Village Voice's Scores

Select another publication »
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 7.6 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
view
per page
  1. The Betrayal - Nerakhoon
    Impressionistic and lyrical, as well as somber and gripping, The Betrayal conveys a ceaseless flow. It's as if the filmmaker has opened a window onto a parallel world traveling beside our own.
  2. 2046
    Mood is everything, trumped up by a score so rich with pop songs, bossa nova drama, and symphonic mournfulness it's almost a movie on its own. 2046 may be a Chinese box of style geysers and earnest meta-irony, but that should not suggest there aren't bleeding humans at the center of it.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Emitaï
    As usual with Sembene, there is much fascinating ethnological detail; more importantly, this is a film by an African for Africans, designed to make them share discovery and revelation: the limitations of myth, the cruelty of the oppressor, the fortitude of the people, the need for revolution. [22 Jun 1972, p.75]
    • Village Voice
  4. A Quiet Passion
    In his sympathetic and intelligent Dickinson biopic, A Quiet Passion, Terence Davies honors his subject by remaining true to this observation from the poet herself: "To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations."
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nothing Sacred
    A delirious send-up of bandwagon piety, the film was scripted by that snappiest of Hollywood crank cases, Ben Hecht, and he never got a better, more committed distaff embodiment of his flair for highlighting hooey than Lombard, who throws herself into the role with daffy, tongue-tripping abandon.
  6. Abortion: Stories Women Tell
    This doc is a tearjerker, but it's also enraging.
  7. Tickling Giants
    Tickling Giants comes off as both a fact-based look at fighting fire with funny and a prescient cautionary tale.
  8. Kung Fu Hustle
    Chow manages to have his cake and eat it too: Kung Fu Hustle is a kung fu parody that's also a terrific kung fu movie.
  9. Meru
    This is a crowd-pleaser, and it's no surprise it snagged the audience award for documentaries at Sundance last winter. Getting to these moments is a bit of a climb itself, though.
  10. Command and Control
    Despite the high stakes, Command and Control is morbidly fun to watch, in the manner of good suspense thrillers and disaster films.
  11. Panic
    Steeped in metaphor as it is, Panic offers a more naturalistic analysis of male midlife crisis than the grotesquely overpraised "American Beauty."
  12. The Aviator
    The Aviator could've been a "Raging Bull" brother film, given that masterpiece's crystalline purity of purpose and humiliated courage. But it brakes far short.
  13. Ratcatcher
    The most audacious debut feature of the year.
  14. A Talking Picture
    Still astonishingly vital at 96, the Portuguese maestro Manoel de Oliveira here takes a becalmed trip through stormy waters.
  15. The Big Red One
    Certainly a testament to Fuller's tenacity, but recent raves notwithstanding, it's no masterpiece...The Big Red One isn't even Fuller's greatest war film. Of those, I'd rank it fourth -- but that's not half bad.
  16. Hukkle
    Deranging a venerable Hungarian tradition of "village sociology," Pálfi employs a bizarrely associative montage to fashion a portrait of a traditional peasant community -- just a midsummer Sunday on Mars.
  17. Above and Below
    The film is a wonder of desert skies, slick tunnels, bumptious fence- and wall-climbing, and occasional staged reveries.
  18. Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience
    [An] inspiring cinematic journey — full of overwhelming beauty, and ready to set the curious viewer's mind aflame.
  19. Legion of Brothers
    It’s clear in their eyes that they’ve seen some shit—and this doc not only gives us a glimpse of it too, but adds valuable context in a way not many others do.
  20. Abuse of Weakness
    Breillat's impressive film is a study of bodies and how we carry them, and it explores the manner in which weakness seeks out strength on an almost primal level, bypassing the higher modes of human thought.
  21. Christmas, Again
    Christmas, Again is a low hum of a downer, but maybe that's appropriate.
  22. Have a Nice Day
    The surprisingly vibrant, hand-drawn images of Have a Nice Day revitalize the story’s more tired elements. It may not give us anything new, but Jian Liu’s film looks lovely and, at 77 minutes, doesn’t overstay its welcome. And sometimes that’s enough.
  23. Grandma, a Thousand Times
    She might not be our kin, but filmmaker Mahmoud Kaabour's anecdotal, warm-humored tribute to his grandmother - and, to a limited extent, to her cultural heritage - taps into the universal desire to hang onto loved ones in their waning years.
  24. Finding Dory
    Finding Dory might be messy, but through its central interplay — between present and past, light and dark, joy and pain — it manages an emotional complexity that puts most supposedly grown-up movies to shame.
  25. Rescue Dawn
    Rescue Dawn is the closest thing to a "real" movie that Herzog has ever made. The lone conquistador has joined the club. Rescue Dawn is a Rambo movie without the Man (who, if I remember my Rambology, was himself of German descent).
  26. A Clockwork Orange
    Let me report simply that A Clockwork Orange manifests itself on the screen as a painless, bloodless, and ultimately pointless futuristic fantasy...The last third of the movie is such a complete bore that even audiences of confirmed Kubrickians have drowned out smatterings of applause with prolonged hissing.
  27. Human Flow
    You’re right not to trust a film critic who calls a movie “stunning.” But let me say this about Human Flow, the epic new documentary surveying the scope of the global refugee crisis, from Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei: It stunned me, in the truest sense of the word.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Happy Feet
    Children, innocent as they are, may not yet have grown to loathe the actor's (Robin Williams) shtick, but you might like to know that he has two--yes, two--roles in this film.
  29. The Weather Underground
    One leaves with barely a clue as to how this group was able to orchestrate a successful string of terror bombings.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Facing the Music
    In a meticulous style that often appears offhanded, the directors chronicle Boyd's journey step-by-step, pausing to eavesdrop on the teacher talking to herself.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »