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. Skin Trade
    Skin Trade's action is all blood and sinew, but its camerawork and choreography are nothing if not graceful.
  2. Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment
    Worse, the film never challenges the traditional Zionist narrative of the kibbutzim developing an untamed land, paying only lip service to the fact that it was already inhabited before the Jewish settlers got there.
  3. Love, etc.
    The admirable Gainsbourg refrains from overacting, but her leading men never quite transcend the emptiness and inanity of their characters' dilemma.
  4. Bee Season
    The mysticism only mystifies; its hieroglyphics are vividly rendered, but Bee Season never manages to spell them out.
  5. Amores Perros
    Undeniably high-powered. At 153 minutes, it's also punishingly overlong.
  6. Home
    Akinnagbe's embodiment of Jack is the most wholly realized accomplishment in the film. His speech, hesitant and stammering, is matched by defensive body language, his walk and posture as guarded and wary as a bird's. It's a truly physical performance in a film that didn't demand it.
  7. The Captive
    When it isn't TV-movie familiar, Egoyan's film is bughouse crazy, mixing in campy pulp elements that bleed pressure away from the story.
  8. The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death
    Flawed but genuinely creepy ghost story The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death is disappointing, but only because it comes close to greatness.
  9. Forgiveness
    David's trauma, madness, and recovery (including a relationship with a Palestinian woman) is arranged as a puzzle of dreams, flashbacks, hallucinations, and strikingly choreographed numbers that, while occasionally dazzling, remains in pieces at film's end.
  10. The Soloist
    Foxx and Downey's disciplined duet come close to redeeming The Soloist from its visual excesses, but Wright leaves us with a parting shot of the dancing homeless that shamelessly exploits the very people he means to champion.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    That's the Way I Like It
    Writer- director Glen Goei, a London stage actor, ably guides his likable cast through this by-the-numbers story, but he is hobbled by the film's lifeless soundtrack.
  12. Lonesome Jim
    Lonesome Jim has the import of a deliberately squelched sitcom, or a home movie that's poisoned by unhappiness but shown anyway for stray laughs.
  13. Beware the Gonzo
    Too cute by half, Beware the Gonzo will appeal to the 20 people left on earth who insist on broadsheets over iPad apps and/or those bewitched by star Ezra Miller's pretty cheekbones.
  14. Shut Up & Sing
    The movie's not quite the Bush bashfest its publicity might lead you to believe; it's closer to the Metallica doc "Some Kind of Monster" than to "Fahrenheit 9/11."
  15. 3 Women
    Today, the movie doesn't portend Altman's subsequent tailspin into irrelevance as much as it suggests a restlessness with the comic realism he had mastered.
  16. 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.
  17. Ghoul
    Ghoul rewards attention for much of its running time with subtle scares and growing unease, before squandering it in a shaky chase through twisted corridors that goes nowhere unexpected.
  18. Godzilla
    Godzilla is one of those generic, omnipresent blockbusters that's undone by the very spectacle it strives to dazzle us with: Everything is so gargantuan, so momentous, that nothing has any weight.
  19. Shelley
    Director Ali Abbasi excels at atmosphere, understanding that any beautiful landscape can be made terrifying with the right sound design and that a cut to a silent interior can be as jarring as any jump scare. His script, unfortunately, is not as interesting.
  20. Shallow Hal
    Not only light on laughs but discomfitingly didactic in its disgust.
  21. A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story
    A Brave Heart is not very sophisticated, flitting between Lizzie the internet celebrity, Lizzie the anti-bullying activist, Lizzie the beloved eldest daughter of a close-knit family, and Lizzie the young woman whose health challenges make her advocacy even harder.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Notes on Marie Menken
    While it opens a rare window into an unconventional life, this portrait of an artist as an old woman is prone to strange distractions.
  23. The Himalayas
    For all the big-budget spectacle on display, it's the scenes that look to have been shot on a GoPro that most excite -- only in these few sequences does The Himalayas begin to distinguish itself from its blockbuster ilk.
