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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    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shanghai Blues
    For the most part, the film is charming in its insouciance, the comedy by turns easy, funny, and slapstick. [23 May 2018]
    • Village Voice
      • Posted Jun 18, 2025
  2. Holy Motors
    The film itself is filled with a joie de vivre about the possibilities of acting, with Lavant expressing an emotional repertoire from wild humor to great sadness.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance
    Viewers who haven’t studied their Neon Genesis DVD box sets in advance will find the plot incomprehensible—Old Testament gibberish mixed with political intrigue at the global defense agency headed by Shinji’s aloof father. But the sentiments are clear: “I guess I want Dad to praise me,” says our wavering hero. And his courtship of Asuka is downright charming.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sansho the Bailiff
    A masterpiece managed with exquisite patience, the film is slow-moving only in the sense that it doesn’t have to move for anybody; Mizoguchi’s hands and eyes search out every crevice along the eternal landscape, granting his characters clemency, or breaking their legs, based on the roll of an infinite-sided die.
  5. The Wages of Fear (1953)
    Wages of Fear rides for a cheap fall. Clouzot has copped out with cheap irony. [25 May 1967, p.31]
    • Village Voice
      • Posted Jul 1, 2020
  6. Tigers Are Not Afraid
    By telling this story through the children’s eyes with a magical-realism element, López makes the tragically unthinkable somehow more palatable.
  7. On Her Shoulders
    Even though she never loses her focus on Nadia, Bombach subtly shifts her attention from Nadia’s specific requests from the international community to the thornier question of what happens to the Yazidis from here onward.
  8. Bisbee '17
    The director purposefully pulls us this way and that, weaving cinematic spells and then yanking us out of them; as viewers, we are both inside and outside the story.
  9. Destination Wedding
    Levin at times seems rather too taken with the verbosity of his own dialogue, but here and there, his quips and situations match perfectly with his actors’ sensibilities.
  10. Let the Corpses Tan
    More times than I could count I had no idea what the hell was happening, and also just didn’t care that I didn’t know. Let the Corpses Tan is that strange and beautiful.
  11. Active Measures
    Active Measures is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the mind. By coming on so strong, so fevered, Bryan achieves the dubious feat of making his host of documented facts, reasonable inferences, and alarming subjects for further research all seem seem less persuasive than if they had been presented more soberly.
  12. The Little Stranger
    Like many gothic tales, The Little Stranger hangs tantalizingly between genres: It has elements of haunted house thriller, of doomed romance, of psychological thriller, of historical allegory.
  13. Reprisal
    It’s downright sad watching Willis go all half-assed in another movie. I guess we’re gonna have to wait for Glass to come out next year to see if Willis can do a movie in whole-assed form again.
  14. Inventing Tomorrow
    We’re privy to the students’ backgrounds and get a tiny glimpse into their futures, but the film skims a lot in favor of showcasing the ISEF gathering. Still, as in the spelling-bee doc, these are moving stories of nerdy children, kids who are pragmatic about the forward march of industry yet believe societies can, and must, find cleaner ways to advance.
  15. Hale County This Morning, This Evening
    By sticking to his impressionistic perspective, by fracturing his narrative, Ross achieves something genuinely poetic — a film whose very lightness is the key to its depth.
  16. Operation Finale
    Rather than the cagey, caged mastermind who later would play dumb at trial, this Eichmann is just another movie bad guy — and Operation Finale is just another movie.
  17. Pick of the Litter
    What are the concerns of coherent storytelling or in-depth documentation when all of these good boys and girls — yes they are! — are leaping and licking and tail-wagging and just being the best?
  18. What Keeps You Alive
    Minihan’s ambitions are towering, so it’s only right to note that he doesn’t quite get there. The ideas, even the emotions, don’t develop and grow.
  19. The Oslo Diaries
    The Oslo Diaries is a striking document, mixing never-before-seen footage shot by the negotiators themselves and current reflections from participants, including the final interview of former Israeli president Shimon Peres.
  20. An L.A. Minute
    Daniel Adams’s An L.A. Minute makes you suffer through it all and never redeems itself, despite the potentially interesting duo of Gabriel Byrne and Kiersey Clemons as leads. The stars seem out of place with each other and in this movie, with creators who have no idea what they want to say.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hot to Trot
    The cameras caress landscapes, skylines, domesticity, and sequined dancers with equal fervor, but one longs for more of what a competition official calls “a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.”
  22. Blue Iguana
    From the characters to the purposely perplexing plot, it’s all hollow and artificial to the point of being downright grating. Blue Iguana is another exercise in sarcastic, self-referential, postmodern pulp whose time has so come and gone.
  23. Arizona
    Director Jonathan Watson’s super-violent Arizona is a well-done but chilly and essentially unlovable black comedy with one tiny spark of warmth — Rosemarie DeWitt’s performance.
  24. The Happytime Murders
    Some viewers, perhaps, might be shocked at the association of Mr. Rainbow Connection with scenes set in porno shops, strip clubs, and drug dens. What jolted me, though, was seeing the Henson name all over a project that’s so often bland and listless, so tame in its designs, so limited in its imagination, so joyless in its execution.
  25. Maison du Bonheur
    Bohdanowicz undertook the project without having previously met her subject, but for both the filmmaker and her audience, making Sellam’s acquaintance proves a rare pleasure.
  26. Support the Girls
    Bujalski frames most of Support the Girls as an almost real-time delineation of chaos, but his storytelling elegance — delicate, nearly invisible foreshadowing; cogent evocations of backstory — adds reflective layers to the surface anarchy.
  27. The Bookshop
    Though nearly nothing happens in this movie besides a woman opening a shop and beginning a standoffish friendship with a reclusive man, I still found myself drawn in, just as I was drawn to Iain’s discreet disaster of a baked Alaska (please check it out if you haven’t seen this TGBBS episode); sometimes the quiet is enticing.
  28. Searching
    Though the script by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian is taut and surprising, I’ve felt more absorbed in an episode of Murder, She Wrote than I did in this film, because, there, it’s story and performance that we’re invited to savor, not just tech and technique.
  29. Papillon
    This new version, directed by Danish filmmaker Michael Noer, brings to the story a refreshing intensity and sweep, and even a sense of adventure.
  30. Crime + Punishment
    Stephen Maing’s searing documentary Crime + Punishment offers a fuller look at the question of what can be accomplished from inside, revealing both the personal toll fighting the system can exact but also the urgent necessity of such battles.
  31. John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection
    Faraut’s film doesn’t just put us courtside — it steeps us in the legend’s boiling mind.
  32. Songwriter
    Songwriter sells the “nice boy” bit well, but if you aren’t already a fan, it eventually becomes tiresome. There are occasional glimmers of a real person (wishing to topple Adele, laying down a “no Snapchat” rule at his house, etc.) but rarely is a feature film so bluntly just marketing.
  33. The Ranger
    By the time the killings start, the film already feels draining, with no characters worth caring about, much less watching.
  34. Memoir of War
    While clearly adoring Duras’s work, Finkiel doesn’t credit the strength it took for her to ruthlessly detail the experience.
  35. Juliet, Naked
    Juliet, Naked has its charms, and they are named Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke.
  36. The Little Mermaid
    The effect is like strolling through a lovely display of early-twentieth-century Americana, admiring the streamlined beauty of mass-produced objects that mimicked the handiwork of artisans, all while encountering a cast of bubbly historical park re-enactors.
  37. Down a Dark Hall
    Ultimately, Down a Dark Hall falls victim to familiar teen horror tropes: a brooding lead with a heart of gold, predictable jump scares, wincingly bad romantic tension, and obvious villains.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Whale of a Tale
    Together, these voices paint a complex picture of the clash between globalism and a fast-disappearing localism.
  39. Do You Trust this Computer?
    The doc never goes much deeper than the information and arguments on AI that can currently be found in the Sunday papers.
  40. Notes on an Appearance
    D’Ambrose proves uncannily adept at conjuring zero-budget paranoia through the sheer accumulation of documents.
  41. The Wife
    It is the depth Close lends to Joan that kept me riveted — and angry.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Crazy Rich Asians
    For all its carnival-like antics, Crazy Rich Asians is all too aware of its own spectacle.
  43. We the Animals
    Brawling yet tender, wild yet rigorously controlled, first-time fiction director Jeremiah Zagar’s We the Animals is an impressionistic swirl of a film about masculinity, about abuse, about growing up queer, about chaotic family life, about the jumble of incidents and stirrings through which a child discovers a self.
  44. The Meg
    Turteltaub is too buoyant for horror — the deaths and danger never sink in.
  45. The Darkest Minds
    Yuh Nelson proves adept with her young actors, drawing out relaxed and detailed performances while carefully managing the space between them in the frame.
  46. Christopher Robin
    Christopher Robin preaches a return to childhood exuberance and frivolity, but its quiet, focused restraint often feels like it’s coming from a very different impulse — an old-world professionalism and humility. It’s a grown-up sensibility applied to a child’s tale, which makes for an occasionally endearing mixture. In today’s world, I’ll take it.
  47. A Prayer Before Dawn
    A Prayer Before Dawn feels scarily authentic, and may be too much for some. But there are moments of grace amid the setting’s despair.
  48. The Swan
    Anchored by a remarkable child’s performance, The Swan is a sensitive example of an overlooked element in coming-of-age films: awakening to the outside world.
  49. Love is Tolerance - Tolerance is Love
    Love and tolerance are difficult to argue with, yet this effort seems pointless — not just because it will change few minds, but also because it’s a mess.
  50. BuyBust
    Though the film becomes a slog, it has a saving grace in Curtis and Vera’s performances, which serve as neat complements to each other in temperament as well as fighting styles.
  51. Elizabeth Harvest
    Gutierrez works some twists on the familiar premise, and one standout thrill of a chase scene employs Brian De Palma’s signature split screens. But as it nears the two-hour mark, the film becomes exhausting, shedding very little light on the futuristic implications of the story.
  52. Skate Kitchen
    In Skate Kitchen, the kids come as they are, and they’re wildly fascinating.
  53. The Island
    There are no good or bad people in The Island, just a group of hapless schmucks who become more sympathetic as they get more desperate.
  54. Summer of 84
    If you’re patient, though, and not put off by the familiarity of this material, Summer of ’84 gains in interest and urgency as it goes.
  55. Milla
    We observe moments of living rather than the beats of a story, all that natural lighting and everyday quiet stirring the sense of lives taking shape before our eyes.
  56. 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.
  57. 40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie
    Only a monster would begrudge Aronsohn for putting this all together. It doesn’t hurt that Magic Music really do have some chops.
  58. Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
    Scotty offers more than just salaciousness.
  59. Never Goin' Back
    Writer-director Augustine Frizzell, making her feature directorial debut, is attuned to the giddy intimacies of female friendship, and Mitchell and Morrone are a charismatic pair.
  60. Night Comes On
    All through the film, you pray it doesn’t go down the bleak routes that films like this usually go — and, most of the time, it does. Night Comes On is an assured first shot from Spiro but, damn, I couldn’t wait for this fucking thing to be over.
  61. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
    Most of the gags in this pandering spoof are about their own schematic nature — they’re jokes about how you’re smarter than the jokes.
  62. King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen
    Mitchell’s documentary style isn’t flashy or refined, but it is economical. The director does his homework and almost cross-examines the film’s subjects.
  63. Gavagai
    Gavagai offers moments of sublimity unlike anything you’ll see in most contemporary movies. It also tests the patience. In that key respect, it’s much like life: You have to throw yourself into it to reap its rewards.
  64. Nico, 1988
    Nico, 1988 offers all I want from this kind of movie: a sense of what time with someone unknowable might have been like.
  65. No Date, No Signature
    No Date, No Signature presents a story of flawed but generally decent people trying to put right what went so horribly wrong.
  66. Cocote
    Getting one’s bearings isn’t impossible; it’s like divining the trick of a Sunday crossword. But Cocote isn’t purely academic. It’s alternately clinical and sensual.
  67. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
    In the end, Cameron Post is a damning indictment of institutional Christianity and adults who make it their mission to tamp down kids’ spirits in the name of God.
  68. The Spy Who Dumped Me
    What’s lost in comedy is not matched by a gain in emotional engagement.
  69. Dead Night
    Crampton’s performance, the squelchy sound design, and spurts of blood provide occasional jolts, but Dead Night ends up being muddled, never committing to either solemn supernatural horror or its elements of camp.
  70. Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings
    The equally thrilling and exhausting Hong Kong martial arts fantasy Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings boasts more inventive weapons, monsters, and plot twists than most Western audiences will know what to do with.
  71. Killer Bees
    Unfortunately, the narrative focus constantly shifts and never coalesces.
  72. Hot Summer Nights
    Elijah Bynum’s messy debut film is only bearable thanks to Chalamet’s charisma.
  73. Puzzle
    Since it’s hard to buy the character, it’s hard to buy the story, no matter how good Macdonald is.
  74. Good Manners
    Rojas and Dutra have created a singular fable where anxiety and fear are directed inward, even when the danger is all too real.
  75. 14 Cameras
    Unfortunately, Archambault’s churlishly over-the-top performance makes it impossible to take 14 Cameras seriously, no matter how you interpret Gerald’s actions.
  76. The Captain
    Filmed in black and white in the wintry countryside of Görlitz, Germany, Schwentke’s vision of a man who would be posthumously named the Executioner of Emsland is chilling and yet, at times, almost farcical.
