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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    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Summer Pasture
    Summer Pasture is remarkable not merely for documenting the disappearing way of life, but for registering the depth of Yama and Locho's uncertainty about moving on from it.
  2. Akeelah and the Bee
    It helps that newcomer Keke Palmer nails it as the 11-year-old prodigy, avoiding cuteness and conveying more angst than all the pasty freaks in "Spellbound" combined.
  3. China Blue
    Shot at the peril of Peled and his crew, China Blue feels stage-managed at times.
  4. All You Need Is Love
    The documentary All You Need Is Love does a nice job of showing how, when it comes to children's lives, the ordinary is inescapable, even in extraordinary circumstances.
  5. Before I Go to Sleep
    If the story is a smidge predictable, at least the movie is pleasingly old-fashioned and grown-up, with a ’90s paranoid-thriller vibe.
  6. Aftermath
    What gives Aftermath its peculiar strain of portent is Pasikowski's consistent suggestion of the futility of bold, desperate attempts to undo a wrong.
  7. Trust Us, This Is All Made Up
    Jagodowski and Pasquesi establish and travel between a host of characters with a deft use of voice, gesture, and, of course, responsive instinct. The moments of triumph are best witnessed live, but Karpovsky captures enough of the thrill to make this film a destination of its own.
  8. JFK: A President Betrayed
    The film offers a solid précis, but it's a curious fact that a well-made doc like this is still only about half as informative or detailed as a long magazine article on the same subject might be.
  9. All the Way Through Evening
    Spong's documentary isn't a beautiful film... Its value, rather, is archival.
  10. Come Undone
    This self-consciously modern movie contains classical pleasures.
  11. MC5*: A True Testimonial
    Bravely bucks the "Behind the Music" arc, conveying a reality of constant flux, a sense of the band being jerked in many different directions.
  12. True Grit
    True Grit is well worth seeing, but it is hardly a monument either to Wayne or to the western. [21 Aug 1969, p.37]
    • Village Voice
  13. The Moment
    What's fresh is Weinstock's interweaving of flashbacks, slightly altered versions of flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, so that viewers must work as hard as Lee to determine past from present.
  14. Searching for Sugar Man
    Fluid, open-ended documentaries that demand more of an audience than foregone assent or fleeting bouts of passive outrage are rare these days, which is what makes Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man such a gift.
  15. Confetti
    If nothing else, this affectionately off-the-wall confection offers exuberant confirmation of every suspicion you might ever have had that the English are charmingly eccentric. They're barking mad.
  16. Driving Lessons
    The sentiment's a bit thick sometimes, but Walters remains sharp, and is sure to inspire drag queens everywhere.
  17. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
    Tyrnauer transforms what could be a staid profile film into an urgent story about the dangers of “urban renewal,” something Jacobs herself would admire.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Micmacs
    Micmacs is more fantasia than violent revenge tale. And its pleasing curlicues--like a bouquet of spoons--linger long after the predictable outcome.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sia, the Dream of the Python
    Sia becomes a bloodbath of Shakespearean proportions as even the good guys kill one another in an effort to preserve illusions.
  20. Battleship
    And when the F-14s came out for a triumphant flyover, I looked around the room to find the moron who was applauding only to realize that it was me.
  21. Front Cover
    Come for the breezy chemistry, stay for the thoughtful exploration of racism, homophobia, and xenophobia via a cross-cultural love affair.
  22. Peace Officer
    The film suffers from some rookie problems.... But through it we can see the history and ramp-up of the military-esque police methods that have become our current crisis.
  23. The TV Set
    The TV Set is wry and true about the messy tangle of art, commerce, and family, as talented creative types try to stay true to themselves and put food on the table. The movie is also a treasure trove of inspired comic personalities.
  24. Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles
    Sturdy and rudimentary, Magician may be Welles 101, but it's dotted liberally with TV and radio clips of the famously loquacious auteur talking, talking, and doing more talking — and how could anybody with ears and a brain resist that buttery voice, spinning out clause-laden sentences that take more twists and turns than the streets of Venice but always end, somehow, in a place that's ravishingly articulate?
  25. They Live
    They Live is, to scramble its most famous line, better at chewing bubblegum than kicking ass.
  26. They Will Have to Kill Us First
    As a look at geopolitics, the film is limited, but as a musical doc it's strong — and it's best as the movie to recommend old white Americans go see as a reminder that people everywhere remain people.
  27. The Eclipse
    The Eclipse is a curious Irish ghost story that fiddles with the recipe just enough to produce interesting results.
  28. When We Leave
    Kekilli, more than an unofficial spokeswoman for rebellious Euro-Muslim youth, sells a simple and deterministic story through her sheer presence and precise reaction shots.
  29. School Life
    The central couple’s unforced benevolence is hard to resist; the bespectacled John, in particular, exhibits remarkable comfort in front of the camera, his frizzy white hair and knowing reaction shots lending him a kind of quizzical charisma throughout.
  30. Kadosh
    One of Gitaï's greatest assets in Kadosh is such stillness, which leaves facile outsiders' judgment out of the frame and thereby deepens our immersion in the narrative.
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