Hal Hinson

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Washington Post
For 420 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 44% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 8.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Hal Hinson's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 58
Highest review score: 100 Hoop Dreams
Lowest review score: 0 Johnny Be Good
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 174 out of 420
  2. Mixed: 166 out of 420
  3. Negative: 80 out of 420
420 movie reviews
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    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Patriot Games
    The main problem with Patriot Games, though, is that the inevitable confrontation between Ryan and Miller takes forever to materialize. In the interim, Noyce gets bogged down in the mass of technical detail -- the inside-CIA baseball -- that is such an integral aspect of Clancy's books. On the page, Clancy's research is impressively exhaustive, and if by chance you become bored, you can always skip ahead. But a movie doesn't afford us this luxury. Some of what we're shown about the inner working of the intelligence network is fascinating, but sometimes it can become an irritating distraction. You just want to cut to the chase.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    King of New York
    [Abel Ferrara's] specialty is a kind of hallucinatory tawdriness, and here, he's made a hepped-up film about drugs that plays as if the filmmakers themselves kept a healthy supply of the stuff at hand.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    La Femme Nikita
    Parillaud is expressive but rather mundane. She's best at playing sullen, but there are so many French actresses who specialize in this particular talent -- the French have mastered the apathetic pout -- that she seems generic.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    High Heels
    It feels more like a prosaic knockoff than a classically inspired original.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Who's That Girl
    Technique counts for a lot in directing a picture like this -- more perhaps than in any other genre -- and Foley doesn't have any. His approach here is to toss things up into the air without caring much where they land. And as a result, the noise they make when they land is not a pretty one.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Another Stakeout
    Sign oath in blood promising stars they will not have to bother creating characters and can just coast on old tricks.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Muriel's Wedding
    Hogan seems skittish about going all the way with the darker side of his material...It's a bright, buoyant comedy about a very sad young woman -- and, regrettably, the mix just doesn't work.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    She's Having a Baby
    In general, if it weren't for the good will we feel toward the actors, the movie would be intolerably feeble. It's nearly intolerable as it is. The only other plus is Stewart Copeland's jaunty, percussive score. It's this sort of thing that's giving maternity a bad name.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Jack
    When a master dedicates his genius to the production of schmaltz, it's not a pretty sight.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Bird on a Wire
    Bird on a Wire lords its star power over us; it thinks the sheer cumulative adorableness of the principals will win us over and make up for its multitude of sins. It should think again. There is nothing to this John Badham movie except the spectacle of determined stars turning the brilliance of their personalities on us. That and chases -- car chases, motorcycle chases, airplane and helicopter chases.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Carlito's Way
    About halfway through, the overwhelming fact that the movie is a complete nothing becomes too much to ignore.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Harry and the Hendersons
    It's about learning to be human and, on that level, it's utter schlock -- cloying, manipulative and overcute. You could see it on another level, though -- as a comedy about an obnoxious houseguest -- and feel a little kinder toward it.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    The Object of Beauty
    Perhaps the shrewdest thing the filmmakers have done is call the film The Object of Beauty instead of A Thing of Beauty, which would make much more sense. By doing so they've removed what they must have known was a far-too-tempting opening for reviewers -- of saying A Thing of Beauty is not a joy forever. Even with the change, though, the sentiment fits.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    The Scent of Green Papaya
    At first, the movie's restraint is enticing, and even soothing. By the end, though, Tran's strategies have an enervating, numbing effect. The same methods he uses to pull us in finally kill our interest.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Ironweed
    Ironweed, the new film by Hector Babenco starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, comes about as close to being an unmitigated waste of talent as any movie in recent memory.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Night on Earth
    It's a lovely idea, and if the individual sections of the film were more substantial, or if we sensed some connection between them, some governing principle, it might have resulted in a delicate, poetically funny movie. Unfortunately, Jarmusch's lackadaisical minimalist aesthetic and his chronic lack of energy are the only unifying elements.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Mr. Destiny
    Overall, what Mr. Destiny turns out to be is mildly sweet and amusing -- not a wonderful life, but merely an okay one.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Big Top Pee-wee
    Kleiser has no feel for comedy, and there's no affinity between him and his star. He shoots the material as if he didn't quite get it, and the gags dribble out weakly, without any emphasis or piquancy, as if the camera itself were perplexed by the scene unfolding in front of it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    In the Line of Fire
    Working from the script by Jeff Maguire, director Wolfgang Petersen ("Das Boot") plods through the narrative as if he were completely unconcerned with giving it even a semblance of credibility.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Trapped in Paradise
    Trapped in Paradise is a new comedy starring Dana Carvey, Nicolas Cage and Jon Lovitz, but considering that there isn't a single laugh in the whole picture, the term "comedy" must be used loosely.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    A Kid in King Arthur's Court
    Because of the square, lackluster way that director Michael Gottleib has staged his material, the whole production seems sort of limp and perfunctory.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Cadillac Man
    Coarse and haphazardly engineered and never more than intermittently funny.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Stuart Saves His Family
    There's a genuinely tragic side to Stuart's character, and for the movie to work the filmmakers have to keep it in balance with the comedy so that the pathos of his life doesn't kill all the laughs. But Ramis can't keep the movie's tone under control, and, as a result, it teeters precariously between farce and wake.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Kansas
    In Kansas, Andrew McCarthy and Matt Dillon have a way of taking pages of dialogue and making it sound like ... pages of dialogue.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Bright Lights, Big City
    The movie is like a Porsche outfitted with a lawn mower engine; there's not even enough juice to get the machine out of the driveway.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    White Palace
    While this sort of thing may have worked in the '30s, by today's standards it's half-baked.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    M. Butterfly
    David Cronenberg's film version of David Henry Hwang's Tony Award-winning play, is no more successful in solving it than any other versions of this fantastic tale have been.... "The Crying Game" it's not. [09 Oct 1993]
    • Washington Post
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Honey, I Blew Up the Kid
    As one-joke movies go, it's fairly inoffensive but also never better than mildly diverting.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Young Guns
    The movie is showy without having any noticeably coherent style. Indeed, it might have been possible to enjoy Young Guns as a larky spree if the photogenic stars didn't carry themselves with such a smug, self-congratulatory air. But they behave as if our adoration were their birthright.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Hal Hinson
    Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
    It's precisely Henry's coldblooded affectlessness that is meant to shock and disturb us. But "Henry" leaves us feeling more numbed than moved. Half art film, half schlock-horror cheapie, "Henry" isn't quite sure what it wants to be.
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