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. One Swallow Brought Spring
    The script offers neither a sustained narrative arc nor strong characterizations.
  2. Dreamcatcher
    If hopeless literalist Kasdan could have decided on a tone this could have been a gynophobe's "Independence Day."
  3. Decasia
    A fierce dance of destruction. Its flame-like, roiling black-and-white inspires trembling and gratitude.
  4. Japan
    A notably confident and achieved debut.
  5. Zhantai
    One of the richest films of the past decade.
  6. Willard
    In a culture clogged with appropriated effluvia and remake cop-outs, Willard is wittier and nastier than we deserve.
  7. Journeys with George
    Although largely devoid of dramatic interest, Journeys With George does convincingly document the horror of life within the campaign "bubble."
  8. Under the City's Skin
    Bani-Etemad's generational melodrama observes a blue-collar dynastic collapse worthy of Lillian Hellman, but stays steadfastly fixed on the quotidian of Tehran life.
  9. The Hunted
    Essentially a reheating of 1982's "First Blood" -- a psychologically wounded warrior-vet pits himself against civilized America -- but the fallout this time is simultaneously more ruthless, less emotional, and duller.
  10. Spun
    The traumatized critic must struggle to avoid capital letters in urging patrons to steer clear of the colorfully cast but unbearable Spun.
  11. Bend It Like Beckham
    Only silent Becks himself rises unstained from this reheated ethno-niche stew.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Short Eyes (re-release)
    Confrontational for its time yet paltry next to any episode of "Oz," Piñero's slim moral quandary is stocked with glib sermonizing and unfocused characterizations, but Robert M. Young's firmly anchored direction creates an appropriate chamber ambience.
  13. Laurel Canyon
    The spectacle of pretty people floating languidly across the screen notwithstanding, Laurel Canyon is short on conviction and long on contrivance. McDormand, however, has a ball.
  14. Nowhere in Africa
    A straightforward epic, almost alarmingly quaint in the telling.
  15. The Safety of Objects
    Though agile edits keep things moving, in braiding several tales into one tight suburban tangle, character development takes more shortcuts than "Short Cuts."
  16. Irreversible
    From the end to the beginning--or is it from the inadvertently ridiculous to the would-be sublime?--Noé's stunt is an exploitation movie with a gimmick, not to mention a vacuous philosophy.
  17. Tears of the Sun
    This "Black Hawk Down" theft is a trial by cliché until the climax, which suggests a dress rehearsal for the torching of Baghdad.
  18. Chaos
    Naturally, the worm turns again and again in this demi-Hitchcockian death trap, and Nakata knows how to shoot scenes of breath-holding paranoia: from a distance, simply, in real time. (We'll see how the inevitable remake, directed by Jonathan Glazer, measures up.)
  19. Journey to Western Xia Empire
    A reticent, primarily visual experience.
  20. Ten
    Conceptually rigorous, splendidly economical, and radically Bazinian.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Cradle 2 the Grave
    Li barely has enough lines to qualify for a SAG card.
  22. Horns and Halos
    What emerges is not only an Underdog v. Simon Bar Sinister saga but a fascinating character study.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Poolhall Junkies
    A movie that, in its unconditional embrace of an all-male subculture, amounts to little more than a rote circle jerk.
  24. Foreign Sister
    Offers an incisive glimpse into one woman's inner transformation -- her secret sense of loss in the midst of plenty and her sudden perception of a world of suffering lying just beyond her home.
    • 14 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Dischord
    Writer-director Mark Wilkinson gracefully elides backstories while arranging his converging narratives into a neat fugue, but the overall preciousness of his conception is suffocating.
  26. Bolivia
    Virtually plot-free, the movie's organic cultivation of Argentina's economic tension and ethnophobic woes is smooth as silk.
  27. Open Hearts
    However schematic, the movie percolates with immediacy and genuine warmth.
  28. Tales of Erotica
    Whittled down from a series of 36 short films commissioned by a German television network between 1996 and 2000, Erotic Tales leaves you only to ponder the horror of the 33 that didn't make the cut.
  29. Till Human Voices Wake Us
    Another mystery that gives up its secrets all too quickly, Till Human Voices Wake Us is named for a T.S. Eliot line -- and it proves a woefully evocative title for this snoozy supernatural pastoral.
  30. Dark Blue
    However misjudged and evidently cobbled together in the editing room, Dark Blue does have the nerve to drive right through the riots with Russell's saber-toothed bigot, implicitly linking the two phenomena and not being shy about the suffering on either side of the combat.
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