Village Voice's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. A Good Day to Die Hard
    The movie is constructed like a window some kid broke and then tried to glue back together.
  2. The Bitter Buddha
    The Bitter Buddha is very funny, and for all its bitterness, Eddie Pepitone's comedy is a taste that's easy to acquire.
  3. Lost in Thailand
    Zheng errs on the side of improvisatory and lazily assembled Apatow-esque narrative episodes; many of those scenes are amiably goofy, but it all holds together based on his cast's charm and energy.
  4. Almost in Love
    Almost in Love has audacity and theatrical immediacy working for it. There's also some really impressive sound design. And that's it, pretty much.
  5. No
    No uses the actual commercial material the opposition created for its anti-Pinochet campaign and—re-creating the behind-the-scenes filming—deftly appropriates mediated history for fiction.
  6. Shanghai Calling
    Shanghai Calling eventually reveals itself to be just another stale tale about the virtue of morality over ambition.
  7. Saving Lincoln
    The tragic ending the material demands precludes viewers from complaining that the movie is the most unpleasant thing that could happen in a theater.
  8. The Jeffrey Dahmer Files
    Thompson assembles his footage with an expert's touch, but what his film lacks is its own perspective on these atrocities.
  9. Beautiful Creatures
    Director Richard LaGravenese, who also adapted the novel, lavishes the material with greater wit than its demographic demands, and the central love story feels warm-blooded—the air prickles between the leads.
  10. The Berlin File
    The Berlin File keeps narrative coherence far down on a priority list that privileges expertly choreographed hand-to-hand combat, hair-raising stunt work...and such familiar genre accoutrements as secret rooms hidden behind bookshelves, shiny metallic attaché cases, and pens concealing fast-acting vials of poison.
  11. Like Someone in Love
    The movie's sense of immutable desire resonates well after the lights have come up.
  12. The Sorcerer and the White Snake
    Visually unspectacular and emotionally stillborn, The Sorcerer and the White Snake fails as both a fantasy and a romance.
  13. The Last Gladiators
    Blending archival footage and new interviews with Nilan, his family, journalists, and fellow combatants, Gibney celebrates hockey's fisticuff traditions while also recognizing how such brutality ultimately takes its greatest toll on those who perpetrate it.
  14. Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder
    Christopher Felver's stumbling hagiography Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder does no wrong by its celebrated subject-- but it never illuminates him, either.
  15. A Rubberband Is an Unlikely Instrument
    Without any engaging small-scale human drama or larger social or culture-clash import, the film comes across as trivial, and too often also indulgent and pretentious.
  16. Would You Rather
    Would You Rather verges on genuine intrigue at times, but it's ultimately just a slasher without the gore.
  17. Porfirio
    Landes's tone is never salacious or exploitative, nor for that matter pandering or sentimental. This is a sui generis work—warm, sporadically funny, deeply human, and altogether beguiling.
  18. The Playroom
    The Playroom jettisons all things cute, but still takes flight by portraying the characters, adult and juvenile, under direct lighting, and asking you if you care about them.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Girls Against Boys
    The obligatory lesbian kiss is checked off like a box on a clipboard, but the B-horror standbys that might rescue the film from self-serious tedium are nowhere to be found.
  20. David
    Thankfully, as David's ostentatious subplot-hopping becomes routine, Nambiar's stylistic experiment coalesces into a moving set of faith-based confrontations. It's thrilling to watch Nambiar futz around with tone and style for the sake of establishing a thematic progression.
  21. Night Across the Street
    Proof that Ruiz was still teeming with ideas himself, Night is a characteristic work of surreal wit and circuitousness—and the filmmaker's winking but mournful goodbye.
  22. Identity Thief
    McCarthy gets bashed about like a Stooge, and she bashes back with riotous abandon. Sadly, the rest of the movie is a shambles. So, let it be said, this one time only: Here is a comedy that really could use more inter-gender violence.
  23. The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia
    The rotting corpses, projectile insect vomit, and creepy geezers in black arrive pretty much on cue, as does the great Cicely Tyson as the obligatory old blind woman who "sees" more than most people with two good eyes. It's her upper bridge, though, that's truly the scariest thing in the whole movie.
  24. A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
    With neither the moral bite of satire nor a voluptuary surrender that really basks in shallowness, this is a vague, unsatisfying work.
