic woes is smooth as silk.
  15. Auto Focus
    Auto Focus doesn't really go anywhere, but then neither does any form of obsessive-compulsive behavior -- which may be Schrader's point.
  16. Dark Horse
    With Solondz's old-hat funeral deadpan and his efforts to pass off Abe's adolescent rage as elevated insight, Dark Horse is neither incisively black-comic nor particularly attuned to human behavior - proof that some directors, at least, do end up the way they started out.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Optimists
    Questionable as a theory of history, but as a human sentiment, it's touching to behold.
  18. The Tiger Hunter
    Immigrant stories certainly don’t demand tragedy to be legitimate, but The Tiger Hunter, with its pastiche of fish-out-of-water comedy and pointy collared shirts, ultimately feels weightless.
  19. The Founder
    The Founder slowly reveals itself as a don't-let-the-devil-into-your-house parable, one that uses all the techniques of inspirational moviemaking to disguise that devil's intentions, even from the devil himself.
  20. Rabin, the Last Day
    By glamorizing struggle and ideology across the Israeli-Jewish political spectrum, it once more invites identification with only half of those locked in the conflict Rabin was trying to solve.
  21. The Tainted Veil
    The Tainted Veil is a long conversation, wide in scope and geography, but nonetheless intimate.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Argentina
    Shot in an old barn in Buenos Aires' La Boca barrio, the film draws you in until nothing matters but the concentration of this population on their heritage and their pride.
  23. Lives Well Lived
    Full of such bon mots, the documentary is the epitome of positive thinking, perhaps the closest thing America has to a state religion. Still, like social worker Wendy Lustbader’s book What’s Worth Knowing, which took a similar tack years ago, it’s an opportunity to connect with souls who’ve been around more than a few blocks.
  24. The Angels' Share
    When The Angels' Share suddenly transforms, in its final act, into a kind of farcical heist picture, that fleeting slapstick tendency wins out, regrettably diminishing the film's social consciousness in the process.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rain People
    The vocabulary of film, with its subliminal grammar is even more susceptible to corruption than mere words. And Coppola, one of the most technically proficient of the new directors, proves himself, once again, a master of the visual cliche. [25 Sep 1969, p.55]
    • Village Voice
  26. A Map of the World
    Scott Elliott's palsied directorial debut, from a mine shaft-ridden script, is a sick joke, and Weaver's part in it screams of temporary insanity.
  27. By Sidney Lumet
    It's workmanlike and impassioned, but ultimately preaching to the choir.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fast Five
    Five's few driving set pieces, all economically cut for spectacle over continuity, are pumped to near-Crank levels of absurdity, with Lin transforming his ragtag bunch of fugitives' superhuman knack for escaping certain death into a running joke.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    OC87: The Obsessive Compulsive, Major Depression, Bipolar, Asperger's Movie
    To be sure, there are more artful and focused documentaries, but OC87 still stands as moving evidence that Clayman's trust in the value of the filmmaking process ultimately outweighed the extreme difficulty he says he has making even the smallest decisions.
  30. Seven Psychopaths
    Remember the shitty crime comedies every Hollywood brat tried to make after "Pulp Fiction"? It took an Irish playwright to get it right. See it with an audience.
  31. Small Town Murder Songs
    Boldly succinct yet confident enough to take its time.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Tuck Everlasting
    Bledel, consigned to corsets and croquet, looks so weepy for much of Tuck Everlasting. The reason might lie in a script that favors the starchy demands of period melodrama over her TV show's fizzy screwball banter -- or maybe it's just William Hurt's embarrassing brogue.
  33. Dog Days
    Dog Days adheres dogmatically to the school of sado-miserablism that Seidl's compatriots Michael Haneke and Jessica Hausner have turned into something of a national industry (non-Austrian adherents abound too, from Gaspar Noé to Harmony Korine).
  34. Steamboy
    Steamboy doesn't have the deep melancholia or the visionary élan of last year's Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Consistent in its graphic invention from first to last, however, it's a sensationally designed piece of work. (The retro stylistics are comparable to Brazil, David Lynch's Dune, and The Iron Giant.)
  35. Phantom Boy
    Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol's superhero story Phantom Boy is no April and the Extraordinary World — but still fine for what it is.
  36. Elstree 1976
    The most interesting part of Elstree 1976 comes when these actors express ambivalence about their odd celebrity.
  37. The Cold Lands
    In the thoughtful and touching coming-of-age tale The Cold Lands, writer-director Tom Gilroy examines self-reliance as a philosophy and way of life.
  38. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story
    Less persuasive is Forbes's perfunctory, psychologically thin rummage through Atwater's childhood for a traumatic event that would explain his utter ruthlessness.
  39. Megan Leavey
    Megan Leavey is a rarity in Hollywood: a true story of a woman in combat, directed by a woman. This representation, combined with the undeniably lovable canine at its center, elevates it above the typical war film.
  40. The Bling Ring
    Even though Coppola is one of our most compassionate storytellers, she can't bring herself to like these kids much. She's not cynical enough to turn this story into satire.
