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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  1. Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner
    Viewers may find the narrative aimlessness here frustrating.
  2. Anna Karenina
    Just as the characters created by Tolstoy the artist got the advantage of Tolstoy the polemicist - at least until the end of his life - so these confoundingly good performances gradually win the movie from Wright's puerile conceit, giving us an Anna Karenina if not for the ages, than at least for an evening.
  3. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
    Blandly engaging sequel.
  4. Chéri
    Frears and Hampton's missteps begin immediately, with the director providing pinched narration as he recounts, over so many cartes de visite, the histories of other famous ladies who made a handsome living on their backs.
  5. Friends with Benefits
    What's most crushing is witnessing what should have been the dream pairing of Kunis and Timberlake - both foxy, loose, confident performers - here generating zero chemistry.
  6. Sade
    Too bland and fustily tasteful to be truly prurient, Sade moves along at a reasonable clip, goosed by claps of gothic lighting, solemn chords, and amplified sound effects.
  7. Polytechnique
    Polytechnique smartly exposes the spectrum of misogyny without overplaying the connection between the two incidents. Which makes the concluding flash-forward scene all the more disappointing: Designed to give hope, it comes off as an emotional sop instead.
  8. My Reincarnation
    Fox's briskness leaves certain questions gaping open. As in, how cynical and derisive is she deliberately being of Rinpoche's teachings, since all we get are trite homilies and vague advice?
  9. First Winter
    Even when things start to go awry for our group (thanks to jealousy, illness, a dwindling food stock) Dickinson's anti-dramatic methodology proves ill-suited to the task of generating narrative interest.
  10. Being Ginger
    Harris is wistful, funny, and articulate about his romantic neuroses and insecurities... Unfortunately, he sometimes fails to go deeper.
  11. That Guy Dick Miller
    That Guy Dick Miller is a cheery and likable film, one that bops along the surface of its story with lots of interviews, too-quick film clips, and spazzy-quirky-tootling music meant to let us know how fun all this is.
  12. The Blood of My Brother
    A few American soldiers are interviewed in a halfhearted attempt at balance, but Berends, who thankfully eschews narration, makes his own p.o.v. clear enough.
  13. The Last Exorcism
    With a small, well-chosen cast, sly script, and slippery, ambivalent characters, The Last Exorcism gives a welcome titty-twist to the demonic-possession movie revival.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's Kind of a Funny Story
    "I used to think art was just bourgeois decadence," a wiser Craig says in the end, which is funny, because that's kind of what this film is.
  15. Vidal Sassoon: The Movie
    More accurately titled "Vidal Sassoon: The Slavering Advertorial," Craig Teper's obsequious documentary on the stylist who popularized geometric haircuts in the '60s is in desperate need of shaping and trimming itself.
  16. Storm Surfers 3D
    The stunning visuals captivate for much of the picture, but as the novelty wears off, and the beauty turns from stunning to repetitive, the non-surfers in the theater may begin to grow restless.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Reel Paradise
    Unfortunately, what could have been a superficially amusing IFC reality series was stretched into a thin, overlong feature that follows the rocky integration of this very New York clan into a somewhat ruffled island society.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies
    The entire affair looks and feels like a reality television show minus the cheap drama.
  19. Human Capital
    The biggest suspense: As everything gets worse for everyone, will this consummate director's outraged worldview afford anyone any pity? At first you'll seethe — then your heart will ache.
  20. Howl
    Basically, Epstein and Friedman are feel-good filmmakers-their Ginsberg has one of the shortest, most successful bouts of psychotherapy in history. But is it really necessary to affirm the poem's ecstatic footnote ("Holy! Holy! Holy!") with a montage of smiling reaction shots?
  21. I'm Carolyn Parker
    In both "The Agronomist" and here, Demme looks at real people defined by their civic-mindedness and explores their politics biographically.
  22. Steak (R)evolution
    If your vegan stomach and ethics do flip-flops at this spectacle, pull back for the cultural comparisons.
  23. Summer Wars
    It's hard to appreciate things like the character detail amid the insufferably squealy voicing and arbitrary suspense.
  24. The Hunter
    The Hunter is too many films in one.
  25. The Eyes of My Mother
    I've been watching horror films since I was three years old. They've never given me nightmares. Until now.
  26. 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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hot Tub Time Machine
    A fundamentally lazy comedy that will probably make you laugh like an idiot.
  28. Noble
    The movie works because Christina's desire to help these kids feels natural, and because she herself shoulders burdens that would drive most people to the grave, all without losing her faith.
  29. Revolution #9
    While the ideas about techno-saturation are far from novel, they're presented with a wry dark humor.
  30. The Komediant
    A linguistic stew with a zesty, homemade flavor that belies its carefully researched preparation.
  31. Spy Game
    Happily, beneath the film's nostalgic veneer and tooth-rattling visual and aural effects lies a mature ambiguity that's unusual for a holiday blockbuster -- and all but unheard of in a Tony Scott movie.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
    As parody, it's toothless and often smug, but as random Ferrellspeak generator, it has its delights.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Two Brothers
    As in "The Bear," Annaud eschews animal voice-over and visual F/X in favor of live, almost wordless action. The result is the humanization of animals and the animalization of humans.
  34. Changeling
    Burdened by a convoluted script and an ensemble-proof leading lady, the director fails to illuminate a particular corrupt system.
  35. Simon Killer
    If Simon Killer's tragic drift is predictable, the seedy particulars still engross. And the storytelling is first-rate.
  36. The Summit
    The Summit is at its most powerful when the filmmakers simply tell the tale, which gradually develops the unsettling suspense of a horror movie, with K2 cast as the implacable killer.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Invisible
    It disposes with social concerns and lets the individuals speak for themselves--and the regrets, rationalizations, and jerry-rigged morality they express are often fascinating.
  38. Cyber-Seniors
    If there's a film that will make you want to finally accept that friend request from your grandparents, this one is it.
  39. Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America
    Davis holds forth memorably on the histories of country, blues, and rock 'n' roll. (He played with Chuck Berry.) But neither he nor Accidental Courtesy has much time to consider the scene with the BLM activists, who, in the film's schematic presentation, get depicted as something like a Klan equivalent — just less friendly.
    • 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.
  41. Klitschko
    Fight fans will still find much of interest, including some surreptitious footage of Don King unsuccessfully wooing the young brothers by "playing" Mozart on a player piano.
  42. Pee-wee's Big Holiday
    Manically imaginative and very funny.
  43. Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family
    Beyond the buzz of iconoclasm, our explorers find a regular troubled marriage, only with three sides to every problem.
  44. Rob the Mob
    The stickups, while plenty funny... lack any sense of dread or danger. And while De Felitta has a knack for slaphappy eroticism — with the feisty Arianda on board, the sex scenes have genuine heat — he also resorts too often to sappy lyricism.
  45. Eames: The Architect & The Painter
    "I think their marriage was a mystery to everyone," an Eames worker notes - an observation true of every couple that you'll wish the filmmakers had explored more deeply.
  46. Winter Brothers
    Pálmason can occasionally get bogged down in his ambiguous leanings.... But many moments attest to the high ceiling of Pálmason’s abilities.
  47. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him
    In this unhurried full version, Benson allows grief to transform his characters, with few guarantees and plenty of regrets.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rocky Balboa
    Rocky Balboa, effortlessly reflexive and patently, even proudly, absurd, is a tough movie to dislike -- and believe me, I've tried.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    Convoluted but diverting.
  50. Jimmy's Hall
    [Loach] and his longtime scriptwriter Paul Laverty combed Irish history to find a figure you might see as Loach's intellectual double; maybe this accounts for some of the speechifying dialogue as various political positions are explained, jarring at times in a film of action shots and escaping out windows.
  51. Lunacy
    Lunacy is dark, scary, and yucky--even by the Czech animator's own standards.
  52. A Man Named Pearl
    Feature-length elaborations on quirky, inspiring human-interest stories are generally to be avoided, but I'll make an exception for A Man Named Pearl.
