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. Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
    With an excess of excitable style, samba music, and heady, montage-driven metaphor that threatens to bury his film's key ideas, young-gun director Kohn--a New Yorker with South American roots--has clearly set out to make a splash. So far, he's succeeded.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Descent
    In the great B tradition, Marshall gets a lot out of nothing.
  3. Rana's Wedding
    It's tempting to read Abu-Assad's view of his ostentatiously wealthy heroine and her debutante narcissism as satirical of a certain cross-section of modernized Palestinians amid the occupation, but the placid, earnest way her dilemma takes up emotional space in his film suggests half-bakery.
  4. The Yes Men Fix the World
    Mainly, Fix the World is about the beauty of the riff. The Yes Men are funniest when addressing a straight audience, making outlandish claims in favor of the free market and the benefits of unregulated catastrophe--the Black Plague gave us capitalism!
  5. The Road
    Call it a haircut of "Psycho" with ectoplasmic additives, The Road still has a whispering menace and visual grandeur all its own.
  6. Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember
    Even Mastroianni cannot hold our attention for over three hours.
  7. Sunshine
    Despite Sunshine's historical scope and multiplicity of characters, it doesn't shed half as much light on its subject -- identity and anti-Semitism -- as does, for example, Agnieszka Holland's claustrophobic chamber piece "Angry Harvest."
  8. Rain
    The visual subtleties don't come to bear on the storytelling, unfortunately -- the dialogue is cumbersome, the simpering soundtrack and editing more so.
  9. Mesrine: Killer Instinct
    Richet proves maddeningly loath to edit his material, and his charismatic star, Vincent Cassel, does not delve deep into the character.
  10. Get On Up
    Get On Up isn't a perfect-picture; there are moments of awkwardness, little gambles that don't quite pay off. But it's one of those experiments that's both flawed and amazing, a mainstream movie (with Mick Jagger as one of its producers) that fulfills old-fashioned, entertainment-value requirements, even as it throws off flashes of insight.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Like Killing Flies
    A curiously tasty dish, one that could leave even a vegan with a burning desire to sample Shopsin's lamb chops.
  12. Letters from Baghdad
    Unfortunately, the doc is devoid of any real context, including how work such as Bell’s helped lead to the quagmire that has unsettled the region for decades.
  13. Big Sonia
    The loose structure is bound by a thread of motherhood. Sonia’s children, two daughters and a son, are lively, intelligent, and deeply affected by their parents’ trauma.
  14. Donnie Darko
    Has plenty of problems. But most stem from a young filmmaker overswinging on his first time up to the plate and hitting a deep fly out rather than a home run.
  15. Bliss
    Though calling out the abominable oppression of women, even in a vehicle as didactic as Bliss, serves at least some redeemable purpose.
  16. American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
    American Radical shows--albeit with great reluctance--how a formidable intellect partnered with an absolutist disposition can get you absolutely nowhere.
  17. Tomorrow
    What Laurent and Dion do best is present pockets of progressive change as blueprints for idealism in action.
  18. The Boys of Baraka
    The Boys of Baraka's heart may be in the right place, but its portrait of poor Baltimore kids selected to attend boarding school in Kenya is rife with suspect perspectives.
  19. Our Brand Is Crisis
    Our Brand Is Crisis manages to be remarkably suspenseful.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Games of Love and Chance
    Unlike American counterparts "Kids" or "Dangerous Minds," this highly intelligent comedy (which cleaned up at this year's Césars) doesn't seek to shock or inspire, but merely documents teen moodiness in all its tedious unpredictability.
  21. Tikkun
    Shot like a photo album, gorgeous frame after gorgeous frame, it continually suggests that crisis and struggle can be beautiful when viewed from the right angle.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mrs Henderson Presents
    This is Dame Judi's show. However extraordinary an actor she may be, she cannot conceal the obvious fact that she's having the time of her life here. Isn't that delicious?
  23. Sworn Virgin
    Cutting between present, childhood, and recent past, Bispuri constructs a subtle, richly emotional collage.
  24. The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector
    To have been in junior high school when rhapsodic fugues of yearning like "Spanish Harlem," "Uptown," or "Be My Baby" first poured from the radio is to have a sensibility, if not a fantasy life, in some way molded by this monster of self-absorption; to see The Agony and the Ecstasy is to be discomfitingly haunted by the specter of that long-ago innocence.
  25. The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble
    Neville briefly showcases individual musicians but never sticks with them long enough to highlight their skills.
  26. Fort Tilden
    Allie and Harper are basically unlikable, but played with a light touch and just enough distance from their own unthinking cruelty to remain funny.
  27. Double Dare
    Micheli's documentary finds a fresh angle via the intersecting stories of two stuntwomen.
  28. The Motel
    The Motel, Michael Kang's modest Sundance applause reaper, doesn't deserve to be shotgunned for the sins of 30 other movies. But the underwhelming syncopation of make-nice clichés is too familiar.
  29. Yossi & Jagger
    At 71 minutes, the movie is scarcely more than an anecdote. But vivid as it is in establishing a specific milieu, its economy is its strength.
  30. Prisoners
    Torn between making sense and arguing that the world itself makes no sense, Prisoners is a captive of its own ambitions.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »