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 Social Network
    Corny as that is, the film's nadir comes when Zuckerberg's pretty young lawyer comforts him (or us) with the mealy-mouthed observation, "You're not an asshole, Mark. You're just trying so hard to be one."
  2. Let Me In
    There's a human tragedy somewhere here-but aggrandized puppy-love romance and stylish revenge fantasy is all that lingers.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Freakonomics
    A quartet of uneven TV pilots posing as a full-length documentary.
  4. Douchebag
    In its rushed, implausible moment of reckoning, Douchebag ends up validating the frat-boy credo: Bros before hos.
  5. Hatchet II
    This time out, Green is not as self-aware, devoting a solid hour of his film's 90-minute running time to pre-mayhem character development so witless and dull that Hatchet II might as well be "Friday the 13th, Part 14."
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ip Man
    Like his narrative, Yip's aesthetics are more muted and traditional than those of well-known florid imports "Hero" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Yet such modesty is in tune with his soft-spoken protagonist, and also provides clean, sharp views of Yen's awe-inspiring skills, which, in choreographer Sammo Hung's thrilling one-against-many skirmishes, make literal the term "fists of fury."
  7. Leaving
    In any language, the actress (Kristin Scott Thomas) does what she can to best serve her scripts, even when they're hopelessly beneath her.
  8. Hot Summer Days (Chuen sing yit luen - yit lat lat)
    While the film is slight, predictable, and familiar, it's great popcorn fare.
  9. Speed-Dating
    Likable enough to wear you down with its eager-to-please capering.
  10. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
    "We're all mixed bags" is the conclusion of unwieldy mixed bag Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Buried
    Rodrigo Cortes keeps the action bound to the box, limiting his lighting to naturalistic approximations, so that much of Reynolds's performance consists of him grunting and heaving in the dark.
  12. 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?
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Enter the Void
    A mash-up of the sacred, the profane, and the brain-dead, Enter the Void is addictive.
  14. Waiting for 'Superman'
    Guggenheim's insistence on not engaging with the injustices that children of certain races and classes face outside of school makes his reiteration of the obvious-that "past all the noise and the debate, nothing will change without great teachers"-seem all the more willfully naïve.
  15. Tibet in Song
    Make no mistake about his ability to make social studies entertaining: A montage about Tibet's many supporters is set to the Beastie Boys playing "Sabotage" live.
  16. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
    That You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is not more dull is due in large part to the adorably flamboyant Punch (late of Dinner for Schmucks and Hot Fuzz).
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jack Goes Boating
    Hoffman's directorial debut transfers to film the company's ethos of an ensemble performing with ruthless honesty encouragingly well. And that's why it's fitting that this drama asks so much of, and gets so much from, Ortiz.
  18. Easy A
    As far as teen comedies informed by 10th-grade English syllabi go, Easy A, partly inspired by "The Scarlet Letter," is remedial ed compared with "Clueless" and "10 Things I Hate About You."
  19. Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo
    There's enough rosy-cheeked drama, triumph, and sacrifice for a ready-made Hollywood remake.
  20. The Town
    It's good enough at least that you wish it was better.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Catfish
    Whether you think Catfish is fact or fiction, it certainly taps into something true: the basic, common need to believe that what feels like love is real.
  22. The Freebie
    None of the dialogue, presumably arrived at through improvisation, is either funny or memorable.
  23. The Girl
    Gorgeously framed by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, the Turner-esque beauty of the landscape at harvest time only adds to the creepiness as the Girl makes do, makes friends, and then unravels in the most creative ways.
  24. The Anchorage
    The Anchorage uses a narrative structure introduced to more powerful effect 35 years ago in Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman.
  25. Music Makes a City: A Louisville Orchestra Story
    An illuminating history lesson about the Kentucky metropolis's artistic vision and philharmonic orchestra.
  26. The Other City
    In her absorbing, alarming investigation into the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nation's capital, Koch cuts a cross-section through a bitter D.C. winter, following about half a dozen local victims, caregivers, family members, and activists as they grapple with a disease without the benefit of social awareness or political will.
  27. Never Let Me Go
    The surface blandness does not efface, and might even amplify, its disturbing qualities. Never Let Me Go is not a movie about death but, more painfully, about the consciousness of death.
  28. Kings of Pastry
    Most of the culinary footage is devoted to documenting-in flat, dull DV-the finalists' piece montée, or "sugar showpiece," in which sucrose is manipulated for its chemical properties, and dessert becomes a weird, often tacky sculpture.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    GasLand
    With its jolting images of flammable tap water and chemically burned pets, New York theater-director-turned-documentarian Josh Fox's Sundance-feted shocker makes an irrefutable case against U.S. corporate "fracking."
  30. Legendary
    Though the redemption/coming-of-age narrative is highly predictable-with Glover appearing intermittently only to dispense bromides-Clarkson, at least, remains reliable.
  31. Lovely, Still
    Call Lovely, Still life-affirming if you must, but its uplift is designed less to reassure than to honor the difficult process of how we deal when faced with the loss of those we have loved.
  32. Ahead of Time
    The unspooling of her life is a truly fascinating yarn of proto-feminist achievement and humbling empathy.
  33. Heartbreaker
    There's trouble in Paradis-and in a script that prizes frenzy over any actual feeling.
  34. Hideaway (Le refuge)
    Though the psychological layering and thematic ambition of the screenplay do not quite result in the depth intended, Hideaway's unsentimental performances will hook you.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I'm Still Here
    At once deeply felt and devastatingly cynical, I'm Still Here's bone-dry satire couldn't exist without the celebrity media feedback loop. But its apparent attack on the Hollywood machine is so insidery, so vicious, that to us-the everyday consumer-it's just not clear why this stunt needed to exist at all.
  36. The Romantics
    It is uncertain, though, how this material is served by disheveled cinematography, shooting handheld on the Hi 8 camcorder I had in high school, apparently editing on two VCRs, and flooding the mix with Forever 21 dressing-room music.
  37. Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould
    Devotees will perhaps find something new in this deep pool of archival footage, and newcomers will get an appropriate introduction to the beguiling charisma of a most media-savvy isolationist.
  38. Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?)
    The director doesn't bother to interview the experts-only those who knew the man best.
  39. Sequestro: A Story of Kidnapping
    Staying squarely with those victims, what Sequestro does crudely do is communicate the only really sensible platform-an abhorrence of cruelty.
  40. Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1
    Mesrine's promised end in November 1979 arrives as history recorded it, but, by that time, you're hoping the next vogue in biopics is the short film.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Going the Distance
    Distance is rated R because everyone swears excessively for no reason, the supporting cast of smart comedians (Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis) saddled with delivering painfully dumb, often unnecessarily dirty dialogue.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Machete
    Because there's no real character drama or consistent critique grounding the spoof, when Machete isn't laugh-out-loud funny, it's deadly boring.
  43. Last Train Home
    Everything is edged with desperation. However arduous Last Train Home may have been to shoot, it was infinitely more arduous to live.
  44. The Winning Season
    Writer-director James C. Strouse's The Winning Season respects its misfits (and its audience) by not stripping away their foibles in the service of sports-movie clichés.
  45. A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
    Those with a higher tolerance for bumptious jestering-from a yipping and mincing Xiao, or Cheng Ye as a bucktoothed jelly-belly-may, however, cry Masterpiece. They are instructed to seek out the longer Chinese cut, which apparently packs in more such interminable shtick, broad as the Yangtze.
  46. Prince of Broadway
    It's not the freshest scenario, and Baker lets Lucky sputter and moan about his fate for so long that we wonder, as his sensible girlfriend does, why we're bothering with such undiluted dickness.
  47. Max Manus
    An epic by Scandinavian standards, Manus's period re-creation is lavish-but the too-polished rental décor doesn't create a living past.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The American
    Despite its director's disinterest in letting people in, there is nevertheless something exciting about a movie this uncompromised, in which the big change from the book to the screen actually toughens up the story instead of watering it down.
  49. Mesrine: Killer Instinct
    Richet proves maddeningly loath to edit his material, and his charismatic star, Vincent Cassel, does not delve deep into the character.
  50. 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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Centurion
    Up to now, writer-director Neil Marshall has specialized in horror movies (Dog Soldiers, The Descent), but here, he imagines and communicates a remote world with terrific energy and a passion for detail.
  52. Change of Plans (Le code a changé)
    A comedy of manners in need of Ritalin.
  53. Daniel and Ana
    Too bad the director blows it with a last act that tips the film's delicate balance over into lurid grotesquerie, even as his staging remains as consciously muted as ever.
