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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    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das
    Frindel can't rescue Kagel from marginalization as a New Agey preacher man, but he does portray this hippest of all Krishnas as someone who deeply believes in the self-sacrificing mantra he chants, even if the very act of starring in a film seems to threaten it.
  2. Venus and Serena
    What Venus and Serena does extraordinarily well is capture the work ethic and undersung smarts of the sisters while taking viewers deep into their enviably close relationship.
  3. Stories We Tell
    This wondrous, absorbing little picture covers a great deal of winding meta-territory, reflecting on the ways in which a single family's story can be told—or maybe, more accurately, examining the idea that there's no such thing as a "single story."
  4. The Great Gatsby
    It's an expressionist work, a story reinvented to the point of total self-invention, polished to a handsome sheen and possessing no class or taste beyond the kind you can buy. And those are the reasons to love it.
  5. Greetings from Tim Buckley
    The film articulates this dimension of the story, regrettably, in little more than biopic platitudes and daddy-issue clichés...But it's not all bad. Badgley delivers a nuanced performance of such ferocity he almost singlehandedly makes a conventional film seem loose and improvisatory.
  6. What Maisie Knew
    The film is admirably committed to simulating the messy experience of life as a real Maisie might live it. But sometimes, as she's tuckered out on her exquisite linens beneath gorgeous exposed brick and shelves of handcrafted toys, Maisie's world feels easier to admire than it is to worry over.
  7. Something in the Air
    In Something in the Air, that past—a version of Assayas's own—is rendered in visuals so specific and evocative, it's perpetually alive.
  8. Voyage to Italy (re-release)
    Voyage to Italy is close to watching actual strangers suffer loneliness despite being together. It can leave an aching bruise, but only if you're paying attention.
  9. Unmade in China
    All of this could be very funny, but while the film does deliver some strong comic turns, far too much time is spent watching an inactive Kofman whining about his lot.
  10. Post Tenebras Lux
    Confusion often reigns here, but the film offers a degree of lush beauty that makes sitting through it well worth the occasional frustrations.
  11. Turtle Hill, Brooklyn
    Nothing is forced in Ryan Gielen's deceptively simple story, with the pressures bubbling forth as naturally as the good cheer that defines so much of the film.
  12. Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn
    Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn's vision of the Mafia comes filtered through a needlessly complex screenplay, as if the creators felt the need to prove they've seen a few Arnaud Desplechin films alongside Goodfellas.
  13. Aroused
    Aspires to be a consciousness-raising documentary but is only as deep as a tube of lipstick.
  14. The Happy House
    It's hard to be certain whether the film's placidity is an ironic gag, but the modesty at work turns out to be pretty likable, as strange as that sounds.
  15. The Source Family
    With some focus and critical perspective, The Source Family might have documented more than a spectacle of its time.
  16. Free the Mind
    Ambo's argument is frayed by her arbitrary recommendations of meditation as a panacea for unrelated psychological difficulties. Even more baffling, the director neglects to define this culturally and geographically variable practice with any exactitude.
  17. Kiss of the Damned
    Cassavetes puts over this simple, poorly acted story with moody lighting, self-consciously "beautiful" gore, and an annoying penchant for impressionistic quick-cut flashbacks, all of which get in the way of rather than enhance the supposed fun.
  18. Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's
    Fun and frothy, a fan's mash note.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Iceman
    Ultimately The Iceman is a blend of Mafia-film cliché and the jarring reality of lives undone by crime.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Caroline and Jackie
    Clark lures you into the chaos through beautiful visuals like the sparkly evening lights of an L.A. dinner party, and the night's principal characters, two attractive brunette sisters...Both irritate. That's the gist and charm of this family's dynamic, which is so real that at times it's unbearable.
  21. Generation Um...
    Reeves is able to make such potentially silly material as this strangely compelling, but his hard work is ultimately a drop in an otherwise empty bucket.
  22. Occupy Love
    The photography is beautiful, the scenes of crowds and their signs arresting, and the interviews with individual protesters...are often inspiring.
  23. Wuss
    A witty black comedy with sociological aspirations that hits unexpected emotional marks while nimbly sidestepping clichés.
