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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    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Where's the Party Yaar?
    This breezy comedy deconstructs the struggles of assimilation, satirizing the stereotypical "culture clash" Indian-American identity narrative.
  2. Sylvia
    A handsome, mostly tasteful production on par with 2001's Bayley-Murdoch impersonation "Iris."
  3. Anna and the King
    Dusted off for one more run-through, and for those who applauded "Titanic's" old-is-new ethos, the moth-eaten, barely breathing Anna and the King will serve as a slap in the face.
  4. Danny Deckchair
    Weird, frivolous, and impossible to dislike.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    All Access: Front Row. Backstage. Live!
    It all seems an advertisement -- ostensibly for a retrograde vision of the R.O.C.K.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Perlasca: The Courage of a Just Man
    More courageous than Spielberg in its depiction of Nazi brutality, Perlasca occasionally feels like the made-for-Italian-TV film that it is.
  7. Wagner & Me
    Most of the time, though, Fry is an unabashed appreciator. He paws at costumes, thrills to touch Wagner's own piano, and looks right at the camera to apologize for being so excited. It's the light, charming touch absent in Wagner - and proof that both of the famous men referred to in the title benefit from each other's association.
  8. All Mistakes Buried
    Even when all the puzzling pieces of Sonny's existence don't quite fit, Trammell's beautifully unhinged performance offers a compelling vision of a grieving narcissist burrowing into the rabbit hole of his own mind.
  9. The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
    Though it's made with lots of modern tricks and technology, it's old-fashioned in the best sense, and not just because it's set in the Sixties.
  10. The Brave One
    Taken literally, almost everything that follows in The Brave One so seriously strains credibility (even by the standards of the genre) as to enter the realm of the absurd. Taken on the level of a menacing urban fairy tale, however--something akin to what Jane Campion was aiming for with "In the Cut"--it's strangely fascinating.
  11. Wolf Creek
    The ambitions are so paltry that our response should be too: Wolf Creek is unimaginative, light on the grue and heavy on the faux-serious desperation.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    39 Pounds of Love
    Eagerly mimicking reality TV's need to mold life into a digestible narrative, the documentary 39 Pounds of Love simplifies its subject until all that's left is a name and a cloying score.
  13. Miss Julie
    Despite a few dynamite scenes from Chastain, Miss Julie's cruelty is more potent than its craft.
  14. Minions
    It's all perfectly OK, and even, at times, delightful.... Yet Minions doesn't add up to all that it should.
  15. Real Steel
    Based very loosely on a short story by "I Am Legend" author Richard Matheson, Real Steel in fact comes closer to road-bonding movies featuring children and hesitant papas: "Paper Moon" or "Over the Top," say.
  16. War Machine
    It’s a complex subject, to say the least. And the film struggles at times with trying to make parodic jabs at a serious topic – it never quite seems to go far enough with its satire. But Pitt’s ridiculous, wildly over-the-top performance somehow keeps it all together. Whenever he’s onscreen, the film finds its soul, its heart, and its funny bone.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Spoken Word
    Though crudely constructed (the lighting and framing are strictly soap opera), unevenly acted (Becker is a bundle of distracting tics), and bluntly scripted, the film does have an honest integrity--at least whenever Blades is onscreen.
  18. For No Good Reason
    It's a film that paints a potent portrait of an artist of righteous, controlled fury.
  19. Unknown
    As with its protagonist, Unknown boasts tantalizing issues buried deep beneath its frantic exterior, but little idea how to unlock or address them.
  20. Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
    An elegantly constructed if misleadingly titled class lecture.
  21. The Rum Diary
    The Rum Diary could use a shot of the mania that fueled Terry Gilliam's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." As deadpan as he is, Depp could use a crazed Benicio Del Toro to complement his cool.
  22. Take Me
    While the film, to its credit, doesn't become a trite morality play, the ending is thin and contrived nonetheless.
  23. Ramona and Beezus
    Wholesome to the point of being dull.
  24. Frank & Lola
    The film's success depends upon the tension between Frank and Lola, and even this cast can't overcome what feels like an essential disconnect in the central relationship.
  25. Filth
    A self-aware psychopath is a tough character to humanize, especially when he's mired in a stylized jumble of comedy and tragedy.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Breaking and Entering
    Forgive Minghella for taking a breather, even if Breaking and Entering exhales nothing but hot air.
