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. Avengers: Infinity War
    The Russos and the hundreds of craftspeople who worked on this film have dreamed up marvelous battles — especially the one where a motley assortment of heroes take their cracks at the purportedly unstoppable Thanos. But only once here did an intergalactic vista catch my breath the way a splash page in a Silver Surfer comic might.
  2. Maps to the Stars
    The fact that Cronenberg directed almost works against Maps to the Stars: We expect greatness from him, not just proficiency, and he doesn't exactly have a gift for comedy, not even the black kind. But the movie still has the darkly glittering Cronenberg touch, even if it's just a light brushing.
  3. Girl Model
    The radiant sadness of its two subjects - one a soulfully impassive stripling, one a symmetrical husk - forms the center of Girl Model, and that is enough.
  4. Boom Bust Boom
    Jones presents a stark picture of a bifurcated economic system: the real one, in which ordinary citizens struggle; and the financial economy, in which the livelihoods of citizens are leveraged by the wealthy for speculative bets.
  5. John Wick
    Reeves is wonderful here, a marvel of physicality and stern determination — he moves with the grace of an old-school swashbuckler.
  6. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
    The film creates a conflicting impression: Here’s a committed wonk and public servant seizing every opportunity he can to combat what appears to be the greatest danger facing our planet. But here’s also a man who would sign off on a movie that so often sets aside his message so that we might admire him and his work.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Way, Way Back
    The Way, Way Back is a crowd-pleasing summer treat, predictable in its sweetness but satisfying all the same.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Americanization of Emily
    Garner plays the scales of cynicism so gracefully in this anti-war gem, he makes them sound like a symphony.
  9. The Desert Bride
    The story works largely on the level of metaphor, but it’s never overbearing or suffocating; there’s life here. A lot of credit should go to the actors, particularly the lead. As the film moves along, García’s face seems to change dramatically.
  10. Chef
    Chef is so charmingly middlebrow that it's exactly the cinematic comfort food it mocks: Favreau has made not a game-changing meal to remember, but a perfect chocolate lava cake.
  11. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
    Spitzer, whose tireless efforts to redeem himself led to his cooperation in this doc, receives an entirely sympathetic-yet thoroughly researched-treatment from Gibney.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Detropia
    The filmmakers pay elegy to the Detroit of the Motown era, with its thriving middle class supported by manufacturing. At the same time, they're honest about the fact that the version of Detroit local partisans yearn for is long gone and most likely not coming back.
  13. Why We Fight
    Jarecki's film forcefully argues that the much abused word FREEDOM cannot paper over the conflicts between capitalism and democracy.
  14. Tales from the Golden Age
    Sardonic as it may be, Tales From the Golden Age is basically affirmative - its true subject is resilience. Romania suffered under a regime of dangerous stupidity. Drawing on popular memory, Mungiu has orchestrated a contribution to local folklore, a suite of stories in which those rendered witless by oppression were compelled by circumstance to live off their wits.
  15. Anita
    Too much of the movie feels like notes toward a portrait rather than the portrait itself, and Mock's failure to nail down the Thomas case drains the power from the victory-lap scenes of Hill addressing adoring crowds.
  16. The Lesson
    It's a tough, gripping watch made emotionally rewarding through trenchant plotting and Gosheva's tight-lipped expressiveness.
  17. 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.
  18. Down Terrace
    Down Terrace has frequently been appreciated as "The Sopranos meets Mike Leigh." But a more fruitful comparison might be to last year's stand-out British satire "In the Loop": In both films, verbal aggression makes for the biggest laughs and the surest signs of moral decay.
  19. Journey to the West
    The camera swoops and whooshes about but never generates any compelling energy — Chow's film proves endlessly manic but devoid of much mirth.
  20. My King
    The tears and recriminations, eruptions and reconciliations hold a begrudging fascination for about an hour.... After that, though, the volume is never turned down and these characters are never less than the most unendurable company.
  21. Stations of the Cross
    The ending's a touch too cute, but the best scenes here stand as potent, empathetic, well-observed broadsides against fundamentalism.
  22. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
    As tight as the parallel homo sapiens storylines are lax, Caesar's prison conversion to charismatic pan-ape revolutionist is near-silent filmmaking, with simple and precise images illustrating Caesar's General-like divining of personalities and his organization of a group from chaos to order. All of this is shown in absorbing, propulsive style, as Caesar broodingly bides his time like a king in disguise awaiting restoration.
  23. With God on Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right in America
    Certainly not as incredulous or mocking as it might have been. If anything, the mood is apprehensive. But it's depressing that--Carter aside--the filmmakers failed to find even one liberal believer.
  24. Theeviravaathi: The Terrorist
    The movie's bold visual and psychological patterns, as well as its heavy immersion in the natural world, imbue Malli's journey with a folktale quality.
  25. Son of the Bride
    In its details, though, Juan José Campanella's movie works beautifully: The actors are all superb when the florid demands of the story allow them elbowroom.
  26. The Black Balloon
    Within its resolutely mainstream parameters, The Black Balloon courses with a firsthand feel for languorous Aussie summers, the shifting scales of love and hate in sibling relationships, and the earned wit that helps families cope with difficult situations.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Timecrimes
    Modestly diverting.
  28. Friends with Money
    As its title jokingly implies, this is a more grown-up version of Aniston's long- running TV vehicle--complete with the star herself as eternal ingenue.
  29. My Friend Dahmer
    My Friend Dahmer is both sensitive and fascinating, distinguished by a stellar, mouth-breathing performance of insecurity from Lynch.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mad Detective
    Apart from its inventive depiction of the weaknesses that tough guys try to hide, Mad Detective is a slight work from the wildly prolific To.
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