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. Night Comes On
    All through the film, you pray it doesn’t go down the bleak routes that films like this usually go — and, most of the time, it does. Night Comes On is an assured first shot from Spiro but, damn, I couldn’t wait for this fucking thing to be over.
  2. Kingsman: The Golden Circle
    The movie has its moments, but the bloat and the blandness take their toll.
  3. Headshot
    The awesome shit's awesome; the ponderous is ponderous; and the bloody corpses are arranged as artfully as wedding bouquets.
  4. Love
    The couplings have an artful intensity lacking in pornography, which favors athleticism and disconnectedness, and the lighting — well, the best thing in the movie is the look of it all, which in a tony sex-flick counts for a lot.
  5. Rise of the Legend
    Too artfully made for camp status but populated by characters too one-dimensional to stand alongside the likes of Once Upon a Time in China, Chow Hin Yeung's martial-arts epic, set in the late nineteenth century, is marked by blue-gray hues and some genuinely striking camerawork.
  6. The City of Your Final Destination
    Best is Linney, conquering scenes as the acrid and touching Caroline, her regal bitterness a shield against nostalgia, dressed Park Avenue posh to drink alone.
  7. La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus
    This is powerful reportage, beautifully shot and gracefully laid out; too bad that Kendall ties it all up with more deep thoughts from the bus itself, thoughts that sound like outtakes from a TED Talk on the interconnectedness of all living things.
  8. Al otro lado
    A competent, earnest ethnographic video doc that never quite rises above its own best intentions.
  9. The Bourne Legacy
    Now, we have Jeremy Renner as another Treadstone mega man (there were nine, apparently), and though he is a likable enough pug-nosed action figure, the Damonlessness is sorely felt.
  10. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
    Fun and smart, but undeniably thin, the first installment of Tarantino's action epic is a fanboy fever dream. The clichés are out in maximum force, tempting any critic fool enough to go one-on-one with the master. (The prize: a Ph.D. in Tarantinology.)
  11. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World
    While overstuffed and scattershot, this episodic documentary makes a vital argument: That American popular music, especially the blues and rock ’n’ roll, owe much more to Native Americans than has been commonly credited.
  12. Zoom
    Director Pedro Morelli's neon-and-grime aesthetic and a solid cast of mostly Canadian character actors (including a campy, animated Don McKellar and a creepy Michael Eklund) are the grounding factors.
  13. Solomon Kane
    It is, for a contemporary CGI-fraught fantasy-slash-living-video-game, not at all bad, dotted with moments of Bosch and steady on its storytelling feet.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tuya's Marriage
    Wang's vision is preferable to the esoteric chic of "Khadak," but the Chinese director still maintains an emotional remove from his subject.
  15. Down and Dangerous
    Forsman — whose loose inspiration was Snowblind, a 1976 memoir by his retired drug-smuggler father — brings a refreshing crispness to the foot chases and fights, and there's a fun cameo that supports the retro-'80s vibe nicely.
  16. Other People
    Despite a strong sense of its characters, however, Kelly rarely generates much melodramatic or amusing momentum.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nomad
    With commendable sincerity but also an unfortunate Hollywood veneer, Nomad is a poor man's "Gladiator."
  18. OzLand
    The final result of all this, if a mixed bag, is still a more accurate rendering of the books' spirit than Oz the Great and Powerful.
  19. Comedian
    Seinfeld's cool professionalism is almost cruelly juxtaposed with the tortured narcissism of heel-nipping tyro Orny Adams, who illustrates the mirror-image view from below. Comedy is pain, whether you're top- or underdog.
  20. Lovesong
    Like its central not-couple, two women tongue-tied about their desire for each other, So Yong Kim's Lovesong frustrates with its lack of articulation.
  21. 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.
  22. Alila
    Israel's one-man new wave, Amos Gitai, surveys his nation's hardscrabble quotidian in Alila, which dallies with both Kiarostamian spirit and Altman-esque fabric, examining the intersecting lives of a dozen or so Tel Aviv residents.
  23. Cesar's Last Fast
    Equally lionizing but richer in detail than the recent Michael Peña-led biopic César Chávez, this occasionally stirring doc portrait of the late Latino labor organizer and civil rights icon frames his legacy around a single act of protest.
  24. Five Star
    New York onscreen is often a fantasy of hustlers, hardened cops, and the spoiled urban yuppies of the Baumbach and Dunham universes. In that sense, writer-director Keith Miller's modest drama Five Star is the kind of depiction the city sorely needs.
