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 Beaver
    Perhaps that's the problem. Mel's character isn't on Prozac, but the movie is-a succession of bland camera setups, cued to a highly conventional score. Would that the direction were half as nutty as the script or as wacked-out as its star!
  2. Something Borrowed
    It's clear that Something Borrowed finds it easier to tell us about relationships than to show us them under way.
  3. Red White & Blue
    The pacing and performances are more organic than in most horror.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fast Five
    Five's few driving set pieces, all economically cut for spectacle over continuity, are pumped to near-Crank levels of absurdity, with Lin transforming his ragtag bunch of fugitives' superhuman knack for escaping certain death into a running joke.
  5. We Go Way Back
    For all of the film's preciousness, the pungent notion of having your young-teen self gazing in horrified disappointment at the adult you've failed to become is as fresh a thematic undertow as it is disquieting.
  6. Lebanon, Pa.
    Lebanon, Pa. begins as a tale about male, middle-aged self-discovery, but soon becomes something quite different: a clear-eyed if crassly manipulative take on the culture wars.
  7. Sympathy for Delicious
    Ruffalo has assembled an exceptional cast-to surround writer and star Christopher Thornton, but a script that favors incident over story and direction that crowds scenes instead of letting them breathe make for curiously rough going.
  8. That's What I Am
    The writing hits the weeds on occasion, but Pavone evokes with feeling adolescence as a series of outlandish physical punishments and sweetly remembered firsts.
  9. Hoodwinked Too! Hood VS. Evil
    One of the more depressing, desensitizing experiences I've had in a theater, Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil feels as computer-generated as its creepy, talking-ceramic-toy style of animation.
  10. The Robber
    Against interpretation, Heisenberg (who is, after all, the grandson of the physicist who gave us the uncertainty principle) has nonetheless created a nimble, dynamic character study of a fiercely guarded loner on the run.
  11. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
    For better or worse, the movie does for Chauvet what Baudrillard complained an on-site replica did for Lascaux-render the real thing false.
  12. Earthwork
    Like Herd, the movie-which resists peeking above the horizon until its final, poignant skyline shot-strives for a connection with land and labor typically missing from depictions of urban life, and provides a timely model for finding value in lean circumstances and humble company.
  13. Exporting Raymond
    Like its namesake, Exporting Raymond captures a few satisfyingly human moments.
  14. The Arbor
    Barnard makes the psychological mayhem Dunbar endured and inflicted tangible.
  15. Prom
    Katie Wech's script is a carousel of reassuringly familiar plot lines, kept smoothly revolving.
  16. 13 Assassins
    Perhaps something important was spirited away with the 20 minutes of footage shorn for this U.S. release, but the combatants are scarcely distinguishable here even before disappearing under layers of mud and guts.
  17. St. Nick
    Like a child bluffing at knowing a secret, St. Nick teases and frustrates.
  18. What on Earth?
    Framed in a series of casual chats, Taylor's subjects make interesting suppositions (invoking particle physics, higher consciousness, and the laws of geometry), but their credibility is sometimes undermined by editorial drift and a beseeching New Age soundtrack.
  19. When Harry Tries to Marry
    A substandard romantic comedy gussied up in Indian drag.
  20. Children of Hiroshima
    This is a movie of blunt juxtapositions-death accompanied by the sound of raucous street musicians-as well as awkward flashbacks. Still, the strategy works.
  21. Beautiful Darling
    Denied the opportunity to see Candy at her best, simultaneously mocking and paying homage to golden-age glamour, viewers instead get too much of Jeremiah Newton, a close friend of the actress's and guardian of her papers, personal effects, and ashes (and one of Beautiful Darling's producers).
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dumbstruck
    All are compelling subjects, especially the disarmingly gifted and emotionally relatable Horn. But Goffman's either unwilling or incapable of getting them to move their lips to reveal enough of themselves, or of their artistry, to make the already overly familiar endeavor worth anyone's time.
  23. African Cats
    That visual beauty helps compensate for a script that wastes no opportunity for heartstring tugging, often in the form of adorable tykes playing with each other and cuddling with their elders in close-up.
  24. Incendies
    Nawal's travails are more in the vein of a Latin American soap opera than Greek tragedy, and Jeanne and Simon's climactic, genuinely god-awful discovery plays like artistic sleight-of-hand rather than the profoundly tautological revelation it aspires to be.
  25. The Bang Bang Club
    Silver treads around and too heavily on the moral ambiguities involved in documenting atrocities, moving between frantic, poorly explained scenes of African conflict and the equally familiar, benumbing aesthetic of boys making a macho game of war.
  26. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
    Anyone who's seen a martial-arts picture expects a certain amount of thumb-twiddling between the big numbers, but director Andrew Lau's handling of exposition is markedly poor, distended with rubbish plotlines, flashy sadism, and overwrought jingo.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stake Land
    It's thick with a distinct mood-the sadness and exhilaration of having nothing left to lose-and the characters, in their desperation and drive, feel real.
  28. POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
    As agreeable as it is insidious, Morgan Spurlock's latest exposé of corporate control via immersive humiliation is his best, most formally inventive project yet.
  29. Phillip the Fossil
    Donovan's idiosyncratic approach to character develops a compelling rhythm, but the film falters when a dramatic double climax pushes it past its low-key limits.
  30. Square Grouper
    Square Grouper's admirably backhanded inquiry into the social and economic costs of weed criminalization extends far beyond the wake-and-bake crowd.
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