  25. Caesar Must Die
    Almost as much as the play itself, the rehearsals are staged; the inmates learning to act, then, are acting like inmates who are learning to act. This leads to some on-the-nose scenes in which they observe the parallels between the text and their own lives.
  26. Side Effects
    If Side Effects, an immensely pleasurable thriller centering around psychotropic drugs, really is Steven Soderbergh's final big-screen film, as the director claims it will be, then he has peaked in the Valley of the Dolls.
  27. Lore
    Shortland draws fine work from her actors, particularly the haunting Rosendahl, who manages to seem by turns a perfectly unbending Nazi youth, a frightened little girl forced to grow up too quickly, and a sensuous young woman bursting into bloom.
  28. Warm Bodies
    The film's intentions are way too good for its own good, producing bloodless romance and more shamefully bloodless carnage.
  29. Bullet to the Head
    Stallone looks great (even if his face doesn't quite move when he talks), while Hill (48 Hours, The Warriors) brings lean economy to the film's bloody, unapologetic mayhem.
  30. Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary
    Oblique and thickly layered with rhetoric, this account does little to illuminate Mumia the man, but it sets Mumia the statue aglow.
  31. Sound City
    Dave Grohl's Sound City is an exciting, sometime illuminating documentary about how a squad of technicians and engineers in a hole-in-the-Valley music studio helped great rock 'n' rollers make great rock 'n' roll.
  32. Little Fugitive (re-release)
    The film's genius is how completely it tunes in to his 
experience, delicately outlining Joey's private moments of shame, elation, despondency, and pride.
  33. Koch
    It's an effective primer on a voluble and charismatic mayor who embodied the spirit of the city he loved.
  34. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
    The Brothers Grimm may have come up with some cruel, weird material in their day, but they'd never condone actor abuse like this.
  35. The Gatekeepers
    The existence of The Gatekeepers is its own chief statement. You don't get the sense that it's any easier for these men to question Israel's leadership from the safety of retirement.
  36. As Luck Would Have It
    Iglesia's slick and frisky direction stirs up some hearty stock-character performances, stoking and stretching out the tension, but it all still feels like black comedy by the numbers.
  37. Movie 43
    It's the kind of thing you feel you should laugh at through a phlegmy, hacking cough-and it does get laughs, if inconsistently, predictable given the circumstances of production.
  38. Supporting Characters
    Frequently funny, Schechter's movie is also shrewd in its handling of the tensions between longtime friends and co-workers as professional opportunities dwindle and off-the-job romantic drama trickles into the cutting room.
  39. Resolution
    Ambiguity enlivens the smart, knotty Resolution, which routinely nods to its own artificiality while positing storytelling as a constantly evolving beast apt to save your life one moment and consume you the next.
  40. Nana
    A fiction film that documents the unpredictable, unscripted actions of its pint-size lead, Nana offers new ways of thinking about childhood, or, at the very least, about children in movies.
  41. 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.
  42. Knife Fight
    Throughout, Knife Fight feels like TV, like a half-season of some promising cable show stuffed into a 98-minute film that never really builds or surprises.
  43. Birders: The Central Park Effect
    Kimball's bird footage is attractive on its own, but the way he positions his birders in conversation with one another is why Birders soars.
  44. Mumbai Mirror
    Mumbai Mirror might not be consistently exciting, but it is mostly irresistible.
  45. The Pirogue
    For all the tense interpersonal conflicts and the inevitable, if thrilling, stormy-seas set piece, what proves most striking are the exactly rendered little moments.
  46. The Taste of Money
    Is there such a thing as "tastefully smutty"? Director Im Sang-soo's moody and semi-Shakespearian The Taste of Money walks that line with some artfully lit humping and cross-generational seduction.
  47. John Dies at the End
    John Dies at the End is a product of a parallel universe where slacker flippancy never got old-and, oh, it is terrible.
  48. Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
    It's fitting that this film of people making do with what they have should itself look somewhat humble, without lyricism, a work not of beauty but of work-which is the thing that makes it beautiful, no matter who directed it.
  49. Broken City
    Broken City slogs through such fatigued plot "twists" as having one character confess to another without realizing he's being recorded. The actors look generally unhappy to be here, most of all Crowe, who seems even more miserable than he did in "Les Misérables."
