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 7.5 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. Patagonia Rising
    Elicits the combination of rage and helplessness (and guilty wanderlust) unique to the genre with admirable thoroughness and balance.
  2. We Won't Grow Old Together (1969)
    "Love" is a quicksilver thing that can't be held in the present tense. It is somewhere between nothing and everything, and no one pinned down more of its complexities and contradictions than Maurice Pialat, hunting barehanded for slippery truths.
  3. Paul Williams Still Alive
    Johnny Carson loved him, and Williams had the credits to back himself up: As with Jimmy Webb, you could probably sing many of his songs without knowing that he's the author.
  4. The Oregonian
    Reeder has stated that he intends for The Oregonian to be "an art film" and not the horror movie it appears to be on the surface, but he's not above upping the gross-out factor in the final reel or creating scream-filled aural landscapes so piercing that one's spine ripples. Artfully.
  5. Corpo Celeste
    Rohrwacher almost overplays her metaphors, but her understated characterizations, cinematographer Hélène Louvart's rapturous range, and especially Vianello's eerie grace combine to make Corpo Celeste the ideal cinematic antidote to the summer doldrums.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bel Ami
    Its the ladies who are worth tracking here, from Ricci's understated sensuality to Thomas's fragile angularity. They've supplemented beauty with good old-fashioned acting chops, something their cover-boy co-star would be wise to emulate.
  7. Dark Horse
    With Solondz's old-hat funeral deadpan and his efforts to pass off Abe's adolescent rage as elevated insight, Dark Horse is neither incisively black-comic nor particularly attuned to human behavior - proof that some directors, at least, do end up the way they started out.
  8. Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding
    An incompetently structured film that pits hippies against squares with the usual wearying results.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lola Versus
    More than subverting or satirizing the modern lady-in-crisis movie, he has made a big, broad stoner comedy, shot and performed naturalistically, from a woman's point of view. Narratively, it's not a huge shock where the film ultimately goes, but there are a number of fun surprises along the way.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Safety Not Guaranteed
    A viewer's patience with some of Safety's more rote stretches is rewarded in the film's final 15 minutes, when the plot takes a truly unexpected turn. As a DIY answer to the Spielberg generation's nostalgia for movie magic, the film's fully earnest, fantastic climax beats something like "Super 8" at its own game for a fraction of the cost.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
    Like a big-screen Big Gulp, this third installment of the billion-dollar animated franchise contains as much cinematic confection as an 85-minute movie can bear.
  12. Prometheus
    With this overreaching Prometheus, Scott seems a bit like David carefully arranging his hair in imitation of O'Toole's Lawrence. He can still mimic the appearance of an epic, noble, important movie - but the appearance is all.
  13. Piranha 3DD
    Add to this that it takes place in the town of Merkin, and you'll get an idea of the labored spirit of dirty-old-man humor that prevails.
  14. One Day on Earth
    Ultimately, a collage film is only as good as its constituent parts, and, with a few exceptions, the brief snippets from this particular day on earth are far too prosaic to be illuminating.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Music from the Big House
    It finally feels too cautious, as if digging a little deeper might compromise the prevailing tone of tentative uplift.
  16. Wish Me Away
    What it lacks in artfulness, Wish Me Away makes up for in emotive force.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hide Away
    The film stays afloat, if barely, thanks to Elliot Davis's uncluttered camerawork, a surprisingly unsentimental denouement, and performers who deftly undersell the script's corniest pretensions.
  18. Battlefield America
    Although it's grotesque to see pre-teens stomping in underground warehouse-battle settings, at least Battlefield America's racial politics are interesting.
  19. U.N. Me
    Unfortunately, mocking jibes and cutaways to Team America and Wonder Woman (among other movies and TV shows) establish a jokey attitude that weakens the overall case.
  20. Crooked Arrows
    Despite referring to the tribe as "my people," Routh is wholly miscast, yet his ill-fitting presence is part and parcel of the plotting's general illogicality.
  21. A Cat in Paris
    Unoriginal and mired in bad jokes.
  22. Found Memories
    Initially treated like the parasite she appears to be, over the course of this crisp, gracefully inflected meditation on time's passage, Rita develops the interest in her subjects that turns an image into more than stolen light.
