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. Wolf Creek
    The ambitions are so paltry that our response should be too: Wolf Creek is unimaginative, light on the grue and heavy on the faux-serious desperation.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    39 Pounds of Love
    Eagerly mimicking reality TV's need to mold life into a digestible narrative, the documentary 39 Pounds of Love simplifies its subject until all that's left is a name and a cloying score.
  3. Miss Julie
    Despite a few dynamite scenes from Chastain, Miss Julie's cruelty is more potent than its craft.
  4. Minions
    It's all perfectly OK, and even, at times, delightful.... Yet Minions doesn't add up to all that it should.
  5. Real Steel
    Based very loosely on a short story by "I Am Legend" author Richard Matheson, Real Steel in fact comes closer to road-bonding movies featuring children and hesitant papas: "Paper Moon" or "Over the Top," say.
  6. War Machine
    It’s a complex subject, to say the least. And the film struggles at times with trying to make parodic jabs at a serious topic – it never quite seems to go far enough with its satire. But Pitt’s ridiculous, wildly over-the-top performance somehow keeps it all together. Whenever he’s onscreen, the film finds its soul, its heart, and its funny bone.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Spoken Word
    Though crudely constructed (the lighting and framing are strictly soap opera), unevenly acted (Becker is a bundle of distracting tics), and bluntly scripted, the film does have an honest integrity--at least whenever Blades is onscreen.
  8. For No Good Reason
    It's a film that paints a potent portrait of an artist of righteous, controlled fury.
  9. Unknown
    As with its protagonist, Unknown boasts tantalizing issues buried deep beneath its frantic exterior, but little idea how to unlock or address them.
  10. Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived
    An elegantly constructed if misleadingly titled class lecture.
  11. The Rum Diary
    The Rum Diary could use a shot of the mania that fueled Terry Gilliam's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." As deadpan as he is, Depp could use a crazed Benicio Del Toro to complement his cool.
  12. Take Me
    While the film, to its credit, doesn't become a trite morality play, the ending is thin and contrived nonetheless.
  13. Ramona and Beezus
    Wholesome to the point of being dull.
  14. Frank & Lola
    The film's success depends upon the tension between Frank and Lola, and even this cast can't overcome what feels like an essential disconnect in the central relationship.
  15. Filth
    A self-aware psychopath is a tough character to humanize, especially when he's mired in a stylized jumble of comedy and tragedy.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Breaking and Entering
    Forgive Minghella for taking a breather, even if Breaking and Entering exhales nothing but hot air.
  17. Christmas in the Clouds
    Few clichés go unexercised, but there's also something quietly amazing going on here: For once, American Indians are portrayed not as spiritually attuned mystics or powerless patsies but as ordinary working stiffs, or at least the cinematic equivalent thereof.
  18. Two Men in Town
    Blethyn is wonderful as an all-too-rare character, a middle-aged woman who holds her own in a position of authority over violent men.
  19. Bamboozled
    Primary story line is clumsy and badly acted. But he (Lee) reminds you that movies have power, that they matter, and for a few brilliant moments, Bamboozled matters more than any other American movie this year.
  20. Tommy's Honour
    Golf's become such a ridiculously well-heeled pastime that it's refreshing to see it portrayed in its infancy, when clubs were carried like a bunch of kindling and the desolate greens of St. Andrews were more like the hazards of today's game.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Stella Days
    Thanks to its understated elegance and surpassing central performance, this modest, too-eagerly schematic period drama is more engrossing than it has a right to be.
  22. Hereafter
    Hereafter is not just a stretch for Eastwood, it's a contortion. The irrationality of the premise is exceeded only by the strategic irrationalities of the plot.
  23. The Minus Man
    Less interesting for what it has to say about evil -- namely, that it's banal/unknowable/random/everywhere -- than for the microsurgical procedures it performs on genre conventions and expectations.
  24. CQ
    Endearing but pointless, at once cluttered and tinny, this film-dork fantasia suggests a shopping spree at a high-end vintage emporium underwritten by Daddy's blank check.
  25. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
    There are pages missing from this fable: Meadows reports that his financiers asked him to cut one-quarter of his original script just before production began, and his fondness for long takes sits uneasily beside the apparent gaps in the narrative.
  26. Men of Honor
    The filmmakers at once coarsen and dilute a fascinating life into a lumpy puddle of punishing inspirational hokum.
  27. Phone Booth
    Best appreciated as hilarious pulp metaphor, which, not coincidentally, happens to be one of the screenwriter's specialties.
  28. The Anniversary Party
    The film's greatest failure, however, is the absence of any convincing emotional or sexual relationship between Sally (Leigh) and Joe (Cumming).
  29. The Ladykillers
    The Coens are uncharacteristically restrained. Indeed, given that the crime comedy is their preferred genre, The Ladykillers is remarkable mainly for its timidity.
  30. After Midnight
    What makes After Midnight more than just another ménage à trois (in homage to Truffaut) is the way Ferrario, who also writes about movies, weaves the allure of early film into a contemporary story, shot with the latest high-definition technology.
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