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. The Five-Year Engagement
    There is exactly one unexpected moment in the otherwise drearily predictable The Five-Year Engagement that, though little more than a throwaway line, at least adds a bit of political reality to puncture Nicholas Stoller's limp, hermetic comedy of deferred nuptials.
  2. Jean Gentil
    Although it's steeped in tragedies both personal and cultural, this contemplative, gorgeously shot documentary-fiction hybrid from husband-and-wife auteurs Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán nevertheless keeps an unsentimental distance from its titular saint-savant and the existential crisis he endures.
  3. Going Down in LA-LA Land
    A lo-fi feature blend of "True West Hollywood Story" and a gay fairy tale.
  4. The Day He Arrives
    Like Rohmer, Hong is wonderful with atmospheric effects, using whirling snowfalls to place his characters' inchoate longing in relief.
  5. Snow on Tha Bluff
    Bluff's portrait of street life has a grungy off-the-cuff realism that's only compromised by some obviously staged incidents.
  6. Inside Hana's Suitcase
    A documentary saga of heartbreaking concentration-camp horrors, Inside Hana's Suitcase attempts to preserve Holocaust memories through frustratingly fractured means.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    My Way
    Perhaps the most charitable thing that can be said about the 143-minute marathon My Way - with a reported budget of almost $25 million, the costliest Korean motion picture ever produced - is that it does nothing by halves.
  8. Fightville
    The language of ground-and-pound fighting remains untranslated for those not fluent in MMA, though ample space is given to the men's discussion of their individual warrior philosophies, illustrated with quotes from Nietzsche, P.T. Barnum, and Virgil.
  9. To the Arctic
    Arguably a good lesson for kids about preserving our environment, To the Arctic is definitely a threat to our equally endangered good taste.
  10. The Moth Diaries
    There's no surer way to murder horror than to literalize it, a mistake incessantly made by The Moth Diaries.
  11. Marley
    Thoroughly researched and packed with phenomenal archival footage, it's a rousing tribute to a mesmerizing performer that forgoes blind hero worship.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Goodbye First Love
    Like "Father of My Children," Goodbye First Love loosely fictionalizes lived experience in order to capture the ineffable - in this case, emotional maturation or, as Sullivan phrases it, "becom[ing] a real person."
  13. Downtown Express
    Whether to let go and follow your own path is a stock dilemma, and an implausibly hopeful conclusion winds up undercutting the realism of this immigrant song.
  14. Darling Companion
    The handsome pooch is also the only appealing aspect of the latest tale of privileged boomer pulse-taking from Lawrence Kasdan.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Chimpanzee
    Throughout, narrator Tim Allen shuttles between a jokey primer on chimp society and a basic play-by-play during the more action-packed scenes - the constant stream of explanation often detracts from the heart-of-the-jungle sights and sounds on display.
  16. Think Like a Man
    Enduring a day-long session of couples' therapy is more fun (and flies by faster) than this film.
  17. The Lucky One
    No amount of neck nuzzling or back arching can make us believe there's real heat rising between these two. Onscreen chemistry between actors is a mysterious thing - 100 years into cinema, it remains the one story element that Hollywood can't fake.
  18. Life, Love, Soul
    Admirable only for its sincere responsibility-over-selfishness message and for giving "The Wire" alums Chad Coleman and Jamie Hector some big-screen work, Life, Love, Soul otherwise proves to be just a low-rent Tyler Perry–style melodrama.
  19. Deadline
    The fact that real-life deadly racial animus in America is often cartoonish in its manifestation doesn't excuse Deadline's cliché-ridden characterizations of bigotry. Worse, the film has no pulse and no dramatic tension, despite its subject matter. It's a slog to get to its big revelations.
  20. Last Will and Embezzlement
    Mickey Rooney's own ordeal of being swindled by his wife's son gives the material a tiny bit of star power, but his mismatched interview clips merely exacerbate the earnest but graceless documentary's editorial clumsiness, aesthetic flatness, and endless repetition.
  21. Life Happens
    L!fe Happens is a blonde-brunette buddy comedy with a charmless cast (Rachel Bilson plays the third roomie, a Christian virgin) and banter as flat as Deena's favorite no-strings imperative, "Bone and bolt."
  22. Detention
    It's one of the most obnoxious movies ever made.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    How to Grow a Band
    How to Grow a Band might be a bit too low-key for the non-fan, but that's not to say the tour doc lacks substance: It doubles nicely as a fly-on-the-wall case study in the demands of making music for a living.