  50. The Last Stand
    Kim finally lets loose, and the imaginatively choreographed mayhem that ensues - culminating in two fast cars chasing each other across a pesky cornfield - can be a wonder to behold.
  51. Our School
    Despite the efforts of many interviewees to seem broad-minded, Nicoara has a knack for ferreting out moments that reveal actual Romanian attitudes.
  52. Stolen Seas
    The protracted 2008 ship-napping of the CEC Future...is couched in illuminating context.
  53. Brief Reunion
    Beautifully filmed but written without the psychological depth or sleight of hand of the best thrillers.
  54. Matru ki Bijlee ka Mandola
    Save for a couple of visually engaging dance numbers, mostly shot with hand-held digital cameras, MKBKM is dishearteningly banal.
  55. Hors Satan (Outside Satan)
    Ultimately less an arty provocation than a secular invocation, Outside Satan seems almost helplessly exploratory, an honest account of groping for grace.
  56. LUV
    Although Common and Rainey make a well-matched duo, their chemistry is frequently squandered by a script that boxes them into impossible roles in one clichéd scene after another.
  57. Mama
    Mama never delivers the primal terror its premise would suggest.
  58. A Haunted House
    Are the movie's half-dozen genuine laughs there just to tease the audience? What can we do to keep "A Haunted House 2" from happening?
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Struck by Lightning
    Struck by Lightning means well, but its gentle dissection of high school cliques brings nothing new to the genre, except the fact that being out isn't the problem for the hero, Carson (Colfer).
  60. Uprising (2013)
    In his concise, accessible oral history of Egypt's 2011 revolution, director Fredrik Stanton stitches together voices of the activists and organizers at the center of the events that led to the end of President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year reign.
  61. Let My People Go!
    Mikael Buch's debut feature is silly and sweet, but also paper thin and mostly unimaginative: a series of cartoonish vignettes during which a generically eccentric Jewish clan confronts movie-family problems (adultery, divorce, health scares, tense sibling relationships).
  62. I Am Not a Hipster
    The film's energy is frequently low, befitting that of its main character, a stalled, self-loathing, San Diego–based indie musician named Brook (Dominic Bogart), breathing contempt for anyone asking him personal questions.
  63. Fairhaven
    Messina's performance has a lived-in, emotional messiness, but the film is nothing but clichés.
  64. My Best Enemy
    Getting even is wearying in My Best Enemy, a banal World War II thriller dependent on contrived role reversals.
  65. High Tech, Low Life
    Whatever their orientation, both men are intrepid in pursuing the truth, the consequences of which are made clear in a series of terrifying late-film crackdowns.
  66. Clandestine Childhood
    A charming, involving first feature, Clandestine Childhood muscles its familiar coming-of-age material into something more vibrant and urgent than the usual.
  67. The Baytown Outlaws
    A stew of cartoon stereotypes, violence, and "Freebird" cast in a skuzzy "Sons of Anarchy" mold.
  68. $ellebrity
    Mazur miscalculates when he tries to direct viewers' outrage at stars' inability to walk down the street without getting cameras thrust in their faces. He's on far surer ground when he uses his on-screen subjects to decry the proliferation of gossip outlets, such as TMZ.
  69. Storage 24
    The eventual appearance of creature fodder in the form of a crazy old coot who lives in the storage facility, as well as a sequel-promising closing note borrowed from innumerable predecessors, ultimately exposes Storage 24 as a monster from a familiar mother.
  70. Gangster Squad
    The proximity of horrible headlines scarcely matters - released on any day of any calendar year, Gangster Squad would be a crime against cinematic sensibility.
  71. Texas Chainsaw 3D
    Discredit director John Luessenhop for giving us 3-D visuals reminiscent of "Jaws 3-D": That slab of meat's coming right for us! Try as he might to honor the original - flashbulb transitions, a skeevy (yet buff) hitchhiker, metal doors, and meat hooks - there's little of its mounting dread.
  72. Dabangg 2
    Mostly likable thanks to its creators' preference for light-hearted mugging over self-serious teeth-gnashing.
  73. A Dark Truth
    The film's heart is in exactly the right place, but there's not a brain in its pretty little head.