  24. 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.
  25. The Boss Baby
    Aside from the slightly fresh take on a familiar concept, The Boss Baby is barely a moderate success as a kid's flick. Perhaps it will come as good news to studio and audience alike that it works much better as an existential horror movie.
  26. Godzilla 2000
    Offers some interesting twists for connoisseurs.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Magic Mike
    The highly calculated Magic Mike is pure Hollywood self-mythology - a neo-Depression musical, a wish-fulfillment fantasy for shitty times, an origin-of-the-star story, and a projection of that star's hoped-for future.
  28. Dog Days
    Dog Days adheres dogmatically to the school of sado-miserablism that Seidl's compatriots Michael Haneke and Jessica Hausner have turned into something of a national industry (non-Austrian adherents abound too, from Gaspar Noé to Harmony Korine).
  29. The Four Feathers
    Feels both tiresomely old-fashioned and disturbingly topical.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Norman
    Although Norman, shot on location in Spokane and scored by singer-songwriter Andrew Bird, succeeds in fleshing out its troubled main character, the actions of his peers are consistently harder to accept.
  31. What We Started
    What We Started is a cute roundup of how EDM came to be, but much like the DJs it shines a light on, it only scratches the surface.
  32. Imelda
    Entertaining as it is, Imelda seems all too willing to take her at her word.
  33. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
    The film creates a conflicting impression: Here’s a committed wonk and public servant seizing every opportunity he can to combat what appears to be the greatest danger facing our planet. But here’s also a man who would sign off on a movie that so often sets aside his message so that we might admire him and his work.
  34. Havana Suite
    It's all pleasant enough, but the pretty pictures, languid pacing, and endless stretches of mood music eventually combine to soporific effect.
  35. Big Trouble
    Cute intentions and shaggy comedy only get you so far when the world is falling down around you.
  36. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
    Constance Marks's documentary on Kevin Clash, the kind, gentle man who created the Muppet beloved by every single child in the world, rushes through the intriguing points its interviewees bring up to devote more time to banalities.
  37. The Missing
    However bogged down by predictable story rhythms, banally assembled shoot-outs, and climactic mano a mano, The Missing has an acidic period tone, a respect for the reality of violence, and a refreshing dearth of superhuman heroics and easy triumph. For that much, we should be grateful.
  38. The Path to Love
    Culminates in a pilgrimage to Genet's tomb--a sweetly respectful gravestomp, to be sure, though one suspects the almost apologetic demureness of the central relationship would have irked him to no end.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Fat Albert
    The animated scenes conjure aromas of the stilted "Clifford," and the overall approach is to throw preordained movie sequences (rap number, shopping spree) together and hope for the best.
  40. The Ninth Day
    Plays best as a dry exercise in historical doublespeak and rationalization.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Amati Girls
    An earnest ensemble weeper I'd at least feel comfortable seeing with my grandmother.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    First Snow
    First-time director Fergus's film is more a moody, tedious anti-thriller about ineluctable fate.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hawk Is Dying
    I won't pretend it makes for a happy night at the cinema, and it may require a leap of faith to succumb to Goldberger's spell. But I leapt, and found it enthralling up to the point where this legitimately weird movie capitulates to the most conventional catharsis. I'd rather watch Goldberger fail than a hundred others succeed.
  44. Umberto D (re-release)
    It's too bad that the film is sporadically crude (a moment of suicidal angst is illustrated with a shove-zoom to the pavement), prone to mega-Italian extroversion, and far too in love with stupid pet tricks.
  45. 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.
  46. Change of Plans (Le code a changé)
    A comedy of manners in need of Ritalin.
  47. The Mummy Returns
    First and foremost a trial run for a Universal Studios ride.
  48. Sleepless Nights Stories
    More often, Mekas's focus on "names" comes off as a cloistered insensitivity to the wider world.
  49. Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
    Lively, exasperating documentary.
