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. Dancing on a Dry Salt Lake
    The cast (which includes familiar character actors like Nicolas Coster and David Leisure) is wildly uneven, talent-wise, and there's a stiltedness to the film's earnestness, but its sincerity is palpable.
  2. Step Up: All In
    Step Up All In cuts too fast, the way an MTV hack does when forced to disguise that a starlet can't move.
  3. Masterminds
    The film is competent in its framing and editing in a way that most comedies aren’t (compare/contrast with Neighbors 2, which is barely a movie except in the most technical sense) and avoids dead-end-obvious improv.
  4. 24 Exposures
    Swanberg has made an inspiring career out of rejecting the aesthetic crimes of Hollywood. It's dispiriting, then, that he so doggedly indulges in its tradition of male gazing.
  5. Hamlet
    Peter Wingfield delivers an engagingly oily Claudius, and Lara Gilchrist's Ophelia is radiant. But Ramsay's Hamlet's madness never really overcomes the character's traditional emo temperament.
  6. Dark Places
    [Paquet-Brenner] squanders Dark Places' icky setup for a rote investigation to find the real killer, a revelation greeted not with a "What?!" but with a "Whatever."
  7. Serena
    Screenwriter Christopher Kyle touches on hot-button issues of class conflict, land use, and no-holds-barred capitalism. He also strips Serena of moral ambiguity, turning deeply twisted relationships into a doomed romance where transgressors punish themselves.
  8. True Story
    Especially for a movie that springs from a horrific and grisly crime, True Story feels undershaped and indistinct; it’s too dispassionate to be genuinely chilly.
  9. Almost Human
    With acting this wooden even among those not playing zombies, though one at least attempts a rural Maine accent, the suspense lies less in who will die than in how grisly the means.
  10. God's Pocket
    The story... could have worked well as a pitch-black comedy, but first-time director John Slattery (Mad Men's Roger Sterling) takes the material so seriously that the mood never changes much after leaving the funeral home.
  11. Equals
    We're left with an idea of passion instead of a real depiction of it. And a movie that can't stop wallowing in its own emptiness.
  12. Brightest Star
    It's either much smarter and more profound than it's letting on, or it doesn't add up to anything at all. Or maybe both — it's all relative.
  13. Somewhere Slow
    Gilsig's transformation is quietly convincing, but the film itself is flatter and less cinematically gratifying than most television dramas.
  14. The Bag Man
    The trouble is that Grovic's attempts to generate suspense by keeping character identities and motivations unknown leaves the proceedings feeling vague and slapdash.
  15. A Birder's Guide to Everything
    While it doesn't quite encompass everything, the film's still a bit too busy for its own good.
  16. Rob the Mob
    The stickups, while plenty funny... lack any sense of dread or danger. And while De Felitta has a knack for slaphappy eroticism — with the feisty Arianda on board, the sex scenes have genuine heat — he also resorts too often to sappy lyricism.
  17. Boys of Abu Ghraib
    Too by-the-numbers for the emotional impact to resonate as long as it could and should have.
  18. Goodbye World
    The soapy material is at odds with the largely distant catastrophe, which often feels too abstract to be a real threat.
  19. Mars at Sunrise
    Using its narrative as a launching pad for abstract visuals, the picture reminds viewers that even the most striking images demand context to create anything like drama.
  20. Brick Mansions
    This is an almost scene-for-scene remake — but not a shot-for-shot remake, which likely would have been more enjoyable.
  21. Earth to Echo
    Earth to Echo is a slender kiddie flick about a quartet of preteens and their palm-sized alien pal that's at once bland, well-intentioned, and utterly terrifying about the mental development of modern children.
  22. Planes: Fire & Rescue
    A time-killing kid-flick whose title is an exact summary of its plot.
  23. Haunt
    The frustration here comes from the filmmakers' inability to present characters with dimension, so that we might come to identify with them and their fears.
  24. Drive Hard
    If you’re not expecting too much, Drive Hard is mindlessly entertaining, but it lacks that spark of madness that might have made it truly fun. At least Cusack is able to shed some of his usual overseriousness.
  25. Black Out
    A self-aware, borderline self-reflexive action-comedy from the Netherlands, Arne Toonen's Black Out is derivative in a way that undermines its wry sense of self.