  24. A Simple Life
    A deceptively simple film, gingerly peels layer after layer of sharp insights into the dynamics of familial love, using compassion and droll humor as its tools. Its strength is that it manages to tap genuine emotion without succumbing to sentimentality.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blue Like Jazz
    One only has so much patience, though, for watching Communion-wafer-thin characters caught in a liberal-arts cartoon.
  26. Late Bloomers
    She (Rossellini) is radiant in a profoundly ordinary and believable way, as always, and stirs up generational pathos all by herself.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Unraveled
    It's a fascinating fishbowl in concept, yet Simon's storytelling is unevenly textured and oddly listless - fatal for a film about a banal document - pushing felon clock-watching to a known outcome.
  28. Kids of Today
    Refraining images of the mind-controlled sleepwalker Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari seem to submit Adrien as a Svengali-like figure to the kids, even as his "Iggy used to say . . ." pickups to fresh-faced scenesters don't seem to pay off.
  29. Oki's Movie
    If the characterizations are fleeting, the recessive mood is not: Hong's signature observational style is at once offhanded and astute, romantic and lightly chilled.
  30. The Lady
    Impersonally directed by cinéma du look pioneer Luc Besson, The Lady was written by first-timer Rebecca Frayn, whose script has all the elegance and nuance of Google Translate.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hit So Hard
    Unfortunately for Schemel, director P. David Ebersole seems to think these pop-up video footnotes are a substitute for narrative development and, more or less, forgets to edit down the rest of the tediously paced rockumentary.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Here
    The dreamy, feverish beauty of these sequences just barely balances out the pretension of the exposition. The film falters the further it drifts from that overheated, slightly delusional mood; the more precisely it's scripted, the less it feels true.
  33. Monsieur Lazhar
    Nélisse, with her tough, Courtney Love puss, and Néron's portrayal of a boy's well-defended torment are extraordinary, as is the film's realization of the small, temporary world that surrounds them. Hitting upon that kind of specificity - of a moment and its emotion - makes for strong memories and a really great movie.
  34. Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope
    A tender, thoughtful paean to geek community.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Cabin in the Woods
    A horror comedy with a structural twist intended to emit an air of being something more, Cabin has an off-putting vibe of cocky self-confidence, a "don't you get it" conviction that it's something special. As with people, it's not a charming quality in a movie.
  36. Post Mortem
    Often drolly, coolly morbid, Post Mortem also operates just as effectively in a more nakedly direct register.
  37. Lockout
    Lockout is, not unexpectedly, a potluck of derivative references.
  38. Tatsumi
    If the structure sometimes disrupts the story of his life, the strong lines and melancholy sensibility of the illustration form an anchor that keep the power of Tatsumi's work firmly in view.
  39. Surviving Progress
    The film trots out a who's who of great thinkers - Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking, Margaret Atwood, assorted scientists and historians - who are riveting as they walk us through the question of whether we will or can survive progress. The anticapitalism prognosis is grim, and the hope offered is slim indeed.
  40. MIS Human Secret Weapon
    When one MIS vet refers to "American soldiers" and doesn't include himself, his son-in-law corrects him, but even after all of his service to his country, the man still feels excluded, a sense that the film powerfully communicates throughout.
  41. American Reunion
    Taken altogether, the Pie movies offer a cohesive worldview, showing each of life's stages as the setting for fresh-yet-familiar catastrophes, relieved by a belief in sex, however ridiculous it might look, as a restorative force.
  42. Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
    Laughton, of course, is elegant rotundity in motion, a naughty, moonfaced cherub in his drunk scene, later sweetly surprised when finding himself elevated into a man by the Gettysburg Address, a recitation of which is the film's palpitating heart.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    We the Party
    Van Peebles's heart is probably in the right place, but his attempt to wed his kids' generational moment to a classic coming-of-age template falters in its message-obsessed execution.
  44. Player Hating: A Love Story
    A young boy's nonchalant attitude toward having a friend stick a loaded gun in his mouth as well as a man's numerous knife scars courtesy of his beloved wife definitely cut through the clichés about "thug life" to capture how violence is an integral, corrosive part of inner-city life.
  45. The Hunter
    The Hunter is too many films in one.
  46. ATM
    After memorably sealing Ryan Reynolds in a coffin in "Buried," screenwriter Chris Sparling's attempts to make a two-ATM vestibule equally claustrophobic are less inspired.
  47. The Assault
    Taut, forceful, ritualistic, and all those other flattering adjectives applied to thrillers that actually thrill, this skyjacking docudrama showcases yet another genre (in addition to shock horror) the French are kicking our asses in.
