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. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
    If there’s one thing that Van Sant does very well here, it’s creating a humanizing anchor at the center of the story. Despite some distracting narrative choices and sketchy character development (especially with Mara’s character, who, of course, turns into a love interest), the film does eventually find its footing.
  2. What Will People Say
    Despite the subject matter, Haq is most often quite tender in her storytelling.
  3. Path of Blood
    Documentary is an inherently tricky field, requiring objectivity, but Path of Blood leans so far into it that any sense of narrative or purpose dissolves.
  4. The Night Eats the World
    Unfortunately, the best and worst thing about director Dominique Rocher and his two co-writers’ scenario is its familiarity.
  5. Skyscraper
    I almost admire the laziness of the scripting. In this overworked, underpaid country of ours, why begrudge a screenwriter seizing the chance to knock off early?
  6. Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
    For all its frantic eager-to-please-ness, Hotel Transylvania 3 doesn’t quite achieve the blissfully reliable drumbeat of hilarious throwaway gags that the earlier films managed.
  7. Fireworks
    Where Your Name’s star-crossed protagonists were fully formed characters who held equal weight in the narrative, Fireworks is very much told from the male point of view, and Nazuna seldom rises above “free-spirited object of desire.”
  8. Sorry to Bother You
    I will be very clear with you, dear readers, that this surrealist comic moral tale, about a poor man selling his soul to ascend in a golden elevator to the heights of a dubious corporation, is a balls-to-the-wall, tits-to-the-glass, spectacular orgy of fist-pumping, anti-capitalist, pro-labor ideas rolled into 105 minutes of gloriously unpredictable plot.
  9. Moss
    There’s an edge to the head-trip and the river journey, a sense not just of the characters’ freedom but also of their limited options and never-articulated desperation.
  10. The Citizen
    Vranik’s film couldn’t be more timely in its moral inquiry, but it’s timeless in form and technique, a melodrama tempered with a painstaking realism.
  11. Whitney
    By the time Whitney winds to an end, that massive talent feels like a dangerously valuable resource, one that even the people who were supposed to protect Houston couldn’t resist exploiting.
  12. Bleeding Steel
    The closest comparison for this film is 2017’s joyfully schlocky Beyond Skyline, though that boasted far more original set pieces. Bleeding Steel seems content to rehash old ones, cutting and pasting Chan into familiar scenes, with the welcome exception of one battle that takes place atop the Sydney Opera House — but I’ll be damned if I could figure out why or how they got there.
  13. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
    Director Stephen Nomura Schible’s understated and moving Coda does a fine job of presenting the composer’s remarkable career as a revelatory journey.
  14. A Skin So Soft
    Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté holds up a shallow mirror to the world of bodybuilding in the underwhelming experimental documentary A Skin So Soft.
  15. Under the Tree
    The first scenes are hilarious, all sharp surprises and adeptly staged physical comedy. But then the story turns, the way that milk does, curdling into tragedy.
  16. The First Purge
    The First Purge actually pulls back somewhat on that sense of bloodthirsty anticipation. The violence here feels more tragic than ever, and it’s also some time coming; when Purge Night does start, the killing doesn’t begin immediately.
  17. Distorted
    If there’s one thing I can say for this movie, it’s that the cast is delivering, even if the story they’re in cannot.
  18. Incident In a Ghostland
    The grisly post-torture-porn horror flick Incident in a Ghostland serves as an effectively punishing critique of the relentless misogyny that has become a staple of every stupid Texas Chain Saw Massacre knockoff that pits sexually active women against emotionally disturbed serial killers.
  19. Never Steady, Never Still
    Usually a tart-tongued scene-stealer, Henderson is devoid of her trademark hauteur in this remarkable performance.
  20. Set It Up
    While the plot is familiar, Katie Silberman’s witty script plays with expectations.
  21. Woman Walks Ahead
    The good intentions it carries out to the plains don’t make up for the tentative falseness at its center, a hero who could herself benefit from a portraitist’s clear vision.
  22. Boundaries
    Where Feste best succeeds in Boundaries isn’t in the father-daughter relationship, which finds her straining for a tight resolution, but in the mother-son one, where the two actors vibe easily and persuasively off each other.
  23. Love, Cecil
    Even though it paints too rosy a picture, Love, Cecil fills out history with sparkling imagery.
  24. Rock Rubber 45s
    Bobbito’s storytelling is infectious, and the scenes of community outreach are heartwarming. May all such vanity projects have such a friendly beat.
  25. Black Water
    Criminal negligence of Dolph is far from Black Water’s only sin — there’s also the sluggish pacing, murky musical score, and somnambulant lead — but it might be its most egregious.
  26. Hover
    Hover may sometimes be unbelievably generic, but Osterman, adapting Coleman’s clever scenario, nails a universal power dynamic.
  27. The Cakemaker
    The Cakemaker is more of a petit four than a belly bomb, but it’s striking in its particularity.
  28. This Is Congo
    McCabe served as cinematographer, and his images here vary from striking to scarifying to magnificent. But his film’s power comes from its voices.
  29. Custody
    Legrand demonstrates great skill as a tactician in this closing third, but his overarching framework for Custody — with its considerable reliance on is-he-or-isn’t-he uncertainty — demands that he sacrifice interior perspectives.
  30. Winter Brothers
    Pálmason can occasionally get bogged down in his ambiguous leanings.... But many moments attest to the high ceiling of Pálmason’s abilities.
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