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. Fados
    Saura is formally ambitious--a troupe travels through the film, articulating lyrics in dance--but the movie missteps when departing wholly from the intrinsic nostalgia of its subject, as the seventysomething director imposes his idea of contemporary cool.
  2. Sherman's Way
    Plays like something out of an indie-film paint-by-numbers.
  3. Tokyo!
    Mutants abound as each episode trips the light fantastic.
  4. Explicit Ills
    A tender ensemble slice of inner-city Philly life.
  5. Reunion
    Not so much a "Big Chill" knockoff as a poor man's Whit Stillman comedy, this pretentious gab-fest from trial lawyer-turned-filmmaker Alan Hruska (Nola) feels like it traveled through a wormhole after someone watched "Metropolitan" in 1990.
  6. 12
    Miklahkov keeps 12 tops spinning at all times in the school gymnasium that serves as their deliberation room, and though the speech/conversion pattern grows a little pat, the movement toward consensus raises the further, richly complicated question of how to decide not only what is right, but what is best.
  7. Red Riding Trilogy
    The fact that the films hang together at the brink of incoherence is a credit to the assembled acting talent. Rebecca Hall and Maxine Peake deserve note, oases in this nasty, masculine world.
  8. Crossing Over
    And so it goes, with Kramer--who doesn't really seem to like people very much--failing to muster even the superficial empathy the makers of the similarly programmatic "The Visitor" and "Rendition" showed toward their own cardboard-cutout imperiled illegals.
  9. Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
    Even in the context of pop-to-statutorily-rape-virgin-eardrums, it's difficult to rate the Jonases. The tunes are no-stick.
  10. The Trouble with Romance
    Can a movie get some "at least we tried" low-budget pity points, man? Move back home, all of you.
  11. An American Affair
    Only Noah Wyle, as Adam's unreadable dad, rises above the muck; he deserves his Tarantino-aided resurrection sooner rather than later.
  12. Examined Life
    Ideas beam out from Astra Taylor's engaging new philoso-doc Examined Life; the viewer basks in the intelligence on-screen and, occasionally, soaks up the rays.
  13. Eleven Minutes
    Charming and unexpectedly perceptive portrait cum procedural proves the DIY-authentic corrective to Unzipped, a warts-and-all chronicle of McCarroll’s yearlong preparation for his inaugural show at New York Fashion Week.
  14. Fired Up!
    We're light years away from "Animal House," sure, but who ever thought we would long for the richer, funnier dignity of "American Pie?"
  15. Delhi-6
    It's pretty much irresistible and, in that sense, represents the enigmatic India of today as well as anything ever could.
  16. Must Read After My Death
    Dews helps Allis hold out a gendered posthumous snapshot of an era whose smug surface, barely masking oceans of suffering, makes "Revolutionary Road" look like a tea party.
  17. Katyn
    While never less than fascinating, Katyn alternates between scenes of tremendous power and sequences most kindly described as dutiful. It's as if the artist is never certain whether he is making this movie for himself, his father, or the entire nation.
  18. Gomorrah
    This corrosive, slapdash, grimly exciting exposé of organized crime in and around Naples comes on like "Mean Streets" cubed.
  19. Two Lovers
    Touching in its absurdity, the movie is what the French, if they didn't love Gray so much, might term agréablement ridicule.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Friday the 13th
    This means that for one ticket price, you get three shoddy Friday the 13th movies packed into one, which might constitute entertainment value if any one of them constituted entertainment.
  21. The Caller
    The Caller begins as a multinational corporate thriller more ambiguous and geopolitically senseless than "Demonlover."
  22. Coraline
    Coraline Jones isn't the pluckiest or most ingratiating sprite ever to take center stage in a children's film, and her (mis)adventures aren't especially novel, but Coraline is still a consistent splendor to behold.
  23. He's Just Not That Into You
    If all you ask for is a few gay jokes, a perky score, pretty shots of Baltimore, and some clever but callow observations of sexual mores in the city, He's Just Not That Into You is an amiable enough night out.