  41. Dinosaur 13
    Unfortunately, Dinosaur 13 never manages to display the story's many complex parts in a way that enables viewers to grasp the whole beast.
  42. After Love
    I walked away from After Love feeling like I knew precious little about these characters. Lafosse gets so many critical things right about this decaying relationship that, at first, I did not wonder too much about the lack of specificity or detail about them as people. But later, it gnawed at me.
  43. Tales of the Night
    The stories are quick, tiny surveys of a given culture's conventions told as monomythic, Joseph Campbell–ish pastiches and animated with fluidity and deliberateness that nearly excuses the film's slightness.
  44. The Midwife
    Not a whole lot happens in The Midwife, but there’s never a dull moment, thanks to the opposing yet equally stellar performances by the two Catherines in the lead.
  45. Idiocracy
    Ten years later, Idiocracy’s real achievement isn’t how much of it has come true, but how much it continues to disturb.
  46. The Informant!
    Unlike the director's usual organic efforts--in which great style never results in overstylized--The Informant! feels overamped from start to shrugging finish.
  47. Crimson Peak
    Though this movie waltzes to its own strange rhythm, del Toro hits every note.
  48. 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.
  49. The Great Museum
    Holzhausen is respectful but not reverential, portraying the museum as a living thing that's being cared for with meticulous diligence.
  50. A Woman, a Part
    Siff gives a modest but poignant performance that rings true for women of a certain age and career.
  51. The BFG
    The film suffers from the one thing that Spielberg films almost never suffer from — stasis. He’s made, essentially, a "hangout" movie, one in which we’re supposed to luxuriate among the characters, but Spielberg isn’t a director who thrives in that kind of environment.
  52. Diggers
    Rudd is sweet and funny; Ron Eldard and Josh Hamilton are great as the town's aimless stud muffin and philosophizing pothead, respectively. But the movie belongs to Ken Marino, who is riotously funny.
  53. Crash
    Full of well-observed supporting riffs, Crash might've accumulated more frisson had it cast a clearer eye on how social tension actually plays.
  54. 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
  55. The Danish Girl
    If The Danish Girl dared to critique its main characters, it'd be brave. If it had celebrated a modern marriage that worked for 26 years — much longer and stranger than the film lets on — it'd be truly pioneering. Real life is full of kinks, mistakes, and selfish behavior. Biopics, however, are made of formulaic virtue.
  56. Game Night
    Mark Perez has written one of the tightest comedy scripts to make it to be the big screen in ages. Game Night, directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, wastes not a single second of dialogue, gives killer lines to every member of its all-star ensemble, delivers genuinely tense action sequences, and even goes for broke with style.
  57. The Woman with the 5 Elephants
    Geier, who died in 2010, speaks on all subjects - from her son's mortal injury to the nature of her various collaborations - with the contemplative, courtly intelligence of her favorite novels.
  58. Don Jon
    It's a comedy that moves with a sense of purpose, as Gordon-Levitt does in the title role.
  59. So Close
    A resolution gifting world-surveillance software to the cops, plus slo-mo action over the oft reprised "Close to You," stretch past bullet time into nap time.
  60. The Eye
    Given that The Eye plays out without so much as a single new idea or real surprise, it's a testament to the Pangs' knack for composition and editing -- or Orange Music's merciless Psycho-tronic score -- that the movie goes boo as effectively as it does.
  61. Voices of Iraq
    It's certainly important for American leftists to consider that many Iraqis have benefited from the war that we oppose, but the omission of historical context here misrepresents the checkered history of American involvement in the region.
  62. Bend It Like Beckham
    Only silent Becks himself rises unstained from this reheated ethno-niche stew.
  63. El bonaerense
    Still, the vapor traces of farce and policier that waft from this terribly earnest film never coalesce -- perhaps our own cultural remove allows what plays straight at home to be experienced as slightly daffy.
  64. Elián
    The film assumes a familiarity with the story most won't have, leaving out crucial details.
  65. The Prestige
    The result is a lopsided yet absorbing movie in which the director is less drawn to his main characters than to those on the periphery.
  66. POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
    As agreeable as it is insidious, Morgan Spurlock's latest exposé of corporate control via immersive humiliation is his best, most formally inventive project yet.
  67. Kung Fu Killer
    Director Teddy Chan's glossy thriller pays tribute to martial-arts cinema by casting enough Hong Kong industry legends to rival the cameo count of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It's a pity, then, that it's an undeniably bland film in style and story, despite a few elaborately staged fight sequences.
  68. The Judge
    The Judge is packed tight; it’s enlightening and suspenseful and paced for maximum enjoyment. In the end, it’s not just about Kholoud Al-Faqih, but you’ll be very glad to have met her.
  69. Truth
    Vanderbilt, the screenwriter of Zodiac, here making his debut as a director, masters the heady pulse of high-end, high-stakes journalism.
