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. The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till
    A triumph of documentary activism nine years in the making.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    After Innocence
    Both riveting and disturbing.
  3. Innocence
    Innocence is not merely the year's best first film, but one of the great statements on the politics of being 'tween.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Gilles' Wife
    Devos's performance is an expert workshop of internalized emotions and silent forbearance.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Far Side of the Moon
    Reworking his own raw material, Lepage spins a rich, moving film that acknowledges humanity's power to break out of Earth's daily gravity; in the process, he leaves audiences floating.
  6. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
    Robust, engrossing, and surprisingly restrained in saving most of its effects for the grand finale, the first Chronicles of Narnia installment eschews Harry Potter's satanic subtext and "The Lord of the Rings'" Wagnerian cosmology. It may be as close to adult-friendly kid fare as Hollywood will ever get.
  7. Caché (Hidden)
    Binoche and Auteuil are both quietly sensational in their fracturing personae, but the film is Haneke's premier postmodern assault--less visceral, perhaps, than "Code Unknown" and the criminally underappreciated "Time of the Wolf," but more thoughtful and, in the end, deeper in the afterplay.
  8. Fateless
    Fateless has a remarkable absence of sentimentality. The movie is obviously artistic, but there are no cheap or superfluous effects. It's almost mystically translucent.
  9. The Spirit of the Beehive
    Beehive is a graceful and potent lyric on children's vulnerable hunger, but it's also a sublime study on cinema's poetic capacity to reflect and hypercharge reality.
  10. The Fallen Idol (re-release)
    The Fallen Idol has been overshadowed by the noir comedy, giddy style, and Cold War thematics of Reed and Greene's subsequent sensation "The Third Man," but (in similarly dealing with the nature of betrayal) The Fallen Idol is actually a superior psychological drama.
  11. Black Orpheus
    Camus's film remains a revivifying experience - and a mid-winter oasis. Born and bred in France, Camus made other films, and lots of French TV, but Black Orpheus may still be the greatest one-hit-wonder import we've ever seen.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hard Candy
    A film that forges identification with its victimized heroine like none I've seen in decades. (The Nova Scotia–born Page, a Molly Ringwald type who was only 15 when the movie was made, leaves little doubt as to whether a kid can play a grown-up's icky game and win.)
  13. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
    An explicit ode to mortality, not without a certain grim humor.
  14. Army of Shadows
    It's here that Melville fully achieved his notion of the sublime, applying "Le Samouraï's" "empty" compositions and near theatrical blocking, as well as its methodical suspense, cosmic fatalism, and sense of grim solitude, to a subject far closer to his heart, namely his own World War II experiences.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Prairie Home Companion
    Keillor's modest subservience to Altman's group dynamic feels downright gallant, and in the context of the veteran director's most humanistic movie by a wide margin, it certainly has its rewards.
  16. Gabrielle
    At once robust and ethereal, this is an existential ghost story, with fresh blood pulsing through its veins.
  17. Overlord [re-release]
    It's still a feat of period filmmaking. More than that, Overlord's revivification of a wasteland Europe offers up a powerful whip lesson for the postwar complacent: that the waging of war, even this most romanticized of conflicts, means bringing a corpse-mountain hell to someone's home neighborhood.
  18. 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.
  19. My Country, My Country
    It seems easily the most valuable piece of film to emerge about the war in all of its three-plus years.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Half Nelson
    The audacity of making an inner-city drama in which the white-male authority figure is the crackhead finds its equal in Gosling's already legendary performance, a high-wire act that's gutsiest for its unconscionable charm.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Illusionist
    Beautifully acted and handsomely mounted, this gorgeous period piece is an intelligent and intriguing exploration of "the dark arts" -- less dependent on mere hocus-pocus than on the convincing journey of the soul undertaken by its hero.
  22. LOL
    The characters are a bit too OCD for LOL to work as the definitive commentary on technology and human relationships that it strives to be...But the movie is unusually attentive to the ironies of communications technology.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sweet Land
    Directing with a light comic touch and a palpable affection for the characters, Selim draws pitch-perfect acting from a large cast and achieves breathtaking levels of color and clarity from old-fashioned 35mm.
