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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  1. Hustle & Flow
    There's something wrong with Hustle. A bad aftertaste, and not just the dry grit of Memphis dust, but something meaner. A feeling that Brewer's sensibility is way off. Aside from Howard's characterization, the most indelible parts of the movie are the demeaning caricatures forced on DJay's women.
  2. A Civil Action
    A slick, shameless job that takes way too long to make its point.
  3. Why Don't You Play in Hell?
    The film's blast of self-mocking overkill can be charming.
  4. Winter Sleepers
    Unfolds in a shroud of nonspecific suggestiveness but never emerges from under it.
  5. Heaven
    An art film without the NYFF imprimatur, Heaven is a peculiar amalgam -- a Miramax package (without the hype), directed by German hotshot Tom Tykwer under the eye of Anthony Minghella, from a script with which the late Krzysztof Kieslowski had planned to inaugurate a new trilogy named for the Divine Comedy.
  6. Bread and Tulips
    A happy ending is never at issue here -- it's clear where she's going, but there's little clue where she's been.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Miracle
    Kurt Russell is terrific as coach Herb Brooks, psychological tactician out to redeem his being cut from the 1960 U.S. squad, the last one to beat the CCCP.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bon voyage
    Relies on its considerable star power to conceal its even more considerable lack of substance.
  9. The Bourne Identity
    Banal big-budget adaptation of Robert Ludlum's 1980 espionage thriller.
  10. American Animals
    Rather than plumb the apparent sociopathy that gripped these young men, Layton toys with unreliable narration and the vagaries of collective memory.
  11. Meet the Fokkens
    Directors Rob Schröder and Gabrielle Provaas capture some un-pretty details of spankings, HJs, and dominance scenarios, but the film is about two old ladies, still cackling despite the sadness that trailed in the wake of the lives into which they were forced.
  12. Abundant Acreage Available
    After a lifetime of routine punctuated by loss, these aging adults fall back into roles as children and siblings. Treading common ground, they seek comfort in the suffocating succor of family, afraid to release the burdens that grief will unleash.
  13. Last Ride
    Newcomer Russell, at once tough and vulnerable, canny and damaged, delivers a performance of nuanced naturalism that starkly conveys the sorrow and sacrifice that sometimes come with learning to achieve self-sufficiency.
  14. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
    When it slows down, when it gives you time to think, Popstar reveals its weaknesses.
  15. Take This Waltz
    There are enough unexpected delights, such as repurposing "Video Killed the Radio Star" during a critical moment between Margot and Daniel, to keep us interested in their drawn-out, teasing, tantalizing courtship.
  16. Bears
    Sincere and unexpectedly good.
  17. Off the Map
    Were it not so soporific, Off the Map could easily drive you off your nut.
  18. Heartbeat Detector
    Here, knowledge and understanding raise more questions than they answer, and the film ends not in closure, but in openness. It is precisely those qualities that give Heartbeat Detector its epic sense of humanity. Take them away and you'd be left with a leaner but markedly less compelling workaday workplace thriller: "Michael Clayton" with Nazis instead of lawyers.
  19. Land Ho!
    Land Ho! feints toward pathos and perversity, only to decide that it's better off giving us abridged, postcard emotions.
  20. Songs My Brothers Taught Me
    The performances are undeniably authentic, the cinematography could make Terrence Malick stand to give a slow clap, and sometimes a sensitive mood and evocative milieu are enough to sustain when there's barely a plot.
  21. Thank You for Your Service
    It’s not always effective drama, but as an example for thousands of struggling American families, it’s a serious breakthrough.
  22. To Die Like a Man
    A mysterious, fabulously sad fable.
  23. Europa Report
    Simply put, the care and thoughtfulness that goes into footage-faking has not been applied to the film's script or structure.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Romántico
    Following a hardworking, goodhearted man as life beats the hell out of him, this documentary is moving almost to the point of exploitation.
  25. Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press
    There’s no self-reflexive media criticism in Nobody Speak, only the simple plea for Americans to resolutely support journalism, in both principle and practice.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Last Mogul
    Avrich's Wasserman is less a man than a list of accomplishments, a Kane without a hint of a Rosebud and nary a whiff of significant criticism.
  27. The Secret Life of Words
    In due course skeletons will march out of closets, but the movie yields up its secrets with slow reluctance.
  28. Fort Bliss
    [Michelle Monaghan's] at her best as Army medic/staff sergeant Maggie Swann in writer-director Claudia Myers's Fort Bliss.
  29. Shanghai Ghetto
    The storytelling is eloquent and genuine, but the Manns' unadventurous approach (compared to, for instance, last year's intimate road movie "Fighter") rarely hits emotional pay dirt.
  30. Vision: From the Life of Hildegard Von Bingen
    Vision is more immediate and immersive when dealing in the jealous attachments among sisters; when circumstance and politics tear Richardis from Hildegard, Sukowa's performance rears to towering heights of abjection.
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