  70. Disorder
    [Winocour] elevates the action hero beyond his physical assets, drilling through his psyche to offer a rare and welcome lens into a type of man usually reduced to stoicism or sulking, hiding behind a rubber mask.
  71. Family Law
    Like his equally father-fixated, and equally wonderful, 2003 film "Lost Embrace," Burman's beguiling tribute to his Jewish father -- or, for all I know, the one he wishes he had -- is warm and deep enough to give humanism a good name.
  72. Elegy
    Spanish director Isabel Coixet's hushed and understated Elegy is a flat, joyless affair.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Shepard & Dark
    Despite its unusual beginnings, the friendship doesn't offer much narrative juice.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    October Country
    Best understood as a work of creative nonfiction. The directors employ art-film techniques to aestheticize a swamp of big issues--the military, poverty, madness, family planning, spousal and child abuse--and give a family's (and America's) angst a clear voice and seductive form without leveling judgment.
  75. In Fear
    In Fear traffics in suspicion, ratcheting tension, and shocks — including a few really effective ones — more than in satisfying explanations.
  76. Carancho
    Short on genuine suspense and long on righteous anger, the film is bolstered by a sturdy performance by Darín that brings emotional nuance to an underwritten role.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Hip Hop Project
    From domestic strife to studio triumph, the most impressive accomplishment of Project is not the student-made album, but that when Kazi says cheesy things like "This is healing through hip-hop," you actually believe him.
  78. SherryBaby
    Sherrybaby is by no means a terrible film...But we know exactly where the transparent action is going from word one.
  79. Landline
    Few period pieces get our dynamic relationship with the now so right, or chart so smartly how the present shifts even under the feet of the youngish.
  80. Stardust
    This is just a silly movie about silly things starring famous people acting all silly.
  81. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
    Ferrell reminds the audience of why he matters: because he's the loudest, driest, and most fearless comic actor working.
  82. The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun
    Unlike far too many human-interest docs today, director Pernille Rose Grønkjær's fantastic little character portrait doesn't rest on the strength of its personality, with prudent attention paid to aesthetic nuances and the growing quasi-love that the titular bickerers have for one another.
  83. Two Women
    Its awkward mix of polemic and melodramatics probably won't travel very well.
  84. Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story
    Manages to have its cake and eat it too -- debunking the Berlin image even while reveling in it.
  85. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    Jones's documentary, named for the opening song on Foxtrot, is most effective as a poison-pen missive to Corporate Rock.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Tattoo
    This plodding serial-killer procedural grafts hand-me-down malevolence onto a standard rookie-veteran police yarn, the results of which yield nary a fright, let alone a goose pimple.
  87. Margarita Happy Hour
    Chaiken ably balances real-time rhythms with propulsive incident -- she catches subtler interior strains, too.
  88. Trembling Before G-d
    Though angry and sorrowful, Trembling Before G-d, beginning with the title, is above all a work of reverence.
  89. Delhi Belly
    Delhi Belly's rare singing-and-dancing production numbers play classical Bollywood glitz for pure kitsch, the Ram Sampath–composed soundtrack otherwise tending toward up-tempo sing-along rock, including a hit song ("DK Bose") with a subliminally dirty chorus.
  90. Letters from the Big Man
    Its quiet plea for reconnection with the non-human world is persuasive, and the engaged, agile meditation on the limits of communication at its center aligns it with Munch's earlier work. Oregon's million-dollar scenery, a sweet cameo by Karen Black, and Rabe's tough/tender performance sweeten the pot.
  91. Stink!
    Though not as funny as Moore's earliest work, Jon Whelan's Stink! is way more emotionally affecting.
  92. Wedding Doll
    Gilady never treats her heroine as a prop in someone else's redemption arc, and Rosenblatt's performance will have you looking for her work in other films.
  93. The Reagan Show
    Rather than reveal a showman, The Reagan Show in the end imitates one.
  94. The Road Movie
    The mayhem is hypnotic, scabrous, scarifying, unpredictable, astonishing, dispiriting, repetitious, clearly both amoral and immoral, and by the end, a little dull. Even over the short running time, you can feel your humanity’s diminishment.
  95. Rolling Thunder
    Performances are made crystalline through a sixth sense for camera placement and curt cutting from director John Flynn, whose 2007 passing was little noted, though his no-BS way of laying down a story is a rare commodity in any era.
  96. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
    It’s basically the equivalent of a sensitively wrought read from the Young Adult shelf, and there’s naught wrong with that.
  97. We Don't Live Here Anymore
    Naomi Watts is a tremendous movie actress. She need only sidle on camera and glance over the terrain to claim the scene. What's her secret? Like the great Isabelle Huppert, Watts doesn't radiate feelings so much as she absorbs them.
  98. American Teen
    Even when it's ripping off "Juno" and "The Hills," American Teen is fascinating in the way of every good documentary--the more time you spend with anyone, the more they surprise you.
  99. Byzantium
    Byzantium isn't Jordan's first movie about bloodsuckers—that would be 1994's Interview with the Vampire—but it's the right vampire movie for today, poetic and elegant in an artfully tattered way.
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