  24. The Pink Panther 2
    It's Garcia, Molina, and Tomlin who give you momentary hope that the film might settle into a witty, irreverent romp. Unfortunately, their efforts are ultimately defeated.
  25. Push
    Seems to have been made up as it was being filmed.
  26. Confessions of a Shopaholic
    Plays like both a supremely outmoded chick-lit adaptation and an outrageously obscene gesture as the economy continues to swallow up livelihoods, homes, and hope.
  27. The International
    Both actors (Owens and Watts) seem mildly aggrieved (and not at all convincing) at having to play characters considerably less intelligent than themselves in a movie that plays even dumber.
  28. Fanboys
    The one genuine bright spot among the performers is Kristen Bell as Windows's would-be girlfriend, his dream combination of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Janeane Garofalo.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Memorial Day
    Placing the onus of the war on the troops, Fox follows "Redacted's" vile moral playbook, only without Brian De Palma's self-reflexive, formalist gestures.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    New in Town
    The movie wrong-foots Zellweger from the start. She's not enough the ice queen, like Sigourney Weaver in "Working Girl," for us to accept her transition into adorable Melanie Griffith.
  31. Service (Serbis)
    Serbis may be a raunch-fest, but it's also a mind-trip--a raunch-fest with ideas.
  32. Luck by Chance
    Remains a fluffy fantasy as trivial as an episode of Entourage.
  33. Shadows
    A prolonged and overemotional take on the putting-lost-souls-to-rest drama.
  34. Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
    An ungainly hybrid of straight-up documentary and ingenuous reenactment.
  35. The Lodger
    Nodding, winking, and sighing, The Lodger lumbers its way to a final twist so anticlimactic and silly as to warrant an incredulous titter.
  36. Donkey Punch
    A workmanlike thriller that works as an (unconscious?) auto-critique of mainstreamed Internet-age hedonism.
  37. Inkheart
    It all smacks of that overdone "passion for literature" common in English teachers who send any healthy-minded kid running from books.
  38. Of Time and the City
    Terence Davies revisits his youth to decidedly mixed effect.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Chandni Chowk to China
    Alas, Chandni Chowk to China, directed by Nikhil Advani, is asymmetrical in the extreme: shapeless, shameless, and slapdash.
  40. Cherry Blossoms
    The best I can say for Cherry Blossoms is that it's made with love; the worst, that it's been a big hit in Germany. Yearning for Ozu, Dörrie stops off at cute, and parks.
  41. Notorious
    Notorious, despite its bigger-than-life subject and habit of dripping sex sweat at the most unexpected moments, is rather square.
  42. The Unborn
    For as long as it forges ahead without explanations, The Unborn works, in its way, as a series of snap-cut gotchas introducing each new contestant in its pageant of cold-sweat set pieces.
  43. Yonkers Joe
    Lahti burns through a thinly written role with a surprising level of warmth and humanity.
  44. Just Another Love Story
    Danish director Ole Bornedal (Nightwatch) continues a career of laying the groundwork for remakes that will be middling in more familiar, English-language ways.
  45. Silent Light
    The results are extraordinary. As understated as it is, the movie is both deeply absurd and powerfully affecting.
  46. Cargo 200
    Regardless of intent, Cargo 200 is beautifully filmed and completely disturbing for its entire running time.
  47. Defiance
    There are subtitles and vaguely East European accents; there is romance and rebirth, tears and regular pauses for gallows humor (at which we Jews are known to be very good, on account of our long history of persecution).
  48. Good
    So incompetently mounted by Brazilian director Vicente Amorim (it takes a clumsy directorial hand to make Viggo Mortensen come on like Sesame Street's Mr. Noodle) as to be utterly incoherent.
  49. Revolutionary Road
    Revolutionary Road isn't a great movie -- it lacks the full, soul-crushing force of the novel -- but what works in it works so well, and is so tricky to pull off, that you can't help but admire it.
  50. Waltz with Bashir
    Ari Folman's broodingly original Waltz With Bashir -- one of the highlights of the last New York Film Festival -- is a documentary that seems only possible, not to mention bearable, as an animated feature.