  24. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
    Indeed, the man who invented Borat is a masterful improviser, brilliant comedian, courageous political satirist, and genuinely experimental film artist. Borat makes you laugh but Baron Cohen forces you to think.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Volver
    Almodóvar isn't what he used to be (who is?), but he's a master of the medium nevertheless, deploying color and light and shadow not merely to express emotions but to tap into ours, directing the blood flow of the audience as much as he directs the movie.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    For Your Consideration
    It's as weird and whimsical an invention as Guest's "Waiting for Guffman," "Best in Show," or "A Mighty Wind."
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bridge to Terabithia
    Director Gabor Csupo of Rugrats "fame" steer clear of cutesy tween stereotypes, but it's Jess's relationship with his father, played by Robert Patrick, that elevates Terabithia from a good kids movie to a classic contender.
  28. Reign Over Me
    If Binder has a considerably heavier hand when it comes to metaphor, his movie nevertheless remains buoyant because the feelings in it are immutable, and because Sandler has never before held the screen with greater intensity.
  29. Offside
    Offside is blatantly metaphoric and powerfully concrete, deceptively simple and highly sophisticated in its formal intelligence.
  30. The Lookout
    Gordon-Levitt's worth the admission all by his lonesome. He's that good--the proverbial young man with an old soul who brings unexpected depth, complexity, and sincerity to what could have been just another damaged-guy role. He's the one to look out for.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Zoo
    The beautiful and beguiling new film by Robinson Devor meditates on the Enumclaw incident through a hypnotic blend of original reporting, staged reenactment, testimony of involved parties (both zoophiles and local law enforcement), and pervasive, somewhat precious lyricism.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mala Noche
    Based on an autobiographical novella by Portland "street poet" Walt Curtis, Mala Noche (1985) was the 33-year-old Van Sant's debut feature. Shot on 16mm for $25,000, it was the first of his bittersweet odes to tender outcasts and remains the simplest and least burdened.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Live-In Maid
    The result is a film of startling insight and grace.
  34. The Hunting Party
    Like many of the best movies about war and its lingering echo, The Hunting Party is full of dark humor. Writer-director Richard Shepard, maker of 2005's "The Matador," is becoming a master at finding the right tone, balancing the seriousness of his characters' purpose with the madness of their intentions.
  35. Eastern Promises
    A rhapsodic movie directed with considerable formal intelligence and brooding power from an original screenplay by Steve Knight, Eastern Promises is very much a companion to "A History of Violence."
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Last Winter
    It's the imaginative background, and Fessenden's talent at insinuating it into the action, that counts--and unnerves--in this most chilling of global-warming movies.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Smiley Face
    On the plus side, 100 percent sober when I watched it, I can say with some authority that Dylan Haggerty has written an eleventh-hour candidate for the funniest movie of 2007, that Gregg Araki has directed his finest film since 1997's "Nowhere," and that Faris, flawless, rocks their inspired idiot odyssey in a virtuoso comedic turn.
  38. I Am Legend
    In what has been a pretty remarkable career up to now, it's this performance that fully affirms Smith as one of the great leading men of his generation.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cloverfield
    Cloverfield never stops to identify the why, whence, or whereto of its rampaging meanie—this relentless thriller stops for nothing—but as for what to call it, behold . . . al-Qaedzilla!
  40. Chris & Don. A Love Story
    With his elegant cadence, crisp comedic timing, and witty flipping of homophobic stereotypes--in his very choice and use of language--Bachardy is that story come to life: the student who eventually mirrored his teacher, the molded who became a duplicate of the mold.
  41. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
    Allen has crafted a wry and thoughtful film about the peculiar stirrings of the heart that is certainly his most accomplished piece of work since 2005's "Match Point" and arguably his funniest in the eight years since "Small Time Crooks."
  42. I Served the King of England
    A mischievously hedonistic, Chaplinesque farce, the film buoyantly but seriously traverses the horrors of World War II with a subtlety and sophistication that most American comedies cannot grasp.
  43. A Christmas Tale
    A heady plum pudding of a movie--studded with outsized performances and drenched in cinematic brio. The concoction is over-rich, yet irresistible.
  44. Wendy and Lucy
    Trembling throughout on the verge of a tearful breakdown, but far too dignified to allow her character to choke up, Williams delivers a sensationally nuanced performance that, were it not so resolutely undramatic, would constitute an aria of stoical misery.
  45. Silent Light
    The results are extraordinary. As understated as it is, the movie is both deeply absurd and powerfully affecting.
  46. Service (Serbis)
    Serbis may be a raunch-fest, but it's also a mind-trip--a raunch-fest with ideas.
  47. 12
    Miklahkov keeps 12 tops spinning at all times in the school gymnasium that serves as their deliberation room, and though the speech/conversion pattern grows a little pat, the movement toward consensus raises the further, richly complicated question of how to decide not only what is right, but what is best.
  48. Treeless Mountain
    Treeless Mountain is skillfully unsentimental--because of, but also despite, the presence of two irresistible, unself-conscious performers in virtually every scene.
  49. Tyson
    Tyson is more like a particularly riveting therapy session, with Tyson as both analyst and patient.
  50. Big Man Japan
    I hurt myself laughing at this amazingly inventive mockumentary, and because it's so good, I refuse to give away much more than an insistent recommendation.
  51. Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land
    There was no happy ending, but if Burma VJ's account of the efficacy of dictatorship threatens to crush you, the sight of a sturdy young back disappearing into the mountains, returning from a Thailand hideout for another round of bearing witness, should make your heart burst.
  52. It Might Get Loud
    It's Page, a joyful instructor and natural storyteller, who steals the spotlight (Robert who? More, please.) Only real complaint: The movie's not loud enough. They should have turned that f***er up to 11.
  53. Crude
    Remarkable documentary.
  54. The Sun
    Though he successfully humanizes Hirohito, who is shown happily shedding his divinity, Sokurov doesn't entirely exonerate him. He contrives a shock ending that, as measured as everything else in this engrossing, supremely assured movie, acknowledges one last blood sacrifice on the emperor's altar.
  55. The Secret of Kells
    Gorgeously mounted tale of enlightenment through art and courage.
  56. Close-Up
    Like nearly every other Kiarostami film, Close-Up takes questions about movies and makes them feel like questions of life and death.
  57. All About Lily Chou-Chou
    It's a uniquely lonely film, and one of the year's most memorable.
  58. Marooned in Iraq
    This lusty, heartfelt movie has a near Brueghelian visual energy and a humanist passion as contagious as its music.
  59. Murderous Maids
    Genuinely unnerving movie.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Painted Fire
    Succeeds as the rehumanizing of a near mythical figure.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Life and Debt
    Devastating, artful, and intelligent documentary.
  62. The Slaughter Rule
    The lead performances could hardly be better: Gosling, having stolen and propped up entire movies last year ("Murder by Numbers" and "The Believer"), crackles with the economical intensity of a young Tim Roth. Morse, who has racked up decades worth of idiosyncratic character parts, is monumental in this career-peak turn.
  63. The Cup
    The lovability quotient is as high as the altitude.
  64. Before Night Falls
    The film's ephemeral, semi-evasive lyricism ultimately works as a modest frame for Bardem's tender, deft portrait, which is in turn suitably expansive and rooted in the most concrete details -- Arenas's pride and anger, his unsentimental wit and defiant vitality.
  65. Shadow Boxers
    As smooth and powerfully packed as its protagonist.
  66. 42: Forty Two Up
    The 7Up series is thus one of the rare documentaries to have had a positive practical effect on the life of at least one of its subjects.
  67. The Opportunists
    Filled with vivid and likable characters, The Opportunists could be the basis for a TV series as captivating as "The Sopranos."
  68. Beautiful People
    It seems like a more witty, wise, and succinct "Magnolia."
  69. Benjamin Smoke
    As ethereal, moving, and uncompromising as its subject.
  70. Water Drops on Burning Rocks
    A movie of cutting humor, near-constant talk, and one show-stopping dance routine.
  71. The Turandot Project
    A must-see for opera lovers and a snappy diversion for cinephiles.
  72. The Back of the World
    What saves this deeply affecting film from being merely a collection of wrenching cases is Corcuera's attention to detail.
  73. Pistol Opera
    Suzuki has made the ultimate meta-movie, a self-parodying, surrealist gangster daydream as intoxicating and insubstantial as an absinthe swoon.
