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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    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mahler on the Couch
    Eccentric and expressionistic reverie on love, loss, and the birth of modern marriage.
  2. Series 7: The Contenders
    Series 7 could have turned out as ugly as the second season of "Survivor," were it not for the pleasure Minahan takes in melodrama.
  3. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
    The older Cruise gets, the more he relies on his fists. (And his abs, and his nerves — he'll never let you forget he does his own stunts, and why should he?) His body is the wonder-gizmo, and Christopher McQuarrie, writer and director of the fifth entry, Rogue Nation, keeps the camera on him like a nature show about a hungry lion.
  4. Merry Christmas
    Carion is no Jean Renoir, but he does strike an appealingly low key of tender, faintly goofy affinity between the combatants.
  5. Horns and Halos
    What emerges is not only an Underdog v. Simon Bar Sinister saga but a fascinating character study.
  6. 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.
  7. The Matrix Revolutions
    No less than the rankest demagogue, The Matrix Revolutions insists on the primacy of faith over knowledge. Once it locks and loads, however, the triumphant visuals short-circuit anything resembling abstract thought.
  8. 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.
  9. Raja
    It plays out as an unsettling solipsistic love story--an account of erotic obsession with a family relation to "Of Human Bondage."
  10. De Palma
    Paltrow and Baumbach don't get fancy with the filmmaking. They're smart enough to let De Palma's own resonant images — his gorgeous compositions, his smooth camera moves — do much of the work.
  11. Terms and Conditions May Apply
    A wide-ranging, if shallow, exploration of intrusive government surveillance practices.
  12. Enemy of the State
    Enemy of the State isn't really a smart film, but it makes a concerted stab at pretending to be one.
  13. Machete Kills
    Kills tops the 2010 original by not giving a mierda about logic or character.
  14. Khodorkovsky
    Though the PR bit is right on, Khodorkovsky goes some way toward questioning the guilt.
  15. To the Limit
    Daring enough to appeal to more than just the usual extreme-sports junkies.
  16. Hop
    Despite its scattered frenzy, Hop-thanks to its fondness for smushing together seemingly incongruous elements and Marsden's goofy, bug-eyed mugging-is just demented enough to deliver a fleeting sugar rush.
  17. Never Stand Still
    It's all pretty loose and formless, but there's enough discipline on display to thrill lovers of movement, whether amateur or advanced.
  18. Agrarian Utopia
    Raksasad manages to keep the film afloat on the real drama of his nation's political and social issues, bringing an added measure of poignancy to the quiet desperation of his characters.
  19. Left Luggage
    Krabbé alternates exaggeration with sentiment, but the main characters are relatively complex, and its surprise ending is genuinely affecting.
  20. Doctor Strange
    It's not all that strange, but it's restlessly arresting and always technically impressive. Unlike most studio franchise fantasies, Doctor Strange rewards the eye rather than assaults it.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Inspector Gadget
    Shot mostly in close-up, with nearly every action accompanied by a sound effect, the film itself is slightly hysterical.
  22. My Terrorist
    Her (Gerstel's) apparent marginalization in Israeli society renders this political psychodrama all the more depressing.
  23. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
    Star Wars: The Force Awakens steers the franchise back to its popcorn origins. It's not a Bible; it's a bantamweight blast. And that's just as it should be: a good movie, nothing more.
  24. Frozen
    Frozen is a fun ride with some catchy tunes.
  25. Are We Not Cats
    Robin uses well-timed jolts and gross-out moments to awaken his solitary characters from their stupor, to shock them into acknowledging that their existence isn’t confined to the soul’s protective shell.
  26. In This World
    Winterbottom was set on bare-bones realism, and so the scalding lyricism of ferocious terrain and sociopolitical absurdity seen in, say, "Kandahar" or "A Time for Drunken Horses," is never resourced.
  27. Yossi & Jagger
    At 71 minutes, the movie is scarcely more than an anecdote. But vivid as it is in establishing a specific milieu, its economy is its strength.
