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. Plastic Planet
    When Boote gets out of the way, the film is illuminating and infuriating.
  2. Unfinished Song
    Shamelessly manipulative, it's a highly effective if not very good film, its success entirely due to the talents of its cast. They bring heart to a script that is unabashedly about pushing buttons.
  3. Farewell, My Queen
    The pleasure of Jacquot's film is in watching various strains of discreet, heated, and deluded passionate attachment performed.
  4. The Son's Room
    A movie more to be prescribed than recommended.
  5. All She Can
    The film proves that closely sketched specificity can trump pedestrian plotting. At least, that is, until steroids rears its ugly and inevitable head and the film veers into morality play and, finally, inspirational uplift.
  6. My Voice, My Life
    Director Ruby Yang doesn't even try to upend the clichés that practically define the kind of inspirational documentary she's made about art transforming the lives of at-risk and disabled students. She embraces them while pushing the film toward an eye-misting ending you'll see coming from the opening moments.
  7. Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead
    The film is playful throughout... Unfortunately, the shoddy treatment of the film's sole LGBT character and a tendency to use people in wheelchairs as punchlines mar this otherwise delightful gruesome confection.
  8. Lovesick
    LeBlanc and Larter carry the day with a spectrum of charm missing from too many entries in this shaky, persistent genre.
  9. Exposed
    Like burlesque itself, Exposed is at its best when it shows rather than tells.
  10. Frankie & Alice
    It's occasionally imaginative, and, most importantly, never boring.
  11. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
    Game Over's brazen lopsidedness may diminish its credibility, but it taps into the essence of all conspiracy theories-the desperate desire to believe.
  12. The Fruit Hunters
    The filmmakers' focus is fleeting. Factoids about the origins of names like Haas avocados, Macintosh apples, Clementines and Bing cherries feel like patches of solid ground, while interludes of terrible acting to illustrate fruit-related historical moments leave a bitter taste.
  13. Lace Crater
    Slight though it may be, Lace Crater's mix of Andrew Bujalski–style naturalism and Roman Polanski–style body horror is at least off-kilter enough to keep one absorbed throughout.
  14. Duma
    Duma turns out to be surprisingly flat, with little of the child's-eye imagery that gave "The Black Stallion" its poetic thrust and too much of the narrative gear-grinding that grounded stretches of "Fly Away Home."
  15. Moon Shadow
    If Moon Shadow does sometimes overcome its sentimentalism and faulty parallels, it's because the film is altogether unburdened by cynicism.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Game 6
    Despite a late-inning swoon of pat emotional generosity, Game Six is a gratifying playground of high-wire language.
  17. That Girl in Yellow Boots
    Koechlin, a striking woman with a slim frame, horse mouth, and big turbulent eyes, has screen presence enough to kick along the frequently-stalling psychodrama up to an ending that seems like a tossing up of hands.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Getting to the Nutcracker
    As visually rich and heartwarming as the documentary is, director Serene Meshel-Dillman struggles with pace: The interviews with the young dancers sometimes drag, while the final dance performance is frenetic.
  19. A Dark Song
    The performances are strong and the scenecraft absorbing.
  20. The Invisible Front
    Befitting a doc about a data-intensive struggle, the movie benefits from a wealth of resources.
  21. Extraterrestrial
    All My Children's Brittany Allen proves herself a big-screen presence as the lead earthling; her commitment to each scene's emotional truth is all the more impressive considering that the schoolboyish Vicious Brothers introduce her character ass-first.
    • 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.
  23. John's of 12th Street
    A mere hour long, the movie could stand to be more discerning with its material.
  24. Heights
    In this study of keeping up appearances while everything falls apart, the stakes never seem as high as the title suggests.
  25. After Love
    I walked away from After Love feeling like I knew precious little about these characters. Lafosse gets so many critical things right about this decaying relationship that, at first, I did not wonder too much about the lack of specificity or detail about them as people. But later, it gnawed at me.
