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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    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Quid Pro Quo
    Farmiga is captivating, Stahl less so--although a bigger problem is writer/director Carlos Brooks's script, which sets up one story, then shifts gears into something more personal and psychologically specific. That's normally a plus, deepening the viewer's sense of involvement, but the transition here is bumpy and, ultimately, unconvincing.
  2. To the Limit
    Daring enough to appeal to more than just the usual extreme-sports junkies.
  3. Encounters at the End of the World
    Perhaps because Herzog is approaching old-master status, Encounters at the End of the World skews toward the observational. As in "Grizzly Man," his 2005 portrait of a deranged bear lover, Herzog seems at least as fascinated with other people's obsessions as his own.
  4. Kung Fu Panda
    Perfectly pleasant, very good-looking, modestly funny, dispiritingly unoriginal variant on the nerd-with-a-dream recipe that's been clobbered to death in animated films for at least a decade now.
  5. You Don't Mess with the Zohan
    If nothing else--and there isn't much else--You Don't Mess With the Zohan pronounces the Middle East fair game for absurdist comedy.
  6. The Go-Getter
    Modestly rewards with gorgeous sun-spotted cinematography, tender digressions in rather brave quantities, and believably charming dialogue that doesn't all sound like it came from the same brain (listen up, Diablo Cody).
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan
    Last year's Academy Award nominee from Kazakhstan for Best Foreign Film, Mongol is purportedly the first in a multi-film saga on the wrath of Khan; as such, it's probably the last thing you'd expect--great fun.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Mother of Tears
    A once-great director's near-worst work passes through its funhouse plumbing and emerges from the crapper as intentional mischief: self-sabotage explained away as mad genius.
  9. The Promotion
    As to whether a smart comedy about work and family can itself succeed in a marketplace overrun by idiot farces about reluctant bridesmaids (male and female), shotgun Vegas weddings, and finding or losing Mr./Ms. Right . . . this remains to be seen.
  10. Take Out
    This is as exceptional as microbudget cinema gets.
  11. Dreams with Sharp Teeth
    Documentarian Erik Nelson, overcautious of his subject, is content to let Ellison luxuriate in his legacy of infamy--as a lothario, and a litigious and pugilistic combatant.
  12. Operation Filmmaker
    A fable for our reality-TV reality, Nina Davenport's Operation Filmmaker is as much virus as video documentary. This essentially comic tale maps a contagion of mutual exploitation that seems to have burnished the careers of everyone involved.
  13. Bigger Stronger Faster*
    Scrappy, remarkably expansive, crazily watchable.
  14. The Foot Fist Way
    Truthfully, The Foot Fist Way is no different from an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm": This is irritainment, something you snicker at while covering your eyes, praying that this guy never gets loose in the real world, when, in fact, he's your next-door neighbor. Or you.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Savage Grace
    A tawdry nighttime soap that marvels without insight at its characters' despicable behavior: It squanders a major performance by Moore.
  16. Sex and the City
    Though Sex and the City is every bit as busy as its HBO progenitor was, it's virtually plotless, not to mention pointless.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Strangers
    Bertino teases with the unknown until he's left no pimple ungoosed. Sometimes avoiding the synapse-raping bad habits of splat packers Eli Roth and Alexandre Aja is its own reward; doing so without also submitting to Michael Haneke–style hand-slapping is nearly monumental.
  18. The Unknown Woman
    Repellent piece of garbage.
  19. Stuck
    Stuck is both darkly comic and disgusting; the name alone reduces the crime to a sick joke.
  20. The Children of Huang Shi
    A tale as ploddingly familiar as it is good-looking and worth telling.
  21. Postal
    Manages to be as toothless as he (Boll) is tasteless. Poorly framed, tone-deaf, and nonsensical (yet still Boll's best!).
  22. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
    It's hard to tell whether Spielberg and Lucas are trying too hard or trying at all--the thing's such a mess, such an unmitigated disaster, that damned is the scholar stuck with the unfortunate task of deciphering this cynical, clinical gibberish in decades to come.
  23. The Edge of Heaven
    It's not brilliant, but it wears current events on its sleeve, feeling out the state of German-Turkish relationships as the former Ottomans clean house for E.U. membership, and the demographic earthquake of 70 million Muslims waits at Europe's door.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Jihad for Love
    Muslims, Jews, and Christians may have their, oh, occasional differences, but as an Islamic scholar observes early in Parvez Sharma's documentary, there is one point on which the world's divine religions agree: Homosexuality is a crime.
  25. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
    Prince Caspian is fairly good fun, and I'm trying to decide whether it was the capable swordplay or Ben Barnes's bedroom eyes that prompted a significant shift in brand loyalty.
  26. Reprise
    Reprise--a masculine story whose women come off best--is less a hermeneutic finger in your face (though it aims wonderfully low blows at literary celebrity) than a savage, funny, tender, tragic, and strangely beautiful riff on growing up in a broken world.
  27. Sangre De Mi Sangre
    The result is contrived, but compelling--as is the movie's high-powered humanism.
  28. Speed Racer
    Gaudier than a Hindu-temple roof, louder than the Las Vegas night, Speed Racer is a cathedral of glitz.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Babysitters
    Ultimately, the film's view of female self-loathing and girl-on-girl exploitation is woefully reductive and painful.
  30. The Fall
    If the human details are often problematic, the IMAX-grade bombast, ceremonial camera, and Jodorowsky-esque eclecticism still combine for a singular spectacle.
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