  28. Morlang
    Penning's film applies too much force behind its hairpin turns, but broad scripting and acting are counterbalanced by crisp photography, shivery sound design, and well-chosen debts.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Prophet
    Sold to the global arthouse market as the "French Scorsese," Audiard does know his genre. A Prophet, the director has said, is the "anti-Scarface."
  30. Call Her Applebroog
    The film is a vehicle for Applebroog-appreciation, daughterly and otherwise.
  31. Epic
    Epic certainly manages to tell a compelling tale. Yet in a post-Up era where animated films can pulse with profound truths, the question remains: Is mere entertainment enough?
  32. American Animal
    Bizarre, off-putting, and finally demanding of rubberneck respect, this fish-tank indie never leaves a rather lovely duplex apartment, occupied by an unemployed Everyman (Brendan Fletcher) and his roommate, Jimmy (director Matt D'Elia).
  33. Monogamy
    The film's final plot twist is easy to spot well before it arrives, but that doesn't detract from its crafty, heartfelt, and surprisingly sound affirmation of getting hitched.
  34. Capote
    In the bell jar that is Capote, Hoffman bogarts the oxygen; everyone else asphyxiates.
  35. Two Step
    Extraordinary ordinariness is Two Step's saving grace.
  36. Lies
    At once distanced and heedless, Lies manages to be lighter and less pretentious than any description suggests. The movie's playful aspect can't be denied.
  37. Angelica
    Queer writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein (the mind behind the vagina dentata horror-comedy Teeth) and an impressive team of collaborators inspire laughs and/or terror out of the libidinal hang-ups of frail stay-at-home mom Constance (Jena Malone) and her unfulfilled spouse, Joseph (Ed Stoppard).
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Darjeeling Limited
    I was moved by Darjeeling, flaws and all, but if my job is to explain why, I find it difficult for reasons that are none of my business. From the minute Wilson walks onscreen, face covered in scars, eyes full of trouble, Darjeeling is warped by the gravitas of his recent suicide attempt.
  39. Sicario: Day of the Soldado
    Del Toro and Moner say everything that’s needed with pained, bewildered eyes. Meanwhile, Graver speaks with relentless American cynicism. He is both funny and unnerving, and maybe more unnerving because he’s being funny.
  40. Street Fight
    Although the film has a righteous heart, by focusing solely on government as showbiz, it's part of what it decries. Curry makes uproarious hay with the illegal shenanigans of incumbent mayor Sharpe James, but is that all there is? That said, Street Fight has enough cultural crosscurrents to fill out a novel.
  41. [REC] 3: Genesis
    Giddy shots of the undead slogging through a decimated party-scape materialize the decadence and instability of upper-crust family life, even as groom and (pregnant) bride prepare to give birth to another generation of the Spanish elite.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Group
    Though the characters are in fact sustained improvisations, the roles feel inhabited rather than acted -- a quality acutely present in scenes of excruciating awkwardness.
  43. Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary
    That unexpected rage is the movie's most powerful emotional truth.
  44. Yiddish Theater: A Love Story
    Lively talking heads lay out the reasons for the decay of Yiddish culture...What's missing from this gentle homage...is a sense of the joyful heyday of Yiddish theater, and the richness it brought to the artistic life of Manhattan.
  45. 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.
  46. House of Flying Daggers
    If only this epic had enough substantial melodramatic hooks to hang this woman's beauty on; emotional traction is most often buried under acres of carefully coordinated vistas and CGI-hued flora.
  47. 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.
  48. Nowhere Man
    Nowhere Man, despite a tossed-off ending, is a compulsive bit of meta-exploitation.
  49. Bill Cunningham New York
    No passion for fashion is required to enjoy this absorbing portrait of legendary New York Times "On the Street" photographer Bill Cunningham, but a sense of history and tragedy might help.
  50. Lost Persons Area
    It's the gestures that elevate the film: What Strubbe's handheld and intimate approach lacks in originality it makes up for in specific and spontaneous tactility.
  51. The Hundred-Foot Journey
    Almost embarrassingly enjoyable, despite the fact that — or maybe because — it's ridiculous in a shiny, Hollywood way.