  25. Changing Lanes
    Smitten by the symmetry of his parable, director Roger Michell crosscuts emphatically between the preening leads -- a strategy that only draws attention to the numerous lapses in logic and unpersuasive changes of heart while sidelining the lively supporting cast
  26. First Sunday
    At first, the movie is over-anxious--trying too hard to squeeze out the laughs, pump up the soundtrack, ingratiate itself with the audience--and the straining is abrasive. But once Talbert gets distracted by keeping the plot clunking along, the comedy eases into relaxed sideline banter.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    7 Days in September
    The interviews occasionally veer into it-seemed-like-a-dream cliché, and the eerie soundtrack doesn't help. But at times the unpolished approach earns a rare complexity.
  28. The Dish
    Harmless and affectionate, The Dish gives its clichés breathing room, and so a few are pleasantly surprising.
  29. Burt's Buzz
    Shapiro seems far more invested than his subject in telling the story, which sometimes makes the film feel a bit underhanded.
  30. A Hard Day
    Kim Seong-hun's riveting if empty-headed A Hard Day will be remembered for its increasingly ominous jump-cuts to mobiles ringing, vibrating, and flashing profane messages.
  31. Una
    There’s nothing wrong with stylization and opening things up (usually, these are good things), and Andrews has impressive command of his frame. But here, the extra-cinematic adornments seem somewhat unnecessary, as Una’s chief power lies in its two striking lead performances.
  32. Aurora Borealis
    Aurora Borealisulth -- yes, that title eventually comes home to roost -- doesn't offend in any way, but it's so self-consciously quaint, so unwaveringly "nice," that you nearly wish it did.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Parallax View
    A movie of splendid bits and pieces disappointingly strung together. [25 July 1974, p.70]
    • Village Voice
  34. These Final Hours
    Hilditch's approach to this end-of-days scenario can be heavy-handed... But Hilditch gets good mileage out of his cast.
  35. The Big Red One
    Certainly a testament to Fuller's tenacity, but recent raves notwithstanding, it's no masterpiece...The Big Red One isn't even Fuller's greatest war film. Of those, I'd rank it fourth -- but that's not half bad.
  36. Mortem
    The initial scenes, thick with creep-show ambiance, promise more fulfilling madness than what actually transpires once the out-of-nowhere second guest reveals who she is.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wild Horses
    Despite the hogtied narrative momentum, Duvall has crafted a lifelike portrait of rural Texas life.
  38. Wasabi
    The real charm of this trifle is the deadpan comic face of its star, Jean Reno, who resembles Sly Stallone in a hot sake half-sleep.
  39. The Martian
    The Martian is only partly a story about a man in peril; it's mostly a story about men (and a few women) taking control of the uncontrollable. It's confident, swaggering sci-fi, not the despairing kind. That may be why, as elaborate and expensive-looking as The Martian is, it's almost totally lacking in poetry.
  40. Flowers
    Pulled in too many directions, the film's subtle mood-building starts to feel intentionally oblique, the force of its characters and symbols lessened by a frustrating circuitousness.
  41. Big Animal
    The tale's faux-fable simplicity is cunningly eloquent.
  42. Fatal Assistance
    Peck's documentary is not a penetrating look at at Haiti's post-quake problems, but a scattered, impressionistic one.
  43. Seeds of Time
    Fowler's work is bureaucratic, institutional, Western-focused. Which shouldn't matter, because it's good work, but as a story of salvation it feels too familiar.
  44. Steak (R)evolution
    If your vegan stomach and ethics do flip-flops at this spectacle, pull back for the cultural comparisons.
  45. Copying Beethoven
    Screenwriters Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson, best known for the two ponderous biopics "Ali" and "Nixon," deliver a film awkwardly composed.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Scary Movie 3
    Vigorously date- and time-stamped, Scary Movie 3 boasts a cultural half-life of about five seconds, but for those seeking a return on their weekly multiplex pilgrimages, this movie is The One.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Black God, White Devil
    The best parts of the film arise from the tension generated between the conventional use of myth and the simultaneous debunking of it. [16 Sept 1971]
  48. Sword of Vengeance
    The film hits its mark of being a popcorn action flick just fine.
  49. Ivansxtc
    Boldly engineering a collision between tawdry B-movie flamboyance and grandiose spiritual anomie, Rose's film, true to its source material, provides a tenacious demonstration of death as the great equalizer.
