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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    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Following Sean
    Arlyck's compulsion is to our great fortune. Patient and elegant, his film is a quietly devastating meditation on family, work, and the unrelenting passage of time.
  2. The Young Victoria
    Man, British heritage cinema can be dull when assembly-lined for the export market.
  3. The Road
    Pale by comparison to an action thriller like "Children of Men" or gross out eco-catastrophe like "Land of the Dead," squandering its ready-made zombie scenario.
  4. True Crime
    A ridiculous deus-ex-machina "wrong man" story.
  5. Surf's Up
    If you have to see another penguin blockbuster, you could do worse than this loose-limbed charmer.
  6. Miss Sloane
    Miss Sloane, with all its Capitol Hill gloss, sometimes feels too much like a primetime political television drama.
  7. The Luzhin Defence
    John Turturro, who, given the most romantic role of his career, fully inhabits the ungainly Luzhin.
  8. The Princess and the Warrior
    Throughout, Tykwer reaches for mysteries he has no idea how to evoke, relying instead on his actors' empty stares.
  9. AKA
    Cumulatively, the echo-chamber syntax achieves a kind of atonal harmony, meshing with the themes of reinvention and self-presentation: The disjunction between the panels is tantamount to the gap between image and reality.
  10. The Dancer Upstairs
    Initially engrossing, The Dancer Upstairs slackens in its second half.
  11. Sleep Furiously
    A lingering, mildly lyrical look at village life, Sleep Furiously does for the mobile librarians of Wales what "Sweetgrass" did for the shepherds of Montana.
  12. The Chaser
    A late-act tragedy drenched in bloodlust slow-mo epitomizes the film's poseur bleakness, with its treatise on individual and institutional amorality sabotaged by broad-stroke characterizations and a knotty narrative too reliant on twin modern-day horror tropes: preposterous decision-making and lousy cell phone service.
  13. Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil
    The most fascinating moments in Hieronymous Bosch come from art historians once they’ve turned to the work of history: creating meaning and context, wrestling with these questions. The film renders this conversation beautifully, and in moments begins to feel urgent in spite of itself.
  14. Inside Deep Throat
    In a Kafkaesque turn of events, Reems was the fall guy--facing prison, he became a Hollywood cause célèbre. Inside Deep Throat includes footage of him partying with Jack and Warren and debating Roy Cohn on TV.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Room
    One of those rare American indies that confidently and successfully propose their own narrative logic, drawing viewers into a mental puzzle that may not contain a single clear solution.
  16. Coming Through The Rye
    Regardless of its capable performances and understated direction, and no matter that it was inspired by Sadwith’s own hunt for Salinger, Coming Through the Rye comes across as a cute conceit incapable of sustaining a substantial feature.
  17. The Road to Guantanamo
    One of the most oppressive accounts of life in a military detention since Jonas Mekas's "documentary" version of The Brig or Peter Watkins's Punishment Park.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
    As fly-on-the-wall as it gets-meaning the camerawork is often sloppy-Flender's film presents O'Brien in full-on Tortured Star mode, alternately overexerting himself and complaining that he's being overworked, courting attention and sulking alone. The portrayal is at times startlingly negative.
  19. The Last Rites of Joe May
    Farina is un-self-conscious and true enough to alchemize cliché.
  20. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    Plays like something crafted in a lab by 54-year-old hucksters trying to sell shit to the kids under the cheerless guise of "alternative." The only thing it's an alternative to? Good.
  21. Ant-Man
    Ant-Man is spry and often funny, despite its familiarity.
  22. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
    If you break the script down into plot points, it sounds a little silly: The narrative thrust is simply Katniss shooting several pro-revolution commercials. But it works because we're fascinated by media fights — thousands occur online every day.
  23. Where to Invade Next
    By exposing his soft belly, the aging documentarian is reconquering his own legacy. He's spent 25 years bellowing about our problems. Now it's time to solve them. If we don't think we can, just remember Berlin.
  24. Men & Chicken
    Mikkelsen, blessed with the rare ability to class up a joint while also being the most menacing guy in the room, is cast against type as a mustachioed philanderer; based on the evidence, his estimable talents are better suited to Hannibal.