  27. Christmas in the Clouds
    Few clichés go unexercised, but there's also something quietly amazing going on here: For once, American Indians are portrayed not as spiritually attuned mystics or powerless patsies but as ordinary working stiffs, or at least the cinematic equivalent thereof.
  28. Two Men in Town
    Blethyn is wonderful as an all-too-rare character, a middle-aged woman who holds her own in a position of authority over violent men.
  29. Bamboozled
    Primary story line is clumsy and badly acted. But he (Lee) reminds you that movies have power, that they matter, and for a few brilliant moments, Bamboozled matters more than any other American movie this year.
  30. Tommy's Honour
    Golf's become such a ridiculously well-heeled pastime that it's refreshing to see it portrayed in its infancy, when clubs were carried like a bunch of kindling and the desolate greens of St. Andrews were more like the hazards of today's game.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stella Days
    Thanks to its understated elegance and surpassing central performance, this modest, too-eagerly schematic period drama is more engrossing than it has a right to be.
  32. Hereafter
    Hereafter is not just a stretch for Eastwood, it's a contortion. The irrationality of the premise is exceeded only by the strategic irrationalities of the plot.
  33. The Minus Man
    Less interesting for what it has to say about evil -- namely, that it's banal/unknowable/random/everywhere -- than for the microsurgical procedures it performs on genre conventions and expectations.
  34. CQ
    Endearing but pointless, at once cluttered and tinny, this film-dork fantasia suggests a shopping spree at a high-end vintage emporium underwritten by Daddy's blank check.
  35. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
    There are pages missing from this fable: Meadows reports that his financiers asked him to cut one-quarter of his original script just before production began, and his fondness for long takes sits uneasily beside the apparent gaps in the narrative.
  36. Men of Honor
    The filmmakers at once coarsen and dilute a fascinating life into a lumpy puddle of punishing inspirational hokum.
  37. Phone Booth
    Best appreciated as hilarious pulp metaphor, which, not coincidentally, happens to be one of the screenwriter's specialties.
  38. The Anniversary Party
    The film's greatest failure, however, is the absence of any convincing emotional or sexual relationship between Sally (Leigh) and Joe (Cumming).
  39. The Ladykillers
    The Coens are uncharacteristically restrained. Indeed, given that the crime comedy is their preferred genre, The Ladykillers is remarkable mainly for its timidity.
  40. After Midnight
    What makes After Midnight more than just another ménage à trois (in homage to Truffaut) is the way Ferrario, who also writes about movies, weaves the allure of early film into a contemporary story, shot with the latest high-definition technology.
  41. Troy
    Hardly gay camp for nothing, sword-and-sandal epics cannot help but teeter on the brink of self-mockery, and Troy, for all its grim seriousness, embraces both the clichés and the beefcake.
  42. Phoebe in Wonderland
    Writer-director Daniel Barnz's film is profoundly stirring, if also occasionally maddening.
  43. Maleficent
    With more actual grrrl power, Maleficent would be a bold redo. Instead, it's a beautiful snooze, a story that hints at the darkness underneath our fairy tales and tarnishes the idea of true love without quite daring to say what's really on its mind: that even the best of us might not live happily ever after.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Time We Killed
    Reeves's remarkable skills for expressive cinematography grant this grim tale a stark beauty bereft of sentimentality.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Falling
    As the characters wander through the countryside, the film's focus wanders too, sometimes away from the audience's interest.
  46. 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.
  47. Fanny, Annie & Danny
    Mostly the movie just gets off on how awful and/or pathetic its characters are, calling on the viewer to judge or pity rather than sympathize with its gallery of grotesques.
  48. Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings
    The comedy preaches tolerance... But using hate crimes—even cartoonified ones—as a source of humor is troubling, and the mincing stereotypes on display bring to mind a little kid pointing and shouting, "Homo! Homo!"
  49. The End of Time
    The awe incited by the world is enough — no pontificating necessary, man.
  50. The Island of St. Matthews
    At its best, the film does the job of the albums lost to the floods: It captures a town's history.