  51. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Benjamin Button is to the first half of the 20th century what "Gump" was to the second -- a panorama of the American experience as seen from the perspective of a wide-eyed Candide. Here as there, Roth reduces our complex times to a parade of shockingly straight-faced kitsch.
  52. The Spirit
    The fanboys will find room in their heart to forgive the desecration. Everyone else won't care at all.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bedtime Stories
    While no one was expecting the live-wire daring of "Punch-Drunk Love" or even "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," the Adam Sandler who shows up in Bedtime Stories is that most unnecessary of movie-star guises: the benign family-comedy guy.
  54. Last Chance Harvey
    Besides being old pros who could elevate such schmaltz in their sleep, Hoffman and Thompson -- despite the 20-plus years between them, and her graceful restraint in contrast to his creepy assertiveness -- have a genuinely sweet chemistry, which is the exact and only reason to seek this one out.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Marley & Me
    Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston relegate Marley to a lifestyle accessory in his own biopic.
  56. Valkyrie
    Valkyrie feels like another installment in the never-ending franchise -- not just the action-movie one, but the Tom Cruise one. Like the operation itself, it's a good idea -- just not well-executed.
  57. The Secret of the Grain
    Escalates into visceral allegory with an abandon and cruelty that seem positively Romanian. The last 30 minutes more than redeem the preceding two hours.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Theater of War
    Walter's doc can't decide whether it wants to be about Brecht, Streep, or Mother Courage herself.
  59. The Tale of Despereaux
    Clumsily wedged in like a TV commercial between deafening stunts, the emotional storytelling sinks without trace, leaving you with only one flawed character to cling to.
  60. The Class
    For anyone who loves language, this cut-and-thrust is a heady delight, so rich and free-flowing in its rhythms that it's hard to decide whether what we're seeing is a vérité-style documentary or a realist drama.
  61. Moscow, Belgium
    We're not talking the Dardennes brothers here, but fellow Belgian Christophe Van Rompaey gives this light May-to-December pair-up an agreeably mussed, pedestrian milieu.
  62. Seven Pounds
    Dispiritingly obvious and phony from top to bottom.
  63. Yes Man
    Yes Man is nothing more than warmed-over holiday seconds, a repackaged best-of for those who already own the hits.
  64. The Wrestler
    Present in every scene, if not each shot, Rourke gives a tremendously physical performance that The Wrestler essentially exists to document.
  65. Nothing But the Truth
    In the spirit of its title, Nothing but the Truth pivots on a plot twist that's both good and fair. And kudos to the ever-earnest Beckinsale for surviving a prison brawl as splatterific as anything Mickey Rourke had to endure in "The Wrestler."
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
    From the increasingly experimental solo records that followed, and Walker's subsequent reputation as a reclusive genius and cult figure, you'd expect the subject of Stephen Kijak's documentary to be a forbidding, pretentious artiste--and the pleasant surprise of Kijak's film is that he's anything but.
  67. Gran Torino
    Above all, it feels like a summation of everything he (Eastwood) represents as a filmmaker and a movie star, and perhaps also a farewell.
  68. Che
    Every Bolivian sequence has its Cuban parallel, which is why Che's two parts are best seen together. Guerrilla may be the more realized of the two--and could certainly stand on its own--but it is only comprehensible in the light of The Argentine. Elevating Guerrilla to tragedy, The Argentine puts some hope in hopelessness--and even in history.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Timecrimes
    Modestly diverting.
  70. The Day the Earth Stood Still
    The problem here is that there are no big ideas.
  71. Doubt
    Doubt is only marginally, and tendentiously, about moral uncertainty--it's more about the sins of a nosy old biddy who pulls out all the stops when going through the official channels of a male-dominated Catholic Church would get her nowhere.
  72. Nothing Like the Holidays
    The cast is appealing enough, though, and those looking for seasonal warm fuzzies can find them, as predictably touching as a muddled-through "Auld Lang Syne."
