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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    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Summer Pasture
    Summer Pasture is remarkable not merely for documenting the disappearing way of life, but for registering the depth of Yama and Locho's uncertainty about moving on from it.
  2. Akeelah and the Bee
    It helps that newcomer Keke Palmer nails it as the 11-year-old prodigy, avoiding cuteness and conveying more angst than all the pasty freaks in "Spellbound" combined.
  3. China Blue
    Shot at the peril of Peled and his crew, China Blue feels stage-managed at times.
  4. All You Need Is Love
    The documentary All You Need Is Love does a nice job of showing how, when it comes to children's lives, the ordinary is inescapable, even in extraordinary circumstances.
  5. Before I Go to Sleep
    If the story is a smidge predictable, at least the movie is pleasingly old-fashioned and grown-up, with a ’90s paranoid-thriller vibe.
  6. Aftermath
    What gives Aftermath its peculiar strain of portent is Pasikowski's consistent suggestion of the futility of bold, desperate attempts to undo a wrong.
  7. Trust Us, This Is All Made Up
    Jagodowski and Pasquesi establish and travel between a host of characters with a deft use of voice, gesture, and, of course, responsive instinct. The moments of triumph are best witnessed live, but Karpovsky captures enough of the thrill to make this film a destination of its own.
  8. JFK: A President Betrayed
    The film offers a solid précis, but it's a curious fact that a well-made doc like this is still only about half as informative or detailed as a long magazine article on the same subject might be.
  9. All the Way Through Evening
    Spong's documentary isn't a beautiful film... Its value, rather, is archival.
  10. Come Undone
    This self-consciously modern movie contains classical pleasures.
  11. MC5*: A True Testimonial
    Bravely bucks the "Behind the Music" arc, conveying a reality of constant flux, a sense of the band being jerked in many different directions.
  12. True Grit
    True Grit is well worth seeing, but it is hardly a monument either to Wayne or to the western. [21 Aug 1969, p.37]
    • Village Voice
  13. The Moment
    What's fresh is Weinstock's interweaving of flashbacks, slightly altered versions of flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, so that viewers must work as hard as Lee to determine past from present.
  14. Searching for Sugar Man
    Fluid, open-ended documentaries that demand more of an audience than foregone assent or fleeting bouts of passive outrage are rare these days, which is what makes Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man such a gift.
  15. Confetti
    If nothing else, this affectionately off-the-wall confection offers exuberant confirmation of every suspicion you might ever have had that the English are charmingly eccentric. They're barking mad.
  16. Driving Lessons
    The sentiment's a bit thick sometimes, but Walters remains sharp, and is sure to inspire drag queens everywhere.
  17. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
    Tyrnauer transforms what could be a staid profile film into an urgent story about the dangers of “urban renewal,” something Jacobs herself would admire.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Micmacs
    Micmacs is more fantasia than violent revenge tale. And its pleasing curlicues--like a bouquet of spoons--linger long after the predictable outcome.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sia, the Dream of the Python
    Sia becomes a bloodbath of Shakespearean proportions as even the good guys kill one another in an effort to preserve illusions.
  20. Battleship
    And when the F-14s came out for a triumphant flyover, I looked around the room to find the moron who was applauding only to realize that it was me.
  21. Front Cover
    Come for the breezy chemistry, stay for the thoughtful exploration of racism, homophobia, and xenophobia via a cross-cultural love affair.
  22. Peace Officer
    The film suffers from some rookie problems.... But through it we can see the history and ramp-up of the military-esque police methods that have become our current crisis.
  23. The TV Set
    The TV Set is wry and true about the messy tangle of art, commerce, and family, as talented creative types try to stay true to themselves and put food on the table. The movie is also a treasure trove of inspired comic personalities.
  24. Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles
    Sturdy and rudimentary, Magician may be Welles 101, but it's dotted liberally with TV and radio clips of the famously loquacious auteur talking, talking, and doing more talking — and how could anybody with ears and a brain resist that buttery voice, spinning out clause-laden sentences that take more twists and turns than the streets of Venice but always end, somehow, in a place that's ravishingly articulate?