  52. Pusher III: I'm the Angel of Death
    Still, the textures of Refn's wallow in bad behavior are completely convincing, if the plot-stuff is a little familiar and if the overarching notion that, as Quentin Tarantino said somewhere, "gangsters have kitchens, too" seems by now valid but no longer terribly fresh.
  53. Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show
    Unstudied to the point of utilitarianism, the film nonetheless has wide scope, and Doyle effectively gets his arms around this huge, nebulous, weird job.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
    Temple's engrossing portrait of the Clash's late frontman uses endlessly suggestive montage to show how he kept punk's precepts alive, even after he left the music and eventually the earth itself.
  55. Papillon
    Shaffner has really made an exhilarating movie out of the most dangerously depressing material. [10 Jan 1974, p.56]
    • Village Voice
  56. The Great Museum
    Holzhausen is respectful but not reverential, portraying the museum as a living thing that's being cared for with meticulous diligence.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Last Cab to Darwin
    Sims imbues his characters with rich thought and heart, particularly in regards to the understated, racially complicated, on-again/off-again relationship between Rex and Polly.
  58. The Producers
    Broderick is a genuine trouper, hoofing his way through his big numbers, while Lane's antics are difficult to resist.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Waitress
    Waitress won't set the world on fire, but it glows.
  60. About Adam
    Hudson is ebullient, never cutesy, and her accent stays in tune.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Perfect Getaway
    A Perfect Getaway is never great, but Twohy isn't aspiring for greatness--he's after gritty and lively and weird. And that's good enough.
  62. King Jack
    This is thankfully no wallow in working-class miserablism.
  63. The Front Page
    It is refreshing to find a director who is still making talkies instead of gawkies, and who thus still believes in the spoken word as a vehicle of expression. [23 Dec 1974, p.83]
    • Village Voice
  64. The Pledge
    Though at times it threatens to meander off, Penn's movie fulfills its destiny as an alienated fable of justice and luck, personified by Jack in the twilight of his iconicity, babbling to himself at the crossroads of nowhere.
  65. Black Death
    Screenwriter Dario Poloni and director Christopher Smith provide enough sword-and-sorcery hoo-ha to please the "Lord of the Rings" demographic, but the movie's real coup is in how it repeatedly shifts our allegiance from Christians to pagans.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rugrats in Paris: The Movie - Rugrats II
    Nicely conveys a family trip abroad as seen from both the exhausted-parent and bewildered-infant points of view.
  67. Naz & Maalik
    It's no news that a filmmaker's debut is mostly 90 minutes of a couple kids gabbing on the streets of Brooklyn. But writer/director Jay Dockendorf's buoyant, tragic, richly textured walking-and-talking job Naz & Maalik exhibits none of the shambling narcissism that so often characterizes such projects.
  68. If You Don't, I Will
    While you may be left craving more emotional fireworks than you get, Fillières's intelligent film is accomplished in its portrayal of a marriage in crisis, the union's last gasps rife with poignant exchanges.
  69. Gangs of Wasseypur
    The killing is bloody, the power struggles involving, the history-class examinations of the relations between mines and unions and gangsters fascinating, and the tough-guy routines, while sometimes tiresome, never less than credible.
  70. 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.
  71. Breathe
    The film lives up to its own characters’ thesis: that disability need not define a person — or even the film about that person.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Siege
    An intramural debate masquerading as an action movie.
  73. Delusions of Guinevere
    Beneath the rom-com pacing and peppy underscoring of a Lifetime movie, Delusions of Guinevere is a surprisingly dark satire of modern celebrity.
  74. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
    For all the frenzied activity, Joan Rivers is less informative dish than infomercializing cliché.
  75. Down to the Bone
    Like Catherine Hardwicke's "Thirteen," this film has an ear for the way moms talk to kids, a sensitivity to drug-sweetened intimacies, and an appreciation of the urgent nuance, not just the comedy, of recovery-speak.
  76. Painted Skin: The Resurrection
    The whole thing can be hard to follow, but the energy (and pulchritude) of the cast make it a perfectly fine bit of popcorn escapism.
