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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    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Captive
    This intriguing debut by Argentinean writer-director Gaston Biraben sets up a lot of tough choices before finally taking the easy way out.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fuck
    Aside from the historically worthy identification of General George S. Patton as a pioneering potty mouth, the film contains little or nothing in the way of surprise.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Coffee Date
    Writer-director Stewart Wade has gracefully expanded his short film, a festival fave, into a warmhearted tale carried by genuine affection and a charming cast rather than cutting one-liners and turbo-charged plotting.
  4. The Magic Gloves
    Martin Rejtman's 1999 "Silvia Prieto" fashioned a deadpan farce from the aimless circulation of objects and identities around its unsmiling title character. The Magic Gloves, the Argentine writer-director's 2003 follow-up, is a similarly absurdist smart-com featuring another depressed protag navigating a yuppie Buenos Aires milieu.
  5. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
    Indeed, the man who invented Borat is a masterful improviser, brilliant comedian, courageous political satirist, and genuinely experimental film artist. Borat makes you laugh but Baron Cohen forces you to think.
  6. Flushed Away
    What's not to love about a movie in which thousands of rodents stand together against a Big Wave generated by TV-watching soccer fans flushing their toilets at halftime?
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Volver
    Almodóvar isn't what he used to be (who is?), but he's a master of the medium nevertheless, deploying color and light and shadow not merely to express emotions but to tap into ours, directing the blood flow of the audience as much as he directs the movie.
  8. Shottas
    Writer-director Cess Silvera claims he's trying to "show the gritty life of Jamaican immigrants," but Shottas is no more a social-issue film than "Scarface."
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Wondrous Oblivion
    If writer-director Paul Morrison's film traces a predictable arc from racial unease to acceptance, it's often winning--and sometimes tough-minded--in the details.
  10. Commune
    Celebrating the desire to immerse oneself in a collective, world-changing enterprise, Commune is unavoidably nostalgic.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Unknown
    The pacing is slightly off, with the action switching between the imprisoned men and the police who are trying to find them, and what should be a mounting sense of urgency inside the warehouse (think Reservoir Dogs) falters and goes slack.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Deeper Than Y
    The interviews are lively, though not all documentary subjects are created equal.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    As the Call, So the Echo
    In the end, though, Keir can't resist glorifying his dad, with a final shot seeped in a tone of self-congratulation that the rest of the film so nimbly evades.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Romántico
    Following a hardworking, goodhearted man as life beats the hell out of him, this documentary is moving almost to the point of exploitation.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Babel
    Puzzle master Arriaga may be the Will Shortz of globalized hand-wringing, but the by-now-predictable jigsawing of his scripts reeks of desperation.
  16. Catch a Fire
    In the end, Catch a Fire plays like some weird hybrid on the crazy-quilt filmography of Phillip Noyce, which includes small productions made in his native Australia and the Sharon Stone sexcapade "Sliver." What it's definitely not is the standard-issue movie about apartheid; there's no white protagonist, no pale-faced hero riding in on his high horse to save the oppressed black man.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Saw III
    This is laughably absurd, but unlike the first "Saw," the third installment gives no indication that its humor is intentional.
  18. Climates
    A terrific movie in the Antonioni tradition, Climates confirms 47-year-old Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan as one of the world's most accomplished filmmakers--handling the end of a relationship and the cloud of human confusion rising from its wreckage as if the subject had never before been attempted.
  19. Conversations with God
    It's an agreeable enough tale right up until God butts in and starts talking; even if you can swallow the premise, it isn't particularly cinematic to watch a guy endlessly scribbling on legal pads.
  20. Shut Up & Sing
    The movie's not quite the Bush bashfest its publicity might lead you to believe; it's closer to the Metallica doc "Some Kind of Monster" than to "Fahrenheit 9/11."
  21. Death of a President
    Dramatically inert but a minor techno-miracle, Range's movie is a faux documentary with fake talking heads and seamless digital effects.
  22. Cocaine Cowboys
    The story is fascinating, if a little overlong.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    20 Centimeters
    The musical numbers are dreadful and the jokes barely register, but more disappointing is how rote the exploration of the transgender dilemma is.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Absolute Wilson
    The real value of this film is its treasure trove of archival footage, rare clips that document this genius of an artist as a young man.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Bridge
    Ghoulish documentary.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Wild Blue Yonder
    Though occasionally striking, the footage doesn't pack the evocative punch Herzog intends, and segments that should be lyrical mind trips only result in overstretched longueurs.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
    Although technically impressive, the remake is dramatically inert, as the set becomes a motionless backdrop to theatrical line readings instead of a pulsing manifestation of diseased minds. It's Caligari embalmed.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Exit: The Right to Die
    Filmed and edited with near anesthetic calm, Fernand Melgar's documentary meditation on the work of Swiss euthanasia outfit Exit ADMD doesn't so much argue for the legalization of assisted suicide as recline comfortably in the knowledge that this firm's devoted "escorts" are here to direct terminal patients toward that shining light down the hall.
  29. Marie Antoinette
    A graceful, charming, and sometimes witty confection -- at least for its first hour.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Running with Scissors
    Like the book, this deadpan celebration of neurosis makes a valiant effort to repress its comedy--which of course makes it funnier.
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