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. Violet & Daisy
    The key relationships are well drawn, if not especially revealing of anything human, and director Fletcher sometimes dares some welcome absurdity. But if you've seen movies built from the same parts as this one, you'll likely find this too familiar—but energetic, well-acted, and distinguished by artfully artless chatter.
  2. Wish You Were Here
    Stories built around a mystery can have a difficult time creating a satisfying answer, and this picture is no exception.
  3. Hello Herman
    The dialogue is all surface: Emotions are laid out on the autopsy table for the audience to dissect and analyze, but rarely feel.
  4. Tiger Eyes
    An engaging (if somewhat slender) portrait of the violence of adolescent maturation.
  5. The Prey
    If the thrills it yields are expected ones, the pleasure in the formula remains.
  6. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
    Perhaps the richest of Resnais's recent efforts.
  7. Dirty Wars
    Dirty Wars is essential viewing for anyone who wants to know how we wage war right now; it's also a chilling prologue for what's likely a global future of endless war and blowback.
  8. Rapture-Palooza
    Always amusing, if never screamingly funny.
  9. The Rambler
    The narrative is haphazard, and by the middle of the film, it's apparent that Reeder isn't even trying to make sense. Unconventional storytelling can be entertaining, too, but The Rambler just seems weird for its own sake and in love with cheap shock value.
  10. Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
    The film is like his life: scabrous, upsetting, kind of moving, funny as hell, alive with hints of how we've become what we are.
  11. The Purge
    As in so many Hollywood spectacles, the message and medium are at hopeless odds... Still, the set-up is arresting, the domestic scenes well observed and acted, and the payoffs involving that Roomba toy excellent. Also, a late-film twist isn't a surprise, exactly, but it is delicious.
  12. Now You See Me
    When functioning like a magic trick, this breathlessly entertaining picture delights in its showmanship, but the more entertaining the trickery, the tougher the explanation, and when the truth is revealed the answer can't help but fail to satisfy.
  13. After Earth
    Jaden is fine at running, jumping, fearful trembling, and affecting steely resolution. He doesn't yet have his father's charisma; perhaps to help him out, dad opted not to bring that charisma to the set.
  14. London - The Modern Babylon
    Temple and editor Caroline Richards demonstrate that the London mob (it can seem like there's been only one mob through the ages) time and again rescues the city from its complacency—and safeguards it from the suffocation of class-bound England.
  15. La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus
    This is powerful reportage, beautifully shot and gracefully laid out; too bad that Kendall ties it all up with more deep thoughts from the bus itself, thoughts that sound like outtakes from a TED Talk on the interconnectedness of all living things.
  16. I Do
    Ross's on-the-nose script offers little subtext or nuance, and the film—for all the inherent drama of the situation—has very little real-life grit.
  17. Sirius
    Amardeep Kaleka's documentary often seems like little more than preaching-to-the-converted, New Age drivel.
  18. Student
    Psychological violence is constantly present and reflected in the film's physical violence, which is typically suggested rather than seen.
  19. American Mary
    This Canadian film seems to be trying to make some points about body dysphoria or modern fame, but the one point it's absolutely sure of is that [Katharine] Isabelle is a startlingly beautiful woman with a well-proportioned (and exploitable) body.
  20. The East
    For all its empathy and equilibrium, The East has nowhere to go after the script backs itself into a corner.
  21. The Wall
    For all its stellar nature photography, its low hum of suspense, and Gedeck's raw and affecting performance, the film often feels like an illustrated audiobook rather than narrative drama.
  22. Hannah Arendt
    The writer-philosopher Hannah Arendt is brought to life by a mesmerizing Barbara Sukowa in Margarethe von Trotta's film.
  23. Shadow Dancer
    The film rests on the desperate chemistry of a paunchy, weathered Owen and a tense, quietly ferocious Riseborough.
  24. Triumph of the Wall
    Triumph of the Wall is often painfully boring and rather shapeless, not so much a crafted film as a compendium of one guy's musings. Regardless, in an era when seemingly every documentary is tied to a hot-button issue, making one about a guy building a wall is endearing.
  25. The History of Future Folk
    Even as an apocalyptic plot-pushing rescue mission unfolds, slapstick police chases keep the level of diverting quirk high, and the husband-wife/father-daughter dynamics remain central.
  26. The Kings of Summer
    The Kings of Summer plays like an extended sitcom episode, and not a very special one at that.
  27. Epic
    Epic certainly manages to tell a compelling tale. Yet in a post-Up era where animated films can pulse with profound truths, the question remains: Is mere entertainment enough?
  28. Ping Pong
    Ping Pong shows us people piquantly aware of the deterioration of their bodies and that they don't have much time left.
  29. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks
    Gibney, a prolific and skilled documentarian, marshals and organizes a raft of information as deftly as anyone could wish. But his conclusions are murkier than they might be.
  30. Fill the Void
    Burshtein's lush visual sensibility, and the subtle performances of the excellent cast, create an aching portrayal of longing and interdependence that transcends the boundaries of the family's small world.
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