  77. Cet amour-là
    May worship heedlessly at Duras's memory, but it's a testament to Moreau alone.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Page Turner
    Anyone who remembers "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" will see the instruments of revenge laid out like cutlery in a slasher movie's kitchen, and Dercourt's overbright visual scheme aims for a Michael Haneke–esque bourgeois chill that comes off instead as curiously bloodless.
  79. Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty
    The film's abrupt ending leaves many crucial questions unanswered, but that weakness doesn't detract from its overall power.
  80. Tommy's Honour
    Golf's become such a ridiculously well-heeled pastime that it's refreshing to see it portrayed in its infancy, when clubs were carried like a bunch of kindling and the desolate greens of St. Andrews were more like the hazards of today's game.
  81. ParaNorman
    Butler called it "John Carpenter meets John Hughes," and that does just about sum ParaNorman up, though the actual math still feels a little fuzzy.
  82. No Reservations
    The cynic would like to write this off as empty grown-up hooey, "Baby Boom" without an ounce of bang. But you can't do it, because the thing's so charming and frothy and delightful and sentimental and beautifully shot and well-acted and sincere that it takes a good couple of hours before you start craving real nourishment.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Princess Diaries
    A modest, enjoyable fairy tale that easily outcharms its animated stablemates of the past decade.
  84. Warrior of Light
    The best moments feature Uerê's children themselves.
  85. For No Good Reason
    It's a film that paints a potent portrait of an artist of righteous, controlled fury.
  86. Only When I Dance
    British director Beadie Finzi follows both dancers to international competitions, where the difficult questions raised by their struggles are set aside.
  87. Men on the Bridge
    Raw yet respectful and tenderly observed.
  88. For Ahkeem
    Levine and Van Soest (who are both white) deserve credit for eliding or treating obliquely a number of seemingly obvious narrative beats.
  89. All I See Is You
    It defeats expectations, but it’s far more arresting and captivating a romance because Forster infuses it with suspenseful urgency. I have to admire the guts of a director who portrays the dissolution of a mismatched marriage with the dread of a murder mystery.
  90. Michael Moore in TrumpLand
    The biggest surprise: Older, un-messianic, and mostly eschewing cute stunts, Moore somehow makes his one-man show seem almost humble. It plays less like "I'm still here!" attention-seeking than it does a concerned citizen's act of hope.
  91. The Big Picture
    For most of the film, Lartigau creates the tension of a Hitchcockian thriller solely through Paul's interior struggle.
  92. Insidious
    We need visionaries-but also solid craftsmen who seem to enjoy their work. Insidious is the product of the latter. It doesn't build a better haunted house but, when on its game, reminds us of the genre's pleasures.
  93. Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope
    A tender, thoughtful paean to geek community.
  94. Fray
    The main strength of writer-director Geoff Ryan's film is its quietude; too many movies exploring the neither-nor status occupied by vets whose experiences "over there" have altered their ability to function back home turn shrill in order to get their point across.
  95. No One Lives
    Director Ryûhei Kitamura (The Midnight Meat Train) is too talented for material this retro-junky, but he and screenwriter David Cohen keep the action coming hard and fast.
  96. Foreign Parts
    Foreign Parts engages in sociological inquiry without narration or contextual handholding, utilizing incisive, striking aesthetics (a panorama of hanging side mirrors, worn shoes trudging through grimy puddles) to elicit potent subcultural immersion.
  97. Idlewild
    Idlewild has a sober, loving respect for history and the old South, and thereby grants itself a measure of distinction.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Great World of Sound
    A fitting 21st-century addition to the genre. The film's meager plotting and casual melancholy peg it as a modest indie, but these ingredients dovetail nicely with Zobel's bigger theme about the futility of the modern world.
  99. Suntan
    Structurally, there’s little that’s new in Suntan. The tale of a middle-aged man delusionally pursuing youth and beauty reaches back to Thomas Mann and beyond. But Papadimitropoulos has a feel for the physicality of this world, for contrasting postures and gestures.
  100. Outside In
    The drama of Outside In is largely underplayed. It’s a tale of people seeking simple lives on their own terms, and while it may be withholding, its small scale seems a statement on just how many worthy stories are kept behind bars.
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