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. The High Life
    This vision of free self-expression bubbling forth under authoritarian pressure echoes sentiments in Zhao's previous work. But the rest of the movie lacks the thrilling organic open-endedness of Zhao's nonfiction depictions; real life (or 2006's Street Life) trumps this Life.
  2. Angel of Evil
    In many ways reminiscent of "Mesrine" but suffers greatly in comparison. It hits many of the same marks -- but the scenes unfold almost elliptically, never really building or illuminating character, and never sparking narrative momentum.
  3. Jig
    Bourne's lengthy chronicle of the World Championship is severely under-contextualized, leaving us in the dark about the competition's structure and frustrating our efforts to take a rooting interest in the proceedings.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Battle for Brooklyn
    Battle for Brooklyn provides a useful primer on the opposition to Atlantic Yards, but figures who might have made more compelling documentary subjects than the always on-message Goldstein crowd the sidelines.
  5. R
    Following "Prophet" director Jacques Audiard's lead, Lindholm and Noer attempt to make up in raw emotion what their film lacks in context, an approach good for a surprising amount of mileage, until the project finally chokes on its own inevitable nihilism.
  6. Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times
    Opens with a montage of the press in full operational mode, spewing out newspapers all but automatically for a fleet of waiting delivery trucks. It's a system at once efficient and cumbersome, ultra-modern yet quaint, that suggests nothing so much as a herd of dinosaurs, oblivious to the threat of impending extinction.
  7. Buck
    Meehl finds the real story in Brannaman's fractured past as a child celebrity trick-roper who, along with his older brother, Smokie, was systematically abused by his alcoholic father.
  8. The Art of Getting By
    Crafted not to give the slightest offense, The Art of Getting By makes the great - and even the mediocre - teen movies of 30 years ago, like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Fame," and "Foxes," look even more radical in comparison, with their depiction of obnoxious, horny, property-destroying teens.
  9. Kidnapped
    The long takes and lack of theatrical affect are presumably meant to heighten the realism by dispensing with film - fiction artifice, but in the process, everything that might lure a viewer - the seduction of style and plot or an engagement with characters - is forgotten.
  10. Mr. Popper's Penguins
    The only faint upside to this excruciating dud is that, in its movie clips of Charlie Chaplin - who the mesmerized birds view as a kindred waddling spirit - the film might hopefully function for some kids as a gateway to superior comedy cinema.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Green Lantern
    The film never rewards the viewer for even trying to keep track of what is going on. So you give up, and instead try to grab on to the small pleasures, which momentarily distract from the fact that the narrative is nonsensical, the characters so boilerplate that their every action seem preordained from the earliest frames, even as the action on-screen is often incoherent.
  12. Viva Riva!
    The first from the Democratic Republic of Congo to be distributed in the U.S. That in itself is worthy of some kind of celebration, even if Viva Riva! too lazily indulges in shapeless genre excess.
  13. Bride Flight
    The flashbacks dominate, playing like wet-inked storyboards: pioneer women forced into patriarch games; a baby born in secrecy and raised in deceit; Jewish legacy lost and found. When the men are all dead, the women speak freely, wrapping up two florid hours with a pickled sentence or two.
  14. Reindeerspotting: Escape from Santaland
    Mostly pathetic but on occasion grimly funny.
  15. Trollhunter
    As de-mythologizings go, Trollhunter has neither the wit, nor art, nor social insight to honor the legacy of George A. Romero's "Martin."
  16. Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?
    True to form, Queen of the Sun presents inspiring and direct solutions from the likes of journalist Michael Pollan, activist Vandana Shiva, and biodynamic farmer and author Gunther Hauk, but it also glosses over the question of how migratory beekeepers, among others, would make a living if those fixes were enacted.
  17. Just Like Us
    The film is largely effective as a breezy travelogue. Still, Ahmed plays the "Muslims, they're just like us" bit a little too hard, pointedly ignoring the obvious parallels between the "freedom" provided by imported stand-up and the endless McDonald's signs that flicker throughout the region.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Lips
    With a minimum of dialogue and backstory, the lead actresses (winners of a single special prize at Cannes 2010) movingly portray the depth of these colleagues' compassion, and their struggle to maintain a front of data-gathering objectivity. Unfolding in a remarkably organic fashion, The Lips pays plaintive tribute to the work.
  19. Road to Nowhere
    The screenplay is by Variety editor Steven Gaydos, and it combines a working knowledge of on-set dynamics with corny cinephile in-joking, frequently elevated by the fresh evidence of Hellman's craft in the tranquil, largely nocturnal atmosphere, until the closing-credits song ruins everything.
  20. Le Rayon Vert (1986)
    Rohmer's 1986 masterpiece (being re-released with its original French title, which translates as "The Green Ray"), Le Rayon Vert centers on those themes, too, but delivers something much richer: an absorbing, empathic portrait of a complex woman caught between her own obstinacy and melancholy.
  21. The Trip
    The verbal jousts are droll and the countryside is splendid, although the food - an endless succession of fussy little presentations - may be an acquired taste.
  22. Reversion
    Like many similarly twisty tales, Reversion's narrative logic is undermined by its characters' irrational behavior.
  23. Agrarian Utopia
    Raksasad manages to keep the film afloat on the real drama of his nation's political and social issues, bringing an added measure of poignancy to the quiet desperation of his characters.
  24. Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer
    The incessant tumult drowns out any real message for the kids - or pleasure for their parents. It's a film so obnoxiously frantic that its most restrained element is a banjo-strumming elementary school teacher played by none other than '90s tween-mugging icon Jaleel "Urkel" White.
  25. One Lucky Elephant
    Admirably, and gently, raises questions about the folly and hubris of a relationship that may only ever be one-sided.
  26. Super 8
    A big-bang demolition derby, J.J. Abrams's much-anticipated, greatly enjoyable Super 8 seems bound for box-office glory.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    X-Men: First Class
    A cameo from an old-school X-Man only serves to remind how stylish and witty the first installment was a decade ago. Lacking a single memorable joke or striking image, First Class is as perfunctory and passionless as would-be franchise resurrections get.
  28. !Women Art Revolution
    Moves briskly, unfolding as one lively sit-down after another with artists, scholars, and curators who established themselves at the height of second-wave feminism.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mr. Nice
    Though told here with appealing drollness, Marks's story makes an odd vessel for the filmmakers' casually advanced legalization arguments, what with its mischief making on the grandest scale possible.
  30. Film Socialisme
    Film Socialisme deflects interpretation but, so long as one subscribes to the William Carlos Williams injunction "No ideas but in things," it's filled with sensuous pleasures.
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