  51. Angelica
    Queer writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein (the mind behind the vagina dentata horror-comedy Teeth) and an impressive team of collaborators inspire laughs and/or terror out of the libidinal hang-ups of frail stay-at-home mom Constance (Jena Malone) and her unfulfilled spouse, Joseph (Ed Stoppard).
  52. Claire in Motion
    Howell and Robinson go all-in on Claire’s measured mourning, and while it may be realistic, that detachment — along with a relentlessly clinical gray-tinged color palette — ultimately bogs down whatever momentum Claire in Motion might be working up to.
  53. Bottle Shock
    The movie should have been more like Rickman: sparkling and light, with just a hint of acid. Instead, it's a huge gulp of vinegar.
  54. December Boys
    If Daniel Radcliffe is hoping for an acting life after Harry Potter, he might want to be choosier than this cloying little Australian number.
  55. Then She Found Me
    In short, it's the kind of film that only a mother, which is to say my mother, would love.
  56. Sangre De Mi Sangre
    The result is contrived, but compelling--as is the movie's high-powered humanism.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie
    Perhaps the fly-on-the-wall approach of Esrick's mentor (and this film's executive producer) D.A. Pennebaker would have been more revealing. Instead, we get just a mystery man in white.
  58. Manglehorn
    As is to be expected from Green in his pensive mode, there are lovely images in Manglehorn... But Manglehorn is also the latest entry into the tiresome Sad Man Learning to Love Again genre.
  59. The Misandrists
    As in many of his films, The Misandrists finds the oppressed themselves oppressing others, a warning among all the dizzy outrageousness.
  60. The Man Who Knew Infinity
    In the end, The Man Who Knew Infinity never allows itself to transcend the sad irony of such biopics — that people known for thinking outside the box are always given film portraits that refuse to do so.
  61. Kundo: Age of the Rampant
    With its harmonica-heavy score and rousing shots of these horse-riding antiheroes, Kundo's early and late scenes resemble a Western as much as the historical epic its middle section gradually turns into.
  62. Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart
    The characters aren't quite stylized enough; though they have skinny bodies and disproportionately big heads, their just-realistic-enough facial features often veer into the Uncanny Valley.
  63. Alex of Venice
    Messina, making his directorial debut, keeps it simple. Alex undergoes a surprising amount of personal maturation in a week, but Winstead never lets the character bog down in excessive navel-gazing.
    • 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.
  65. Downloaded
    The doc is only about as revealing as a middling magazine article on the subject.
  66. The Recruit
    Cliché-density aside, Roger Donaldson's perfectly rote movie is childishly naive about the reality of the CIA as it stands in the official record and in the public mindset.
  67. Dinosaur
    Dinosaur amounts to 80 minutes of discouraged Cretaceous trudging, punctuated by the occasional fight or stampede and one pyrotechnic coup: a truly thrilling meteor shower.
  68. Ned Kelly
    The film marks a welcome departure from the usual rah-rah machismo of the semi-nationalist action adventure, but Jordan never escapes the mighty shadow of "The Thin Red Line"--from the grace-note inserts of exotic birds, snakes, and foliage to Ledger's laconic, sometimes haiku-like voice-over to Klaus Badelt's embarrassingly Zimmer-derivative score.
  69. Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp
    Intentions and effect are at odds throughout Jorge Hinojosa's one-note documentary.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Monk
    The finale, in which godly rites are juxtaposed against the vilest of sins, builds to an unholy power.
  71. The Yellow Birds
    What Moors offers that’s new is a kind of unfolding mystery, as we come to find what really happened to Murphy in the war zone. Too bad that the pacing is botched and that the whole narrative becomes one long dirge of “and then, and then, and then.”
  72. Joy
    Russell enthusiasts — and I consider myself one — often applaud the director's abiding interest in the messiness of his characters' lives, most vividly on display in American Hustle, a movie animated by flamboyant dissemblers and depressives. But the disorder found in Joy is a reflection not of any quicksilver dynamics among the actors but of the odd tonal shifts in the film itself.
  73. Wassup Rockers
    Larry Clark's latest finds the grizzled shock-meister in a thoughtful mode and a mellow mood.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Matador
    The Matador reserves judgment while raising the core issue concerning this traditional ritual: deep, poetic cultural expression or glorified animal cruelty?
  75. Lucha Mexico
    The film's most worthy detour is into the history and personal significance of masks.
  76. 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.
