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. Vivere
    I like writer-director Angela Maccarone's ambition, but her technical ingenuity exceeds her grasp of potentially complex emotions, which get stuck in a groove of mawkish self-pity.
  2. Bonneville
    This rarity in cinema--a graying cast in a female-bonding adventure--couldn't be more dull-humored or predictably maudlin without just calling itself "The Bucket List 2."
  3. Chicago 10
    However authentically chaotic, Chicago 10 is insufficiently frenzied.
  4. Penelope
    Ricci is appealingly human, and some acknowledgement of the importance of female friendship, in addition to romance, is faintly touching.
  5. Semi-Pro
    What at least distinguishes Semi-Pro from its predecessors (not only those starring Ferrell, but also such lesser lights as "Dodgeball" and "Balls of Fury") is that it's a slightly darker movie--one made for grown-ups, hence the R rating.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Unforeseen
    Making her first feature, Austin filmmaker Dunn no doubt included some unnecessary detours for star power's sake (like the inessential footage of Redford and Nelson). But it's ultimately the movie's glacial pace and willingness to let its mind and eye wander that produces its spiritual and intellectual heft--not to mention its atypical visual splendor.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jar City
    Here, the movie's urgency lies mostly in its convincing cast, its varied urban-to-pastoral locations (in light that ranges from harsh to bilious), and its cold-pro handling of familiar genre machinery, made fresh by unusual detail--such as the investigator's fast-food predilection for sheep heads.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Chop Shop
    Authentic as all this feels (and smells, and tastes), Chop Shop gives off a heightened sense of reality, a faintly idealized atmosphere akin to the Lower East Side milieu of "Raising Victor Vargas," a close relative in the New York branch of neo-neorealism.
  9. Charlie Bartlett
    Like most wannabe heroes of the eager-to-please teen comedy, poor little rich boy Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin) is too charming by half and not nearly quirky enough.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Signal
    This uneven but impressive shot-on-digital shocker earns a marker in the mausoleum of apocalyptic horror--a genre that's proving (un)surprisingly durable in the new century.
  11. Cover
    This is a weirdly schizophrenic movie, one that's light on the murder mystery and heavy on the sermonizing.
  12. Be Kind Rewind
    Although frequently funny, Be Kind doesn't have the same pathos as "The Science of Sleep." (Nothing approaches the loneliness projected by Gael García Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg.)
  13. The Counterfeiters
    At its best--and queasiest--The Counterfeiters asks disturbing questions more commonly found in the survivor literature of Primo Levi or Bruno Bettelheim than at the movies.
  14. Vantage Point
    Produced by Paul Greengrass, and conceived as something of a companion film to his own "Bloody Sunday," there wasn't a moment in "Omagh" that rang false. There's not a single one in Vantage Point that rings true.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Duchess of Langeais
    Rivette is teasing his way, thinking afresh, playing a game but tweaking its rules, telling a story, but only sort of--making, in short, not simply a movie, but that ineffable magic called cinema.
  16. Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone
    As a visceral experience, it’s entrancing, especially during Shinji’s fight sequences, when his anxieties are cruelly exacerbated by having his body and mind symbiotically bonded to his father’s combat toy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Diary of the Dead
    Visually, Romero's ersatz-DIY experiment isn't as suave as Brian De Palma's similar effort in the recent and risible "Redacted," nor as exactingly engineered as the video convulsions of "Cloverfield," but its scrappy, ultra-low-budget edges are part of its charm.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Year My Parents Went on Vacation
    This warmly engaging film benefits from its understated approach (it suggests rather than spells out the political turmoil), and its light, comedic tone never mitigates the drama of the central story.
  19. Definitely, Maybe
    A surprisingly rewarding romantic comedy.
  20. The Spiderwick Chronicles
    The movie's richly autumnal look is by swift turns cozily naturalistic and terrifyingly baroque, and director Mark Waters (Freaky Friday, Mean Girls) sustains the balance between real and surreal with mischievous brio.
  21. Ezra
    Unsparing, pedagogic, and genuinely compelling.
  22. Fool's Gold
    Fool's Gold is the sort of movie that makes you look more kindly upon the WGA strike. It isn't merely bad--it's so desperate that the actors can scarcely conceal their contempt for the material.
    • 7 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The Hottie & the Nottie
    Crass, shrill, disingenuous, tawdry, mean-spirited, vulgar, idiotic, boring, slapdash, half-assed, and very, very unfunny.
  24. In Bruges
    Bruges may be the movie's rather too-long-running joke, but Farrell's shaggy brow is easily the most entertaining thing in Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's first foray into the crime caper.
  25. Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland
    The doc provides plenty of backstory (meeting the comics' families offers generous context to material heard earlier in the film). But in the end, it's the bits involving Vaughn and his celeb guests that linger.
  26. Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins
    Although the big comic setups in Lee's script feel a bit forced--the director continually sets up moments of rapid-fire, barb-filled interplay among his accomplished cast.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    London to Brighton
    LTB offers a fresh (if grimy) contribution to kitchen-sink realism, but little to the tiresome persistence of vicious British gangster chic.
  28. A Walk to Beautiful
    Aside from a few casual digs at the loutishness of the rural Ethiopian male, documentarians Mary Olive Smith and Amy Bucher feel no need to overlay this health-care calamity with pious outrage; any editorial is implied in the immutable facts from overworked gynecologists and the camera's testament.
  29. How to Rob a Bank
    So objectively awful it ceases even to be a reflection of writer- director Andrews Jenkins's non-talent, How to Rob a Bank calls into question the distribution filtration process that should protect delicate consumer eyes from things like this.
  30. Caramel
    Beauty-parlor romantic comedy has been done to death and beyond, but what Caramel lacks in originality is redeemed by its exuberant sensuality and astute commentary on the way Lebanese women sit uncomfortably in the crosshairs of their country’s clash between patriarchal tradition and Westernized modernity.
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