  24. Desperate Acts of Magic
    Desperate Acts of Magic is a pleasant little film.
  25. 1st Night
    The depressingly predictable script—and tendency of everyone involved to jump to ridiculous conclusions—suggests a combination of Noises Off at best, and at worst, Three's Company.
  26. Love Is All You Need
    Formulaic despite its trespasses, Love Is All You Need leaves the lingering sensation that more fun could have been had if the film cut loose and lived a little.
  27. Dead Man's Burden
    Dead Man's Burden is a fine example of economical storytelling.
  28. Iron Man 3
    The big problems with Iron Man 3 are less specific to the movie itself than they are characteristic of the hypermalaise that’s infected so many current mega-blockbusters—too much plot, too much action, too many characters, too many pseudo-feelings.
  29. G-Dog
    Once the stakes are raised in the final third, Mock allows her camera to roam over its subjects’ faces and let their story tell itself—a wise choice, made not a moment too soon.
  30. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
    What saves the film—and grandly—is Nance’s wildly ambitious visual imagination. Teetering somewhere between film school precocity and impressively assured audaciousness...It’s almost hypnotic in its style and genre promiscuity.
  31. The Big Wedding
    Many Hollywood films are founded on privilege, but few are as open and nasty about their racism, misogyny, and homophobia.
  32. Holla II
    Dumb as they're written, even Holla II's characters are smart enough to want to exit this clunker as fast as they can.
  33. Mortem
    The initial scenes, thick with creep-show ambiance, promise more fulfilling madness than what actually transpires once the out-of-nowhere second guest reveals who she is.
  34. It Takes a Man and a Woman
    The final leg of director Cathy Garcia-Molina's exceptionally broad, partly English-dubbed cockles-warmer of a trilogy outright apes Hollywood rom-com formulas with a personality so affably lobotomized it wouldn't dare frighten delicate tastes.
  35. Filly Brown
    Youssef Delara and Michael D. Olmos's variation on the too-familiar subgenre (the rising inner-city superstar here is a Latina tomboy) is more heartfelt, humanistic, and entertaining than such a clichéd showbiz cautionary tale has any right to be.
  36. Midnight's Children
    Even if you've read the novel, and are prepared for the long running time and haphazard structure, this isn't a movie you should expect to feel or even closely follow. See it if Midnight's Children is a novel you always wanted the gist of.
  37. The Numbers Station
    There are some decent shootouts, but the movie's strongest assets are the soulful performances Danish director Kasper Barfoed, making his American debut, draws from Cusack and Akerman.
  38. Hamesima X
    The mysticism chokes a bit on its own tail, but is tempered by the underlying human drama.
  39. Paradise: Love
    It might be the most lonesome film about a tropical vacation we've seen, and the greatest film ever made about the weird socioeconomics of tourism.
  40. Tai Chi Hero
    This sequel is sluggish and rote where its predecessor was aggressively perky and desperate to please...Tai Chi Hero is more Tai Chi Business as Usual.
  41. Graceland
    Striking the right balance between interior and exterior can mean the difference between compelling drama and accidental melodrama. Writer-director Ron Morales just misses equilibrium in the visually arresting Filipino thriller Graceland.
  42. Arthur Newman
    Fun for a bit, things soon turn silly.
  43. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
    At times it's dense and sluggish, too much like a novel. But there is some exhilaration to be had.
  44. At Any Price
    Quaid has a genius for broadcasting conflicting impulses. His body language twists uncomfortably away from his intentions, and his smile is built on the chassis of a cringe.
  45. Mud
    It's too bad...that a movie so attuned to natural currents in the end gets caught up in Hollywood's impossible ones.
  46. Pain & Gain
    When the story runs off the rails and crashes headfirst into a too-perfect ending, it's because Bay was led astray by the same things that got the Sun Gym Gang into this mess in the first place: superficiality, ambition, and the belief that reality just isn't good enough.