  23. Cellmates
    The film, directed by Jesse Baget, aims to be a satiric look at racism but at every turn flaunts the laws of logic and believability.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    6 Month Rule
    As with the latest Kate Hudson comedy, it's a formula for irrelevancy pretty much as a rule.
  25. High School
    John Stalberg Jr.'s dismal stoner comedy does little to inject any sense of joy or laughter into its depiction of teenage pot antics.
  26. For Greater Glory
    It is plodding, lazily filmed, gassy with James Horner's score, and pads its runtime only by way of tolling repetition.
  27. Snow White and the Huntsman
    For all this Snow White's visual ornamentation, there's no sense of narrative priority - the filmmakers can't see the Dark Forest for the trees.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    OC87: The Obsessive Compulsive, Major Depression, Bipolar, Asperger's Movie
    To be sure, there are more artful and focused documentaries, but OC87 still stands as moving evidence that Clayman's trust in the value of the filmmaking process ultimately outweighed the extreme difficulty he says he has making even the smallest decisions.
  29. Redlegs
    The trio's mourning feels more like immature self-absorption.
  30. Mighty Fine
    The mood is generally melodramatic and ends as mushy, aided by the soft-focus cinematography that drenches it all in melancholic nostalgia.
  31. The Woman in the Septic Tank
    The novel and wickedly funny topic is mined for only a portion of its potential, but a little ironic astringency is certainly more unsettling than by-the-book slum drama.
  32. Men in Black III
    Despite such ubiquitous timidity, one can pluck out a few pleasing distractions here.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Battle Royale
    [Fukasaku's] genius is finding the overlap between teenage dreams and nightmares, between the intensity of first love and the terror of extinction.
  34. Oslo, August 31st
    Matching the precision of the film's title, remembrances of things past-whether destructive or salutary, quickly mentioned or dilated upon-are shaped by just enough exacting detail.
  35. 5 Broken Cameras
    What makes 5 Broken Cameras stand out is its insistence on nuance and its refusal to get caught up in the self-defeating war of words over who is the bigger victim.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Moonrise Kingdom
    Shot on Super 16mm, the visible grain giving each image a wonderfully tactile depth and life, Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom is, in a lot of ways, the ur–Wes Anderson film.
  37. Lovely Molly
    It can't sustain interest in the endless unraveling of Molly's psyche, which, as handled by Sánchez, has all the interest of watching an inexplicably untreated wound fester.
  38. 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).
  39. 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.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mahler on the Couch
    Eccentric and expressionistic reverie on love, loss, and the birth of modern marriage.
  41. Quill: The Life of a Guide Dog
    When isn't it a good time to show a movie tracing the development of a kind, charismatic yellow Labrador retriever from frolicsome puppy to devoted seeing-eye companion to weary senior?
    • 33 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Virginia
    A bonkers tragicomedy that blandly mocks the red-state family-values charade.
  43. Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story
    There are so many complicated political, religious, and cultural issues swirling around Yoni's story, and Follow Me keeps them on the sidelines. It is pure hagiography.
  44. Bill W.
    A loving, exhaustive, warts-and-all look at the man who spent years battling his own alcoholism before a spiritual experience in the hospital set him on the course to help others.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Indie Game: The Movie
    An insightful new geek documentary, well directed by first-timers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky.
  46. The Samaritan
    Weaver's story slowly begins to buckle under the weight of its own self-seriousness and familiarity, concluding with a showdown and resolution marked by one implausible and unsatisfying been-here-done-that twist after another.
  47. Hysteria
    Proceeds as a tedious, clumsy diddle, constantly reminding viewers how much progress has been made since the Victorian era.
  48. Beyond the Black Rainbow
    At heart, the film is no more (or less) than a brilliantly executed lark, but it's not often that we're reminded with such potency that movies are most delightful as sensory experiences.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Polisse
    The strange, unsettling juxtapositions, even when mashing up the mawkish and mockery, are full of life.
  50. Mansome
    While making a priority of squeezing in every usable bit of celebrity face-time, Mansome passes by potentially interesting digressions without more than a wayward glance.
  51. Elena
    All of this builds into the film's last image, Elena's family finally welcomed into Vladimir's apartment, as the cautious, controlling, abstemious bourgeoisie are overtaken by the heedlessly fertile lower orders, the temporary inheritors of a terribly weary earth.