  26. Trainwreck
    Schumer, writing and performing a character close to the one she’s been presenting to the public, may never be this funny again, but funny she is.
  27. King Kong
    For King Kong is an accountant's movie at heart. Given the excessive length and bombastic F/X, there's too much action and precious little poetry.
  28. Luminous Motion
    If Lloyd's performance is the film's near-fatal flaw, Unger's is its saving grace.
  29. Backstage
    An enjoyably overwrought meditation on the consequences of celebrity and the vicissitudes of fandom, Backstage stars Le Besco as the schoolgirl acolyte of Emmanuelle Seigner's pop diva, a singer-songwriter and high priestess of cheese.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shine a Light
    Shine a Light's only point seems to be: You try this at 60. One would hope that, after "The Last Waltz" and "No Direction Home," Scorsese might venture beyond making a glossy episode of "Ripley's Believe It or Not." Nope, and we're not supposed to question it: Like the Stones, Marty's earned the right to coast, especially in his senior years.
  31. Coffee and Cigarettes
    C&C hardly coalesces, but then again, it doesn't try to--never more or less than what it appears to be, the film is a slow honky-tonk thud-beat, only intermittently punctuated by a joke or idea.
  32. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
    For better or worse, the movie does for Chauvet what Baudrillard complained an on-site replica did for Lascaux-render the real thing false.
  33. Straight Into a Storm
    The messy but charming concert doc Straight Into a Storm works best if you treat unfocused on-camera interviews with the members of Rhode Island–based folk/grunge-rock group Deer Tick like an unintrospective but affectionate video memoir of the group’s rise to alt-rock prominence.
  34. Boulevard
    Director Dito Montiel aspires to sensitive drama, but Douglas Soesbe's script too often mires Williams in pat situations.
  35. And While We Were Here
    It's a bummer that the movie settles for such an oft-mined vein of bummed-outedness—for a few minutes, Coiro really had me going.
  36. The Hottest State
    Hawke quite capably taps into the bittersweet complexities of young, love-struck idiocy.
  37. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    Where Judgment Day exhibited the profligate sprawl of a military operation, the leaner, less grandiose Rise of the Machines has the feel of a single Hummer careening through an earthquake in downtown Burbank.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    We Are Wizards
    Ignore the scattershot approach, however, and there's considerable pleasure to be had in spending time with these bizarre enthusiasts and watching the creative ways they find to express their obsessions.
  39. Winter's Tale
    Winter's Tale, however imperfect, is that rare beast on the movie landscape: an unapologetic romance (for the first two-thirds, anyway), with attractive stars and special effects designed to give audiences something other than the experience of watching worlds get blown up.
  40. Roseanne for President!
    And this is the film's buried lede: Hakeem busts her ass for the candidate while Barr conducts her entire campaign from her house via Skype.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Usher
    Flush with evidence of Harrington's trademark blend of the strange and the sublime.
  42. Mr. Holmes
    Condon, like this Holmes, can't quite keep everything in his story straight and clear, but he and his film come close just often enough.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    13 Tzameti
    The artiest entry in the ever growing torture-movie genre, this playfully wicked French thriller from twentysomething provocateur Gela Babluani blasts its way into your brainpan with the help of black-and-white widescreen cinematography whose striking but smooth textures better suit the upwardly mobile auteur than his poor protagonist.
  44. JCVD
    What exactly is JCVD? Comedy? Confession? Confusion? No one will ever mistake these backstage shenanigans for "Irma Vep." But as a self-regarding expression of masculine angst, it's a Damme sight more fun than "Synecdoche."
  45. Observe and Report
    Broad but thin and more bleak than uproarious--a humorously downsized homage to foundational '70s classics like "Dirty Harry" and, especially, "Taxi Driver."
  46. The Muse
    As consistently funny as it is smartly tooled.
  47. Kill the Messenger
    It doesn't entirely engage, in part because it's so determined to correct the story that it can't let us explore it ourselves.
  48. After the Storm
    The class and cultural tension that exists between the well-intentioned city slickers and underprivileged kids is unavoidable, and director Hilla Medalia lets it settle evenly, refusing to judge.