  48. 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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Keyhole
    The film is infectiously somnambulant, so convincingly and unrelentingly dreamlike that its sudden end mimics the sensation of snapping awake from deep sleep.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Damsels in Distress
    The thing that Damsels and its damsels value above all else - outside of well-timed, well-phrased, slyly deployed witticisms (Stillman hasn't lost a step) - is sure to rankle mavericks on both sides of the aisle. Forget the economy - it's about conformity, stupid.
  51. Wrath of the Titans
    What it lacks are the very elements that made the first movie such a surprise: wit and nerve.
  52. Mirror Mirror
    Here, the familiar tale is retold with concessions to feminist self-determination and camp humor, bending the Grimm Brothers' tale without infringing on its basic beauty.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fear and Desire
    Treat it like a wobbly, precocious demo from a 24-year-old with mighty aspirations, filled with hints of what he would become, and you'll be properly enthralled.
  54. Artificial Paradises
    Olaizola pans across peeling building facades to subtly enhance her portrait of characters crumbling under the weight of self-destructive habits and solitude - a weight that might only be lifted through the selfless compassion of others.
  55. Love in the Buff
    Buff gels into a surprisingly moving look at the machinations of the heart.
  56. God Save My Shoes
    There's no escaping the fact that Benasra's documentary does little more than perpetuate the myth of women - all women - as vapid materialists worshipping at the altar of Manolo Blahnik.
  57. The Beat Hotel
    Scaling new heights of inessentiality is The Beat Hotel, which chronicles the period, roughly 1958–63.
  58. Scenes of a Crime
    What's remarkable about Scenes of a Crime, besides Hadaegh and Babcock's ability to stay out of the way of their story and resist flashy graphical flourishes, is the degree to which the events it reveals are business as usual.
  59. Womb
    The glacial pace is only quickened for seconds at a time with evocative ideas and hints of satire.
  60. Turn Me On, Dammit!
    Like its title, Turn Me On, Dammit! is a jokey pseudo-provocation.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Four Lovers
    Cordier remains sensitive to the subtle shifts in the foursome's dynamics, but do we really need another handwringer about the perils of polyamory?
  62. Intruders
    With nothing tangible at stake, Intruders is just an aggregation of influences that's as blank as its bogeyman.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bully
    It has a clear and calm approach to storytelling and some interest in the quality of its handheld images.
  64. Goon
    When considering the moral implications of such gladiatorial violence, the film comes out squarely in favor, asking what's crueler: enjoying the spectacle of blood on ice or taking away a livelihood from those who can't do anything else?
  65. The Island President
    The Island President also shows how the most high-minded idealists inevitably become deal-makers: The toothless agreement eventually ratified in Copenhagen - which calls for but doesn't require CO2 reductions - is lauded by Nasheed as "a very good, planet-saving document."
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Musical Chairs
    All would be forgiven if Seidelman weren't so damningly dispassionate about dance, cutting up and away from movement and devaluing the thing we'd countenance so much cheese in order to see.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Losing Control
    The blue rom-com then takes a frenzied late turn into espionage territory, an attempt to gather momentum that only makes the film more tiresome.
  68. All In: The Poker Movie
    Instead of sustaining a significant cultural story, at almost two hours, All In feels like an energetic but overlong highlight reel.
  69. Brake
    Dorff's mannered Bruce Willis affect seems as insincere as the script, which helplessly loses credibility as info accrues and the narrative unpeels.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Come on Eileen
    The film betrays an eager crowd-pleaser's impulse toward on-the-nose dialogue and resolution on command.
  71. October Baby
    A slick piece of pro-life propaganda, it has relatively luxe production values, painfully earnest performances, and a drippy "inspirational" score.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Trouble with Bliss
    The tiredness of its conceit aside, the film manages to ingratiate thanks to a script that pleasantly ping-pongs from one digressive dialogue to another and a persuasive performance by Hall.
  73. The Raid: Redemption
    Lean, fast-moving, and filled with game-changing fight sequences that have a brutally beautiful (or beautifully brutal) quality, Gareth Evans's Indonesian martial-arts film The Raid: Redemption lives up to its viral hype.
  74. The Deep Blue Sea
    Plumbing disquieting depth, Deep Blue Sea investigates the insoluble dilemma of romantic love: the expectation, contrary to experience, that we can or will find every quality that we want in a single person.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    4:44 Last Day on Earth
    The use of stock footage eventually approaches overkill in the montage-heavy climax. Much more impressive is the way Ferrara uses his own "documentary" footage of the city.
