Village Voice's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Notorious
    Notorious, despite its bigger-than-life subject and habit of dripping sex sweat at the most unexpected moments, is rather square.
  2. The Unborn
    For as long as it forges ahead without explanations, The Unborn works, in its way, as a series of snap-cut gotchas introducing each new contestant in its pageant of cold-sweat set pieces.
  3. Yonkers Joe
    Lahti burns through a thinly written role with a surprising level of warmth and humanity.
  4. Just Another Love Story
    Danish director Ole Bornedal (Nightwatch) continues a career of laying the groundwork for remakes that will be middling in more familiar, English-language ways.
  5. Silent Light
    The results are extraordinary. As understated as it is, the movie is both deeply absurd and powerfully affecting.
  6. Cargo 200
    Regardless of intent, Cargo 200 is beautifully filmed and completely disturbing for its entire running time.
  7. Defiance
    There are subtitles and vaguely East European accents; there is romance and rebirth, tears and regular pauses for gallows humor (at which we Jews are known to be very good, on account of our long history of persecution).
  8. Good
    So incompetently mounted by Brazilian director Vicente Amorim (it takes a clumsy directorial hand to make Viggo Mortensen come on like Sesame Street's Mr. Noodle) as to be utterly incoherent.
  9. Revolutionary Road
    Revolutionary Road isn't a great movie -- it lacks the full, soul-crushing force of the novel -- but what works in it works so well, and is so tricky to pull off, that you can't help but admire it.
  10. Waltz with Bashir
    Ari Folman's broodingly original Waltz With Bashir -- one of the highlights of the last New York Film Festival -- is a documentary that seems only possible, not to mention bearable, as an animated feature.
  11. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Benjamin Button is to the first half of the 20th century what "Gump" was to the second -- a panorama of the American experience as seen from the perspective of a wide-eyed Candide. Here as there, Roth reduces our complex times to a parade of shockingly straight-faced kitsch.
  12. The Spirit
    The fanboys will find room in their heart to forgive the desecration. Everyone else won't care at all.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bedtime Stories
    While no one was expecting the live-wire daring of "Punch-Drunk Love" or even "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," the Adam Sandler who shows up in Bedtime Stories is that most unnecessary of movie-star guises: the benign family-comedy guy.
  14. Last Chance Harvey
    Besides being old pros who could elevate such schmaltz in their sleep, Hoffman and Thompson -- despite the 20-plus years between them, and her graceful restraint in contrast to his creepy assertiveness -- have a genuinely sweet chemistry, which is the exact and only reason to seek this one out.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Marley & Me
    Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston relegate Marley to a lifestyle accessory in his own biopic.
  16. Valkyrie
    Valkyrie feels like another installment in the never-ending franchise -- not just the action-movie one, but the Tom Cruise one. Like the operation itself, it's a good idea -- just not well-executed.
  17. The Secret of the Grain
    Escalates into visceral allegory with an abandon and cruelty that seem positively Romanian. The last 30 minutes more than redeem the preceding two hours.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Theater of War
    Walter's doc can't decide whether it wants to be about Brecht, Streep, or Mother Courage herself.
  19. The Tale of Despereaux
    Clumsily wedged in like a TV commercial between deafening stunts, the emotional storytelling sinks without trace, leaving you with only one flawed character to cling to.
  20. The Class
    For anyone who loves language, this cut-and-thrust is a heady delight, so rich and free-flowing in its rhythms that it's hard to decide whether what we're seeing is a vérité-style documentary or a realist drama.
  21. Moscow, Belgium
    We're not talking the Dardennes brothers here, but fellow Belgian Christophe Van Rompaey gives this light May-to-December pair-up an agreeably mussed, pedestrian milieu.
  22. Seven Pounds
    Dispiritingly obvious and phony from top to bottom.
  23. Yes Man
    Yes Man is nothing more than warmed-over holiday seconds, a repackaged best-of for those who already own the hits.
  24. The Wrestler
    Present in every scene, if not each shot, Rourke gives a tremendously physical performance that The Wrestler essentially exists to document.
  25. Nothing But the Truth
    In the spirit of its title, Nothing but the Truth pivots on a plot twist that's both good and fair. And kudos to the ever-earnest Beckinsale for surviving a prison brawl as splatterific as anything Mickey Rourke had to endure in "The Wrestler."
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Scott Walker: 30 Century Man
    From the increasingly experimental solo records that followed, and Walker's subsequent reputation as a reclusive genius and cult figure, you'd expect the subject of Stephen Kijak's documentary to be a forbidding, pretentious artiste--and the pleasant surprise of Kijak's film is that he's anything but.
  27. Gran Torino
    Above all, it feels like a summation of everything he (Eastwood) represents as a filmmaker and a movie star, and perhaps also a farewell.
  28. Che
    Every Bolivian sequence has its Cuban parallel, which is why Che's two parts are best seen together. Guerrilla may be the more realized of the two--and could certainly stand on its own--but it is only comprehensible in the light of The Argentine. Elevating Guerrilla to tragedy, The Argentine puts some hope in hopelessness--and even in history.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Timecrimes
    Modestly diverting.
  30. The Day the Earth Stood Still
    The problem here is that there are no big ideas.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »