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 7.5 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
view
per page
  1. The Science of Sleep
    Sweet, crazy, and tinged with sadness, Michel Gondry's new feature The Science of Sleep is a wondrous concoction.
  2. Elling
    Elling is nothing if not carefully controlled hokum -- both actors, the director, and screenwriter all worked it through first as a stage adaptation of a novel by Ingvar Ambjornsen.
  3. Elephant
    Flagrantly artistic and transfixed by its own enigma, Elephant is strongest on evoking a succession of specific, "empty" moments and weakest on motivation.
  4. Love Songs
    That Honoré knows a lot about movies is beyond question--but from first frame to last, Love Songs stays as icy to the touch as Julie's premature corpse.
  5. Birthright: A War Story
    The doc is thorough.
  6. The Syrian Bride
    The Syrian Bride has no particular visual style, but it exudes affection, for its characters and their culture as well as the unprepossessing beauty of the scrubby terrain that holds them in thrall. Like all wedding films, it's essentially a comedy, albeit a sad one.
  7. The 12th Man
    Harald Zwart’s thrilling The 12th Man, based on the true story of a Norwegian soldier who escaped the Nazis in World War II, is a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart but also an unexpectedly tender adventure that is as celebratory as it is tense.
  8. Meet the Patels
    Meet the Patels is a good-natured documentary that plays like a romantic comedy.
  9. Twist of Faith
    Director Kirby Dick (Derrida) shapes the movie in such a way as to leave everyone flummoxed.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strange Culture
    Slipping in and out of character, variously embodying, studying, and commenting on their counterparts, the actors manage both dramatic reenactment and its deconstruction with aplomb.
  11. A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story
    A Brave Heart is not very sophisticated, flitting between Lizzie the internet celebrity, Lizzie the anti-bullying activist, Lizzie the beloved eldest daughter of a close-knit family, and Lizzie the young woman whose health challenges make her advocacy even harder.
  12. Doubt
    Doubt is only marginally, and tendentiously, about moral uncertainty--it's more about the sins of a nosy old biddy who pulls out all the stops when going through the official channels of a male-dominated Catholic Church would get her nowhere.
  13. A Man Called Ove
    A Man Called Ove — preaching tolerant togetherness as the key to happiness — earns its sentimentality by striking a delicate balance between barking-mad comedy and syrupy melodrama.
  14. On the Job
    Matti sets a brisk pace, utilizing the squalor and desperation of Manila's slums and prisons as well as powerful, against-type performances by Torre and Pascual to give us a familiar yet engaging thriller (with more than a few surprises).
  15. Informant
    Informant is riveting as it slowly assembles a damning profile of its subject. It's also timely.
  16. Happy Together
    Acerbic, moody, and provocatively slight, it's a movie of apparent non sequiturs and privileged moments. [21 Oct 1997]
    • Village Voice
  17. Stop the Pounding Heart
    Nothing wrenching happens, just unforgettable moments of piercing isolation and sadness.
  18. Sidemen: Long Road to Glory
    Sidemen seems at first like a didactic cultural corrective. It’s only when Rosenbaum digs into the trio’s life stories that their historic impact becomes clear:.
  19. The Hoax
    To its credit, The Hoax isn't glib--it doesn't chalk up Irving's moral vacuum to anything a bad mommy or daddy did. But there's no other point of view either; the film suffers a fatal equivocation over whether to frame him as a prankster or an American tragedy.
  20. Belladonna of Sadness (1973)
    You can fully enjoy Belladonna of Sadness if you either overlook or participate in the objectification of a gorgeous victim.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Who Killed the Electric Car?
    The real question is why this purportedly impassioned documentary investigation of a great subject--the culture's conspiratorial dismissal of eco-friendly alternatives to the gas-guzzler -- would assume such massive viewer disinterest that it coats the pill with C-list celebrity NutraSweet, including Martin Sheen voiceovers -- that would sound unforgivably hackneyed even on basic cable.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Outsourced
    Outsourced has all the charm and color of its made-in-India locations, yet it's crafted--well crafted--according to familiar Hollywood convention.
  23. Journey from the Fall
    Tran's reliance on declamatory political dialogue and movie-of-the-week inspirationalism feels decidedly old-fashioned and, finally, even phony.
  24. Fados
    Saura is formally ambitious--a troupe travels through the film, articulating lyrics in dance--but the movie missteps when departing wholly from the intrinsic nostalgia of its subject, as the seventysomething director imposes his idea of contemporary cool.
  25. Pauline and Paulette
    Without condescension, Debrauwer offers comic glimpses into their separate dreams of grandeur, but he lets Pauline's touching simplicity unite them.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tosca
    Two hours fly by -- opera's a pleasure when you don't have to endure intermissions -- and even a novice to the form comes away exhilarated.
  27. Our Father
    By way of a tragic left hook, Haroun's relaxed movie climaxes back where it began, on the devastated home ground. The journey, however pessimistic, is like a gentle handshake.
  28. Yom Yom
    A darkly comic tale of characters riven by divided loyalties and neurotic inhibitions.
  29. Audition
    After simmering for an eternity, it derails, with spectacular, psychotic force, bulldozing its way toward an almost unwatchable theater of cruelty.
  30. Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry
    I got a charge out of Going Upriver, but as more than one person has noted, the movie's ideal spectator would be Kerry himself.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »