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 7.6 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
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  1. Circo
    Circo is filled with beautiful images and haunting moments, especially in the third act, when the family unravels as the film culminates in a final triumphant, haunting image.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stephanie Daley
    Writer-director Hilary Brougher knows how to rub it in, but Tamblyn is fearless in her attempt to save the narrative from falling into clichéd sermonizing.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Water
    This work of gorgeous fury, about the virtual imprisonment of millions of Hindu widows in the years before independence, transforms Mehta's feminist rage into an eloquent testament to the hunger for freedom.
  4. The Rape of Europa
    Impressive in scope if unremarkable in style, The Rape of Europa provides a chronology of World War II as it was experienced by "David," "Mona Lisa," and other artistic treasures the Nazis plundered.
  5. Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts
    Rather than epic or thrilling, justice becomes an errand, an extension of domestic work.
  6. Italian for Beginners
    A funny, relationship-driven ensemble piece that takes the chill out of the Danish winter with a snuggly blanket of humanism.
  7. Bukowski: Born into This
    Charles Bukowski, the bard of post-war L.A.'s working-class underbelly, was no ordinary cult writer, and John Dullaghan's thorough, compelling doc Bukowski: Born Into This does a credible job of showing why.
  8. Monsoon Wedding
    An air-conditioned bus tour of Punjabi ritual. Nair stuffs the film with dancing, henna, ornamentation, and group song, but her narrative clichés and telegraphed episodes smell of old soap opera.
  9. Home of the Brave
    Doubles as a narrative of the nascent women's movement.
  10. Gerald's Game
    With rasps and desperate eyes, Gugino communicates Jessie’s thinking and planning so powerfully that cutaways to that other Jessie, the chatty vision, egging her on, prove redundant.
  11. High Ground
    From its low-key, guitar-based score by composer Chris Bacon to the filmmaker's refusal to sugar-coat the tough times some of the soldiers faced after completing the climb, High Ground takes its cues from the worldview of its subjects.
  12. Louder Than a Bomb
    The movie floats to another realm entirely when the cameras go into the home of Nova Venerable, a smart, eloquent, gorgeous girl whose love for her special-needs younger brother and their hardworking single mom is expressed in terms that sidestep the formulaic verbal and physical bombast of so many of her peers.
  13. Code Black
    What will pull viewers in is the empathy of the healthcare workers who battle to retain their idealism in the face of staggering obstacles.
  14. The Wife
    It is the depth Close lends to Joan that kept me riveted — and angry.
  15. How to Train Your Dragon 2
    The plot is needlessly busy, and much of the action is more manic and indistinct. But How to Train Your Dragon 2 cuts deeper than the first picture — it will be particularly resonant for anyone who has ever worked with or adopted rescue animals — and there are a few sequences of cartoon grandeur.
  16. Still Bill
    Withers gets a sleepily even-keel portrait that could use more on musical technique, though it is nice to see him get happy with singer-songwriter Raul Midón.
  17. Dheepan
    Ultimately, Dheepan is the story of three people struggling to maintain their humanity, even as they lose their identities.
  18. The Messenger
    The filmmakers, like the songbirds they advocate for, are only messengers, but their message is persuasive and terrifying.
  19. The Disaster Artist
    Franco’s own movie works best as a portrait of the complicated friendship between Greg and Tommy, and it’s an inspired idea to have real-life brothers Dave and James play best friends — we can sense alternating undercurrents of exasperation and affection beneath every exchange.
  20. Bill Cunningham New York
    No passion for fashion is required to enjoy this absorbing portrait of legendary New York Times "On the Street" photographer Bill Cunningham, but a sense of history and tragedy might help.
  21. Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World
    Herzog smartly takes a broad, bird's-eye perspective of our early techno-evolution.
  22. Service (Serbis)
    Serbis may be a raunch-fest, but it's also a mind-trip--a raunch-fest with ideas.
  23. Dig!
    These flashes push Dig! beyond recording-industry kvetch, causing it to stay with you longer than either band's ephemeral music.
  24. A Poem Is a Naked Person
    Whiskery and restless, grooving and grotesque, the documentarian Les Blank's long-suppressed film A Poem Is a Naked Person plays like your memories of some mad, stoned last-century summer.
  25. Leaning Into the Wind
    The film ranges more widely than its predecessor, surveying more landscapes and a greater variety of projects. But it’s still a contemplative beauty, a chance to consider and be moved by a richer sort of connectedness than our lives typically allow.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Broken Embraces
    Indeed, three decades into his career as a name-brand fashioner of zesty soapers, Spanish cinema's most beloved export could direct un film de Almodóvar with his eyes shut and still get a rise out of his fans. So who could blame the matador for letting the bull run the show this time?
  27. Rosetta
    Pummeling, jagged, and extremely well-edited film.
  28. Kandahar
    The movie feels truncated, but it communicates a certain urgency and at times a powerful sense of the absurd.
  29. Blue Caprice
    The key question is whether this procedural—as in, here we watch killers proceed—contributes to any greater understanding. I believe it does.
  30. Spettacolo
    Is this art or is this prophecy? Is there even a difference?
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