  26. In the Blood
    Carano’s badass-beauty charm notwithstanding, it’s a grim, formulaic saga in desperate need of some genuine B-movie fury and flair.
  27. Mistaken for Strangers
    Mistaken for Strangers doesn't reveal anything about Tom but his own insecurity.
  28. Entourage
    It may be not much more than a heavily branded romp through a Hollywood fantasyland, but it’s got a pulse. It’s easy fun. No one ever died from reading People magazine.
  29. How to Be Single
    No matter how much fibrous real talk it's wrapped in, How to Be Single has a heart made of sugary-sweet white chocolate.
  30. The Activist
    Morin's idea of wedging a political thriller into this historical moment is brilliant, but he undermines his story with broad caricatures and a phlegmatic pace.
  31. The Den
    The Den's commitment to its presentational conceit leads to a number of implausible scenarios, but what's more disheartening is the gore-fest it turns into once the curtain is thrown back on the mystery propelling both Elizabeth and the narrative.
  32. The Signal
    The persuasive power of individual moments suggests that director William Eubank has a bright future — and could push himself harder when writing his scripts.
  33. Tiger & Bunny: The Rising
    Tiger & Bunny: The Rising indulges in homosexual stereotypes that would have been regressive in the 1980s, let alone in a spin-off of a 2011 television series, and it's a damn shame.
  34. Refuge
    Even at its well-meaning best, Refuge is listless.
  35. Into the Storm
    Too cartoonish to be cathartic, and too ghoulish to be honest fun, Into the Storm is mostly a somewhat uncomfortable sit enlivened by occasional hilariousness.
  36. Hank and Asha
    The film's success rests upon the interest engendered by these characters, but Hank and Asha fail to meaningfully engage us.
  37. The November Man
    As far as escapist fluff laced with totally unnecessary real-world horror goes, The November Man isn't wretched.
  38. That Demon Within
    Rock-dumb Hong Kong thriller That Demon Within is exhausting, and only sometimes batshit enough to be engaging.
  39. Coherence
    The Rod Serling tension Byrkit is angling for never quite arrives, nor does any real Borgesian frisson. But thanks to its social setting, it does offer a vivid and perhaps intentional satirical portrait of L.A. culture.
  40. The German Doctor
    Puenzo dramatizes her material with an overcooked sense of import that generates scant suspense.
  41. Desert Riders
    None of the reliably irritating qualities of the social issue documentary gall quite so acutely as the tendency to venerate mere awareness.
  42. Marvin Seth and Stanley
    Shot in '70s naturalism, the film's cinematography only invites unfavorable comparisons to the more ambitious, psychologically searching interpersonal dramas of that era.
  43. Walking with the Enemy
    As with many other WWII films, it takes genuinely stirring source material -- a young Hungarian man poses as a Nazi to find his dislocated family -- and reduces it to its most shopworn components.
  44. Tanzania: A Journey Within
    This film shows what was clearly a profound set of experiences for both Ndibalema and Kenney, but it is not much more than a well-made vacation slideshow or an extended Facebook post, complete with exclamation points.
  45. Don Peyote
    At its best, this descent into madness plays out like a millennial stoner's take on Jacob's Ladder. More often, it recalls a sobering truth: Nobody likes listening to someone ramble while high.
  46. Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film
    Banks seems to hope that merely spending time with her subject will somehow create an illusion of intimacy. But her film's secretive opacity only makes Callahan a little prince, far away on his own planet.
  47. The Rescuers
    This very serious film sometimes feels like a farce.
  48. Rage
    You may feel some anger if you pay to watch this. Or you may not, as Rage offers exactly what you think a Nic Cage movie called Rage would, except maybe for continually inspired lunacy.
  49. Grand Départ
    The director, Nicolas Mercier, has failed to grasp how repellent his own protagonist seems to us. By the end, he's tipped his hand, and what seemed an incisive portrait is revealed as oddly skewed.
  50. V/H/S: Viral
    Each propulsive segment features a handful of disturbing sequences... But such pleasures barely compensate for the vapidity of V/H/S: Viral's sketches.
  51. The Human Race
    One test for movies like this is whether they bemoan the inevitable gore or revel in it; The Human Race too often falls into the latter, amplifying and focusing on the bloodshed.
  52. Life's a Breeze
    The film's surface naturalism and visual grit simply cover up a screenplay that's as full of crap as the average recent Hollywood comedy.
  53. Jackpot
    Certainly, a lot of blood is spilled in the name of laughs. There's only one problem with its broad attempts at grotesque comedy: Jackpot simply isn't funny.
  54. Affluenza
    The film is dragged down by its awkwardly paradoxical story, which tries too hard to care too little.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Big Gay Love
    It's complicated with superficial obstacles are treated with the subtlety of a hammer hitting a nail.
  56. Love, Rosie
    The message is more pedestrian than passionate: Life is long, and full of instant messages.
  57. After
    The final revelation of the big secret that haunts the family -- hinted at throughout the movie -- is more than a little maudlin, and the dedication feels like nothing so much as ass covering. Until then, After is a frequently absorbing miserablist family drama shot in appropriately chilly winter tones.
  58. The Liberator
    Bolivar is eye-rollingly romanticized as a wonderful lover and an even better fighter in Alberto Arvelo's lushly produced, dully reverential The Liberator.
  59. No Tears for the Dead
    There are more tears than the title lets on, and even more blood, but it's a reason to truly be invested that's missing from No Tears for the Dead, which is rarely any better or worse than serviceable.
  60. Spare Parts
    This blatantly big-hearted product isn't half as vibrant as the original 2005 Wired article on which it's based, and myopically neglects to address Arizona's troubling anti-immigration legislation through even a splash of hindsight.
  61. Video Games: The Movie
    More problematic than its lack of a compellingly laid-out time line is the film's habit of hopping between points of interest, so that every one of its chosen topics...is treated with a few catchy sound bites.
  62. Me and You
    Bertolucci, despite his obvious affection for Lorenzo, can't help but seem out of touch, and his hero looks and sounds less like a modern-day teen than an old man's wistful idea of one.
  63. Horns
    Most oppressively, every inch of Horns is choked in religious metaphor that strangles the fun from the film. Aja clutters the movie with golden crosses and Garden of Eden snakes, but doesn't dare wrestle with the theology behind them — this is a snapshot of a steak, not a full meal.
  64. Kite
    In a film that pits the heroine directly against the sexualization of young women, the camera's gaze itself feels awfully exploitative.
  65. Rabindranath Tagore: The Poet of Eternity
    This film struggles to do justice to his many accomplishments, shortchanging his artistry.
  66. My Old Lady
    It sounds like a recipe for comedy (and Kline seems to think so too, waltzing and prat-falling through Mathias's alcoholic foibles), but Horovitz's screenplay guns instead for an emotionally and financially tangled melodrama, and ends up feeling aggravatingly inconsistent.
  67. Jake Squared
    More enervating than it is ambitious, Jake Squared is partly a romantic comedy and mostly a pseudo-philosophical apology for self-absorption.
  68. I Am Happiness on Earth
    I Am Happiness on Earth's script is mostly filler between explicit, intensely choreographed sex acts.
  69. Revenge of the Green Dragons
    Green Dragons wants to be spaghetti with marinara, but it's closer to egg noodles and ketchup.
  70. American Sniper
    The humble Kyle onscreen is Kyle with his flaws written out. We're not watching a biopic. We're watching a drama about an idealized soldier, a patriot beyond reproach, which bolsters Kyle's legend while gutting the man.
  71. Swim Little Fish Swim
    The performances often enliven the stale material... But the script's naïveté is galling.
  72. Autómata
    Automata has moments of tremendous visual and storytelling elegance which are punctuated with ham-fisted characterization and thunderingly terrible acting.
  73. Innocence
    Hilary Brougher's YA-ish horror satire/romance/whatzit Innocence, adapted from Jane Mendelsohn's novel, boasts a wicked setup, some strong performances, several gloriously bloody spook-out images, and a movie-wrecking hypoglycemic listlessness.
  74. Rock the Kasbah
    The film often plays like everyone making it agreed that some on-set idea was so funny it had to be included, whether or not it suited the story.
  75. Second Opinion: Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering
    Like many docs with activist undertones, Second Opinion tells a potentially interesting story in a bland way.