  52. Battleship
    And when the F-14s came out for a triumphant flyover, I looked around the room to find the moron who was applauding only to realize that it was me.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    What to Expect When You're Expecting
    For all the fear, loathing, and overthinking that Murkoff's bedside text engenders, its journey ends with the hopeful beginning of a new life, whereas the movie leaves you hoping for a swift end to your own.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Dictator
    Even in its manufactured boundary-pushing - a flash of full-frontal Baron Cohen, another scene set partially inside a birth canal - The Dictator never really risks anything.
  55. A Bag of Hammers
    A few striking performances - Ritter, Preston, and Canterbury are especially great - smooth out what might have been a much bumpier ride.
  56. You Are Here
    Overlapping story threads, voices, and imagery result in an atmosphere of disquieting psychological confusion.
  57. Portrait of Wally
    Shea's documentary is a well-arranged if rather drawn-out parade of talking heads telling Wally's story, including a trenchant and funny Morley Safer, never missing a chance to knock the art world.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tonight You're Mine
    The authenticity baked into the production doesn't redeem the absurdly improbable premise, the attractive actors don't do anything to make the caricatures they're playing feel real, and the aggressive hipness of the film is queasily dated - it's the cinematic equivalent of the clearance corner at Urban Outfitters.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Where Do We Go Now?
    Like the hashish-laced pastries the ladies make to sedate the male population, the film feels like it has been dosed with sugar to mask its distressingly bitter taste.
  60. The Road
    Call it a haircut of "Psycho" with ectoplasmic additives, The Road still has a whispering menace and visual grandeur all its own.
  61. Sleepless Night
    There are hints of humor and depth early on, but about halfway through, Sleepless Night clicks into something funny and warm without sacrificing its edge.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Wish
    I Wish makes us feel like we are watching these kids discover each new sensory pleasure of youth for the first time, or that we're experiencing it ourselves.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bonsái
    Bonsái seems like a veritable thicket of illuminating references and correspondences. A kind of poetry sprouts up even in some of the inevitable sad-twee flourishes.
  64. The Color Wheel
    The Color Wheel is funny, but it has a dark streak that takes it into increasingly creepy territory as the siblings face down a procession of people who are even more screwed-up than they are.
  65. God Bless America
    The interplay between Murray and Barr is closely and carefully handled, but when the monotonous squib-popping subsides, the movie is often static and talky, lapsing into criticism-hedging qualifications and anti-everything speechifying.
  66. Small, Beautifully Moving Parts
    Unfortunately, its tale is so slight and simple that it also fails to say anything particularly poignant about life.
  67. Girl in Progress
    Unconvincing, flawed matriarch Mendes and junior showboat Ramirez appear to be acting in entirely different movies.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Nesting
    Chuldenko doesn't aspire to hard realism, but a lifestyle comedy with hard-to-buy fundamentals and a central couple you can't invest in is a dubious proposition nonetheless.
  69. Dark Shadows
    "Wood" is still by far Depp and Burton's best collaboration, exhibiting the balance of tone between kitsch parody and zealous fantasy that's missing in Dark Shadows, less a resurrection than a clumsy desecration.
  70. Hick
    Too odd to be funny, too cold-hearted to be tragic, Hick is an infuriating muddle.
  71. The Observers
    There are moments when the tedium loosens you to melt into the landscape, and you swear you can hear the moss on the rocks start talking.
  72. Mother's Day
    Mother's Day is distinguished, at least, by De Mornay's porcelain-smile lampoon of castigating matriarchy.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Chronicling a Crisis
    At once downbeat and claustrophobic, it's also often grueling to watch.
  74. Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)
    The playfulness of Rivette's sublime female-buddy picture, recalling the fun of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," would inform Susan Seidelman's "Desperately Seeking Susan" 11 years later. But its greatest descendant is David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," another film about two women erotically attached, a house with a secret, and transformation.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    You Hurt My Feelings
    For all of its gradual build and minimalist focus, the film misses out on something essential, something more crucial than clarity, context, and connecting tissue - all of which the film aggressively eschews. It lacks a center, a sense that within its strenuously ambiguous story is a thrumming motor.
