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. Irrational Man
    It works better than most of Allen's recent films because it's a trifle without pretense, and because the director's finally smartened up — a little — right when everyone's written him off.
  2. Shaolin
    This crude, overlong chunk of kung-fu kitsch lays its scene in a 1920s Republican China, torn by internecine fighting and weighed down by drably expensive production design.
  3. Sex and the City
    Though Sex and the City is every bit as busy as its HBO progenitor was, it's virtually plotless, not to mention pointless.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Goal! The Dream Begins
    The appealing young man's tribulations are predictable, his triumph inevitable; while he gets respect, we get another Rocky-style dose of emotional uplift, cloaked in the usual game-day clichés.
  5. The Promise
    You can't help wondering how the same Fifth Gen filmmaker who made "Yellow Earth" and "Life on a String" could've fallen on such hard times, or justified such goofiness to himself.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Basket
    Combines the wholesomeness of "Old Yeller" with the moral and physical claustrophobia of "The Waltons."
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Short Eyes (re-release)
    Confrontational for its time yet paltry next to any episode of "Oz," Piñero's slim moral quandary is stocked with glib sermonizing and unfocused characterizations, but Robert M. Young's firmly anchored direction creates an appropriate chamber ambience.
  8. Diario di una siciliana ribelle
    The visuals can seem desperate -- Sicilian landscapes through a scrim of turning pages -- but a storytelling guitarist's running elegy gives Rita's bold actions a sadly epic scope.
  9. The Art of the Steal
    The Art of the Steal doesn't advance the nerdy intertextuality that has distinguished ironic crime films since Guy Ritchie, but writer-director Jonathan Sobol knows the ropes.
  10. Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
    From Oshima’s later career (after one stroke, he made 1999’s Taboo; after two strokes, it’s unclear whether he’ll direct again), most notable is this bilingual, end-of-WWII tearjerker about forgiveness and understanding between cultures, which could have been dubbed The Man Who Fell to Java.
  11. Honour
    Khan’s orchestration of suspense impresses.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    After the Apocalypse
    While short on narrative propulsion, Yasuaki Nakajima's low-budget, 72-minute After the Apocalypse turns out to be a surprisingly engaging ride.
  13. Yau doh lung fu bong
    The comedy is somewhat doused by posture and repetition, and the characters' whimsical behavior is endearing and irritating in turn. Which still makes it the absolute best neo-samurai judo farce in town.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story
    Nevertheless, if not as stirring as the similar "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg," it remains a reasonably comprehensive tribute to athletics as the great melting pot.
  15. Pray for Japan
    Filmed over a period of six weeks and supplemented with animated music sequences and chilling news footage of the terrifying deluge, Pray is both an elegy and a love letter.
  16. The Color Wheel
    The Color Wheel is funny, but it has a dark streak that takes it into increasingly creepy territory as the siblings face down a procession of people who are even more screwed-up than they are.
  17. $ellebrity
    Mazur miscalculates when he tries to direct viewers' outrage at stars' inability to walk down the street without getting cameras thrust in their faces. He's on far surer ground when he uses his on-screen subjects to decry the proliferation of gossip outlets, such as TMZ.
  18. You Don't Need Feet to Dance
    Govenar's slow pace doesn't quite do the story justice. With tighter editing, the film's beats might be just as infectious as those from Conde's drum.
  19. Men at Lunch
    Given Men at Lunch's compelling argument that the identity of its anonymous ironworker subjects is beside the point—that mystery is a prime facet of its enduring appeal—the documentary's desire to determine who they really were comes across as unnecessary.
  20. Big Ass Spider!
    This is squirmy, hilarious fun.
  21. Revolution
    Revolution is educational, but its shortcomings are glaring.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Getting to the Nutcracker
    As visually rich and heartwarming as the documentary is, director Serene Meshel-Dillman struggles with pace: The interviews with the young dancers sometimes drag, while the final dance performance is frenetic.
  23. My Friend Victoria
    My Friend Victoria has a specific vibrancy as delicate and understated as Lessing's social critique. It's an accumulation of small moments: telling gazes, sour notes in the dialogue, the persistent impression of a woman who's in a room but never fully present.
  24. Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
    Almost despite itself, this is a deeply pessimistic movie.
  25. Generation Wealth
    By turns, Greenfield’s survey is alarming, hilarious, and indulgent, sometimes strained and a little dull, prone to overstatement and an abuse of synecdoche.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Being Flynn
    What the actors are unable to get across emotionally (which is a lot - Dano and De Niro, both of them all big actorly tics, often seem like they were filmed in different rooms), Weitz hammers home via near-constant music.
  27. Lucky Number Slevin
    Cursed--but ironically!--with stomach-churning '60s decor, Slevin might round off in Park Chanwook country, but the lingering sense of it is as an amusement park for the actors, who are as infectiously overjoyed for the bouncy badinage as preschoolers on Christmas morning. Like tired parents, our enjoyment is primarily vicarious.
  28. Rounders
    An unappealing, conventional, and somnolent piece of work in which, as glumly directed from David Levien and Brian Koppelman's corny script, every scene feels like it's being played for the second time.
  29. Unmade in China
    All of this could be very funny, but while the film does deliver some strong comic turns, far too much time is spent watching an inactive Kofman whining about his lot.
  30. Unfriended: Dark Web
    For all its inventive and impressive technique, the film lacks fun; a lot of folks, myself included, need very little reminding that the Internet is a threat and that terrible men are actively out there abducting and terrorizing girls and women for lulz.
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