  77. That Sugar Film
    That Sugar Film suffers from some of the usual stunt-doc laziness.... But Gameau builds his case well.
  78. A Fragile Trust
    While mostly well made, and certain to serve as a handy précis for the J-school set, A Fragile Trust is more a soiling reminder than a revelation for anyone already familiar with Blair's case.
  79. Monsters vs Aliens
    The grandeur of the effects--the honest-to-God spectacle of the thing--elevates Monsters vs. Aliens to something approaching art. It's not a masterpiece, but it's most certainly a milestone.
  80. W.
    A painful movie to endure.
  81. Going Shopping
    Henry Jaglom's latest study of contemporary female obsessions among a noxious clan of West L.A. bourgeoisie is of more pathological than cinematic interest.
  82. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?
    The ending has a surfeit of sugar, but writer-director Arvin Chen's story jaunts along, a cheery rom-com tinged with dream visions and a somewhat daring conceit.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Kamikaze Girls
    If you value plausibility in movies, skip Kamikaze Girls; this is the sort of picture where getting run over by a truck gives a character gorgeous hair instead of a broken hip.
  84. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    The biggest titters at a recent preview screening came during a scene in which Mewes shows off his dick--as though, at last! Still, how Jason Segal of him. Does Apatow always get there first?
  85. Twilight
    In the 17-million-copy land of "Twilight," the calling card isn't blood and fangs, but the exquisite, shimmering quiver of unconsummated first love. By that measure, the movie version gives really good swoon.
  86. The Secret Disco Revolution
    The film isn't as smart on the issue of race as it needs to be, and its feminist read of the music and scene feels forced in places, but as an entry-level conversation starter, it gets the job done.
  87. Bokeh
    Toward the end, the filmmakers relent on all the grieving sightseeing and offers up a couple plot developments, plus colloquies on matters geo- and theological. None of this proves as arresting as Iceland’s cliffs and horses, or those first moments of a city depopulated.
  88. Max
    For all its flaws, Max does propose a credible young Hitler, played by Noah Taylor as an unpleasantly opinionated, arrogantly ascetic, defensively vain autodidact with a diffident sneer and a bottomless well of grievance to draw upon.
  89. The Manson Family
    A film the family might've made themselves: sophomoric, hagiographic, amateurishly strobe-happy, and thoroughly hippiefied.
  90. Soft Fruit
    Bursting with grotesque burlesques of household relations.
  91. Concussion
    Concussion isn't much of a movie, but it's a fascinating bellwether for where the National Football League currently stands on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease associated with many of its former players.
  92. Calling All Earthlings
    There isn’t much marijuana use in Jonathan Berman’s documentary Calling All Earthlings, but its elliptical, ramshackle structure could make one question the merits of legalization.
  93. Edge of Darkness
    Onscreen much of the time, thicker and more creased than you remember, Gibson can make this rather unshapely movie seem taut.
  94. The Merry Gentleman
    Keaton, who took over directing duties from ill-stricken screenwriter Ron Lazzeretti before shooting started, inherited a stock-still story of two lonely souls and never develops their rapport.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Finding Eleazar
    Only true opera diehards will appreciate the backstage psychodrama, a catalog aria of the singer's multiple neuroses.
  96. Dr. Feelgood: Dealer or Healer?
    Director/producer Eve Marson doesn't characterize Hurwitz as devious or nefarious. Instead, she presents him as a naïve, way-too-trusting schnook — an even more troubling diagnosis.
  97. Touchy Feely
    Worse than the goofy premise, Shelton fails to enliven the incredibly talk-heavy (but subtext-free) inaction with any sort of visual flair.
  98. Dom Hemingway
    If only Shepard's movie lived up to his leading man. It's merely a frame for a character portrait, with Shepard's camera screwing our eyes to Law's performance and pasting in supporting actors and situations for no larger purpose than to see his reaction to them.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Jihad for Love
    Muslims, Jews, and Christians may have their, oh, occasional differences, but as an Islamic scholar observes early in Parvez Sharma's documentary, there is one point on which the world's divine religions agree: Homosexuality is a crime.
  100. I'm So Excited
    I'm So Excited! is characterized by a distinct brand of unsuccessful yet ambitious storytelling, the kind often found in minor works by major masters.
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