  25. La sierra
    A stark, relentlessly deglamorized vision of ghetto life, La Sierra is essential viewing for anyone who ponied up for the aestheticized amorality of the Brazilian "City of God."
  26. The U.S. vs. John Lennon
    Snazzy, mawkish, and practically Pavlovian in recycling all requisite late-'60s images. Given its subject, though, this David Leaf–John Scheinfeld production is not only poignant but even topical.
  27. Nothing But the Truth
    In the spirit of its title, Nothing but the Truth pivots on a plot twist that's both good and fair. And kudos to the ever-earnest Beckinsale for surviving a prison brawl as splatterific as anything Mickey Rourke had to endure in "The Wrestler."
  28. The Almost Man
    To his credit, even as his material begins spiraling into less amusing territory, Lund alleviates the growing gloom with goofball levity.
  29. Tip Top
    Serge Bozon's smart, surprising, marvelously realized French crime-and-sex police drama/comedy distinguishes itself with trenchant plotting, inspired framing, and performances that honor true human feeling even as they lunge into the screwball.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Outsider
    Nicholas Jarecki's The Outsider is among the great docs about moviemaking.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
    The film's both soothing--as an act of recording promise--and churningly emotive.
  32. Or
    The scoreless Or (My Treasure) consists solely of stationary shots that, while sometimes awkwardly composed, build in organic momentum and bracing detail.
  33. Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
    The overall effect is flattering but shallow, making Murphy's movie the last thing Mockingbird needs-another toothless encomium. No wonder Lee dodges the limelight.
  34. Justice
    With its unobtrusive visual style, Justice plays like a near-parody of documentary objectivity, subtly suggesting the malleable nature of "truth," both in the courtroom and the movie theater.
  35. If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle
    It's a measure of the movie's success that one oscillates between two despairs-noting the abject failure of the system and the utter futility of revolt.
  36. In Country
    O'Hara and Attie never judge the players, letting their words and actions speak, though those actions are often intercut with footage from the real war.
  37. Crown Heights
    Most of Crown Heights, which is based on an episode of public radio’s This American Life, suffers from structural confusion.
  38. bwoy
    For most of its running time — thanks to director Young’s visual rigor and the excellent performances of its leads — Bwoy keeps us in this cinematic fugue state, where reality only peeks through in brief flashes.
  39. Giant
    With potentially lethargic materials, Biniez has made a quiet, intent, involving film, a moony-innocent urban alienation fairy tale of bashful ogre and village beauty--and it never quite crests.
  40. Grass
    Grass's relentless hard sell ultimately grows wearisome. Although only 80 minutes, it ends, and not a moment too soon, with a pot legalization rally that might well be reproduced outside the theater.
  41. Chocolat
    Airy, pseudo-folkloric gibberish at best.
  42. Fraulein
    Stylized with a recurring misty focus, the film's economically captured detail shots (gestures, expressions, caught moments) convey genuine sensitivity without the expected weepiness.
  43. Tracktown
    Although Tracktown presents itself as adorably, harmlessly twee, I wished Pappas had tapped deeper into the dark side she hints at — the side that makes her protagonist more concerned about being a winner than about being a person.
  44. One Bright Shining Moment
    Amy Goodman's narration, though correct, has a petulant, Spanish Inquisition ring to it, only made more childish by the film's cheap idealization of the senator from South Dakota as some kind of pacifist Savonarola, overdue for canonization.
  45. Becks
    With Becks, directors Elizabeth Rohrbaugh and Daniel Powell have crafted an understated musical that really works, thanks to Alyssa Robbins’s heartfelt music and standout performances from the cast.
  46. The Hedgehog
    Watching Balasko, a veteran actor-writer-director in thick-browed, frumped-up drag, sitting at her kitchen table reading Tolstoy and nibbling on dark chocolate with a cat in her lap, is one of The Hedgehog's purest delights. At the very least, it provides relief from the prating of that junior wisenheimer.
  47. The Fall
    If the human details are often problematic, the IMAX-grade bombast, ceremonial camera, and Jodorowsky-esque eclecticism still combine for a singular spectacle.
  48. State of Play
    An effectively involving journalism-cum-conspiracy yarn with a bang-bang opening and a frantic closer.
  49. Guest of Cindy Sherman
    A highly entertaining evisceration and celebration of the milieu. It's also a fascinating, probably one-sided view of the artist herself.