  49. WA-SHOKU ~Beyond Sushi~
    Wa-shoku isn't as contemplative as Kanai and his acolytes, though it might still make you feel like a dilettante if your Japanese palate begins and ends with California rolls.
  50. The Island
    This is pure essence of Bay--it's big, it's loud, it has no context, and if you show up tanked, I'm sure it's really quite poetic.
  51. The Insomniac
    For most of its run, the film is a tribute to unimaginative competence, confidently venturing where so many movies have ventured before. But in the last few scenes, the script offers a solid twist and a cynical social critique, the latter coming out of nowhere but still somehow managing to work.
  52. Odd Thomas
    Sommers's script relies on rapid-fire banter between Odd, girlfriend Stormy Llewellyn (Addison Timlin) — yes, that's her real name — and Chief Porter (Dafoe), but occasionally feels forced.
  53. The Neon Demon
    Whether or not you connect with Refn's brand of over-the-top violence, you can't deny that his attention to color, texture, and music is nearly unmatched by other directors working today.
  54. 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.
  55. Hellion
    Hellion offers Paul his most adult screen role so far, and he's very fine, but the movie belongs to Wiggins, a newcomer whose innate gifts are a perfect echo of Paul's.
  56. Himalaya
    Himalaya lacks such lightness, humor, and grace, offering instead the surface beauty of an ancient and inviolate culture.
  57. Hank: 5 Years from the Brink
    Joe Berlinger's Hank: 5 Years From the Brink is more workaday and less transfixing than projects of his like "Brother's Keeper" or "Paradise Lost."
  58. Made in Dagenham
    Though nothing here is as rousing as "The Pajama Game's" raise-baiting "Seven and a Half Cents," the always-welcome Miranda Richardson steals the film in a small role as Barbara Castle, Labour P.M.
  59. Pulse
    With very few strong characters and a great many middle shots, Pulse sometimes plods--it's the price of Kurosawa's restraint and his indifference to structure.
  60. Naples '44
    It’s basically a high-caliber book-on-tape augmented with actual (as opposed to horror-movie fake) found footage — a missing link between full-on dramatization and simply reading the book while imagining visuals.
  61. Monster
    Theron's empathetic victim-wrath and elemental female outrage almost trump the otherwise cartoonish gender-bending and award-grubbing po' folk put-on.
  62. Surveillance
    Surveillance is the work of a director who has made significant strides in both storytelling and control of the medium, deftly interweaving a grisly thriller, a sicko "Rashômon," a switcheroo, a psychotic love story, an imaginative paean to children, and an inspired resurrection of Julia Ormond.
  63. Diary of a Wimpy Kid
    Sweet and funny at either end, but in between, it sags with endless repetition of gross bodily functions.
  64. Lakeboat
    Forster not only makes this unlikely story emotionally believable, he moves you to tears. Lakeboat isn't much of a film, but for Forster fans, it's indispensable.
  65. Adoration
    The end result is a movie considerably more absorbing to talk, write, and think about afterward than it is to actually watch.
  66. It Follows
    Mitchell's unwillingness to define the parameters of the specter haunting Jay leads to a finale that's muddled and confusing, and definitely not scary.
  67. Home
    If director Tim Johnson -- adapting Adam Rex's book The True Meaning of Smekday -- can't do much with the story's confused, if well-intentioned, agenda, at least he's got some charming, vivid characters to work with.
  68. Ivory Tower
    What the film does accomplish is making you think, especially about how universities are spending their ever-increasing tuition on top-notch campus amenities and their own disastrous loans, and how state governments and federal agencies are similarly passing off their education cuts onto the young people who they expect to one day run the economy and society.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tau man ji D
    Another oil-slick ode to man-on-auto lust, Initial D offers enough full-speed money shots to eke out a victory over its barrage of clichés.
  70. The Mule
    The Mule proves a tough sit, but by the end you might be satisfied you gritted through it.