  74. A Bottle in the Gaza Sea (Une bouteille à la mer)
    Although smoothly directed, A Bottle in the Gaza Sea has little visual personality or dramatic urgency. What might have been a tough and adult take on a bond full of hope but thwarted by war plays more like an after-school special.
  75. 56 Up
    By now, grandchildren are ever-present, and stasis has set in. Apted's entire project is awesome in scale but subject to inevitable diminishing returns.
  76. My Brooklyn
    As a paean to the sort of vibrant, quickly disappearing community that Brooklyn represents less now than it did in the past, her film works well; as a genuine study, it sometimes falls short.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tabu
    Tabu manages to be both classical and modern, ironic and heartbreaking.
  78. Allegiance
    Without its topical pretext and overzealous patriotism, Allegiance would be just another generic action film.
  79. Promised Land
    Van Sant knows how to display the common touch, but the movie is a hard sell whose ending is never in doubt.
  80. Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away
    The ravishing and kitschy Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away is the rare movie whose title serves as an accurate indicator of whether you will enjoy seeing it.
  81. Not Fade Away
    It's a small gem with a killer rock soundtrack, well worth seeking out amid all the awards-season Sturm und Drang.
  82. This Is 40
    Much like marriage, This Is 40 is somewhat formless, and it almost never hurries up. But life is improved by having the option.
  83. On the Road
    Here is one glimmer of truth in what's otherwise a deliberately unfinished fraud - another "primitive" postwar antique repurposed for boutique sale.
  84. Jack Reacher
    Cruise is definitely too short for the gig, but in this first fight, he proves his tough-guy chops. Outraged Reacher readers can stand down.
  85. The Impossible
    These horrors, and the absorbing performances of Watts and McGregor, will soon be undermined by a surfeit of sentiment.
  86. Aquí y Allá (Here and There)
    The film is as simple, straightforward, and elegant as its title.
  87. Barbara
    A transfixing Cold War thriller set in the East Germany of 1980, Christian Petzold's superb Barbara is made even more vivid by its subtle overlay of the golden-era "woman's picture," the woman in question being Dr. Barbara Wolff, brilliantly played by Nina Hoss in her fifth film with the writer-director.
  88. The Girl
    Hernandez is soulful and affecting, though, and Cornish embodies Ashley's self-centered character with nuance and subtlety.
  89. West of Memphis
    That makes this the most rare of films: one that indisputably matters. And one that stuns.
  90. Les Miserables
    For the more Hooper tries - and oh, how he tries, ratcheting the filth amp to 11 and shooting almost everything with an arsenal of wide-angled, handheld cameras - the more the moist-eyed storybook romanticism of the source material proves resilient to his efforts.
  91. Django Unchained
    Like all of the best pop art, Tarantino's film is both seriously entertaining and seriously thoughtful, rattling the cage of race in America on-screen and off.
  92. Amour
    Haneke remains, by his rules, infallible. So what? A movie in which incident is as spare as it is in Amour can certainly be great; a movie in which ideas and feelings are so sparse cannot.
  93. Zero Dark Thirty
    It's a sensational performance by Chastain...She's a most unlikely leading lady, pale and slight of stature, with a raging mane of strawberry blond hair, but she holds the screen with a feral intensity, an obsessive's self-possession.
  94. The Guilt Trip
    Pairing Rogen and Streisand turns out to be inspired.
  95. Saving Grace B. Jones
    The film packs in more characters, subplots, and moments of nostalgic detail than it can gracefully accommodate, and the pacing often feels rushed.
  96. Lost Angels: Skid Row Is My Home
    The film would have been more powerful if it also included a man or woman who wasn't lovable once you got to know him or her--maybe one of the young crack or meth addicts whose violent demeanors, as explained by an old-timer, have considerably shifted the dynamics of street life.
  97. Trashed
    The form is straightforward, if a little meandering, as is the message: We have to fix this.
  98. Stand Up Guys
    But by the end, the feeling the movie inspires isn't suspense but relief: Thank God that the producers behind "Grumpy Old Men" and "The Sunshine Boys" didn't yet have Viagra to joke about.
  99. Quartet
    Sentimental and pandering.
  100. Any Day Now
    Straining for "teachable moments," the film has one noteworthy, unintentional function: to remind us that though LGBT rights are continually evolving, the laws of kitsch remain immutable.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »