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. Phoenix
    The director's last film was the superb 2012 Barbara, also starring Hoss and Zehrfeld, another romance with a mystery built in; Phoenix is an even finer piece of work, so beautifully made that it comes close to perfect.
  2. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
    Some critics find Andersson's latest redundant, arguing that its sketches lack the freshness of those in Songs From the Second Floor. I found it the fullest flowering yet of his approach, with Andersson orchestrating his finest dada — and even risking tenderness and horror.
  3. Top Five
    Chris Rock couldn't have planned it this way, but his exuberant and wondrous comedy Top Five, opening at just the right time, is like an airdrop of candy over the city, if not the country.
  4. While We're Young
    Baumbach has made some fine pictures (Frances Ha) and some deadening, hermetic ones (Margot at the Wedding), but it's While We're Young that really fulfills the promise of his brash but fine-grained debut.
  5. Red Army
    Red Army is a riveting look behind the Iron Curtain.
  6. Fishing Without Nets
    Cutter Hodierne's gorgeous, harrowing debut feature, Fishing Without Nets, doesn't just ask you to feel a bit for Somali pirates, as Captain Phillips did -- Hodierne puts you in their shoes.
  7. The Innocents
    Clayton's filmmaking, mustering frisson by both candle and blazing daylight, could serve as an object lesson in its genre.
  8. Evolution of a Criminal
    Vital, thoughtful, and deeply personal, first-timer Darius Clark Monroe's autobiographical doc stands as a testament to the power of movies to stir empathy.
  9. Revenge of the Mekons
    What Angio captures, beautifully, is that the Mekons make great music because, together and apart, they’re so alive to the world around them.
  10. Virunga
    The fights Virunga documents couldn't feel more urgent. This is one of the year's most compelling and important films.
  11. Story of My Death
    Story of My Death is a singular work, and its originality is apparent in every frame.
  12. Concerning Violence
    A commanding indictment of the exploitative nature of geopolitics, and of Europe's and the U.S.'s abuse of native peoples around the world.
  13. Match
    Writer-director Stephen Belber's inspiriting, generous Match is so good that it's like some kind of trick.
  14. She's Beautiful When She's Angry
    One of the year's best films, Mary Dore's She's Beautiful When She's Angry is an urgent, illuminating dive into the headwaters of second-wave feminism, the movement that — no matter what its detractors insist — has given us the world in which we live.
  15. Maidan
    Easily the most rigorous, vital, and powerful movie of 2014, Sergei Loznitsa's Maidan may be a perfect Bazinian cinema-machine — reality is captured, crystallized, honored for its organic complexity, and delivered unpoisoned by exposition or emphasis.
  16. Tip Top
    Serge Bozon's smart, surprising, marvelously realized French crime-and-sex police drama/comedy distinguishes itself with trenchant plotting, inspired framing, and performances that honor true human feeling even as they lunge into the screwball.
  17. War for the Planet of the Apes
    The effects are incredible, the action is exciting, the music is great, and Andy Serkis, once again embodying a non-human character through motion-capture technology, remains terrific. But there’s something more here.
  18. Play
    It's the rare contemporary film that's as majestically and gruelingly rigorous in its form as in its thematic interrogations.
  19. Finders Keepers
    Most docs are lucky to have one wild character. The phenomenal Finders Keepers has two.
  20. Brooklyn
    The film serves as an authentic examination of the mid-twentieth-century immigrant experience — and an intimate exploration of one woman's attempt to understand who she is and where she wants to belong.
  21. Love & Friendship
    With the plotting and the epigrams taken care of, Stillman seems liberated as a craftsman: Never before has one of his films been so crisp, so tart, so laugh-out-loud funny.
  22. Queen of Earth
    Queen of Earth is also a semi-comedy, often funny in an intentionally bleak way. And that, besides Moss, is what makes it work.
  23. 45 Years
    With 45 Years, [Haigh] has created not only a searching examination of a long-term marriage — and the myths that sustain it — but also a compassionate portrait of a woman reconciling herself with those false notions.
  24. Victoria
    This sparse marvel leaves the audience rattled by how small decisions lead to big consequences. Still, you're most likely to leave the theater gushing about the cast's bravura unbroken performances.
  25. Court
    The film is richly detailed, and its acting seems almost invisible — the performers just seem to be these people. Court is one of the strongest debut features in years.
  26. Metalhead
    The film deftly marries the essence of the music to a moving coming-of-age framework.
  27. Krisha
    Even the familiar elements of this particular family's drama are invested — through vigorous scripting, directing, and acting — with almost elemental power.
  28. It's Such a Beautiful Day
    Warped keyhole-size images stack atop one another in a Frankenstein-ian collage that evokes the films of Terrence Malick, David Lynch, Stan Brakhage, and Bruce Conner. Seeing "the years [slip] out of [Bill's] head" in this 71-minute compendium is nothing short of revelatory.
  29. I'll See You in My Dreams
    It's crucial to note, too, that this isn't just a nice little movie for older people: There's some real bite to the way it deals with the life questions that come with aging, and whatever sweetness it has is just an undertone, not a feel-good frosting overlay.
  30. American Ultra
    Nima Nourizadeh’s American Ultra is a bloody valentine attached to a bomb. It’s violent, brash, inventive and horrific, and perhaps the most romantic film of the year.
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