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. Slack Bay
    Slack Bay is nothing if not anti-authoritarian, and while its anarchic energy is appealing in small doses, it becomes tiresome when it turns toward cruelty.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Margot at the Wedding
    Hard as it may be to imagine a comedy that inflicts all the psychic torment of "Cries and Whispers," Baumbach has pulled off a more psychologically acute--and funnier--version of the Bergman pastiches that Woody Allen attempted 30 years ago, with a jumpy, nerve-rattling rhythm all his own.
  3. Advanced Style
    Ultimately, Advanced Style presents these women not as objects of curiosity, but as what they truly are: role models.
  4. Pelican Dreams
    The most effective part of Irving's film is how deftly she captures the pelicans' clear anxieties, curiosities, and joys.
  5. Winter in Wartime
    An efficient, absorbing example of the form framed in a boy's coming-of-age story set in a snowbound rural Holland in 1945.
  6. Wish Me Away
    What it lacks in artfulness, Wish Me Away makes up for in emotive force.
  7. Maelstrom
    Wanders all over the map thematically and stylistically, and borrows heavily from Lynch, Jeunet, and von Trier while failing to find a spark of its own.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Beautiful Boxer
    Those in search of a liberating treatise about empowered sexuality may find too much of the movie's erotic potential sublimated in sports metaphors, while those looking for a martial arts matinee will find its feats of physical prowess shriveled next to a fully engorged genre workout like "Ong-Bak."
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kick-Ass
    Never as shocking as it thinks it is, as funny as it should be, or as engaged in cultural critique as it could be, Kick-Ass is half-assed.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Littlerock
    Atsuko the character doesn't speak English; Atsuko the actress, speaking mostly un-subtitled Japanese when she speaks at all, gives a performance that's a marvel of nonverbal reaction.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Snowtown Murders
    This slog adds up to nothing other than the shocking truism that average people will do horrible things primarily because someone tells them to.
  12. Harvest of Empire
    Harvest of Empire is never quite wrong, but it's effectiveness is inversely proportional to how hard it's trying.
  13. Liquid Sky
    Liquid Sky has always been caught smack between delirious curio, avant-garde put-on, exploitation cheapie, and naive masterpiece.
  14. A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries
    While the acting ensemble is crucial, it's not the only asset here.
  15. Mean Girls
    Director Waters and screenwriter Tina Fey (also cast as the voice-of-reason math teacher) aim less for the usual high-gloss caricature than acutely hilarious sociology, nailing the servile malice of 15-year-old girls.
  16. Transamerica
    Pleasant even without reaching much of a destination, Transamerica leaves the basic impression that it's not as self-satisfied as it could have been.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Notorious C.H.O.
    All stand-up comedy is oral aggression, but Cho's is an especially fascinating strain.
  18. The Tailor of Panama
    A cut above last season's best studio offerings. The performances are well turned out. The morality is stylishly gray. The attitude is almost fashionable.
  19. Moulin Rouge!
    A voracious vacuum cleaner of a movie --hoovering up a hundred years' worth of junk with the same monotonously unmodulated hum.
  20. The Good Dinosaur
    It's smart in surprising ways, daring in a few minor ones, moving in the right ones.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields
    Yet that dissonance is also what makes Strange Powers, a 10-years-in-the-making record of Merritt and his Magnetic Fields bandmates, so intriguing.
  22. Miami Vice
    Mann has done something transformative with Farrell: The Irish actor has never had this much charisma and natural authority in a role, and as he navigates that gray area between Crockett's real identity and his fabricated one, revealing subtle fissures in the character's cocksure facade, he's fascinating to watch.
  23. The Revolutionary Optimists
    Change may be elusive, Optimists confirms, but the will to make it blazes.
  24. Midsummer in Newtown
    [A] slightly uneven yet deeply affecting documentary.
  25. Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone
    As a visceral experience, it’s entrancing, especially during Shinji’s fight sequences, when his anxieties are cruelly exacerbated by having his body and mind symbiotically bonded to his father’s combat toy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Paris, je t'aime
    Paris, Je T'aime's brimming declaration of love to the City of Lights leaves one breathless but dissatisfied.
  27. La Vie en Rose
    Uplifted beyond its merits by a stunning performance from Marion Cotillard, the humdrum biopic of Edith Piaf, La Vie En Rose, jogs obligingly along with Piaf the legend rather than the woman.
  28. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
    Sure, all the studios offer anymore are big, dumb adventure spectacles, but that's not a knock against the achievement of this one, which at least parades wonders before us, not the least being the greatest dragon in the history of movies.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Another Earth
    Unable to organically incorporate their Big Ideas into the narrative, the filmmakers lazily lay them on top, leaving the exposition of Another Earth's structuring fantasy to a blanket of background voiceover.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Unmade Beds
    Unmade Beds revels in its art-pop sensibility, bursting with the spirit of Jean-Luc Godard and Wong Kar-wai.
  31. Let the Bullets Fly
    Comedy and shifting-allegiances intrigue more than compensate for the dearth of rousing action in this 1920s-set film.
  32. Mosquita y Mari
    Despite occasional lapses into showy expressionistic slo-mo, Guerrero's direction demonstrates a patience and attention to emotional detail that allows the two young leads' performances to develop naturally.
  33. E-Team
    The emphasis on the team's daring amid mass chaos seems a bit off: This threatens to become yet another film about white Americans and Europeans telling the stories of Third World people. But the rest of the film does much to redeem that dubious trope.
  34. Killer Bees
    Unfortunately, the narrative focus constantly shifts and never coalesces.
  35. Ich hiess Sabina Spielrein
    This evocative film is a poignant testament to the twin forces of love (however blighted) and the unconscious.
  36. Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow
    In equal parts mesmerizing and disorienting, Over Your Cities (the title comes from the biblical story of Lilith) plunges viewers into the earth, wind, and fire of Kiefer's massive-scale projects.
  37. The Amazing Spider-Man
    The film is also faithful to the smartassery of the Spider-Man of the comics, and Garfield's spindly physicality evokes the Marvel illustrations of the 1960s.
  38. Nixon
    Satisfying as it is to at last have Nixon as a Disney character, Hopkins's overheated, self-consciously self-conscious performance doesn't get the overall nuttiness of Nixon's unctuous rage, his iron-butt single-mindedness. [26 Dec 1995]
    • Village Voice
  39. God Knows Where I Am
    The Widers opt for much footage of the still-empty house itself, inside and out, shot by gently gliding cameras. This conveys an appropriate lonely stillness, a sense of a soul wandering a static world, especially in early scenes, but by the end the footage seems repetitious – yes, we’ve nosed around this sad doorway before.
  40. Premium Rush
    There is a lot of silly bike-is-life philosophy, including Wilee's personal credo of "Fixed gear, steel frame, no brakes," none of which I can speak to because I don't care a tinker's damn about bikes, but I do have an abiding fondness for compact and coherent action movies, and this is surely one.
  41. Catfight
    In its blunt, inelegant, but surprisingly gripping way, Catfight is the (im)perfect movie for our rotten times.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stake Land
    It's thick with a distinct mood-the sadness and exhilaration of having nothing left to lose-and the characters, in their desperation and drive, feel real.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Monumental: David Brower's Fight for Wild America
    Instead of the affectless soundtrack of mopey indie rock, a trip through the Anthology of American Folk Music would have better served the landscape.
  44. Marshall
    Even in this glossy pulp fictionalization, Marshall is filled above all else with truths that still demand telling.
  45. Splice
    Splice is a queerly funny movie, attuned to the absurd.
  46. Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
    The poised Vega and pleasingly phlegmatic Sabara are resolutely uncute performers, and the reach-out-and-touch-it gadgetry carries a homey scent of proactive nostalgia. Spy Kids 2 is an island of lost Circuit Cities.
