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. A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile
    Deraspe returns specificity, intimacy, and human weirdness to this international scandal.
  2. A Man Called Ove
    A Man Called Ove — preaching tolerant togetherness as the key to happiness — earns its sentimentality by striking a delicate balance between barking-mad comedy and syrupy melodrama.
  3. Chaos
    Naturally, the worm turns again and again in this demi-Hitchcockian death trap, and Nakata knows how to shoot scenes of breath-holding paranoia: from a distance, simply, in real time. (We'll see how the inevitable remake, directed by Jonathan Glazer, measures up.)
  4. The Bubble
    Given the upbeat, tender rhythms of the movie's love story, the climax--a cry of bottomless despair--comes as a profound shock. It's meant to, and though the ending is touched by the goofy absurdities of melodrama, Fox's mix-and-match sampling of apparently incompatible genres nails the nervous blend of vitality and desperation that is Israel today.
  5. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
    Against the prevailing cheerlessness, these intensively choreographed fights, many shot in audacious, roving single takes, are like glimpses into a dream world.
  6. Mavis!
    Edwards is content with presenting Mavis as she sees herself: as the conduit for a song's message, and a voice to uplift the weary.
  7. Silent Water
    Sumar's debut feature could scarcely be more relevant to Pakistan's present, or, given this country's history of backing such repressive regimes, to ours.
  8. Roar
    Roar is a thrilling bore, an inanity with actual peril in every scene.
  9. Detonator
    An insightful, often funny, never glib character-driven tale about class angst, withered dreams, and the costs of adulthood.
  10. More Than the Rainbow
    On treks through the city, camera in hand, Weber's expertise, tenderness, and taste for the absurd become clear. Wechsler runs with it, interspersing decades of Weber's often gritty photographs with expert cinematography.
  11. Paul Williams Still Alive
    Johnny Carson loved him, and Williams had the credits to back himself up: As with Jimmy Webb, you could probably sing many of his songs without knowing that he's the author.
  12. State of Fear
    An informative if shrill primer on the last 35 years of Peruvian plight, the new doc State of Fear may only be effective as an educational tool for Americans, whose media have told them next to nothing about one of the Western Hemisphere's most horrifying killing fields.
  13. No Sex Last Night
    Compelling viewing, even if there's nothing pretty (pictorially or emotionally) about it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Puffy Chair
    Like "Funny Ha Ha," Andrew Bujalski's casually raw 2002 faux–cinema vérité indie about a bunch of shiftless twentysomethings, The Puffy Chair uses simple, unadorned dialogue and intimate, off-the-cuff performances to get at the underlying issues.
  15. But I'm a Cheerleader
    Not as skillful, subtle, or hilarious as "Some Like It Hot," but its anti-essentialism vis-à-vis gender roles is just as sharp and exhilarating.
  16. Salvo
    Viewers looking for a shoot-em-up will be disappointed, but those hankering for an old-school Italian broodfest will find plenty to soak in.
  17. The Notebook
    Szász's harrowing film roots that coming-of-age process in suffering, depicting it with a grim solemnity that, by never wavering, ultimately leads to a tempered measure of unexpected hopefulness.
  18. Avenue Montaigne
    Not that Thompson's films lack for romance. She shoots Paris like Woody Allen shoots New York--ritzy, golden, and packed with chance meetings between highly strung arty types.
  19. Alone in Berlin
    While not the most formally adventurous or action-packed picture, it is a film of compelling urgency.
  20. Arctic Tale
    A smarmy score, some orgiastic farting from a herd of walruses, and a modicum of cutesy anthropomorphism from narrator Queen Latifah prove a small price to pay for this stunningly photographed narrative documentary about a year in the endangered life of Arctic ice floe.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Berlin
    A concert film by technicality, a cinematic trance in practicality.
  22. Cash Only
    Cash Only features many familiar action movie markers, but it's distinguished by a raw energy and strong sense of place.
  23. The Great Gatsby
    It's an expressionist work, a story reinvented to the point of total self-invention, polished to a handsome sheen and possessing no class or taste beyond the kind you can buy. And those are the reasons to love it.
  24. Archaeology of a Woman
    Sharon Greytak's Archaeology of a Woman is a decidedly well-made, unnerving film.
  25. The Two Faces of January
    Mortensen is a pro at the slow burn, and he adds genuinely frightening layers of impulsiveness to this tempest-in-a-teapot scenario. The freshest twist is that each man has a notable advantage over the other.
  26. I don't feel at home in this world anymore.
    Lynskey’s shivering rage and Wood’s Zen incompetence play off beautifully against each other, and Blair deftly juggles the suspense, humor and social overtones of his script. Until, that is, the film’s final 30 or 40 minutes, when he settles for genre schlock and the revelatory film we thought we were watching devolves into a less interesting, more familiar one.
  27. Peepli Live
    It's an unusual taste of mainstream Indian cinema (or, thanks to superstar Aamir Khan's production company, it's a small film given an unusually mainstream push), unexpectedly irreverent with an earthier, folkier soundtrack than the typical Bollywood electro-bounce.
  28. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
    Everything about this berserk, essentially static procedural is just crazy enough to be true. In any case, Herzog has gone beyond Good and Evil to reinvent himself as a candidate for the wiggiest director of comedy in America today.
  29. Jesus People
    Director Jason Naumann treats the characters with genuine affection and a portrayal of faith that actually has integrity.
  30. Playing It Cool
    Proving that its chosen genre is best when its tropes are treated with a balance of sincere sweetness and wink-wink absurdity, Playing It Cool thrives through sheer liveliness, as well as the chemistry of its perfectly paired stars.
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