Village Voice's Scores

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:
11162 movie reviews
  1. Thick with reenactments and cute cutaways, the movie evolves into a cultural inquisition, following this stranger through the strange land of bad-news America, where the truth is still waiting to be exhumed.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shooting on grainy, high-speed film stock with an often handheld camera, working with a suite of actors who are game to both play light and silly and dig deep, Ficarra and Requa lend a naturalism to highly contrived, patently absurd situations.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Anyone who hates '80s pop will find this movie awfully tiresome, but Stiles and her underage Petruchio (Australian actor Heath Ledger, as hunky as his name) are charismatic and bold enough to carry any romantic comedy.
  2. Piers McGrail's nuanced, moody cinematography brings out the best in writer-director Ivan Kavanagh's over-mannered but effectively creepy ghost story.
  3. May be one of the wisest studies of urban loneliness since Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty."
  4. If you break the script down into plot points, it sounds a little silly: The narrative thrust is simply Katniss shooting several pro-revolution commercials. But it works because we're fascinated by media fights — thousands occur online every day.
  5. In her absorbing, alarming investigation into the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the nation's capital, Koch cuts a cross-section through a bitter D.C. winter, following about half a dozen local victims, caregivers, family members, and activists as they grapple with a disease without the benefit of social awareness or political will.
  6. [An] insightfully open-ended inquiry into the role of humor as it relates to unspeakable tragedy.
  7. The Voices is a perfect film that's hard to watch.
  8. For better or worse, there isn't a human experience that French director André Téchiné can resist lathering into a tone poem.
  9. Perhaps even more disturbing than the Dickensian in extremis ordeal of Svalka life — including her rational yet heartbreaking decision to give up her baby rather than raise it in the dump — is Yula's straightforward acceptance of her situation.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    A sign of The Baxter's charm is that it's essentially spoiler-proof: We know from the get-go which couples will pair off, and the pleasures lie in the spring-stepped vibe, the natty throwback wardrobe, and the intricate goofball patter.
  10. The frontman's reminiscences, though, are invariably eloquent, witty, and often moving.
  11. Heist is a neat, bouncy, minor-key crime procedural that shakes no rafters. Glorious, freestanding Mametisms are dropped into it like beef hunks into clear soup.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All told, and well told, this is essential history.
  12. A Girl Like Her focuses on the characters' emotional traumas while eschewing moral panic about how Kids These Days are so wrapped up in their phones and the internet.
  13. Full of such bon mots, the documentary is the epitome of positive thinking, perhaps the closest thing America has to a state religion. Still, like social worker Wendy Lustbader’s book What’s Worth Knowing, which took a similar tack years ago, it’s an opportunity to connect with souls who’ve been around more than a few blocks.
  14. López is a singularly tender, compelling, and articulate campaigner in this high-stakes struggle for justice, filmed with the urgency and suspense of a Hitchcock thriller.
  15. Jennifer M. Kroot's film opens up the careers that followed “Naked.” It's an accessible, professional job, with onscreen testimonials from Waters--whose work owes the most to them, and who has been their most faithful proselytizer--Guy Maddin, and Buck Henry.
  16. The restrained performances of Dubreuil and Yaron (Fill the Void) gradually reveal the flaws and strengths of this fragile couple, while Twersky is quietly devastating as an abandoned husband who fully understands devotion and sacrifice.
  17. As a work of sustained, thoughtful inquiry, Eating Animals is a bust; as a reminder of what we should all be thinking about, though, it’s searing. After seeing it, pretending not to know is impossible.
  18. This isn’t a laugh-a-minute movie; it’s more a succession of snickers, punctuated by genuine emotion.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Highly entertaining but underdeveloped documentary.
  19. The Wile E. Coyote fatalities are fun, but it's that repetitive moment of horror that holds this bipolar stunt together: Cruise, bug-eyed and gasping for breath as he shakes off his fear and grimly prepares for the next suicide mission.
  20. The Invisible War, though revelatory, is perhaps the most straightforward film yet from a director who likes to broach the fault lines of sex and society.
  21. Geier, who died in 2010, speaks on all subjects - from her son's mortal injury to the nature of her various collaborations - with the contemplative, courtly intelligence of her favorite novels.
  22. One senses that The Guard is McDonagh's eulogy for the brusque, warts-and-all character of a passing generation of tough, working-class Irishmen, much as Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino" was for vintage Americanism.
  23. Gorgeously framed by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, the Turner-esque beauty of the landscape at harvest time only adds to the creepiness as the Girl makes do, makes friends, and then unravels in the most creative ways.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The film delves deeper into the pain and pleasure of watching other people experience the wonderful things you dream of happening to you. In that sense, Hausner has crafted a kind of meta-riff on the masochistic lure of cinema itself.
  24. What's remarkable about Scenes of a Crime, besides Hadaegh and Babcock's ability to stay out of the way of their story and resist flashy graphical flourishes, is the degree to which the events it reveals are business as usual.

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