  25. They Live
    They Live is, to scramble its most famous line, better at chewing bubblegum than kicking ass.
  26. They Will Have to Kill Us First
    As a look at geopolitics, the film is limited, but as a musical doc it's strong — and it's best as the movie to recommend old white Americans go see as a reminder that people everywhere remain people.
  27. The Eclipse
    The Eclipse is a curious Irish ghost story that fiddles with the recipe just enough to produce interesting results.
  28. When We Leave
    Kekilli, more than an unofficial spokeswoman for rebellious Euro-Muslim youth, sells a simple and deterministic story through her sheer presence and precise reaction shots.
  29. School Life
    The central couple’s unforced benevolence is hard to resist; the bespectacled John, in particular, exhibits remarkable comfort in front of the camera, his frizzy white hair and knowing reaction shots lending him a kind of quizzical charisma throughout.
  30. Kadosh
    One of Gitaï's greatest assets in Kadosh is such stillness, which leaves facile outsiders' judgment out of the frame and thereby deepens our immersion in the narrative.
  31. The Kill Team
    The emotional disconnect between a soldier's perception of reality and reality itself is the subject of this documentary, which finds drama in evenhanded storytelling that is the inverse of its characters' emotional shakiness.
  32. Canvas
    Greco's sincerity is so palpable that the frequent uplift feels deserved, but with just-passable filmmaking and the demeaning score, Canvas falls somewhere between powerful indie and made-for-TV diversion.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Spellbound
    In their randomness, the bee words take on an oracular quality--shades of kabbalistic gematria, or the "Sortes Vergilanae," the supernatural attributed to symbols on paper.
  34. Distant
    Thoughtfully orchestrated and filled with visual wit.
  35. Grandma, a Thousand Times
    She might not be our kin, but filmmaker Mahmoud Kaabour's anecdotal, warm-humored tribute to his grandmother - and, to a limited extent, to her cultural heritage - taps into the universal desire to hang onto loved ones in their waning years.
  36. Sollers Point
    Keith’s sincerity and depth of feeling are embodied in Lombardi’s performance.
  37. Kill Me Three Times
    The flick, written by debut screenwriter James McFarland, is twisty, clever, and totally Nineties.
  38. Teza
    Gerima's film stands as a richly expansive portrait of a man caught between an untenable exile and the terrible consequences of his homeland's violent past.
  39. Ping Pong Summer
    It's a throwback film in both style and sentiment, and what it lacks in depth, it make up for with warmth.
  40. Beasts of the Southern Wild
    In trying through incessant narration to make a six-year-old a prolix sage, Zeitlin can't avoid falling into sticky sentimentality.
  41. Equal Means Equal
    Despite the gravity and breadth of the subject matter, Lopez herself is a frequent subject of the camera.... These awkward inclusions can’t diminish the horror and injustice she catalogs, but they will make Equal Means Equal a difficult sell to anyone outside its intended audience of socially progressive, politically empowered women.
  42. The King
    The film survives on a thick diet of genuine acting moments...Probably no other actor (Hurt) standing today could've brought this much juice to such a potentially simplistic character.
  43. Misunderstood
    Both Aria and the film as a whole are very much in their own head, which is a nice place to visit but probably not the healthiest environment to grow up in.
  44. The Silence Before Bach
    Not only very civilized--this cool, deliberate film suggests that Bach's music is the quintessence of European civilization.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Horton Hears a Who!
    Horton Hears a Who! has blessedly been conceived and executed in reverence to Seuss's story, padding out the original narrative with some meaningful new ideas and casting a mercifully muzzled Jim Carrey as the titular beast.
  46. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
    A mild upkick in pacing and texture can be credited to director Alfonso Cuarón (more Little Princess than Y Tu Mamá), who avoids Chris Columbus's mastodon-like setups and knows a bit more about whipping up atmospherics.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
    Conran takes the ghosts in his machine seriously, and the results appear at once meltingly lovely and intriguingly inhuman.
  48. Rejoice and Shout
    The best bits - the powerful instrument called Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, for example - more than speak for themselves.
  49. Fun Mom Dinner
    A perfectly enjoyable way to spend 81 minutes.
  50. The Seventh Fire
    The movie is less about making a grand social statement and more about conveying the ground-level desolation of this world. Riccobono films it all with intelligence, sensitivity, and a feel for offhand poetry; his camera captures moments of intimacy and tension without ever quite intruding.
  51. Northmen: A Viking Saga
    The battles, occurring every fifteen minutes or so, are brisk and bloody, but in them Northmen leaps too quickly from image to image, sometimes not giving us time to make sense of the mayhem. But the chases, and the Jacksonian sense of an epic journey across a time-lost landscape, will please devotees of the genre, and the flourishes are grand.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bad Posture
    Bad Posture, the first narrative feature from director Malcolm Murray, is sure to unsettle those who prefer films to pass clear judgment on not-so-upstanding types, but it's hard not to admire such a drolly off-kilter pass at the domestic regionalist indie.
  53. 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.
  54. Commune
    Celebrating the desire to immerse oneself in a collective, world-changing enterprise, Commune is unavoidably nostalgic.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trekkies
    There's a great deal of love in Trekkies, Roger Nygard's warm and good-naturedly funny documentary about the world of Star Trek fandom.
  56. True Son
    With sharper on-the-ground footage, True Son might have been as sharp a doc as it is inspiring a story.
  57. The Winslow Boy
    This film is solidly built, faithful to its material, and utterly lacking in pretense, but its maker is still running in place.
  58. What's in a Name?
    The French chamber dramedy What's in a Name is frequently delightful, full of ribald humor and compelling, intelligent debate.
  59. The Order of Myths
    Quietly shocking, The Order of Myths is a deft, engrossing cross-section of Mobile life, heavy on local color and insight.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jackass 3-D
    Not to put too fine a point on it, but Jackass is only Jackass when all is going to shit.
  61. Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
    Augmenting his talking heads with animation and inspired stock footage, Gibney dignifies Hubbard with the capacity to conjure feelings of connection and magnificence, never losing sight of what brings people into the fold, which makes their attempts to escape it all the more harrowing. Still, the richness of detail of Wright's book is lost.
  62. Kinsey
    Opening too late for the election but still one the year's most politically relevant movies, Condon's earnestly middlebrow biopic is an argument for tolerance and diversity.
  63. Dolphin Boy
    Dolphin Boy stands as an example of how the pitfalls of potentially mushy material can be overcome by smart and sensitive direction.
  64. True Legend
    In countless over-the-top set pieces, Yuen delivers striking combat clarity without sacrificing the visceral editing and crazy digital effects of modern bloodbaths.
  65. The Mind's Eye
    The Mind's Eye ought to hit the sweet spot for fans of early David Cronenberg, the more violent X-Men comics, and the kinds of indie horror movies Larry Fessenden always cameos in, as he does again here.
  66. Miss Lovely
    Rife with jealousy, treachery, and violence, it's a stylish portrait of the tangled relationship between cinematic and real-world sleaze.
  67. Het ondergrondse orkest
    A world-beat city symphony.
  68. My Little Pony: Equestria Girls - Rainbow Rocks
    Like much of the anime that influences its source series, the picture is continuity-heavy and not particularly accessible to newcomers, but for the faithful, Rainbow Rocks does, in fact, rock.
  69. The Paw Project
    The story of veterinarian Jennifer Conrad's crusade to outlaw declawing of cats is eye-opening and sometimes charming.
  70. Expelled
    Expelled isn't going to change the world, but it's a fun and promising debut film.
  71. Emelie
    Emelie does create a menacing atmosphere and provide an interesting response to the "Final Girl" model that has long been the horror standard.
  72. Bluebird
    For all its piteousness, [it's] often moving, always well acted, and distinguished by rare stillness and beauty.
  73. Disobedience
    As a whole, the film is directionless, with few individual character-study scenes making it compelling enough. It’s almost as though there are miniature, worthy films within this film, and watching for those can be a thrill.
  74. Half The Road: The Passion, Pitfalls & Power of Women's Professional Cycling
    An enraging portrait of entrenched sexism in competitive sports that proves parity is worth fighting for.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Free China: The Courage to Believe
    Free China, with its aggressive narration, haunting music, and disturbing photographic evidence of crimes against humanity, wants you to walk away outraged at the injustice of it all, and most likely, you will.
  76. Donnie Darko
    Has plenty of problems. But most stem from a young filmmaker overswinging on his first time up to the plate and hitting a deep fly out rather than a home run.
  77. Chunhyangdyun
    Im's movie approaches a seething, primitivist beauty that evokes Makhmalbaf and parallels the contrapuntal textual investigations of Resnais.
  78. Adanggaman
    Ostensibly factual, helplessly self-conscious -- Adanggaman is being touted as the continent's first film about slavery as it was experienced on African soil—where the victims and enslavers were both native peoples.
  79. Wildlike
    Greenwood brings his usual A-game, generating great chemistry with Purnell in their ad hoc paternal relationship, but she's the revelation.
  80. Disturbing the Peace
    Directors Stephen Apkon and Andrew Young reverse the usual act of border-crossing, and they do not differentiate between Arabic and Hebrew, allowing their subjects to switch between the two and subtitling both in English, signaling that the film is a space for listening, for trying to understand.
  81. Bestiaire
    Bestiaire is, most profoundly, about the dynamics of looking, an exercise in studying gazes that are either unidirectional or, superficially, at least, reciprocated.
  82. Magical Universe
    This story is about tenderness and empathy, including Carbee's for his plastic proxies.
  83. The Guilt Trip
    Pairing Rogen and Streisand turns out to be inspired.
  84. The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls
    The beloved Kiwi duo, who frequently perform as a rotating cast of corny alter egos, can charm even the crankiest viewers, thanks to their soaring, clarion harmonies and cuddly-butch personas.
  85. Vanishing on 7th Street
    It is creepy enough to make you hope the theater parking lot is brightly lit.
  86. Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
    Spry, if sprawling, Supermensch warmheartedly affirms the Gordonian style of karmic contemplation.
  87. Extinction
    Sometimes, Extinction is a zombie apocalypse story; mostly, it's a meditation on isolation, redemption, and family that could, in its basic outline, be satisfyingly told outside of its genre.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Descent
    In the great B tradition, Marshall gets a lot out of nothing.
  89. Fort Bliss
    [Michelle Monaghan's] at her best as Army medic/staff sergeant Maggie Swann in writer-director Claudia Myers's Fort Bliss.
  90. Y Tu Mamá También
    It has the charm of the original American road movies, feasting on the gorgeous, ramshackle landscape of the filmmaker's motherland.
  91. Spy Kids
    Has an intemperate vitality that's hard to resist.
  92. Mundane History (Jao nok krajok)
    The ultimate break comes with a glorious full-screen CGI zoom into blazing heavenly bodies, a refutation of the title's modesty.
  93. Last Days Here
    An affectionate look at a self-destructing maniac and his supporters that bluntly reveals Liebling's total abjection without mocking him.
  94. Hitch
    While far from perfect, Hitch is a rare studio product that earns the goodwill it smugly demands.
  95. Killing Ground
    What the film doesn’t do, much to its credit, is make the killers into charismatically “cool” villains, à la Wolf Creek‘s Mick Taylor.
  96. Bonobos: Back to the Wild
    Tixier never strays far from a worshipful view of André and her sanctuary, but the film evolves into an interesting primer on the differences between life in captivity and the wild.
  97. 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.
  98. This Is Martin Bonner
    This Is Martin Bonner isn't exciting, but it's also never dull.
  99. Trouble with the Curve
    Here is the irony: Trouble With the Curve embodies all of the values it espouses - it is an old-fashioned, proficient, amiable, and decent movie - but it has no instinct.
  100. Harlem Street Singer
    Here's the rare lionizing-a-musician doc that strikes a smart balance between vintage footage, talking-head testimonials, and contemporary tribute performances.
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