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. Ass Backwards
    The episodic story and minimal budget result in a small canvas over which these two huge characters dominate.
  2. The Armstrong Lie
    To use a phrase from the film, The Armstrong Lie is a "myth-buster." It's wholly necessary, brilliantly executed, and a complete bummer.
  3. Approved for Adoption
    Watching the animated memoir Approved for Adoption can stir a serenity like skipping stones on water for a delightfully long time.
  4. Thor: The Dark World
    Lacking Iron Man’s wit, the Hulk’s brains, and the Captain’s ideals, he’s in peril of going poof himself if the franchise doesn’t figure out how to capitalize on its most glorious hero.
  5. Ender's Game
    Some of the movie isn't bad.
  6. Last Vegas
    The film’s hidden asset is the luminous Mary Steenburgen, funny and gorgeous as an empty-nest mom turned lounge chanteuse who beguiles the dudes with age-appropriate flirting and arch humor.
  7. Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony
    Each anecdote builds upon the next to create that rarest of films: a documentary as ineffable and transformative in its reach as it sets out to be.
  8. Sweet Dreams
    It's utterly rousing watching the women master their instruments and then push past the birth pains of their new business enterprise, and it's completely wrenching as their individual backstories unfold.
  9. The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
    In essence, the film is a lecture, but Zizek's associative thinking and understanding of the applicability of psychoanalysis makes it a lecture like no other.
  10. Tough as Iron
    Far better as a family drama than as a gangster picture, the film's muddled attempt at marrying the two distracts from its emotional center.
  11. Two: The Story of Roman & Nyro
    A vanity project riding the waves of a socio-political moment, Two confirms just as many stereotypes as it attempts to dismantle.
  12. Skinwalker Ranch
    Fixed cameras lend themselves well to dimly lit effects and shrewd obfuscation, and McGinn proves a fine hand at stock-horror misdirection.
  13. Sal
    A stubbornly not-bad character study.
  14. Running from Crazy
    The possible hereditary nature of suicide in general and of the seven known Hemingway suicides in particular is lazily poked at; decades of research go unmentioned and unexplored.
  15. The New Black
    What emerges is an illuminating look at the ways race, specifically blackness, has been cynically portrayed by the mainstream media, rightwing politicians and religious leaders, and even some white queer activists.
  16. Man of Tai Chi
    The film is stale Chinese popcorn from the get-go, with only Chen's wiry guilelessness and wicked athletic skills to keep it remotely edible.
  17. The legend of Sarila
    A vibrant color scheme and the deliciously evil cackle of Christopher Plummer elevate this kid-friendly animated adventure from Canada.
  18. Last Love
    Scene after scene is defined by blunt exposition and gooey maxims, not to mention cornball visual metaphors.
  19. In the Name Of
    A nuanced, character-driven critique of the Catholic Church and its regressive stance on homosexuality.
  20. The Impaler
    The cell phone reception in Dracula's castle is pretty bad, but it can't be as frustrating as trying to fathom the plot of this woefully muddled horror film.
  21. Immigrant
    Immigrant is reportedly based on writer-director Barry Shurchin's own family history, but the story he's chosen to tell is so melodramatic and relentlessly grim that any passion he feels for the material isn't reflected onscreen.
  22. Free Birds
    Like so many modern animated features, Free Birds packs too much in; the picture feels cramped and cluttered, and, despite its occasionally manic action, it moves as slowly as a fattened bird waddling toward its doom.
  23. Fighting for Freedom
    None of these TV-movie trappings does Freedom's topical subject any favors, but they do confirm that those most passionate about something often require some sort of creative filter when making art about it.
  24. Diana
    Diana is a Lifetime movie in sensible pumps, at once too silly to be taken seriously, yet so self-serious it rarely allows us to giggle.
  25. Dallas Buyers Club
    What's remarkable about Dallas Buyers Club is its lack of sentimentality. The movie, like its star, is all angles and elbows, earning its emotion through sheer pragmatism.
  26. The Counselor
    The Counselor is the cumbersome end product of a high-minded writer trying to slum and a slick director aiming for cosmic depth.
  27. Casting By
    While Dougherty clearly had an almost eerie sense of how a particular actor might inhabit a part, this film also shows that she may have single-handedly created a filmmaking craft and then made it indispensable.
  28. Escape Plan
    With its fun script and cheap visuals, Escape Plan evokes the halfwit cheesiness of 1980s-era Cannon films, but it also recalls the deft pacing and legibility of their action sequences.
  29. Behind the Blue Veil
    What we're presented with is a scattering of scenes amid an overpowering backdrop of geopolitical and anthropological explanation, and nothing resembling drama.
  30. Birth of the Living Dead
    What distinguishes this doc from much of the tedious critical prose Romero has inspired is the fan-boy and fan-girl ardor that fuels its smarts--both behind and in front of the camera.
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