  74. Les Destinées
    An impressively coordinated enterprise that lasts three hours, manages a large cast, and covers a period of 30-odd years while successfully unfolding as a series of scenes from the life of a single character.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony
    Hirsch edits segments together to merge disparate voices, showing how for this movement, music was no universal language -- it was specific, pointed, and almost paranormal in its power.
    • 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.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Quai des Orfèvres [re-release]
    The visual style has an expressionistic undertow, rich in shadowy chiaroscuro compositions.
  78. Metropolis (re-release)
    The greatest of all pulp fantasies.
  79. Rififi (re-release)
    A vivid exercise in hokum that more or less invented the idea of French film noir...and not just for Americans.
  80. The House of Mirth
    Leisurely yet streamlined film, brilliantly adapted by British filmmaker Terence Davies from Edith Wharton's most powerful novel.
  81. Spring Forward
    The sense of continuing life is quietly remarkable.
  82. The Lady and the Duke
    If you can forget the world-historic significance of the mass revolution that overthrew Europe's oldest absolute monarchy -- or rather, subsume it in the mysteries of personality -- The Lady and the Duke is the stuff of human interest.
  83. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
    Self-contained, enigmatic, illuminated from within, Huppert banks a performance that pays dividends throughout the film.
  84. Affliction
    As chilly a spectacle as you're likely to see. It's like watching a comeback in an empty stadium.
  85. Wendigo
    Grounded in Fessenden's handheld camera, stuttering montage rhythms, and time-lapse photography, the engagingly primitive animated special effects contribute to a mood that's sustained through the surprisingly somber conclusion.
  86. Erin Brockovich
    This is the Julia Roberts performance her fans have been waiting for.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tosca
    Two hours fly by -- opera's a pleasure when you don't have to endure intermissions -- and even a novice to the form comes away exhilarated.
  88. One Day in September
    It could be described as the most gripping political thriller to hit the big screen in many years, although given the events it depicts through interviews, photographs, and news footage, the words "gripping" and "thriller" have inappropriately frivolous and commercial associations.
  89. Piccadilly [re-release]
    Wong is sensationally expressive and projects a modern, coolly appraising sexuality. Visually eloquent and often dazzling, the movie is no less terrific. Piccadilly is both evidence of silent cinema at its rudely aborted peak and Wong's frustrated potential to have been among its greatest stars.
  90. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    One of the best titles in movie history and a cast to match.
  91. Shanghai Noon
    Unstintingly funny -- far more so than the wince-worthy trailer -- owing to Chan's pairing with droll indie eccentric Owen Wilson, as his would-be gunslinger sidekick.
  92. Two Family House
    A fairy tale that presents love as a case of mutual enchantment, Two Family House is not only uniformly well acted, superbly designed, lovingly lit, and sensitively scored, it's as romantic as it is funny.
  93. Unknown Pleasures
    Unknown Pleasures suggests a coolly formalist reinvention of neorealism. The film is both distanced and immediate -- a fiction with the force of documentary.
  94. Once Upon a Time in China II (re-release)
    More concentrated and svelte than its precursor, Once Upon a Time II also has the benefit of fights staged by Master Yuen Wo-Ping that show Jet Li -- another camera-age hero -- to even greater advantage.
  95. Decasia
    A fierce dance of destruction. Its flame-like, roiling black-and-white inspires trembling and gratitude.
  96. My Architect
    An inspired homage to his father's work, and a bracing, bittersweet testament of filial love mixed with pain and compassion.
  97. In My Skin
    Without deploying reductive backstory or simplistic psychology, this fearless movie -- easily the year's best debut feature -- illuminates Esther's pathology as an extreme response to the mind-body split.
  98. Traffic
    Traffic is not just an ultra-procedural--it's the Big Picture, the Whole Enchilada, complete with a complicated war between two Mexican drug cartels.
  99. Love and Diane
    From first shot to last, Dworkin's movie is a continuously absorbing, sometimes revelatory, frequently moving experience; as documentary filmmaking it's not only amazingly intimate but also characterized by an unexpected lyricism.
  100. Ran
    A magisterial film, but not quite a great one.
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