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. Lawless
    The narrative often seems at odds with the director's pictorialism, trudging when it should be striding toward the climax, isolating the performers on their marks when everything depends on taut blood-ties interconnection.
  2. Raging Dove
    Raging Dove can't avoid the biodoc pitfall of fixating on its subject's personal saga to the virtual exclusion of all else; by the end it's essentially blaming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Abu Lashin's professional demise.
  3. Jobriath A.D.
    Kieran Turner's Jobriath A.D. is an exceptional example of this subgenre, a cubist portrait of an unknowable man and a dramatic whodunit about an artist-victim who died by a thousand cuts.
  4. Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry
    Here, as Berry warns, the imagination is limited by the camera. In a world in which I couldn’t buy Berry’s New Collected Poems, I might make an effort to see this again someday, with my eyes shut.
  5. Brothers
    Sheridan, repeatedly drawn to family sagas, including his own (2002's In America), aims for Greek tragedy but ends up with a PTSD melodrama, with Maguire able to produce slobber almost as effortlessly as Portman can summon up tears--essentially all her role calls for.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    20 Centimeters
    The musical numbers are dreadful and the jokes barely register, but more disappointing is how rote the exploration of the transgender dilemma is.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Red Chapel
    The Red Chapel becomes an infectiously funny, gonzo glimpse into the sausage-making process of propaganda.
  8. A Hologram for the King
    Tykwer sublimates what Eggers made explicit: the joblessness, the debt, the isolation. He knows the power of an image, a gesture, a brief exchange, so he captures those social themes in flashes, which ironically gives them new power.
  9. Stepmom
    Loathsome though Stepmom is, the eternally coltish Roberts is always a pleasure to watch and Sarandon's mordant wit occasionally comes to the fore.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Police Beat
    Dreamlike in style, Police Beat is also a real-world vision of what American indies could be if they dared to recognize the drama in our own neighborhoods.
  11. Vanishing Waves
    For those who found Inception too plotty and sexless, Lithuanian director Kristina Buozyte's sleek sci-fi reverie is hereby advised.
  12. Crazy Legs Conti: Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating
    Lighthearted foray into the world of competitive eating.
  13. Penance
    While it doesn't cohere into anything more substantial than a collection of self-loathing anxieties, Japanese teledrama Penance is effectively unnerving on a scene-for-scene basis thanks to writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's preference for ambience over character-driven drama.
  14. The Moving Creatures
    A puzzling film that despite being saturated with feeling leaves only a vague impression.
  15. Prime
    Not quite a romance by numbers, Prime is nevertheless a movie we need like a hole in the head.
  16. Jimmy P.
    Amalric's impish dexterity and Del Toro's mild catatonia make for a memorable mismatch, but Jimmy P.'s profound slow burn might be too clinical for some to consider dramatic.
  17. Rising from Ashes
    Rising from Ashes is not just about a cycling team; it's a testament to what happens when human beings care for one another.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ed Park
    Tortilla Soup
    Tortilla Soup feels instantly dated, distinguishable from EDMW only by some attractive close-ups of avocado.
  19. Abschied - Brechts letzter Sommer
    Marvelously grizzled and tender, Josef Bierbichler's Brecht wheezes and grumbles through it all.
  20. ZigZag
    Kid-pulp screenwriter Goyer (Dark City, Blade I and II) manages some mature textures but his movie never surmounts its manipulative ideas.
  21. Francis Ford Coppola Presents: The Legend of Suriyothai
    Prince Chatri Chalerm Yukol's movie is lovely, large, and tedious, subscribing blindly to storybook stereotypes (this warrior is brave, this prince is noble, this consort is evil) and acted, for the most part, in a passionless monotone.
  22. The Legend of 1900
    Good-natured but labored, the film clings to its lone gimmick with increasing desperation.
  23. Risk/Reward
    Holder and Parker tread lightly on issues of sexism, and sex in general, and leave us wishing more questions were asked.
  24. I Am Chris Farley
    Shrewder documentarians than directors Brent Hodge and Derik Murray would have balanced out the sentiment with grit. The movie is saccharine.
  25. Ask the Dust
    Alternately grandiose and abject, Bandini is a sort of underground man, and if no more miscast than usual, heartthrob Colin Farrell miserably fails to convincingly render Bandini's neurosis.
  26. Lost in Beijing
    The prevalent shooting style is monotonous naturalism, as the camera buzzes between contentious actors and trolls after anything on the move. No performance registers quite so much as the capital city itself.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    First Snow
    First-time director Fergus's film is more a moody, tedious anti-thriller about ineluctable fate.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Somebody Up There Likes Me
    The whole thing comes off as a fairy tale bordering on hallucination, perhaps the vision of life that passes before the eyes at death.
  29. Ramen Heads
    As demonstrated by this exquisite documentary, the preparation of Japan’s national dish is an arduous affair, with the most celebrated chefs — variously referred to here as “ramen gods” and “ramen demons” — toiling fanatically to retain the color, richness, and viscosity of their dishes.
  30. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
    At any speed, the movie only springs to full life late in the day, during the first meeting of Bilbo and the tragic creature who will come to be known as Gollum (once again played by the sublime Andy Serkis).
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