  47. Heist
    Heist is a neat, bouncy, minor-key crime procedural that shakes no rafters. Glorious, freestanding Mametisms are dropped into it like beef hunks into clear soup.
  48. Epidemic
    Basically an experimental psychodrama, Epidemic has a pleasingly slapdash, underground quality that recalls early Fassbinder and Wenders -- although, with its cynical premise and frequent infusions of Wagner, it exudes the prankster snarkiness characteristic of von Trier.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Barbershop
    As hackneyed as they come, but the overall mood is less cynical than affectionate.
  50. Bridget Jones's Diary
    The three-act structure is too predictable, and at 90 minutes, feels both draggy and hacked to the bone.
  51. We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists
    Former "Frontline" producer Brian Knappenberger's fascinating, incisive social history of the online network known as Anonymous.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dracula Has Risen from the Grave
    Grave is the fourth entry in Hammer’s Dracula rotation but doesn’t possess a whiff of being a retread, given its innovative formal choices and series-best direction. [24 Jul 2018]
    • Village Voice
  53. Moebius
    Except for the presence of the Internet, the picture feels like a retelling of an ages-old fable. In fact, Moebius is almost weird enough to be a creation myth, and that's no small accomplishment.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Elf
    Works best as a rapid-fire series of sight gags and absurd remarks.
  55. The Way Back
    His (Weir) hardship drama is stolidly old-fashioned, more extreme travelogue than exercise in visceral horror.
  56. A League of Ordinary Gentlemen
    Christopher Browne's entertaining A League of Ordinary Gentlemen goes behind the scenes of the Professional Bowlers Association's comeback bid following the league's 2000 sale (for a mere $5 million) to a trio of retired Microsoft execs.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    The multiple story lines can feel choppy, but the dialogue has snap, and the pants' powers never distract from the teenagers' emotions.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Sugar Curtain
    Both love story and memory of underdevelopment, The Sugar Curtain illuminates, with great sobriety and reverence, the paradox of a nation as steeped in tradition as it is in hypocrisy.
  59. Unsettled
    Adam Hootnick's burningly smart documentary, delves into this national crisis, which was a relative blip on the international media's radar.
  60. One Hundred Mornings
    Part morality play, part comment on our excessive energy consumption, One Hundred Mornings is often most affecting when it considers the most mundane points.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cold Fish
    Cold Fish is wild, head-turning, stomach-churning stuff, and it makes a bracing addition to the overstuffed canon of serial-killer cinema.
  62. The One I Love
    Some of the surprise works, but the final gotcha won't getcha.
  63. The Flight Fantastic
    The Flight Fantastic is both a lively biography of the Mexican circus family and a primer on trapeze as both art form and joyous expression.
  64. Kangaroo
    Kangaroo is a sobering depiction of how deep cultural divides affect the future of a species, even one so seemingly ubiquitous and resilient.
  65. Husbands
    Husbands confirms, if indeed any confirmation were needed, that John Cassavetes is one of the major American film-makers of the past decade, and one of the most tortured and turgid as well. [10 Dec 1970, p.69]
    • Village Voice
  66. Guidance
    The crime-spree-driven final third feels more like a sordid movie of the week than the sprightly comedy that preceded it.
  67. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
    Fantastic Beasts is often lovely to look at, at times even stirring, but there's very little to hold on to, story- or character-wise.
  68. Nénette
    Watching Nénette watch those who gape at her is an intriguing, multi-layered exercise of voyeurism, but one that wanes after our gaze is demanded for too long.
  69. Black Butterflies
    Art, politics, and craziness conspire to form a rather mechanical melodrama in Black Butterflies.
  70. 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.
  71. Beloved Sisters
    Although there's nothing sensationalistic about his approach, [Graf] treats the characters' tentative, often problematic bohemianism as a wild, brave, and precious thing, and the lead actors — restrained where it counts and bold where it matters — are a pleasure to watch.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes
    The story--is only important in that it gives the Quays a foundation for their fabulous animated tableaux.