  76. Triple 9
    The story isn't complex, but its telling is tangled, often willfully so.
  77. Jamie Marks Is Dead
    There are too many vaguely defined interpersonal dynamics and marginal characters (hi, Liv Tyler and Judy Greer!) that distract needlessly from the earnest tone of an outrageous set-up.
  78. The Pact 2
    The directors demonstrate confident technique in most of the scare scenes, but their uncertain touch with actors and dialogue makes a cock-up of the climax.
  79. The Man on Her Mind
    The Man on Her Mind has a terminal case of the cutes.
  80. I Am Eleven
    "I wanted to make something energetic, optimistic, universal, and real," Bailey announces in voiceover as the movie begins. She's certainly accomplished that, but it's too bad she didn't also aim for vital, illuminating, or consistently compelling.
  81. Alumbrones
    Alumbrones's creators talk up their work's restorative value, but never go into great detail about the world beyond their canvases. Donnelly's vague, circuitous questioning is to blame.
  82. The Quitter
    The movie is partly saved by Bonifacio and DP Timothy Nuttall's regular use of patient long shots, as well as their capable grasp of widescreen composition.
  83. Believe
    Any movie is improved at least 10 percent by the presence of Scottish actor Brian Cox, even mushy sports drama Believe.
  84. Jackie & Ryan
    The tepid Jackie & Ryan's only real strength is its supporting cast.
  85. The Frontier
    Co-writer/director Matt Rabinowitz doesn’t artfully withhold information so much as lay it all on the table a bit earlier than he might have.
  86. Black or White
    Occasionally, the film rouses into something thoughtful, even daring.
  87. Wolves
    If you're in the bag for werewolves (or have a thing for hairy dudes smoking distinctive pipes), Wolves is a beckoning howl in the night. As an action movie, however, it's surprisingly tame.
  88. A Most Violent Year
    Grand in its aims but tepid in its conclusions, A Most Violent Year burns slow and gives off very little heat. It's not really that violent. But it sure feels like a year.
  89. The Culture High
    It’s strongly anti-prohibition, and the film’s structure favors that bias.
  90. Vacation
    This new Vacation is hardly an improvement on the old Vacation, and may in fact be worse. Neither of them, to borrow the immortal words of the Go-Go's, is all we ever wanted.
  91. Dying of the Light
    It's sort of a fascinating mess, a jagged, dark jumble of a thing anchored by Cage's anguished, moony-eyed obsessiveness. It's not bad enough to be fun, but maybe just bad enough to be intriguing.
  92. Rhymes for Young Ghouls
    Carefully lit and designed, with a moody and muted color palette, the film effectively conveys the feel of Aila's hardscrabble existence. But the horrific behavior of Popper, who does little other than threaten, beat, and try to rape Indians, becomes problematic.
  93. Viktor
    Aside from some inspired uses of chiaroscuro lighting, the movie around Depardieu is mostly derivative.
  94. Point and Shoot
    Matthew VanDyke, Point and Shoot's hero/subject, can't forget the mediated, imitative nature of his adventures even when he has dedicated himself to a grand cause.
  95. Blood Ransom
    Fewer cops and more full-tilt vampire batshittery might not have resulted in a more coherent movie, necessarily, but almost certainly would've made for a more captivating one.
  96. Comet
    Sam Esmail’s first film has a visual assurance that suggests the arrival of a gifted director, but the characters he’s created are so off-putting that viewers aren’t likely to appreciate the beauty surrounding them.
  97. On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter
    If anything unites On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter's cyclists, it's Brown and Rousseau's inability to highlight their subjects' most singular qualities.
  98. The Playback Singer
    Were it not for Partridge's and Mishra's performances, the generic plot -- Ray becomes inspired after bonding with Ashok, a down-on-his-luck Bollywood singer -- would be completely unmoving and unenlightening.
  99. Stones in the Sun
    Good intentions can be deadly: Benoit runs into the common tripwire of caring more about pitching her cause than she does about movies. Scenes illustrate simple social-injustice points, and the characters are one-dimensional sufferers.
  100. The World Made Straight
    On-the-nose monologues on the cyclical nature of centuries-old blood feuds ultimately feel more like stuffy lectures than living history; ditto the film as a whole.
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