Joshua Land, Village Voice
Select another critic »
For 45 reviews, this critic has graded:
-
22% higher than the average critic
-
2% same as the average critic
-
76% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.2 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Joshua Land's Scores
- Movies
| Average review score: | 54 |
|---|---|
| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
90
|
| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
10
|
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 12 out of 45
-
Mixed: 30 out of 45
-
Negative: 3 out of 45
45
movie reviews
- By critic score
-
-
Joshua Land 90
A triumph of documentary activism nine years in the making. -
-
-
Joshua Land 80
Its title an acknowledgment of the reality of evil, Shake Hands With the Devil touches on the unanswerable hows and whys, but its ultimate subject is the terrible burden of command. -
-
-
Joshua Land 70
Expertly programmed by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt, the second go-round of The Animation Show features 12 films from five countries. -
-
-
Joshua Land 70
Micheli's documentary finds a fresh angle via the intersecting stories of two stuntwomen. -
-
-
-
Joshua Land 70
A fair-minded (but hardly apolitical) grunt's-eye view of the war in Iraq that trusts the audience to draw its own conclusions. -
-
-
Joshua Land 70
A stark, relentlessly deglamorized vision of ghetto life, La Sierra is essential viewing for anyone who ponied up for the aestheticized amorality of the Brazilian "City of God." -
-
-
Joshua Land 70
Largely content to bask in the great man's glow, Angio provides generous clips and soundbites alongside fond reminiscences, but the celebratory tone leaves room for darker reflections. -
-
-
Joshua Land 70
Sleeker and more ambitious than the 2003 BBC-produced "Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death," which focused more narrowly on long-suppressed Belgian atrocities of that era. -
-
-
Joshua Land 70
Warmhearted but never sentimental or condescending, Home finally proves most affecting as an unsparing glimpse into the psychology of poverty. -
-
-
-
Joshua Land 70
With its unobtrusive visual style, Justice plays like a near-parody of documentary objectivity, subtly suggesting the malleable nature of "truth," both in the courtroom and the movie theater. -
-
-
Joshua Land 60
Christopher Browne's entertaining A League of Ordinary Gentlemen goes behind the scenes of the Professional Bowlers Association's comeback bid following the league's 2000 sale (for a mere $5 million) to a trio of retired Microsoft execs. -
-
-
Joshua Land 60
Lively, intelligent look at the art of film editing. -
-
-
Joshua Land 60
A movie refreshingly lacking in social graces, Piggie uses the transparency of video to x-ray the psyches of characters obsessed with the essence of things. -
-
-
Joshua Land 60
Atmosphere trumps plot throughout, enabling the movie to survive an unfortunate, if inevitable, final-act turn. -
-
-
Joshua Land 60
A formal hodgepodge, Congo suffers from abrasive voice-over narration, stilted re-enactments, and an awkward courtroom conceit, but gets by on its shocking material. -
-
-
Joshua Land 60
The Roost proves that West has enough talent to do without the gimmick next time around. -
-
-
Joshua Land 60
While positioned firmly as camp, the new Trapped by the Mormons is a surprisingly faithful rendering--at least until the flesh-eating zombies show up. -
-
-
Joshua Land 60
At times resembling an Iranian "Dead Man Walking," Beautiful City goes out of its way to give each character a fair shake-a few patriarchal rages notwithstanding, even the vengeful father is treated sympathetically. But the script, overly laden with red herrings, forces its characters into some improbable dilemmas. -
-
-
Joshua Land 60
Establishes a strong sense of milieu in these street scenes, and while the movie's not without its flaws--much of the dialogue is colorless and Lisa seems a bit too together to be hanging out with Curtis--it's never less than credible. -
-
-
Joshua Land 60
A few American soldiers are interviewed in a halfhearted attempt at balance, but Berends, who thankfully eschews narration, makes his own p.o.v. clear enough. -
-
-
Joshua Land 50
Poorly organized mishmash of archival war films, scholarly chatter, and literary quotations. -
-
-
-
Joshua Land 50
Florida-born folksinger Jim White serves as guide on this musical tour of the rural South, conceptualized less as a state of mind than as an atmosphere. -
-
-
Joshua Land 50
Frustratingly little here grapples with the day-to-day realities of life in Chechnya and the surrounding areas. -
-
-
Joshua Land 50
The master propagandist comes across here as a brooding, insecure megalomaniac--or at times, a bitchy member of a particularly malevolent high school clique, an effect enhanced by some of narrator Kenneth Branagh's English line readings. -
-
-
Joshua Land 50
The movie recovers from a sluggish opening act to pack some real suspense in its second half. -
-
-
Joshua Land 50
Investigates the events leading up to the coup d'état; that it was the second for Aristide (overthrown in 1991, mere months after becoming Haiti's first democratically elected president) darkens the film's triumphalist-sounding title. -
-
-
Joshua Land 50
While the questions may be universal, they're not particularly original, and the responses largely run the expected range, rendering the whole project less enlightening than your average collegiate coffee-and-cigarettes bull session. -