  47. Un Flic (re-release)
    Haunted by death-obsessed men of action, Un Flic (A Cop) is a fitting final act for noir master Jean-Pierre Melville
  48. Portrait of Jason (re-release)
    The roles of affect and artifice in mediating the realities of racism, homophobia, and poverty are perhaps the true subjects of Shirley Clarke's landmark doc.
  49. Love Sick Love
    Attempts to transform meet-cute romance into an absurdist fatal-attraction thriller, but ends up neither fish nor fowl.
  50. In the House
    In the House is a mystery, but it investigates a far tougher riddle than what makes Claude tick—it's trying to figure out why, exactly, voyeurism and mystery delight us so. In the process, it delights us.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm
    This is one of the most fully rounded, unsentimental portraits of an artist you'll ever see on film.
  52. Deceptive Practices: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay
    Here's a movie with magic.
  53. Herman's House
    Herman's House coasts on the strength of its portrait of two systemic outsiders.
  54. The Lords of Salem
    The movie is eerily photographed (by Brandon Trost), but never suspenseful or scary, and eventually, events descend into goat-sacrificing silliness.
  55. Oblivion
    The good news: Here's a lavish, serious science-fiction picture, one that on occasion transcends big-budget hit-making convention to glance against grandeur...Which brings us to Tom Cruise, the not-necessarily-good news. However engaging its end-times mysteries, Oblivion is still a Tom Cruise movie.
  56. Scary Movie 5
    Scary Movie V murdered my capacity to feel joy.
  57. Nautanki Saala!
    Nautanki Saala's creators spend so much time disinterestedly transitioning from one plot point to the next that they only effectively establish the haphazard nature of RP and Nandini's romance.
  58. Fists of Legend
    The battles are staged with moderate intensity but a dispiriting lack of surprise that's also characteristic of the story in general.
  59. Antiviral
    Papa Cronenberg must be proud, but be advised: If there's a blood test in your future, book it before seeing this movie.
  60. The Revolutionary
    As a filmmaker, Drasnin should not have relied so singularly on Rittenberg's testimony.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    American Meat
    American Meat won't fully counter the negative sentiment that the meat industry has, but it's not entirely propaganda, either.
  62. Oconomowoc
    Like the characters, all conversation and action in the film take turns amounting to nothing.
  63. Chashme Baddoor
    Chashme Baddoor's modest charms dissipate quickly, but they're certainly real.
  64. 42
    The movie sugars up Robinson's story, and like too many period pieces it summons some vague idea of a warmer, simpler past by bathing everything in thick amber light, as if each scene is one of those preserved mosquitoes that begat the monsters of Jurassic Park.
  65. It's a Disaster
    The story's outline may be familiar, but its emphasis and quality are not.
  66. To the Wonder
    For all the absurdity, there's also something strangely touching about it, maybe because for once Malick has allowed himself to be unsure. To the Wonder is an irresolute piece of work, a sketchbook of a movie, one made by a human being rather than an august master.
  67. 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.
  68. This Ain't California
    This Ain't California is a masterful lie that illuminates a little-known reality.
  69. Disconnect
    Disconnect might play better a decade from now, when it's more clearly a compendium of contemporary fears rather than some dire expression of them.
  70. Paris-Manhattan
    Shallow, witless but pretty enough French ode to Woody Allen.
  71. Stranger Things
    The bond between this university graduate and the ragged drifter comes to seem vital and true, undercutting the full-blown sentimentality of the conclusion.
  72. The Brass Teapot
    Wearing out its welcome long before its moralizing finale, the film...does manage to mine contemporary fears about the increasing worthlessness of a college degree.
  73. Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner
    Viewers may find the narrative aimlessness here frustrating.
  74. Evil Dead
    The plotting as a whole feels fresh, as does the emphasis on women strong enough to defend themselves.
  75. Thale
    Any initial, intriguing otherworldly atmosphere is negated by answers that are more pedestrian than terrifying.
  76. Free Angela & All Political Prisoners
    Thanks to Lynch's expert pacing and modulation of narrative tension, even viewers who already know the outcome of the film's central incident will likely be pulled to the edges of their seats.
  77. Simon Killer
    If Simon Killer's tragic drift is predictable, the seedy particulars still engross. And the storytelling is first-rate.
