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. Zipper
    Wilson is a charismatic and underused actor, perfect here as a guy with a talent for convincing others of his virtue. Headey, as Sam's wife, creates a surprisingly complex portrait of a woman shattered by her husband but hungry for higher social position.
  2. When Animals Dream
    Avoiding the genre's typical werewolfism-as-puberty metaphors, director Jonas Alexander Arnby instead casts his material as a drawn-out character study — the problem being that his characters are all one-note dullards, which turns his slow, portent-heavy drama into a giant slog.
  3. Memories of the Sword
    Memories of the Sword stands apart from other action films because Park wisely imagines violence as an elemental clash of dispositions.
  4. 7 Chinese Brothers
    A comedy too listless to bother crafting jokes or comic incidents, a character study centered on a sweet-natured prick it's hard to believe could actually exist tumbleweeding into a job at a lube shop, 7 Chinese Brothers is a go-nowhere shrug of a movie, the kind of indie that might send you screaming for the multiplex.
  5. Z for Zachariah
    The film works on its own terms, capturing, at least, the mournful vibe of O'Brien's book. What's more, Zobel's revision opens up plenty of space for the three actors who inhabit this circumscribed little world, all of whom are terrific.
  6. Queen of Earth
    Queen of Earth is also a semi-comedy, often funny in an intentionally bleak way. And that, besides Moss, is what makes it work.
  7. We Are Your Friends
    Remake The Graduate today, and an adult might corner Benjamin Braddock and whisper, "Startups." Debut director Max Joseph gives that a good shot, though the result — the EDM-fueled, drug-laced dream-crusher We Are Your Friends — is so sweaty and silly people may not notice.
  8. No Escape
    No Escape, while cruel, is often uncommonly suspenseful. And by pitting its white leads against the citizen hordes of Southeast Asia, No Escape is also uncommonly honest about the fears and assumptions that fuel adventure fiction — here, the Other is not abstracted away to orcs or aliens.
  9. The Curse of Downers Grove
    The Curse of Downers Grove coasts on pulpy fumes thanks to its creators' effective emphasis on circumstantial peril over character-driven drama.
  10. Top Spin
    With sleek and informative onscreen graphics and thrilling slow-motion demonstrations of game technique, Top Spin packs a lot of information into its 80-minute running time, arguing that a great table tennis player is one part boxer, one part chess master.
  11. The Park Bench
    The script plays like something by an English major overstuffed with knowledge of lit but whose real-life experience is drawn largely from movies -- and whose simplistic views on race and class are straight out of the white liberal's "But I mean well..." handbook.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Station to Station
    Director Doug Aitken's trick of turning 62 one-minute clips into a single feature turns out to be less a shattering of narrative than a segmentation.
  13. The Boy
    Craig William Macneill's The Boy tries so hard to be ominous that it nearly strains itself in the process.
  14. The Mend
    It's a tough film to shake, a slice-of-life that slices, knifelike. It's a funny drama of brothers that first makes you hate its prickly leads but then, after steeping you in their bottomed-out day-to-day, might inspire you to hope for them.
  15. The Second Mother
    As we switch sympathies from scene to scene, Muylaert forces us to think big about the clash between idealism and acceptance, a philosophical war that spills beyond the walls of this small story into every corner of our own lives.
  16. Slow Learners
    While it has a few funny moments (including the uncomfortable date that begins the film), Slow Learners mostly feels like a collection of exaggerated performances of drunkenness and mean-spiritedness that leads to a very predictable end.
  17. Youth
    Elegantly shot to emphasize the suffocating atmosphere of its believably frightening scenario, the film speaks clearly about generational expectations and the disintegration of the middle class, even when the brothers communicate without using words.
  18. Some Kind Of Beautiful
    Anti–romantic comedy Some Kind of Beautiful starts with a dialogue scene that baldly explains to viewers what kind of casually chauvinistic narrative it's not going to be. That promise is gracelessly and repeatedly broken thanks to neophyte screenwriter Matthew Newman's clichéd characterizations and helmer Tom Vaughan's incompetent direction.
  19. The Iron Ministry
    It's always political when regular people speak plainly about their circumstances — here, it's also moving, revelatory, and often funny, offering plenty to mull over during the long shots of train workers trundling their food carts.
  20. Learning to Drive
    The filmmakers' hearts might be in the right place, but the film's doesn't kick in until well after you might already have declared it dead.
  21. Guidance
    The crime-spree-driven final third feels more like a sordid movie of the week than the sprightly comedy that preceded it.
  22. Grandma
    It gradually settles and deepens into something nuanced and moving, a character study that's not so much about aging, specifically, as it is about the great and awful process of getting to know yourself.
  23. Being Evel
    He may not be likable, but he remains fascinating. The film is on firm ground when examining Knievel's actual measurable impact: the action/extreme sports that have flourished since his retirement.
  24. Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery
    Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery makes us question not only art, but the experts who claim to understand it best.
  25. She's Funny That Way
    There are some modest pleasures to be mined from Peter Bogdanovich's romantic caper She's Funny That Way, which at least strives for buoyancy.
  26. After Words
    Feldman, having established all his stereotypes, refuses to push them beyond the motions you know they have to go through from the first scene of lonely Jane crying into her cat's fur.
  27. Digging for Fire
    Digging for Fire affably drifts by, bolstered by some strong set pieces.
  28. American Ultra
    Nima Nourizadeh’s American Ultra is a bloody valentine attached to a bomb. It’s violent, brash, inventive and horrific, and perhaps the most romantic film of the year.
  29. People Places Things
    People Places Things crackles to life whenever the camera turns to one of Will's students, Kat (The Daily Show's Jessica Williams), and her professor mother, Diane (Regina Hall).
  30. Amnesiac
    The plot develops confidently (if unsurprisingly), abetted by coincidence and shoddy police work, but it's the tone that grates.
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