  50. We Have a Pope
    Until the potent concluding scene, the humor and shallow profundities of We Have a Pope pivot on the cuteness of geriatrics, especially when they're spiking a volleyball in slo-mo.
  51. Pineapple Express
    A savvy nod to 1980s action comedies, down to the Huey Lewis original that plays over the end credits. But its greatest achievements lie in the tossed-off non sequiturs, the pop-culture (and Scott Baio) allusions, and the unexpected respites in the midst of all the bang-bang-boom.
  52. Danny Says
    Toller's film is narrated entirely by Fields via a series of lengthy recorded interviews that unwind jerkily, like a misshapen bolt of yarn over hundreds of still photos, Super-8 footage, and hand-drawn animations.
  53. St. Vincent
    Some moments still work after the movie grows mawkish.
  54. Silent Water
    Sumar's debut feature could scarcely be more relevant to Pakistan's present, or, given this country's history of backing such repressive regimes, to ours.
  55. Cradle Will Rock
    Historical forces and famous ghosts jostle past each other in this evocation of mid-1930s New York like harried commuters at Grand Central Station.
  56. Appaloosa
    Harris and his collaborators are playing it straight with a timeless male fantasy--horse, hat, six-shooter--a traditional approach that will please moviegoers like my dad and yours.
  57. The Villainess
    The Villainess is entertaining enough, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that we should be caring more for this character as the film goes on, not less.
  58. Arctic Tale
    A smarmy score, some orgiastic farting from a herd of walruses, and a modicum of cutesy anthropomorphism from narrator Queen Latifah prove a small price to pay for this stunningly photographed narrative documentary about a year in the endangered life of Arctic ice floe.
  59. Everest
    Everest is visually splendid, though it loses a few points for its murkiness in rendering its main characters as distinct individuals.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blood Diamond
    De Beers can relax; the only indignation stirred up by Blood Diamond won't be among those who worry about where their jewelry came from, but with audiences incensed by facile politics and bad storytelling.
  61. Wedding Crashers
    Amiable and hollow.
  62. Changing Times
    If the title, knee-jerk cast, pop-song intro, and schmaltzy plotline of his new film Changing Times is any indication, he's (André Téchiné) now the French mainstream, the premier Gallic pilot of high-toned soap opera.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Freedom Writers
    Reaction shots of the class's befuddled white boy are played for cheap laughs, but writer-director Richard LaGravenese otherwise keeps it real by recruiting cinematographer Jim Denault from Indieville High and Imelda Staunton--here playing Bitchy Old Department Head.
  64. X-Men
    When it comes to stoopid fun, X-Men could be the summer movie to beat.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Bright Young Things
    Aside from cameos by Jim Broadbent (as the drunken major) and Peter O'Toole (as Nina's reclusive, eccentric father), much of the acting strains for a sophistication that quickly becomes annoying.
  66. Stage Beauty
    Most frustrating, Stage Beauty fumbles XX/XY politics at every turn.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stealing the Fire
    Placing blame sorta misses the point in a world of matrixed self-interest where all is equally just and unjust.
  68. Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes
    Filled with people who cut Holmes more slack than he deserved.
  69. How I Killed a Saint
    Throughout, first-time director Teona Strugar Mitevska (the sibling of the lead actress) demonstrates a keen eye for off-center compositions, a striking visual depiction of a world out of balance.
  70. The Other Guys
    Following the clues, The Other Guys turns more hectic than antic, and somebody didn't pack enough comedy for this long trip.
  71. Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
    Spry, if sprawling, Supermensch warmheartedly affirms the Gordonian style of karmic contemplation.
  72. Kelly & Cal
    Amy Lowe Starbin's script offers a welcome directness and some sly observations about acceptance and compromise.
  73. Young Bodies Heal Quickly
    Even in its longueurs Young Bodies yields beauty and surprise, and there are inklings of some grand conception, even among scenes that feel haphazardly chosen.
  74. Call Me Lucky
    Call Me Lucky is a loving but fair portrait of the artist as a heroic hothead.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Train Robbers
    Burt Kennedy wrote and directed the movie, which consists mostly of scenic rides on horseback, waiting for the outlaws to appear, and talking wisely while waiting. [22 Mar 1973, p.83]
    • Village Voice
  76. Something New
    Sanaa Hamri's brisk, refreshingly understated romantic comedy Something New is the rare movie that delivers on its title's promise.