  77. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
    A cinematic centrifuge of acrobatic stunt work, breakneck chases and immersive action, Mission: Impossible – Fallout is a perfectly calibrated piece of filmmaking that plays the viewer like a drum right from the start.
  78. Pin Cushion
    Pin Cushion has the visual cues of comedy, with its candy-colored kitsch and exaggerated signifiers of eccentricity and snobbery, but at heart, it’s a tragedy of naïveté.
  79. Generation Wealth
    By turns, Greenfield’s survey is alarming, hilarious, and indulgent, sometimes strained and a little dull, prone to overstatement and an abuse of synecdoche.
  80. Far from the Tree
    It’s a painstaking inspection of parenthood, which is fraught even in less formidable circumstances than what these families face, and often harrowing. But it’s also a contemplation of what it means to be human and, ultimately, optimistic.
  81. Occupation
    The cast, led by Dan Ewing, Temuera Morrison, and Stephany Jacobsen, delivers sturdy character work, and the action is clear and well-executed, but none of it ventures beyond well-trod ground.
  82. McQueen
    The difference between McQueen and the standard tortured genius documentary lies in the kind of artist McQueen was: Behind the (sometimes incendiary, sometimes infantile) provocations in his designs was a clear humanity, his garments the unfiltered expressions of his emotions and ideas.
  83. Unfriended: Dark Web
    For all its inventive and impressive technique, the film lacks fun; a lot of folks, myself included, need very little reminding that the Internet is a threat and that terrible men are actively out there abducting and terrorizing girls and women for lulz.
  84. Blindspotting
    It’s wild and singular, often beautiful, a feast and feat of self-definition through verbal dexterity. It’s shaking with laughter, teeming with insights and tense as hell when the police roll up.
  85. The Equalizer 2
    It’s hard to appreciate the hero’s crafty planning when we can’t really make out what he’s crafted.
  86. Minding the Gap
    The film is filled with lengthy, sensuous skateboarding scenes, which feel meditative, therapeutic; we sense that these kids skated not because it was fun, but because it helped them to survive.
  87. Milford Graves Full Mantis
    Form and content collide in inspiring ways in this documentary about Milford Graves — avant-garde jazz percussionist, educator, gardener, martial artist, and cardiovascular researcher. Milford Graves Full Mantis is a jazz movie in every sense of the word.
  88. Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti
    Cassel’s Gauguin may ultimately be a lightweight cinematic descendant of the monstrous European pioneers that Klaus Kinski played in Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, but he’s also both menacing and pitiable enough to make Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti riveting on a moment-to-moment basis.
  89. Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind
    This film seems meant to be more a kind, sweet eulogy than an illumination.
  90. Siberia
    This movie so badly wants to be a sexy thriller, but it is neither sexy nor thrilling.
  91. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
    If there’s one thing that Van Sant does very well here, it’s creating a humanizing anchor at the center of the story. Despite some distracting narrative choices and sketchy character development (especially with Mara’s character, who, of course, turns into a love interest), the film does eventually find its footing.
  92. What Will People Say
    Despite the subject matter, Haq is most often quite tender in her storytelling.
  93. Path of Blood
    Documentary is an inherently tricky field, requiring objectivity, but Path of Blood leans so far into it that any sense of narrative or purpose dissolves.
  94. The Night Eats the World
    Unfortunately, the best and worst thing about director Dominique Rocher and his two co-writers’ scenario is its familiarity.
  95. Skyscraper
    I almost admire the laziness of the scripting. In this overworked, underpaid country of ours, why begrudge a screenwriter seizing the chance to knock off early?
  96. Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
    For all its frantic eager-to-please-ness, Hotel Transylvania 3 doesn’t quite achieve the blissfully reliable drumbeat of hilarious throwaway gags that the earlier films managed.
  97. Fireworks
    Where Your Name’s star-crossed protagonists were fully formed characters who held equal weight in the narrative, Fireworks is very much told from the male point of view, and Nazuna seldom rises above “free-spirited object of desire.”
  98. Sorry to Bother You
    I will be very clear with you, dear readers, that this surrealist comic moral tale, about a poor man selling his soul to ascend in a golden elevator to the heights of a dubious corporation, is a balls-to-the-wall, tits-to-the-glass, spectacular orgy of fist-pumping, anti-capitalist, pro-labor ideas rolled into 105 minutes of gloriously unpredictable plot.
  99. Moss
    There’s an edge to the head-trip and the river journey, a sense not just of the characters’ freedom but also of their limited options and never-articulated desperation.
  100. The Citizen
    Vranik’s film couldn’t be more timely in its moral inquiry, but it’s timeless in form and technique, a melodrama tempered with a painstaking realism.
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