  53. David Hockney: The Colors of Music
    This delightfully sensual documentary gets inside the artist's creative process while also treating viewers to glorious music by the likes of Wagner and Satie.
  54. The Congress
    Like its actress, it's an ambitious knockout that doesn't quite live up to its potential. But its argument is worth hearing: Instead of crying for the collapse of one actress, Folman is crying for the collapse of civilization, the triumph of the synthetic over the real.
  55. Tallulah
    The film's premise rests on one contrivance too many as it is...and Heder keeps raising the stakes instead of settling into the groove established so well by her two leads.
  56. All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone
    All Governments Lie is worthy testimony that many journalists are in it for the truth.
  57. Biggie and Tupac
    This is Oliver Stone country, but Broomfield's self-effacing affect is more Woody Allen,
  58. The Grace Lee Project
    A breezy first-person video essay that goes in search of the average Asian American woman, all the while wondering if there is in fact such a thing.
  59. Before the Flood
    It's far more convincing — and enraging — when focused on the lives of real people. In these heartbreaking moments, Before the Flood grows more aggressive in its imagery and argumentation, becoming the climate-change documentary Americans need to see.
  60. Green Zone
    A master of smash-mash montage and choreographed chaos, Greengrass is the best action director working today, adroit at producing the sense of everyone converging and everything happening simultaneously.
  61. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    Moody, pretentious, but potent.
  62. King of California
    Hard to tell what’s more annoying in this empty character study of eccentrics and the suckers who love them: the braying, blurting soundtrack or Douglas himself, who can’t find his way into a man tortured by dull demons.
  63. Damsel
    Pattinson and Wasikowska deserve better material than the Zellners’ head-scratchingly lazy jokes.
  64. Thomas in Love
    It's squeamish about sex but not, unfortunately, sentiment.
  65. Booye kafoor, atre yas
    A humorously death-haunted psychodrama.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    Chamber's charm lies in the sheer visualization of Rowling's weirder inventions: pots of shrivel-phizzed screaming treelets, Harry's arm gone boneless from a bungled spell, a scolding letter from home that leaps to life as a yapping paper mouth.
  67. Eden
    A few moments harp on the sentimental, but overall, this is a powerful addition to the small collection of films dedicated to spreading awareness of this horrific crime.
  68. Weekend of a Champion
    The result is a pleasure, perhaps as much for audiences as for Polanski; it's a chance to luxuriate in the atmosphere of world-class Formula One, here a lavish free-love party interrupted now and again by a few laps on the track.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Limehouse Golem
    Director Juan Carlos Medina depicts a grim city perpetually shrouded in fog the color and consistency of pea soup. He makes the murders appropriately gory, but not over the top. Yet a storyline involving anti-Semitism threatens to upend the compelling detective tale.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Friend
    Shot on DV, the film looks awful, but this homemade quality fosters an authenticity that allows for startling suspense as Yunes's secret life comes to light.
  71. Borg vs. McEnroe
    The film — which is nowhere near as interesting as LaBeouf’s performance — is hopelessly reductive about its subjects’ psychology even as it mocks the press of 1980 for being reductive about its subjects’ psychology.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The 11th Hour
    A cautionary eco-doc so earnest and moth-eaten it should properly be seen on filmstrip during fourth-period social studies.
  73. William S. Burroughs: A Man Within
    Leyser's collation of interviews and stock footage is polished enough to effectively perpetuate the Burroughs legend.
  74. Israel: A Home Movie
    Lilti tells a fine story, but he doesn't always look closely enough at what he's saying.
  75. Unsane
    Simple and well acted, Unsane has tension enough to knot the stomach.
  76. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
    What makes Watson's novel a delight is its guilelessly homoerotic subtext. By downplaying that, the movie argues the case for Watson's innocent sensuality--and against its own worldly update.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme
    Despite cloying narration, Fitzgerald's footage and interviews are fantastic.
