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. Police, Adjective
    Police, Adjective is a deadly serious as well as dryly humorous analysis of bureaucratic procedure and, particularly, the tyranny of language. Images may record reality, but words define it.
  2. Avatar
    Avatar is a technological wonder, 15 years percolating in King Cameron's imagination and inarguably the greatest 3-D cavalry western ever made. Too bad that western is "Dances With Wolves."
  3. Nine
    Wisely keeping her distance, Cotillard mostly lurks along the sidelines projecting a wounded visage, before finally stepping into the spotlight for the movie's single moment of emotional sincerity. It's the only point at which Nine seems more than a total zero.
  4. The Young Victoria
    Man, British heritage cinema can be dull when assembly-lined for the export market.
  5. Crazy Heart
    It's merely a well-done, adult American movie--that is to say, a rarity.
  6. A Town Called Panic
    A Town Called Panic, which has more strident colors and less synopsizable action than a year's worth of comic-book adventures, embodies a sensibility that might be termed "extreme quirk."
  7. Ricky
    Ozon's fractured-working-class-family magical realism, liberally adapted from Rose Tremain's short story, "Moth," works best in specific moments.
  8. Invictus
    Like every Eastwood production, Invictus is stately, handsomely mounted, attentive to detail right down to the Marmite adorning the team's breakfast buffet, and relentlessly conventional. As a portrait of a hero, the movie effortlessly brings a lump to the throat (Freeman gives a subtly crafted performance that blends Mandela's physical frailty with his easy charm and cerebral wit); as history, it is borderline daft and selective to the point of distortion.
  9. The Lovely Bones
    In Jackson's hands, The Lovely Bones is doubly appalling. Part Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," part Fritz Lang's "M," the movie is horrific yet cloying, alternately distended and abrupt, sometimes poignant and often ridiculous.
  10. A Single Man
    A Single Man, with one significant exception, gives us only a series of immaculate poses. The exception is Firth, who, in spite of Ford's best efforts to turn him, too, into another piece of movable scenery, manages to convey a real human soul stirring beneath George's petrified façade
  11. The Slammin' Salmon
    Likably stoopid, the latest from comedy troupe Broken Lizard (Super Troopers, Beerfest) mines plenty of jokes from eating out and being served.
  12. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
    Everything about this berserk, essentially static procedural is just crazy enough to be true. In any case, Herzog has gone beyond Good and Evil to reinvent himself as a candidate for the wiggiest director of comedy in America today.
  13. Up in the Air
    Up in the Air goes down like a sedative. This is a movie that's easy to like--and to dislike as well.
  14. The Last Station
    Tolstoy fought a love-hate war with his bipolar wife, Sonya, and thank God for that, since it allows Helen Mirren, basically playing a cross between Ibsen drama queen Hedda Gabler and the little squirrel from "A Doll's House," to waltz away with the movie.
  15. Brothers
    Sheridan, repeatedly drawn to family sagas, including his own (2002's In America), aims for Greek tragedy but ends up with a PTSD melodrama, with Maguire able to produce slobber almost as effortlessly as Portman can summon up tears--essentially all her role calls for.
  16. Everybody's Fine
    Robert De Niro's only good at playing a dad in movies starring Ben Stiller? It's all so much raging bull.
  17. Giant
    With potentially lethargic materials, Biniez has made a quiet, intent, involving film, a moony-innocent urban alienation fairy tale of bashful ogre and village beauty--and it never quite crests.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Breaking Point
    Breaking Point is so dry you may wish it had the good sense to be a campy hoot.
  19. Serious Moonlight
    Serious Moonlight has a backstory much more intriguingly dramatic than what's onscreen.
  20. Big River Man
    The real drama lies in the sweetly twisted symbiosis between this likable, infuriating wreck of a man and his devoted son and publicist, Borut.
  21. Loot
    The bleakness and resignation running through the film can be gut-wrenching.
  22. The Strip
    Could Dave Foley prostitute his talent to amuse any further without actually becoming a prostitute? In a plunging step down from emceeing celebrity poker, Foley provides a recognizable face to Jameel Khan's picked-over Goodwill bin of workplace comedy, The Strip.
  23. Until the Light Takes Us
    One artist favorably compares the homemade metal scene to state-supported "mediocre cultural activity"--as good a designation as any for Until the Light Takes Us.
  24. Le jour avant le lendemain
    But if the movie's documentary function tends to trump its narrative one, the directors nevertheless manage to locate great reserves of sadness in the material, tapping a particularly rich vein in the wrinkled look of resignation on actress/co-director Ivalu's face.
  25. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
    In this densely populated ensemble piece, Reeves stands out as the only actor whose damaged character evokes sympathy and avoids cliché. Pippa, played by Wright Penn in near-permanent Stepford Wife mode, isn't much more than a vehicle for false epiphanies and forced rapprochements.
  26. Home
    Ursula Meier's confident, appealingly bizarre theatrical debut.
  27. The Road
    Pale by comparison to an action thriller like "Children of Men" or gross out eco-catastrophe like "Land of the Dead," squandering its ready-made zombie scenario.
  28. The Princess and the Frog
    The Princess and the Frog is pleasantly, if unmemorably, drawn. But the movie as a whole never approaches the wit, cleverness, and storytelling brio of the studio's early-1990s animation renaissance (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King) or pretty much anything by Pixar.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Ninja Assassin
    A triple-cross plot with Harris's superiors doesn't help the movie's clarity--neither does the clattering sound design. Shouldn't throwing stars be silent? If they're gonna sound like gunshots, why not just use guns?
  30. Me and Orson Welles
    Deft, affectionate, and unexpectedly enjoyable.
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