  73. Waiting for Armageddon
    Line up this terrific documentary about end-times evangelical Christians against Bill Maher's sneering "Religulous," and you'll see an excellent argument for restraint and a fair fight.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bandslam
    Todd Graff's film is written with a desperate cleverness that clamors for attention over the brainless against-the-odds music-competition plot.
  75. Occupation: Dreamland
    A fair-minded (but hardly apolitical) grunt's-eye view of the war in Iraq that trusts the audience to draw its own conclusions.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mystery Men
    Mystery Men is wryly sentimental stuff, but it's also pretty sharp.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shelter
    As far as coming-out dramas go, Shelter is a puppy dog, well-acted but rife with cliché received wisdom and at least one ingeniously arbitrary bit of mid-scene dialogue: "That's why you never tell a woman how to cook a chicken."
  78. Thou Wast Mild and Lovely
    Our glimpses of what's already occurred and what will soon come are vivid and impressionistic, prophetic warnings about which everyone seems powerless to do anything other than silently observe.
  79. The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
    This is not the can't-we-get-along Arab-Persian world we see in most liberal nonfiction films, but a broader and helplessly apocalyptic view of an entire region crazed with anger, frustration, and bloodlust into objectifying death as a weapon, a cause for cosmic glory, and little else.
  80. Puzzle
    The self-esteem booster shot provided by the sudden discovery of a prodigious talent is conveyed in a shy, self-surprised amusement by Onetto, accompanied by the slightest loosening of the joints.
  81. La bûche
    By turns hilarious and wounding.
  82. Robot Stories
    A quietly impassioned, genuinely stirring indie rarity.
  83. Delicatessen
    Delicatessen may be junk food, but it's served with the discretion of nouvelle cuisine. [07 Apr 1992]
    • Village Voice
  84. Breathing
    A film of unreconciled impulses, Breathing is by turns vaguely sentimental and cooly detached in a manner that's ultimately more off-putting than it is complementary.
  85. 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Reivers
    A slight, sentimental movie that is clearly to be enjoyed rather than respected. [29 Jan 1970, p.54]
    • Village Voice
  87. Deadpool 2
    Rather than face its own moral incoherence, Deadpool 2 blinks.
  88. Puzzle
    Since it’s hard to buy the character, it’s hard to buy the story, no matter how good Macdonald is.
  89. The Infiltrator
    Unfortunately, as he performs the acting equivalent of triple backflips, Cranston isn't given much of a safety net from the script or direction.
  90. The Idol
    Unfortunately, as Mohammed approaches his goal, Abu-Assad goes all in on archival footage.... That backfires.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hard Goodbyes: My Father
    A tender Greek drama.
  92. The Fairy
    While every scene is art-directed with zest and innovatively staged, The Fairy rarely inspires outright laughter. At least it respects its influences more than does "The Artist."
  93. Félix And Meira
    The restrained performances of Dubreuil and Yaron (Fill the Void) gradually reveal the flaws and strengths of this fragile couple, while Twersky is quietly devastating as an abandoned husband who fully understands devotion and sacrifice.
  94. No Impact Man: The Documentary
    We could all do better, definitely, but how much can we possibly glean from a guy whose idealism can be measured with a calendar?
  95. Last Passenger
    While certainly a formulaic genre film, it's nevertheless a formula executed with a great sensitivity to visual engagement.
  96. You're Next
    You're Next streamlines the gory stuff for something truly shocking: good characters. Not deep, mind you. But characters who are crayoned in bright enough that they're interesting even while alive.
  97. Patema Inverted
    Yoshiura keeps the story fairly linear, while playing with perspective and composing many stunning, vertiginous images that consider the different possibilities of being at war with gravity.
  98. 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.
  99. Voices in Wartime
    Poorly organized mishmash of archival war films, scholarly chatter, and literary quotations.
  100. Hope Springs
    Jones and Streep give likable enough performances as a humane monster and a human victim. But their characters never become more than that.
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