  78. Undertow
    However cloying, the movie creates a powerful vortex. It's surprisingly visceral-at times almost thrilling.
  79. North Sea Texas
    Director Bavo Defurne fills the frame with warm, bright color and the lovely austerity of the Belgian seaside, angling for a soulful, slightly hyperreal comedy rather than the pursuit of a political agenda or a boring awareness-raising endeavor.
  80. Spring Breakers
    Spring Breakers seems to be holding a funhouse mirror up to the face of youth-driven pop culture, leaving us uncertain whether to laugh, recoil in horror, or marvel at its strange beauty. All I knew is I couldn't wait to see it a second time.
  81. The Cat's Meow
    A better-than-competent period evocation that allows the director to flaunt his knowledge (and perhaps vent some of his own bitterness) regarding Hollywood.
  82. Everything Put Together
    Seeks to portray loss as a literal, convulsive nightmare, and it's not above resorting to horror-movie tropes and Grand Guignol trickery.
  83. Happy Times
    Schmaltz served in a hand-painted cup, Happy Times culminates in a Chekhovian complement of two narrated letters that have a mutually corresponding force the rest of the film only hints at. By then, our hopes have fatally diminished.
  84. Open Water
    Open Water is simply a stunt--hopelessly literal-minded and cheap in every sense.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Persons of Interest
    Beautiful, powerful, and moving interrogation.
  86. Elemental
    Elemental isn't essential, but it's a fascinating if limited portrait of the diversity of eco-warriordom today.
  87. Rio
    Too timid to be either inspired or outrageously inept, Rio is merely a bird of a familiar feather.
  88. The Great Buck Howard
    Malkovich swallows up the screen, and when he's out of frame, the movie feels slack and slow.
  89. Revenge of the Electric Car
    Sleekly designed (Tim Robbins narrates) with excellent mileage, Revenge is a balm for beaten-down times. In lieu of a business case for ethics, it tells the story of that rare moment when the bottom line finally dovetails with the greater good.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eden
    This portrait of an imploding marriage is remarkable for every reason that counts in a good film.
  91. Algorithms
    [A] slow-moving yet soulful documentary.
  92. Batkid Begins
    Batkid Begins wants audiences to celebrate the everyday heroes who donated their time and energy to Miles's dream. Absolutely, we should. Still, take a minute to ask what the disproportionate investment and interest in Batkid's adventure says about our own maturity — and how the internet allows us to feel like champions for rallying for one afternoon, while overlooking the years of unglamorous doctor appointments before it.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    City of Men
    Paulo Morelli directs capably, with a heavy dash of MTV-generation flair: hyper-saturated colors, close-ups of skin glittering with sweat, and a constant patter of gunfire that undergirds the soundtrack like a steady heartbeat.
  94. World War Z
    Forster's meticulousness—coupled with ample excuses to blow stuff up—isn't enough to turn World War Z into one of those class-A end-of-everything movies that leaves you feeling just a little bit queasy, momentarily uncertain of your own small place in this unmanageable world.
  95. Hello, My Name Is Doris
    Field can't make it all make sense, but she does make it diverting, even pleasurable.
  96. Love, Cecil
    Even though it paints too rosy a picture, Love, Cecil fills out history with sparkling imagery.
  97. The Foot Fist Way
    Truthfully, The Foot Fist Way is no different from an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm": This is irritainment, something you snicker at while covering your eyes, praying that this guy never gets loose in the real world, when, in fact, he's your next-door neighbor. Or you.
  98. Aurora
    Call it a mental workout that (although considerably less arduous than reading Sartre) some might find exhausting and others exhilarating. Aurora is not a movie to make you glad that you exist; it's a movie that makes you aware that you do.
  99. À Tout de Suite (Right Now)
    Less a tale of desperado lovers than a cruel story of youth, Tout de Suite is framed largely in close-up, with few transitional shots and a narrative that grows increasingly fragmented.
  100. Split
    McAvoy is impressive as he switches personalities, but never scary or moving; the script gives him many chances to exhibit virtuosity but too few for soulfulness.
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