  76. An Encounter with Simone Weil
    Julia Haslett's absorbing if patchy ode to Weil, an advocate for the rights of the disadvantaged, confronts her subject's ideas of moral responsibility through surprisingly personal and experimental means.
  77. The Hunger Games
    Like the pacing of the novel, the film, even at almost two and a half hours, moves briskly, continuously drawing us in.
  78. The Wise Kids
    The Wise Kids suffers from a theater workshop-y tendency to rest too long on pauses and silences to convey dramatic heft. But the blunder is ultimately overshadowed by Cone's excellent young actors, particularly Torem, burrowing deeply into her character's zealotry and anguish about being left behind.
  79. Pray for Japan
    Filmed over a period of six weeks and supplemented with animated music sequences and chilling news footage of the terrifying deluge, Pray is both an elegy and a love letter.
  80. Seeking Justice
    Seeking Justice is the kind of effective middle-range pulp thriller that has lately become an endangered species.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Reuniting the Rubins
    What happens when you put a rabbi, a Buddhist monk, a high-strung capitalist, and a lesbian humanitarian together in the same room? Not comedy, it turns out.
  82. Natural Selection
    Natural Selection mixes elements of "Transamerica" and the recent "Higher Ground" to tell the story of how a God-fearing fortysomething woman found the greatest love of all.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Kid with a Bike
    The Kid With a Bike seems to unfold in a different world than that of previous Dardenne joints, one with a wider range of spiritual and practical possibilities.
  84. Gerhard Richter - Painting
    Gerhard Richter Painting artfully and convincingly immerses us into the world of one of the greatest, painting.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The FP
    Infinitely better as a beer-goggled pitch than as a feature film, The FP never gets beyond the studied novelty of its own pose.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Free Men
    Free Men never feels like a movie about a developing conscience, due largely to the shallowness of the protagonist as written and, by extension, Rahim's portrayal.
  87. Detachment
    Movies about teachers are flypaper for overblown armchair crusaderism, and this overbearingly cynical attempt gets my vote for worst offender yet.
  88. Delicacy
    Tautou, playing workaholic widow Nathalie in Delicacy, gives off a sexless, cutie-pie charm - not as aggressively as she did in "Amélie," but still gratingly. The actress, therefore, is perfect for this dainty, inconsequential romantic dramedy.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jeff Who Lives at Home
    Jeff is a surprisingly mutable, ultimately poignant day-in-the-life drama about a slacker who genuinely wants to stand tall.
  90. Casa de mi Padre
    The humor doesn't only target south of the border. Like any good genre product, Casa also smuggles in rude social criticism.
  91. 21 Jump Street
    Though these mismatched cops bounce well off each other, Tatum, in his first comedic lead role, is the better performer, both more riotous and affecting.
  92. John Carter
    The achievement of John Carter is that it takes the elements worn to nubs by everything from "Star Wars" to "Avatar" to TV's "Fringe" and makes them fresh again.
  93. Convento
    Alterman's camerawork, panning and zooming about Christiaan's ants, rabbits, birds, and other assorted mecha creatures, conveys a sense of ominous religious awe.
  94. Apart
    To understand Apart's Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown tommyrot any better, one would need a psychic bond to first-time writer/director Aaron Rottinghaus, for his movie doesn't do much of a job explaining it.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
    This impressionistic approach eschews traditional biography, instead giving the viewer the feeling of being inside a moment, without necessarily providing all the information we might need to contextualize what we're seeing.
  96. Shakespeare High
    If Shakespeare High lacks the tightness and emotional tension a competition doc needs to take off, we get to know enough of these preternaturally self-assured kids to care about what happens to them beyond the finals.
  97. Good for Nothing
    Good for Nothing has a nice comic sense of the brushfire eruptions of Western violence.
  98. Sound of Noise
    More an intriguing premise than a successful film, the Malmö-set Sound of Noise, about a group of "musical terrorists," quickly loses its novelty and becomes about as bold as a Swedish production of "Stomp."
  99. Children of Paradise (1945)
    What's left to be said about Marcel Carné's towering intimate epic of early 19th-century love and the lives of performers, often heralded as the greatest French film of all time?
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jiro Dreams of Sushi
    Gelb might flit around a bit too much, but his appealing documentary always comes back to its subject's determination (sometimes overbearing) to leave the most meaningful possible legacy to his family and his craft.
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