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. The Spiderwick Chronicles
    The movie's richly autumnal look is by swift turns cozily naturalistic and terrifyingly baroque, and director Mark Waters (Freaky Friday, Mean Girls) sustains the balance between real and surreal with mischievous brio.
  2. Bleak Street
    Like his onetime mentor Luis Buñuel, Ripstein favors sparse, naturalistic settings populated by pathetic-yet-zany characters and eschews anything that might be considered traditionally beautiful. Instead, he unearths beauty in the mire of his characters' social conditions and in their dedication to each other.
  3. The Same River Twice
    It's a generous document of cultural passage, and not incidentally, the sexiest naturally nudist American movie since Murnau's "Tabu." Moss, however, keeps himself out of the picture and neglects massive amounts of context that might've made Same River a stunner.
  4. Simon & the Oaks
    Lisa Ohlin's Simon and the Oaks has all the superficial elements of compelling drama but none of the interiority; it looks like a good movie without ever actually feeling like one.
  5. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
    Prince Caspian is fairly good fun, and I'm trying to decide whether it was the capable swordplay or Ben Barnes's bedroom eyes that prompted a significant shift in brand loyalty.
  6. Solo: A Star Wars Story
    Howard stamps the material in some welcome ways: The scruffy breeziness of his early comedies (Night Shift, Splash, Gung Ho) suits the hit-and-miss script, by Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan. Here’s a Star Wars that’s more appealing when its characters are chatting than when they’re pew-pewing.
  7. Dreams Rewired
    The filmmakers aren't arguing that mass-media tech leads to fascism, but they suggest, with some lightness, that our interconnectedness certainly facilitates it. But Dreams Rewired is no polemic, and it never mocks the past.
  8. Iron Man 3
    The big problems with Iron Man 3 are less specific to the movie itself than they are characteristic of the hypermalaise that’s infected so many current mega-blockbusters—too much plot, too much action, too many characters, too many pseudo-feelings.
  9. Hollywoodland
    Props then to Affleck. Coulter contrived a neat behavioral trick by inducing his star to play a comparably big-jawed bad actor. Surrounded as he is by canny professionals--Lane, Hoskins, Smith, and Jeffrey DeMunn as an unctuous glad-handing agent--it's an unexpectedly touching performance.
  10. Backcountry
    Writer-director Adam MacDonald's direction creates an ominous sense of rural-nowhere isolation, and his script avoids contrived banter while shrewdly suggesting it's headed toward horror before unexpectedly veering into survival-story territory. Nonetheless, such misdirection can't compensate for hopelessly routine action.
  11. Dogma
    A tediously childish exhibition.
  12. Skin
    This workmanlike, but enormously moving, movie makes the case that apartheid really does control her life, even her decision to rebel and get involved with a black man.
  13. 42
    The movie sugars up Robinson's story, and like too many period pieces it summons some vague idea of a warmer, simpler past by bathing everything in thick amber light, as if each scene is one of those preserved mosquitoes that begat the monsters of Jurassic Park.
  14. Disturbia
    There's not one single bombshell dropped in Disturbia; everyone is exactly who you think they are and does exactly what you think they'll do precisely when you think they'll do it.
  15. California Solo
    Any transformation feels like a device, and any modest hopefulness comes across as simply the unearned wishful thinking of the filmmaker.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kabluey
    Catches the nation's mood of economic anxiety and workplace exploitation more pungently than anything else in theaters.
  17. Beneath the Harvest Sky
    Gaudet and Pullapilly have a background in documentaries, and there's a convincing naturalism to their storytelling.
  18. When the Sea Rises
    If the movie stops short of exploring its own baggage, the actors still make for unforgettable company.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Princesa
    Unsettling in spots, Princesa ultimately glosses over the futility of Fernanda's plight, her misery rapidly erased.
  20. Outside Providence
    Cross "Rushmore" with "Cheech and Chong" and you might get Outside Providence.
  21. A Burning Hot Summer
    Although Angèle's religious faith and Frédéric's belief in luck seem like strained attempts at adding heft to the material, the film nevertheless works up a potent dramatic restlessness, derived from the push-pull between an entitled, obsessive Frédéric and Bellucci's quietly chaotic Angèle.
  22. Reset
    Reset often seems like Demaizière and Teurlai's attempt to indoctrinate a new generation. Their glorious recruitment film espouses individual expression and athletic grace, while also pinpointing the limits of star power.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Twins of Evil
    Twins loses its center and therefore the nightmarish force of the earlier film. [10 Aug 1972, p.57]
    • Village Voice
  24. Godzilla
    Godzilla is one of those generic, omnipresent blockbusters that's undone by the very spectacle it strives to dazzle us with: Everything is so gargantuan, so momentous, that nothing has any weight.
  25. Love for Sale
    Once you know the title, you pretty much get the gist. Just as Hermila ought to escape her hometown, Guedes deserves to flee to a richer film.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Jesus Camp
    The doc these kids would make with flea market camcorders couldn't possibly be as ugly as this absurdly hypocritical critique of the far right's role in escalating the culture war. The classier indoctrination to which Gap-shopping urban Democrats subject their kids might look damn spooky, too, but it probably wouldn't sell.
  27. The Discoverers
    The dysfunction may be perfunctory, but in this gorgeous natural setting — Schwarz makes full use of the stunning woods — it feels like new territory.
  28. Wristcutters: A Love Story
    A well-wrought indie written and directed by Goran Dukic, has to be the kewpie doll of current zombie flicks: Its walking dead are a bunch of attractive slackers whose wounds are largely internal. They've got attitude.
  29. Cherry Blossoms
    The best I can say for Cherry Blossoms is that it's made with love; the worst, that it's been a big hit in Germany. Yearning for Ozu, Dörrie stops off at cute, and parks.
  30. Willow Creek
    The horror's a long time coming, but Goldthwait and company make the waiting worth it.
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