  77. The Ballad of Lefty Brown
    Moshe relates his tale of can-do vengeance with an unfussy clarity and an obvious fondness for the oaters of yesterday’s Hollywood — an affection that, as in Burden, imparts a winning sincerity.
  78. Finding Fela!
    Once it gets going, it's fine, a somewhat scattered précis of the life and accomplishment of one of the 20th century's towering musicians, activists, and curiosities.
  79. The Horse Boy
    The Horse Boy may excuse itself as a "raising awareness" tract on autism, but the exotic travelogue isn't a practicable care option for most cases, and it certainly isn't worthy cinema.
  80. Bright Future
    Kurosawa strolls through his narrative with relaxed confidence, suggesting apocalyptic significances without assuring us that he has anything particular on his mind.
  81. Futuro Beach
    Futuro Beach is as strong on texture as narrative. It's full of sensual images.
  82. Ready Player One
    Ready Player One is entertaining enough, and it’s certainly well-made, but what truly stands out is the filmmaker’s prevailing-present sense of bemused disgust at the way his offspring are spending their time. He can’t go home again, and he knows it.
  83. Proof
    John Madden's competent, monotonous film version, not exactly stagebound but hardly freewheeling, only underscores its mechanical nature.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Star Trek: Insurrection
    The latest Star Trek flick, Insurrection, is the 9th, and although it doesn't suck as completely as some ignoble odd-numbered low points, it doesn't exactly boldly go where no one has gone before.
  85. You're Gonna Miss Me
    Director Keven McAlester's film is entertaining. But with battered archival footage and celebrity worship, McAlester skimps on perspective and complexity.
  86. Donovan's Reef
    By any interpretation, Donovan's Reef is a beautiful example of cinematic art, and the atavistic desire to let the movie sweep over the spectator without disruptive analysis is at least understandable. [01 Aug 1963, p.13]
    • Village Voice
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jack Goes Boating
    Hoffman's directorial debut transfers to film the company's ethos of an ensemble performing with ruthless honesty encouragingly well. And that's why it's fitting that this drama asks so much of, and gets so much from, Ortiz.
  88. In a Valley of Violence
    A slow approach requires careful atmosphere-building, and these days West is actually stronger at writing funny dialogue than he is at creating atmosphere.
  89. We Are X
    Die-hard X Japan fans may enjoy seeing Yoshiki talk about his past, but everyone else will leave We Are X wondering who X Japan is.
  90. Café Society
    Lovely visuals, terrific performances, renewed ambition: There's enough good in Café Society to make it worth your while — and also to make you wish it were better.
  91. Peter Pan
    Uniquely jacked into a ripe sense of antique-nursery Victoriana and buzzing with a pre-adolescent metaphoric charge, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan is a primary text of modern culture, and P.J. Hogan's live-action rendition is the only one, screen or stage, to completely uncage this changeling and give it flight.
  92. Nymphomaniac: Volume I
    If the off-kilter pleasures of Volume I is von Trier enticing us to watch the rest, consider me seduced.
  93. Dementia 13
    Despite the rough edges, you feel you’re in the hands of someone who enjoys telling a story, and knows how to do it — even when the story’s a disposable one such as this.
  94. Robots
    Entertaining enough that it leaves one wishing for more in the way of android mythology—a pint-sized Blade Runner or A.I. The screenplay goes on autopilot, grinding toward a happy ending just when it has a shot at something darker and more memorable.
  95. Last Call at the Oasis
    Ultimately, it's all connected, and with as fascinating and far-ranging an issue as this one, you can't fault the director for wanting to fit it all in.
  96. Asura: The City of Madness
    Winningly over-the-top Korean gangster drama Asura: The City of Madness is what you'd get if you combined The Wire with a really good soap opera.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    The Mystic Masseur
    Ismail Merchant's screen adaptation retains much of the novel's incident, but fumbles both the humor and moral ambivalence.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trekkies
    There's a great deal of love in Trekkies, Roger Nygard's warm and good-naturedly funny documentary about the world of Star Trek fandom.
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