  50. White King, Red Rubber, Black Death
    A formal hodgepodge, Congo suffers from abrasive voice-over narration, stilted re-enactments, and an awkward courtroom conceit, but gets by on its shocking material.
  51. Mendy
    Inspired by a 1997 "Voice" article on ex-members of the Satmar sect, Mendy is cast largely with Orthodox or former Orthodox actors, who are utterly credible with dialogue that necessarily teeters between the candid and the offensive.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Inch'Allah
    This film has a lot to say, and it's sometimes affecting, but most of the time feels too understated to really deliver the powerful effect it seems to be going for.
  53. Bad Turn Worse
    For all its familiarity and rote nastiness, the film's sharply crafted and quite promising.
  54. We Go Way Back
    For all of the film's preciousness, the pungent notion of having your young-teen self gazing in horrified disappointment at the adult you've failed to become is as fresh a thematic undertow as it is disquieting.
  55. On the Outs
    Most importantly, the environment feels real: the accents, the snaps, the working moms and warehouse crack nooks, every dilapidated stairwell, every bodega and lovingly appointed teenage bedroom sanctuary.
  56. Land Ho!
    Land Ho! feints toward pathos and perversity, only to decide that it's better off giving us abridged, postcard emotions.
  57. You're Killing Me Susana
    Roberto Sneider's You're Killing Me Susana (Me estás matando Susana) is a culture-clash comedy in which the clash happens both onscreen and off.
  58. The Cell
    Not nearly the mindfuck it wants to be.
  59. Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth
    Walker's life is so eventful — and her contributions so important — that the hagiography is worth forgiving.
  60. Baunsu ko gaurusu
    Casting Tokyo as a neon wilderness thick with aged "perverts" and teenage pimps, the movie frames a critique of socially permissible pedophilia as indelible as Harada's eavesdropping mise-en-scène.
  61. Infini
    Infini doesn't go anywhere that superior science fiction films haven't already, but for a while, it's exciting enough to feel brand-new.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Inside Out
    This WWE-produced thriller is the best kind of bait-and-switch, auguring cranium-crushing action but instead delivering a meandering, eccentric, downright adorable existential crime yarn.
  63. Forever
    The film twists tension in the viewer's gut as the clock ticks toward a day of reckoning. But the script could be tougher-minded.
  64. Stop-Loss
    In the end, Stop-Loss's evening-news topicality proves both an asset and a liability--an irresolvable structural conundrum. Simply put, the film so effectively reconstitutes those Vietnam-homecoming touchstones that we can anticipate its every move well before it makes them.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Stone Angel
    Despite its cutesy comic-relief digressions and overdone solemnity, The Stone Angel finds its way past tonal inconsistencies to a moving conclusion that doesn't romanticize death.
  66. Ae Fond Kiss...
    Despite the agreeable lead performances, it's one of Loach's more forgettable films.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Detropia
    The filmmakers pay elegy to the Detroit of the Motown era, with its thriving middle class supported by manufacturing. At the same time, they're honest about the fact that the version of Detroit local partisans yearn for is long gone and most likely not coming back.
  68. Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve
    Bruce may succeed in making you wary of the Fed, but, unfortunately, he's also likely to make you wary of his film.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Comedy of Power
    An enjoyable but curiously weightless trifle that lowers rather than raises the temperature of the affair. Comedy of Power has to be the most polite, untroubled conspiracy film since the genre first tapped a phone.
  70. The Conversation
    The Conversation could have used a great deal more vulgar curiosity about its own plot and its own characters. Coppola's good taste has been misplaced on this occasion, but he remains one of our most promising new filmmakers nonetheless. [20 June 1974, p.78]
    • Village Voice
  71. The Pill
    What makes Khoury's film work - at least until its cop-out ending - is the consistency of Fred's loathsomeness.
  72. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
    Murray is always pleasurable company, and his barely suppressed soulfulness might've supported this dawdling big-fish story if its insistent larkiness had abated and let a little reality in, as had "Rushmore."
  73. The Boys & Girl from County Clare
    Gets by on infectious geniality.
  74. Pandora's Promise
    The proceedings, no matter how logical their contentions, come off as merely one side of the debate.
  75. Thank You for Smoking
    Instead of hitting the gas and allowing the scenario to rock 'n' roll with g-forces, Reitman keeps his movie small, unvaried, slack, and deliberately and oddly, completely smoke-free.
