Village Voice's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Last Days Here
    An affectionate look at a self-destructing maniac and his supporters that bluntly reveals Liebling's total abjection without mocking him.
  2. Thin Ice
    Working the long con and damn near getting away with it, this kissing cousin to "Fargo," "Cedar Rapids," and "Win Win" makes for a surprisingly entertaining and nonderivative February time-passer.
  3. Chico & Rita
    The result has only a loose resemblance to Valdés's story - though real-life figures including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo, and a Cuban songstress who bears some resemblance to Rita Montaner are featured as characters - but it's a dazzling thing to behold.
  4. The Front Line
    Tightly directed and well acted (even though many characters are cut-outs from every war movie you've ever seen), The Front Line shoehorns little known history into a familiar format, and it works.
  5. Scalene
    Although Scalene slows to a drip in places, strong performances and a Hitchcock-trained eye build unnerving tension into its depiction of the intimate stress of caring for an invalid and the ways people might or might not crack under it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Goodbye First Love
    Like "Father of My Children," Goodbye First Love loosely fictionalizes lived experience in order to capture the ineffable - in this case, emotional maturation or, as Sullivan phrases it, "becom[ing] a real person."
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Keyhole
    The film is infectiously somnambulant, so convincingly and unrelentingly dreamlike that its sudden end mimics the sensation of snapping awake from deep sleep.
  8. Chronicle
    Chronicle, with its found-footage storytelling and superpowered teens, at least playfully transcends its "Cloverfield meets Heroes" pitch.
  9. Pretty Poison (1968)
    Like any good study in couple's psychopathology, a familiar relationship is visible here, but in a parodic, mutated form.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jiro Dreams of Sushi
    Gelb might flit around a bit too much, but his appealing documentary always comes back to its subject's determination (sometimes overbearing) to leave the most meaningful possible legacy to his family and his craft.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
    This impressionistic approach eschews traditional biography, instead giving the viewer the feeling of being inside a moment, without necessarily providing all the information we might need to contextualize what we're seeing.
  12. Buried Prayers
    With the survivors' physical presence amongst Nazi slaughterhouses as its own powerful statement, Buried Prayers is a nonfiction work that confronts Holocaust atrocities from a piercing ground-level view.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Color Me Obsessed: A Film About The Replacements
    With so many voices, Color Me becomes a rock version of "Rashomon," and what the film lacks in music and live footage, it more than makes up for with obsessive detail and heated debate. Who's right? Everyone.
  14. Grandma, a Thousand Times
    She might not be our kin, but filmmaker Mahmoud Kaabour's anecdotal, warm-humored tribute to his grandmother - and, to a limited extent, to her cultural heritage - taps into the universal desire to hang onto loved ones in their waning years.
  15. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
    What gives the film its human dimension are the conflicting memories of former residents.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Dish & the Spoon
    For once, an American indie's muted modesty at least makes emotional sense, suiting a bittersweet romance that, by nature, has neither a name nor a future.
  17. Escape Plan
    With its fun script and cheap visuals, Escape Plan evokes the halfwit cheesiness of 1980s-era Cannon films, but it also recalls the deft pacing and legibility of their action sequences.
  18. The Forgotten Space
    Epic in scope, intellectual agility, and the potential to induce panic and despair, this documentary exploration of global trade as an emblem of economic apocalypse avoids (just barely) doom-mongering by virtue of its compassion and visual grandeur.
  19. Good for Nothing
    Good for Nothing has a nice comic sense of the brushfire eruptions of Western violence.
  20. The Fairy
    While every scene is art-directed with zest and innovatively staged, The Fairy rarely inspires outright laughter. At least it respects its influences more than does "The Artist."
  21. Beasts of the Southern Wild
    In trying through incessant narration to make a six-year-old a prolix sage, Zeitlin can't avoid falling into sticky sentimentality.
  22. Easy Money
    A hit in its native Sweden as "Snabba Cash," the English title is a piece of cheap irony; this is a crime thriller where no one gets away clean, and every action has its irrevocable reaction.
  23. Better Than Something: Jay Reatard
    Even non-fans will appreciate what a tough act Reatard is to follow, though, and anybody with a shred of respect left for rock 'n' roll will feel loss and anger at his passing.
  24. The Salt of Life
    Di Gregorio's performance sets the tone of dim hope and quiet forbearance, telling the story through reactions: an ever-accommodating smile that shades into a wince; sparkling, heavy-lidded eyes betrayed by vexed brows.
  25. Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope
    A tender, thoughtful paean to geek community.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Safety Not Guaranteed
    A viewer's patience with some of Safety's more rote stretches is rewarded in the film's final 15 minutes, when the plot takes a truly unexpected turn. As a DIY answer to the Spielberg generation's nostalgia for movie magic, the film's fully earnest, fantastic climax beats something like "Super 8" at its own game for a fraction of the cost.
  27. Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away
    The ravishing and kitschy Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away is the rare movie whose title serves as an accurate indicator of whether you will enjoy seeing it.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fun Size
    The fundamental Schwartz touch applies: In the guise of a narrowly targeted tween flick, he has delivered a smart and emotionally satisfying slice of wish fulfillment, tracing how a threatened family finds harmony.
  29. For a Good Time, Call...
    Lauren and Katie aren't defined by their attitudes toward men; they're defined by being fu--ing funny and awesome.
  30. Surviving Progress
    The film trots out a who's who of great thinkers - Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking, Margaret Atwood, assorted scientists and historians - who are riveting as they walk us through the question of whether we will or can survive progress. The anticapitalism prognosis is grim, and the hope offered is slim indeed.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »