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 7.5 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. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
    Vol. 2 aims to please with breathtaking set pieces that’ll convince you to delete all your old diatribes about CGI ruining the movies. But no matter how funny writer-director James Gunn wants this film to be — the one-liners move at lightspeed — too many of the punch lines are referential.
  2. The Circle
    Ponsoldt’s film is caught between comedy and paranoid thriller. I fear he half-asses the latter.
  3. Rackstraw Downes: A Painter
    Rackstraw Downes: A Painter is glacial and mesmerizing, the documentary equivalent of droning Tibetan singing bowls, a work crafted to induce its audience into the same contemplative state as its subject at work.
  4. Casting JonBenét
    Green's doc — like the case at its center — defies resolution or easy answers.
  5. Danger Close
    By focusing on Quade’s absolute respect for military service and authority, Salzberg and Tureaud miss an opportunity to explore her pragmatic conservatism, lyrically expressed in her profiles of unquestioning heroism.
  6. Below Her Mouth
    Linder possesses a compelling, Kurt Cobain-like androgyny, but neither she nor Krill can do much to save the portentous screenplay.
  7. Nise: The Heart of Madness
    Unlike in so many films, here the actors’ portrayals of psychiatric patients’ conditions — and their humanity — ring true.
  8. Tomorrow
    What Laurent and Dion do best is present pockets of progressive change as blueprints for idealism in action.
  9. One Week and a Day
    Rambling in the best manner imaginable, it’s an amusingly heartbreaking (and hopeful) portrait of misery’s messiness.
  10. Buster's Mal Heart
    It’s science fiction that’s complex, thoughtful and funny, like 12 Monkeys or Primer run through a Fargo filter.
  11. Voice from the Stone
    As evocative as the production design and cinematography are, multiple cheesy scenes with one-dimensional characters undermine Howell’s efforts to spook, let alone redefine a genre.
  12. Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story
    For an hour and a half, this charming little movie, with its chatty talking heads and its sweet-natured subjects, offers a glimpse into the lives of two fascinating people whom I had never heard of, and who shared an unlikely life filled with achievements and setbacks, wonder and pain.
  13. Natasha
    With naturalistic honesty, Ozerov and Gordon tap into their characters’ insecurities and sexuality (because, duh, teens). But Bezmozgis delves deeper than pubescent angst, exploring the immigrant experience through family dynamics, dinner-table debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and old-country dreams.
  14. Rupture
    Rupture is a sci-fi abduction thriller that leaves little to be thrilled about.
  15. A Dark Song
    The performances are strong and the scenecraft absorbing.
  16. Black Rose
    Let’s cut straight to the chase: Black Rose is a bad film — amazingly, astoundingly, supercalifragilisticexpialidociously bad.
  17. Bang! The Bert Berns Story
    Blending stock footage, vintage audio, re-creation, and many testimonials from heavy hitters from Ben E. King to Van Morrison, Berns' son Brett keeps things visually lively, and not as morose as may be implied.
  18. Sleight
    The director builds to one big, beautiful revelation. But the story he tells in the lead-up doesn’t distract so much as it politely asks you to stand up so that it can place the trick card under your ass.
  19. Obit
    Obit rarely strays from the anodyne tone of the advertorial.
  20. Let It Fall: L.A. 1982-1992
    In those days after the misbegotten verdict in the trial of the four police officers who kicked and beat Rodney King, these Angelenos discovered what they and their neighbors were capable of. Ridley’s patient, humane approach allows us, over his film’s 145 minutes, to discover it, too.
  21. LA 92
    LA 92 is about what this all looked like on TV, a sort of Los Angeles Burns Itself.
  22. The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
    Olli Mäki isn't a knockout, but it does go the distance.
  23. Slack Bay
    Slack Bay is nothing if not anti-authoritarian, and while its anarchic energy is appealing in small doses, it becomes tiresome when it turns toward cruelty.
  24. Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent
    Just like high-wire showman Philippe Petit, Tower is a brilliant, dedicated artist who has spent most of his life wowing people with his talents — but is ultimately always out there by himself.
  25. The Promise
    As drama and spectacle, it’s not quite first-rate — I rarely feared for these characters or believed that I knew their souls, and George is too much of a humanist to wring real-life tragedy for cineplex suspense. But as a moral corrective and a call to decency it moved me.
  26. Free Fire
    10 minutes early to the Free Fire press screening, I grew restless as “Annie’s Song” played on a continuous loop in the theater; the gimmick filled up my senses with the quickly confirmed fear that Wheatley’s film would rarely rise above the dopey and obvious.
  27. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
    Tyrnauer transforms what could be a staid profile film into an urgent story about the dangers of “urban renewal,” something Jacobs herself would admire.
  28. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
    Gere jabbers amusingly, and there's something touching in his Norman's persistence.
  29. By the Time It Gets Dark
    It's a film, a rather gorgeous one, of glances and ephemera and delicate metaphors.
  30. Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back
    In this stylish documentary, Cattelan talks effusively on camera about his career, his work, and his private life in unexpectedly candid interviews.
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