  50. Desert Dancer
    The film plays too safe with its narrative. Fortunately, like its characters, it's most daring when it's in motion.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Art of Amália
    De Almeida's latest hagiographic effort diminishes Amália's legend by purifying it.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Trust You to Kill Me
    Perhaps you are wondering why a little-known band called Rocco DeLuca and the Burden merits a glossy feature-length documentary of its whirlwind European tour. After watching Manu Boyer's film, you may still wonder.
  53. La Vie en Rose
    Uplifted beyond its merits by a stunning performance from Marion Cotillard, the humdrum biopic of Edith Piaf, La Vie En Rose, jogs obligingly along with Piaf the legend rather than the woman.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sunflower
    As father and son argue and reunite every few minutes, accompanied by veeery slow violin music, Sunflower plays less like the epic it aspires to be than an episode of "Full House: Beijing."
  55. Miss Julie
    Despite a few dynamite scenes from Chastain, Miss Julie's cruelty is more potent than its craft.
  56. Watchmen
    Watchmen is neither desecratory disaster nor total triumph. In filming David Hayter and Alex Tse's adaptation of the most ambitious superhero comic book ever written, director Zack Snyder has managed to address the cult while pandering to the masses.
  57. The Girl from Monaco
    The modest pleasure of the film issues chiefly from the performances.
  58. Kaaterskill Falls
    The filmmakers skillfully evoke the sense of menace that nature holds for many urban dwellers. -- Sometimes, though, the editing is choppy, and the film could use more of a script.
  59. Little Secrets
    The film's broad performances and heavy-handed moralizing strike a note of condescension sure to be heard by the alienated teenager within us all.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Louis
    Louis may superficially resemble movies of a bygone age, but it lacks their essence: masterful effortlessness.
  61. 9 Dead Gay Guys
    The film scores points needling the guys' lingering insecurities.
  62. Mayor of the Sunset Strip
    Engaging, if ultimately wearisome.
  63. Act of Valor
    The villains come across as individuals rather more compellingly than do the film's ostensible heroes, mostly mouthpieces for warrior credo recited in voiceover.
  64. Adventures of Power
    The film--despite some successful goofs and a defiantly dorky Phil Collins tribute--can't quite win for trying.
  65. Vanity Fair
    The pacing feels choppy, and the characters' emotions are sometimes too sudden to be believable. (One exception is Rhys Ifans, affecting as Amelia's long-suffering and neglected suitor.)
  66. Rigor Mortis
    The resulting creep show has some frantic action scenes, but never quite enough spring in its step.
  67. Immoral Tales (re-release)
    Immoral Tales works best when its creator is focused on surprising viewers with his perverse imagination, and not his misguided cynicism.
  68. Tim's Vermeer
    Penn and Teller are bright guys, and their act can be fun in small doses. Yet Tim's Vermeer accentuates one of their worst impulses: They think they're mischievously raining on our parades when, really, they're not telling us much at all.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    My Life Without Me
    What's annoying and eventually absurd is writer-director Isabel Coixet's decision to have her heroine keep the diagnosis a secret.
  70. Dough
    A mirthful, edgeless dramedy.
  71. Lawless
    The narrative often seems at odds with the director's pictorialism, trudging when it should be striding toward the climax, isolating the performers on their marks when everything depends on taut blood-ties interconnection.
  72. Election
    The film never finds a confident tone: it's pitched as a satire, but seems to have no real targets.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    About Cherry
    Setting out to reassure that certain decisions do not necessarily have fatal consequences for one's sexual morality, though, About Cherry only manages to seem inconsequential.
  74. The Ultimate Gift
    Directed with accomplished impersonality by Michael O. Sajbel ( One Night With the King), The Ultimate Gift means well, but in the end it's "The Pursuit of Happyness" made from the ivory tower looking down instead of from the street looking up.
  75. 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.
  76. Beijing Taxi
    The highlight is the crop-cut woman of the group, Wei Caixia, resoundingly vivid in her mix of ambivalence and confidence and worth her own film. Why not this one?