  76. Gangs of New York
    Cost well over $100 million, and the money is up there for the gawking. Illuminated by the orange flames of hell, the vast New York City set looks great. The least engaging aspect of the movie is its script -- which passed through the hands of three separate writers and perhaps even producer Harvey Weinstein.
  77. Rachel Getting Married
    A middlebrow domestic drama beating its wings against an experimental frame.
  78. Sorry Angel
    Honoré’s scenes feel at once composed and curiously mundane, as if he’s trying to take the precision of his earlier work and mix it with a more realist impulse — or, if we’re being less charitable, as if he’s trying to will his aesthetic into something more “mature.”
  79. The Taste of Others
    A pleasant time-passer.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Optimists
    Questionable as a theory of history, but as a human sentiment, it's touching to behold.
  81. That Obscure Object of Desire
    Elaborate exercise in frustration.
  82. The Treatment
    Short, sweet, and hardly ever cloying, The Treatment is largely dependent for its success on the quality of its performances--most surprisingly, Eigeman's.
  83. I've Loved You So Long
    A modestly satisfying tale of sisterly love weighed down by a history of family betrayal and mendacity.
  84. Paycheck
    Woo's film is in some ways closer to Dick's -- and his own -- pulp roots, and if he lazily quotes himself (and, inexplicably, Aldrich's "Kiss Me Deadly") once too often, he at least gets loose, spirited performances from his cast -- Uma's post-"Kill Bill" gravitas notwithstanding.
  85. The Longest Ride
    A good romance can make us endure an implausible plot as long as the leads have heat. Luke and Sophia's connection feels true. Who cares about the mechanics? By the time The Longest Ride runs right off a cliff, we're already strapped in to the passenger seat. Give in and enjoy the plunge.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Lucky Break
    Mike Leigh mainstay Timothy Spall deftly shades in the designated goner, fellow "Still Crazy" alum Bill Nighy is sweetly wispy as the capable fop, and anger-management counselor Olivia Williams trembles pleasantly as usual.
  87. Cotton Mary
    Brought to life by the weirdness of its subject matter and the risks Madhur Jaffrey takes in her brilliant performance.
  88. Free the Nipple
    It's too rare for movies to depict women working together as friends to effect political change, and this one makes it seem righteous, loud, and fun as a rock concert. Free the Nipple won't change the conversation, but it might help start one.
  89. Simon Birch
    That Simon Birch is not as maudlin as it might have been is largely due to the intensely thoughtful, prickly performance of 11-year-old Ian Michael Smith, who plays Simon.
  90. Descent
    A well-acted trifle straining to be a hard-hitting morality play.
  91. Passionada
    There's much to admire here, including an often witty script and a cast that includes Theresa Russell, Seymour Cassel, and the irrepressible Lupe Ontiveros (Celia's mother-in-law).
  92. Happy Together
    Acerbic, moody, and provocatively slight, it's a movie of apparent non sequiturs and privileged moments. [21 Oct 1997]
    • Village Voice
  93. Sweet Talk
    The mustiness of many of the script's ideas hardly detracts from what feels like a radical premise, at least in film — that a woman can get off with a stranger and leave it at that. Erica Jong would be proud.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everything Strange and New
    The film conveys the intimate sense of reading a diary and provides no more consolation than we feel in writing in our own.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Deeper Than Y
    The interviews are lively, though not all documentary subjects are created equal.
  96. Interstellar
    Whatever his strengths may be, Nolan lacks the human touch. His movies are numbingly sexless, and by that I don’t mean they need sex scenes or nudity -- those things are rarely really about sex anyway. But in all of Nolan’s films, human connection is such a noble idea that it’s beyond the grasp of flesh-and-blood people.
  97. Ana Maria in Novela Land
    Ganem and her talented co-stars work hard, but Riedel's pacing is always a beat or two behind their mad energy, making for a film that's enormously appealing, but not quite addicting.
  98. The Most Unknown
    Much of the film is beautiful — hot springs, the ocean’s depths, and deep space are photogenic — although Cheney preserves a few too many mundane “hello, how do you do”s, and the science isn’t deeply explained.
  99. Violet & Daisy
    The key relationships are well drawn, if not especially revealing of anything human, and director Fletcher sometimes dares some welcome absurdity. But if you've seen movies built from the same parts as this one, you'll likely find this too familiar—but energetic, well-acted, and distinguished by artfully artless chatter.
  100. Hatchet III
    There's no shortage of visceral, gross-out thrills.
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