  54. The Milk of Sorrow
    In this wonderfully strange, hypnotically beautiful second feature from writer-director Claudia Llosa, the traumatic experience of the 1980s civil war on Peruvian women is passed down through song and, it is said, through their mothers' milk.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Highwater
    Sure to become a sacred text to surf-movie enthusiasts, but surprisingly watchable even for those who think "goofy-footing" is a new Southern hip-hop dance craze.
  56. Make-Out with Violence
    The product of a genuinely unique sensibility, the sort-of-zombie-movie Make-Out With Violence is inventive without being twee, quirky without being overly Wes Anderson, and suffused with a late-adolescent sense of longing as palpably felt as it is understated.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Louis
    Louis may superficially resemble movies of a bygone age, but it lacks their essence: masterful effortlessness.
  58. Baghdad Texas
    Hickey's overarching arguments about war, diplomacy, and American intelligence aren't just muddled, but altogether nonexistent, leaving his comedically challenged film Iraqi-desert-level barren.
  59. Piranha 3-D
    Irredeemable, and yet, the movie, written by Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg, is too funny and the filmmaking too self-aware to be truly offensive.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lottery Ticket
    The theme of this formulaic but vibrant ensemble comedy could best be described as a paraphrase of Biggie's well-worn credo: Mo' money, mo' problems-but mo' money, yeah, definitely.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mao's Last Dancer
    Based on the memoirs of Li Cunxin, Mao's Last Dancer means well, but it stumbles between genres.
  62. Nanny McPhee Returns
    McPhee's latest saga neither conjures the humanistic heart of "Babe" nor addresses father-son separation issues with the sobriety of "The Water Horse." Instead, it's merely a compendium of photocopied elements, cartoonish special effects, and easy-bake happily-ever-afters.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Switch
    Saddled with the responsibility of carrying the film, Bateman acquits himself admirably by playing it straight, developing a genuinely convincing and affecting chemistry with Robinson and taking his character's repression seriously.
  64. The Tillman Story
    The Tillman Story goes deeper, exposing a system of arrogance and duplicity that no WikiLeak could ever fully capture.
  65. Hiding Divya
    Though the leads make for a believable family unit, the performances in writer-director Rehana Mirza's thin-skinned, no-frills drama unevenly range from functional to histrionic.
  66. The Army of Crime
    Virginie Ledoyen stars as Missak's impossibly lovely, stalwart wife, and a troupe of supporting players give life to the men and women who died not for the miserable France of that moment, but for the vision of what it could be.
  67. Soul Kitchen
    Since the filmmaker's main agenda here is to keep things bumping along, the fraught situations are happily played and funk-scored as crowd-pleasing rather than issue-stroking.
  68. A Film Unfinished
    The artificial look of the added footage, counterpointed by the commentary of inmates and survivors, only underscores the unending shock of the film's unadulterated images, even though we have seen them in other Shoah documentaries.
  69. The Expendables
    This is action as timeless as the reptilian brain-and if The Expendables is no classic, for about 20 minutes, it blowed up real good.
  70. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
    As he did in "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz", Wright immerses his heroes in pop culture's detritus and diversions, but doesn't drown them in it. You don't have to be dazzled or tickled by the movie, or get every joke, to be touched by it, too.
  71. Animal Kingdom
    Michôd wants a Greek epic but doesn't have the material. Animal Kingdom is a work of obvious ambition, and seeing a debut filmmaker swing for the fences like this is its own kind of moviehead satisfaction.
  72. Peepli Live
    It's an unusual taste of mainstream Indian cinema (or, thanks to superstar Aamir Khan's production company, it's a small film given an unusually mainstream push), unexpectedly irreverent with an earthier, folkier soundtrack than the typical Bollywood electro-bounce.
  73. Tales from Earthsea
    Earthsea seems to be a stupendously dull place. It would try the patience of any kid.
  74. Salt of This Sea
    Annemarie Jacir, who was raised in Saudi Arabia, directs with flair and loving attention to the wild, damaged beauty of the contested landscape. But Soraya's rebellious bursts of rage come off more like the tantrums of a spoiled princess than the legitimate anger of an emerging activist.
  75. They Came to Play
    A welcome twist on the now-ubiquitous kiddie competition doc, They Came to Play centers on the Van Cliburn Foundation's gathering of the world's best amateur pianists over the age of 35.
  76. La Soga (The Butcher's Son)
    If La Soga feels neither gritty nor poignant enough to hit that sweet spot, it's not for a lack of sincerity.
  77. The People I've Slept With
    (It) notably liberated itself from the fusty tradition that a sex comedy should either titillate or tickle an audience.
  78. Neshoba
    Though Neshoba is standard-issue in terms of craftsmanship, the tools used to tell the tale (newsreels, family photos, crime scene and autopsy photos) are masterfully employed.
  79. Trust Us, This Is All Made Up
    Jagodowski and Pasquesi establish and travel between a host of characters with a deft use of voice, gesture, and, of course, responsive instinct. The moments of triumph are best witnessed live, but Karpovsky captures enough of the thrill to make this film a destination of its own.
  80. Vengeance
    More than once does To's grandiose imagism miraculously grant this rote thriller a gleam of the sublime, as in a trash-dump face-off staged as an epic field maneuver, or a campground shoot-out timed to the fickle light of the moon.
  81. The Other Guys
    Following the clues, The Other Guys turns more hectic than antic, and somebody didn't pack enough comedy for this long trip.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cairo Time
    Happily, writer-director Ruba Nadda's emphasis on body language ultimately trumps the clumsiness of her script.
  83. Middle Men
    But for all that predictability, Middle Men is smart and tense, with each scene drenched in dread.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Wildest Dream
    Everest looks suitably majestic in this IMAX documentary, though five different expeditions on the peak are awkwardly cobbled into one dubious narrative.
  85. Twelve
    Though Crawford's bangs and facial hair are the most art-directed aspect of the movie, he's costumed to look like a member of the Trenchcoat Mafia (Madison Avenue branch).
  86. Lebanon
    Not just the year's most impressive first feature but also the strongest new movie of any kind I've seen in 2010.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Spring Fever
    For long stretches of this tantalizing, romantic, aggravating film-until just before its extremely satisfying ending, in fact-I wished Lou had caught a little spring fever himself, cranked up the volume, and turned on the lights.
  88. Brotherhood
    Sounds trashy, sounds silly, but first-time director Nicolo Donato, who wrote the screenplay with Rasmus Birch, and a superb ensemble refuse to wink, resulting in a film that constantly subverts expectation.
  89. Patrik Age 1.5
    One is never bored, thanks to the innate charms of Skarsgård and young Ljungman.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mundo alas
    Actual insight into these people's hearts and minds is replaced with skin-deep montages of cheery tour-bus road-tripping, hanging out with friends, and writing songs in the studio.
  91. Last Letters from Monte Rosa
    Ari Taub's film is a rich tale of moral complexity tinged with an invitingly surrealist air.
  92. The Parking Lot Movie
    Their sense of superiority toward the petty SUV drivers and rude midlife-crisisers who frequent the lot is matched by introspective considerations of traditional social contracts.
  93. The Sicilian Girl
    The facts are more gripping than the filmmaking in Marco Amenta's routine docudrama about tenacious teen informer Rita Atria.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dinner for Schmucks
    Paramount Pictures and director Jay Roach would like to invite you to a dinner they're hosting, at which you are welcome to laugh at these poor jerks. That's a little messed up.
  95. Charlie St. Cloud
    This handsomely shot melodrama has a twist too peculiar to dismiss as some two-bit Nicholas Sparks weepie.
  96. Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel
    Playboy "gave us some of the best literature of our time," opines noted literary critic Tony Bennett, among a cast of mostly ridiculous and redundant talking heads.
  97. The Concert
    Beyond fans of Mélanie Laurent--who furiously fingers a fiddle and wears flashback wigs--The Concert may appeal to those who delight in stereotypes.
  98. The Dry Land
    The Dry Land does slip inside the inescapable, closed-circle logic of despair, and O'Nan's shy, precarious performance keeps you with him to the edge of the abyss.
  99. The Extra Man
    Going below the surface, the filmmakers and the cast (including a marvelous performance by Marian Seldes as an osteoporotic doyenne) successfully create the hardest characters to pull off: exotic yet recognizable New Yorkers.
  100. Get Low
    Despite that maddening third-act stumble, Get Low is a pleasure to watch.
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