  77. Pali Road
    Chen's full-bodied commitment to her role adds something new to this familiar scenario, which also benefits from its idyllic island setting; psychodrama and Hawaii pair surprisingly well.
  78. The Chaperone
    You get a bargain two high-concepts for the price of one in this amiably lame offering from Stephen Herek, who, once upon a time, cooked up an excellent Adventure for Bill and Ted, then veered off into inspirational goo with "Mr. Holland's Opus."
  79. Storm Surfers 3D
    The stunning visuals captivate for much of the picture, but as the novelty wears off, and the beauty turns from stunning to repetitive, the non-surfers in the theater may begin to grow restless.
  80. Scheherazade Tell Me a Story
    An Egyptian feminist tale told with both affecting compassion and made-for-TV corniness.
  81. Mifune: The Last Samurai
    Okazaki gets close to, but never sheds enough light on, Mifune's elusive personality.
  82. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
    The techies still can't manage to make two characters look convincingly into each other's eyes -- it's like watching Disney World animatronic figures do soap opera.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tekkonkinkreet
    It's both too cute and too rambling.
  84. Starry Eyes
    The film is far less successful once it delves into body horror that makes Sarah's transformation as ghoulishly physical as it is mental.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
    This burlesque of biopic clichés flounders from one setup to the next without the engine that drives the genre: a strong central character.
    • 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.
  87. Blank City
    Danhier has made a lifestyle-nostalgia oral history after the popular "Please Kill Me" model, but gets none of the tall tales and internecine grudging that made that tome so entertaining.
  88. Luminarias
    Chock-full of feisty-frank go-girl sextalk speculating on white guys' underplayable size.
  89. Hellaware
    A broad and occasionally disjointed indictment of the New York art scene and horrorcore rap that leaves no broad side of a barn untargeted.
  90. Ararat
    If the movie feels cumbersome and overstuffed, it's because Egoyan's characters, so often aphasic, are this time driven by a compulsion to speak -- though the noisy tumble of words mostly underscores their failure to communicate.
  91. Generation War
    Generation War seeks the epic, creating multiple, lavishly realized worlds and moving with confidence between them. What it finds of both history and its individuals is less complete.
  92. Ghost River
    The only conceivable reason to immerse oneself in this inexplicable release is, of course, Huppert. Gravely, she accepts the challenge of delivering a coherent performance in a wildly incoherent role.
  93. The Girl Next Door
    Begins with the same deathless question that has bedeviled generations of teenagers: how to fill the space allotted to graduating seniors for memories and shout-outs at the back of their yearbook?
  94. Heaven Is for Real
    Unlike many of the features targeted to what Hollywood is calling the "faith audience," the movie is well-acted and shot, often thoughtful and (intentionally) funny.
  95. Dark Blue World
    Dark Blue World and Sverak's previous "Kolya" were each written by the director's father, Zdenek, and both films betray a weakness for the symmetrical and sentimental.
  96. March of the Penguins
    The Central Park Zoo is cheaper, you can walk away from the penguins after 10 minutes, and it has snow monkeys and beer.
  97. The Conjuring
    The Conjuring's problem, beyond its lack of a conjuring, is how its otherworldly hokum is stubbornly of this world.
  98. The Château
    The raw art of the malapropism has rarely been so extensively honored, but the increasingly strident, slapstick-smacked movie runs out of steam once the culture shock wears off.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
    Desperately overcompensating for the fact that most horror films are already parodies of themselves, Behind the Mask takes a bite out of the dumb "Scream" franchise before devouring its own tail, proving that you are what you eat.
  100. Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America
    Davis holds forth memorably on the histories of country, blues, and rock 'n' roll. (He played with Chuck Berry.) But neither he nor Accidental Courtesy has much time to consider the scene with the BLM activists, who, in the film's schematic presentation, get depicted as something like a Klan equivalent — just less friendly.
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