  71. Semi-Pro
    What at least distinguishes Semi-Pro from its predecessors (not only those starring Ferrell, but also such lesser lights as "Dodgeball" and "Balls of Fury") is that it's a slightly darker movie--one made for grown-ups, hence the R rating.
  72. Two Lives
    The film takes one entire act too long to shake its mopey fog and get crackling.
  73. Endgame
    The principals, especially Ejiofor, rise above the starchiness that often hampers portrayals of recent, monumental history.
  74. A Wolf at the Door
    As with so much of Brazilian cinema, the framing of the plot as a social allegory instead of a psychological portrait doesn't yield the most emotionally satisfying experience. But Wolf serves as an important feminist correction -- and a compelling reminder that predators can come from anywhere.
  75. Cellular
    Basinger takes her shuddery Stanwyckness very seriously, but everyone else has a ball.
  76. The Magnificent Seven
    You get enough of a sense of this place and these men — and that widow! — that it's a disappointment when, in the end, we just have to watch it all blow to hell.
  77. Music Within
    Sheen, like the movie itself, is trying too hard to inspire when the story doesn't need the help.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Walk Away Renee
    Picking up where his 2003 "Tarnation" left off, Jonathan Caouette's new documentary is no less hermetic, autobiographical, messy, and ultimately touching.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Man on Fire
    Intentional or not, Man on Fire's over-the-top evocation of Christian retribution goes a long way to making this otherwise standard revenge fantasy watchable.
  80. Imagine That
    Imagine That does manage to get a crowd tearing up on cue for its emotional climax; as much as it works, it's through the personal charm of Murphy and Shahidi.
  81. Lowriders
    Other than a from-nowhere burst of violence that nearly destroys the movie, Lowriders is a refreshingly muted celebration of family and forgiveness, of honoring your roots while being yourself.
  82. Midnight's Children
    Even if you've read the novel, and are prepared for the long running time and haphazard structure, this isn't a movie you should expect to feel or even closely follow. See it if Midnight's Children is a novel you always wanted the gist of.
  83. Nina's Tragedies
    With improbable charm, Gabizon knits it all together, his characters' sexual obsessions and earthiness tempered by a soulful melancholy.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Meet Me in Montenegro
    The quiet honesty of Anderson and Lina's interactions and raw, often handheld camerawork wash away the film's meandering pace and sometimes grating dialogue.
  85. A Coffee In Berlin
    Gerster and Schilling are more successful when they allow Niko's behavior to be their main subject.
  86. Fanny
    Fanny has a stagy sensibility, but Auteuil displays flashes of genuine, old-school craft.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    God Grew Tired of Us
    A borderline lazy but nonetheless compelling documentary co-produced by National Geographic.
  88. Boy Culture
    All told, this is a harmless, well-packaged bit of overly familiar fluff.
  89. Aimee & Jaguar
    Relies on the hefty talents of its two leading ladies.
  90. A House on a Hill
    Squint through the humbug, and there's some genuine life going on.
  91. Our Last Tango
    Viewers will sense that the history of these compelling figures entails more frustration and complexity than can be examined in a short running time.
  92. 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.
  93. 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.
  94. The Houses October Built
    [An] uneven but intriguing found-footage horror flick.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Duplex
    A bitter little fable of rent control and its discontents, Duplex moves rapidly into darkness and claustrophobia.
  96. Being Ginger
    Harris is wistful, funny, and articulate about his romantic neuroses and insecurities... Unfortunately, he sometimes fails to go deeper.
  97. Arlington Road
    The mode is hysteric-Hitchcockian, the result mostly devoid of suspense.
  98. Edge Codes.com: The Art of Motion Picture Editing
    Lively, intelligent look at the art of film editing.
  99. Zheng hun qi shi
    An intelligent, perceptive film. It's good enough to make you wish Chen hadn't sacrificed emotional complexity for a last-minute surprise.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Missing Victor Pellerin
    The result is a satire that somehow doesn't feel satirical: comic yet humane.
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