  78. The Company You Keep
    Far from engaged, the film practically surrenders in an arthritic faint.
  79. Trance
    Trance packs many reveals, and the guessing game of who's who and what's what continues throughout. But with its terribly campy setup (hypnotherapy and gangsters? One's inner child and murderous showdowns?), Trance could have gotten some mileage out of comedy
  80. Upstream Color
    To be bewildered by Upstream Color is to be human; the story is obtuse by design, though the filmmaking is X-Acto precise. But it's a bloodless movie, and its ideas aren't as tricky or complex as Carruth's arch, mannered approach might suggest.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    No Place on Earth
    The stats relayed at the movie's end...almost have more impact than the narrative.
  82. The Story of Luke
    The Story of Luke is a charming little film in need of a bit more grit.
  83. Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal
    While secret handshakes are amusingly depicted as the key to building trust and friendship, it's Stephen McHattie's greedy agent...that truly hammers home the film's depiction of the art world as fueled by rapacious, kill-or-be-killed bloodlust.
  84. Lotus Eaters
    Lotus Eaters, which McGuinness co-wrote with Brendan Grant, is maddeningly shallow—maybe that's the point—but McGuinness does have talent.
  85. Smyrna: The Destruction of a Cosmopolitan City - 1900-1922
    Filmmaker Maria Ilioú's uninspired flake of talking-head Wikipedia cinema focuses on the forgotten Anatolian port city's post-World War I years.
  86. Bert Stern: Original Madman
    Bert Stern: Original Madman is a sometimes uncomfortably intimate portrait of a man who seems unsure if he has a place left in the culture he helped to shape.
  87. Tomorrow You're Gone
    What starts out as a moderately interesting thriller in the vein of Blue Velvet and Angel Heart ends up less than the sum of its portentous parts.
  88. Down the Shore
    The saddest part of this movie that oh-so-wants you to know it is sad is that Jennings sets up a pretty interesting dynamic, then bails on telling a story.
  89. Tattoo Nation
    The images of the style as it evolves, and especially those that fill the last 15 minutes of "Tattoo", are so beautiful and often majestic that they overshadow the film's small shortcomings.
  90. Himmatwala
    The pseudo-progressivism inherent in Himmatwala, an action-comedy remake of the 1983 Bollywood action-drama of the same name, makes toxic camp of otherwise meaningless kitsch.
  91. Tyler Perry's Temptation
    Temptation’s refusal to find nuance in its didactic worldview ensures that the film will ultimately only succeed for audiences already in agreement with it.
  92. The Host
    As with the Twilight series, The Host's infelicities—drab dialogue, ridiculous plotting, more emotional crises than there is story—are enlivened by its thematic eccentricities.
  93. Mental
    Mental skewers the easy-on and -off labels of psychiatry, but some sequences, particularly one of "bad dreams," are sophomoric. The movie's real mess-up was to move Shaz into melodrama at the movie's end.
  94. G.I. Joe: Retaliation
    It's not enough to call this the rare franchise action movie to bring the goods; it's the even rarer one whose creators seem to understand what the goods even are.
  95. Wrong
    The film's heady buzz is invigorating, and there are substantial pleasures—and laughs—to be found in all its real-life-just-gone-sour strangeness.
  96. The Happy Poet
    Off-handed and yet quite artfully observed, The Happy Poet's winsome deadpan offsets its skewering of class and sustainability issues, right through to a tricky ending that, like Bill himself, may not be what it seems.
  97. Silver Case
    Some movies really are unwatchable, but a reviewer, as an underpaid but loyal public servant, must persevere. Take, for example, Silver Case, the truly terrible debut feature of writer-director Christian Filippella and writer Jason A. White.
  98. Room 237
    Even if the theories don't persuade you, the film fascinates. It's revelatory about the nature of spectatorship in an era when technology allows audiences to watch films frame by frame.
  99. The Place Beyond the Pines
    The Place Beyond the Pines is a much bigger canvas, and scene by scene it can be riveting...But the disparate pieces never quite jell; the movie is all trees and no forest.
  100. Detour
    The performance and filmmaking are invigorating.
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