  76. Jesus Henry Christ
    Making their screen debuts, young Spevack and Weinstein give the film's most natural performances and provide its little bit of warmth, but it seems time to petition Collette, a truly gifted actress, to take a long hiatus from playing bitter single moms.
  77. 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.
  78. The Perfect Family
    Renton's competing tones and intentions result in a film at odds with itself and its lead performance.
  79. First Position
    The result is a film that eschews in-depth insight in favor of easily digestible who's-going-to-win suspense, a tack that's aided by Kargman's rather poignant (and visually graceful) evocation of pre-performance anxiety but ultimately leaves the material feeling deflated once the winners emerge.
  80. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
    The plot twists are about as venerable as the cast and predictably affecting when performed with such old-hand proficiency.
  81. A Little Bit of Heaven
    A Little Bit of Heaven demands miracles of its cast to keep proceedings from becoming grindingly mawkish and does not get them.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Avengers
    Every time the movie hints at something rich and evocative, Whedon undercuts it with a punchline - his instincts as a big-picture storyteller crippled by his short-term need to please the crowd.
  83. The Raven
    It's a pathetic missed opportunity - and one occasion of actually going broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
  84. Dolphin Boy
    Dolphin Boy stands as an example of how the pitfalls of potentially mushy material can be overcome by smart and sensitive direction.
  85. Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment
    Worse, the film never challenges the traditional Zionist narrative of the kibbutzim developing an untamed land, paying only lip service to the fact that it was already inhabited before the Jewish settlers got there.
  86. Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance
    A deeply archived and circumspect history of the Joffrey dance company, Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance does a perfect white swan but has trouble developing much of a personality.
  87. Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story
    Frank De Felitta's guilt over having aired the footage is moving, yet it's ultimately countered by this piercing film's stance - promoted by the subject's proud children and grandchildren - that Wright's statements, far from a slip of the tongue, were an intentional act of courageous defiance.
  88. Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
    It's not clear what Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale values more - endless preaching about ancestral spirits or gruesome CG decapitations.
  89. Citizen Gangster
    First-time writer-director Nathan Morlando shows commendable focus (even Cox dials it down), and his movie's modest aspirations nicely reflect the condition in which Boyd, his damaged charisma spent, finally thrives.
  90. The Giant Mechanical Man
    Tim eventually evolves out of smugness, but unfortunately, the film merely trades it for sappiness. Fischer, meanwhile, imbues Janice with a wounded soulfulness that cuts right through the clichés. The less said about a hideously wigged Topher Grace as a smarmy self-help author, the better.
  91. Headhunters
    Plenty of twisty scripting makes the queasy damage seem conceptually neat and tidy, as if that's a good idea, but what we need here is a little more meat.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Elles
    It's entirely too much for co-writer/director Malgoska Szumowska to coherently flesh out in an hour and a half, especially with so much time dedicated just to the state of arousal.
  93. Restless City
    Told in an elliptical style with a pacing and jagged rhythms that take some getting used to, the thrust and power of the film lies in its poetic imagery.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    96 Minutes
    The narrative machinery grows creakier as the plot advances, and the film is a bit too strident about some of the issues at play, but 96 Minutes is admirably knotty nonetheless.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sound of My Voice
    The bland, jittery visual "realism" can't counteract overheated performances of tin-eared dialogue, which strain for pulp but often land at soap.
  96. Whores' Glory
    Michael Glawogger's fearless Whores' Glory demystifies trick turning with a bluntness and sneaky artistry that's sure to make even the most jaded of us choke on our next sitcom-hooker-joke chuckle.
  97. Bernie
    Richard Linklater's Bernie is the rarest of rarities: a truly unexpected film. It might be classified as a black comedy, for it deals with the murder of an 81-year-old woman in a fashion that is not exactly tragic.
  98. Payback
    Cinematic globe-trotting doesn't necessarily trump reading a good book, it turns out; then again, more movies should be burdened with the flaw of being too intellectually curious.
  99. The Pirates! Band of Misfits
    A script that consistently finds fresh outlets for its running gags makes for a sufficiently rollicking pleasure cruise.
  100. Safe
    A preposterously enjoyable - or enjoyably preposterous - action-thriller.
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