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. Toast
    Slater's book was evidently an ax-grinder, and the resulting film, directed with tone-deaf comic rhythm by S.J. Clarkson, shows pity and bemusement for the people raising Nigel but rarely human interest in them. More damning still, even the food looks ugly.
  2. Cirkus Columbia
    "No Man's Land" director Danis Tanovic, adapting a novel by Ivica Djikic, also returns to his roots with this decidedly old-fashioned, quasi-satirical drama that is a bit on the nose with its indictments of post-communist animosities and opportunism.
  3. Right at Your Door
    Grounded hard by some terrific smoking-skyline special effects and by Cochrane and McCormack's intensity.
  4. Generation War
    Generation War seeks the epic, creating multiple, lavishly realized worlds and moving with confidence between them. What it finds of both history and its individuals is less complete.
  5. Strangers with Candy
    Strangers With Candy regularly lampoons junkie-reparation melodramas and after-school specials, but with so little focus it's never clear what the film, or even Sedaris's vaudeville buffoon incarnation, is supposed to be parodying. That may be its fascination for some--it's a satire without a baseline, free-floating in its own self-indulgent ether.
  6. Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure
    Still, the tapes are great. More than just a flophouse Punch and Judy show, the Raymond vs. Peter dustups elevate cruel bickering to a ritual through which we live life's pain.
  7. The Wall
    Liman, for all his action acuity, struggles to make lying behind a wall exciting. He manages some tense and rousing sequences, but between them yawn scenes of the killer jabbering bullshit and the hero passing in and out of consciousness.
  8. Saudate for the Future
    Infectious city symphony.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Scorpio
    Scorpio exists merely as a succession of stylistic flourishes without feeling, representative of the emptiest, most uninteresting kind of cinema. [24 May 1973, p.83]
    • Village Voice
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Wildest Dream
    Everest looks suitably majestic in this IMAX documentary, though five different expeditions on the peak are awkwardly cobbled into one dubious narrative.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Bubba Ho-tep
    Though unpainfully entertaining, its greatest dose of otherworldly mojo must have been spent warding off straight-to-video status.
  12. Snow White and the Huntsman
    For all this Snow White's visual ornamentation, there's no sense of narrative priority - the filmmakers can't see the Dark Forest for the trees.
  13. Greetings from Tim Buckley
    The film articulates this dimension of the story, regrettably, in little more than biopic platitudes and daddy-issue clichés...But it's not all bad. Badgley delivers a nuanced performance of such ferocity he almost singlehandedly makes a conventional film seem loose and improvisatory.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Coach Carter
    Proudly wearing its self-righteousness like a letterman jacket, Coach Carter's just an exasperatingly long "The More You Know" commercial starring one first-stringer and the junior varsity.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Assisted Living
    There's a finer line between peaceable pothead jocularity and just being a dick--and sometimes it's tough to tell whether Todd is more Jon Stewart or Tucker Carlson.
  16. 1,000 Times Good Night
    Poppe's closeness to the material ensures a level of passion, but he still fails to create a truly specific dynamic for Rebecca and Marcus's family, settling instead for a catch-all representation of the difficulties of maintaining a healthy home life while working in a dangerous profession.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Brighton Rock
    The leads are compelling and the chase and fight scenes - scored to a propulsive bass-drum beat - are kinetic, but as Brighton Rock attempts to zero in on Rose and Pinkie's dangerous relationship, it loses momentum.
  18. The Great New Wonderful
    Ironically, Leiner's two monuments to pothead delirium seem vastly more coherent than this hazy attempt to mine the zeitgeist, a film every bit as pointed as its nounless title.
  19. The Dinner
    The beauty of a single-location thriller is how the tension escalates in containment, but Moverman fails to seize that built-in advantage.
  20. 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.
  21. A Walk Among the Tombstones
    A Walk Among the Tombstones is an uncommonly well-made thriller.
  22. Backstage
    An enjoyably overwrought meditation on the consequences of celebrity and the vicissitudes of fandom, Backstage stars Le Besco as the schoolgirl acolyte of Emmanuelle Seigner's pop diva, a singer-songwriter and high priestess of cheese.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Morning Glory
    The only love Morning Glory truly cares about is the passionate but sexless amour fou between a girl and her work.
  24. Traveller
    The movie lacks any sense of subcultural specificity, though it has a superabundant country music score. [22 Apr 1997]
    • Village Voice
  25. The Last Kiss
    The Last Kiss isn't terrible, but if you're strapped for a night out it can easily wait till DVD. Better yet, it may be time to revisit "Diner."
  26. The Tavern
    Though rife with incidental plot holes, Foote's movie feels right even when nothing important is happening...which is much of the time.
  27. Sasayaki
    This dreamy, languorous farce offers a manageable strawberry-flavored alternative, a mildly kinky Hello Kitty sadomasochism.
  28. The Man from Elysian Fields
    Manure of a relatively clover-scented variety, George Hickenlooper's The Man From Elysian Fields is at primal odds with itself.
  29. Up at the Villa
    The Haases, whose previous films ("Angels and Insects," "The Music of Chance") evinced a remote, unfussy sensibility, are a poor fit for the melodramatic contortions that the story demands.
  30. Alila
    Israel's one-man new wave, Amos Gitai, surveys his nation's hardscrabble quotidian in Alila, which dallies with both Kiarostamian spirit and Altman-esque fabric, examining the intersecting lives of a dozen or so Tel Aviv residents.
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