    • 58 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Adam Resurrected
    One cannot recommend this film strongly enough.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dark Streets
    The film has its shallow pleasures, but once it becomes obvious that that's all Dark Streets has going for it, the affected performances and forced tough-guy speak stop feeling playful and start to become oppressive.
  75. Delgo
    You'll just wonder why this isn't a video game you can actually play.
  76. What Doesn't Kill You
    Goodman's movie tends to limp along.
  77. Where God Left His Shoes
    Leguizamo, working at a scramble, gets more on-screen traction than in recent memory.
  78. The Reader
    Like many narrative filmmakers who walk on their tippy-toes when dealing with the Holocaust, neither Daldry nor Hare seems eager to make the material his own.
  79. Wendy and Lucy
    Trembling throughout on the verge of a tearful breakdown, but far too dignified to allow her character to choke up, Williams delivers a sensationally nuanced performance that, were it not so resolutely undramatic, would constitute an aria of stoical misery.
  80. Hunger
    A superbly balanced piece of work, addressing the passion of Irish Republican martyr Bobby Sands.
  81. Cadillac Records
    With everything so wrong, how can there be anything right about Cadillac Records?
    • 28 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Nobel Son
    Director and co-writer Randall Miller is so ill at ease with the basic building blocks of the genre that Nobel Son quickly announces itself as one of those misbegotten clunkers where almost every creative decision isn't just wrong but tone-deaf.
  83. Punisher: War Zone
    The script isn't what matters here: This is a slasher movie with guns, and, uh, huh-huh, that's pretty cool.
  84. Frost/Nixon
    Frost/Nixon's main attraction is neither its topicality nor its historical value, but Langella's re-creation of his Tony-winning performance.
  85. The Black Balloon
    Within its resolutely mainstream parameters, The Black Balloon courses with a firsthand feel for languorous Aussie summers, the shifting scales of love and hate in sibling relationships, and the earned wit that helps families cope with difficult situations.
  86. Let Them Chirp Awhile
    It's lively and funny, if unbalanced.
  87. Four Christmases
    The movie doesn't offer a single surprise within its scant 82 minutes, which feel like at least twice that.
  88. Milk
    Milk is so immediate that it's impossible to separate the movie's moment from this one.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Transporter 3
    The movie has more lags in action than either of the previous episodes, and somehow the dialogue is even more daft
  90. 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.
  91. The Betrayal - Nerakhoon
    Impressionistic and lyrical, as well as somber and gripping, The Betrayal conveys a ceaseless flow. It's as if the filmmaker has opened a window onto a parallel world traveling beside our own.
  92. Special
    All that's left then is a miserablist analogue to M. Night Shyamalan's "Unbreakable," a sad portrait of paranoid delusion with wipe-out stunts played for the comic wincing of "Jackass."
  93. Bolt
    Bolt carries two tales for the price of one, both handled by Disney veterans and first-time directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard with wit, grace, and the dazzling craftsmanship we've come to expect from the studio that's hitched its wagon to Pixar.
  94. Lake City
    Added to the general torpidity and twangy tropes of this Southern family drama is the discomfort of watching a natural actor (Garity) force it.
  95. Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
    This may or may not be the greatest instance of college football ever played, but "Brian's Song," J"erry Maguire," and "The Longest Yard" notwithstanding, Rafferty's no-frills annotated replay is the best football movie I've ever seen: A particular day in history becomes a moment out of time.
  96. Australia
    The result is mostly a woodenly derivative melding of '40s maternal melodramas, oaters, and World War II actioners.
  97. Quantum of Solace
    A spastic, indecipherable, unholy, and altogether unwatchable mess.
  98. A Christmas Tale
    A heady plum pudding of a movie--studded with outsized performances and drenched in cinematic brio. The concoction is over-rich, yet irresistible.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eden
    This portrait of an imploding marriage is remarkable for every reason that counts in a good film.
  100. House of the Sleeping Beauties
    One of the year's worst releases. A second viewing of "Synecdoche" would be less painful.
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