Mike Hale

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The New York Times
For 108 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 35% higher than the average critic
  • 8% same as the average critic
  • 57% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 12.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Mike Hale's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 53
Highest review score: 90 Pom Poko
Lowest review score: 20 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 28 out of 108
  2. Mixed: 67 out of 108
  3. Negative: 13 out of 108
108 movie reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise
    It was created under different circumstances and it is, perhaps inevitably, a less powerful work than “When the Levees Broke,” more diffuse in its storytelling and more uncertain in its point of view.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Mike Hale
    The Cat Returns (2002)
    As it is, it’s the best non-Miyazaki, non-Takahata Ghibli feature. A girl prevents a cat from getting crushed by a truck and gains favor with a nocturnal kingdom of hipster felines, in a story with echoes of Alice in Wonderland and the novels of Haruki Murakami.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Veteran
    Mr. Ryoo (“The Unjust,” “The City of Violence”) isn’t known for his sense of humor, but Veteran is amusing throughout, even if the funny scenes are more subdued or go on a beat or two longer than American viewers are used to.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Mike Hale
    Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
    Mr. Morgen was given access to Cobain’s archives — “art, music, journals, Super 8 films and audio montages” — and his exhilarating, exhausting, two-hour-plus film, both an artful mosaic and a hammering barrage, reflects years of rummaging through that trove.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
    Surprisingly old-fashioned. It seems to be having an argument with itself: the dazzling but often antiseptic immersiveness of the viewing experience is countered by storytelling suffused with nostalgia for a simpler, messier, livelier period in Chinese film.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Littlerock
    It's significantly smaller and more casual than "Mystery Train" or "Lost in Translation," movies its premise calls to mind, but in some ways it's more layered and complex.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Fire in Babylon
    It all adds up to an entertaining 88 minutes, despite the film's ramshackle construction and its once-over-lightly approach to political, cultural and athletic history.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    The Woman with the 5 Elephants
    It's an interesting story, well told, though Mr. Jendreyko overworks some documentary fallbacks: gnarled fingers, the view from a moving train.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema
    Between Mr. Ziman's music-video skills and his close approximation of the kinetic style of Michael Mann (a scene from Mr. Mann's "Heat" has a key role in the plot), it's easy to overlook the formulas and just enjoy the ride.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Mike Hale
    Trollhunter
    One of the many pleasures of the Norwegian director André Ovredal's clever and engaging mock documentary Trollhunter is the way it plays with the idea of the supernatural rule book.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Caterpillar
    Shinobu Terajima, a major figure in Japan who won the best actress award at the 2010 Berlin film festival for Caterpillar, is effective as the wife, though Mr. Wakamatsu is more interested in scoring political and historical points than in shaping her character.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Hobo with a Shotgun
    Only for those with a truly bottomless appetite for gore and fan-boy humor.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Winston Churchill: Walking with Destiny
    Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny is a handsomely produced, television-scale documentary with a split personality.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    I Am Secretly an Important Man
    While I Am Secretly an Important Man skims the surface of Mr. Bernstein's life, it's a surface with more than enough texture to keep you interested.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Bhutto
    If nothing else, the directors, Duane Baughman and Johnny O'Hara, deserve praise for devoting this kind of attention to a foreign leader and to the internal politics of another country (as opposed to how those politics affect the United States).
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields
    In her director's statement for Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, Gail O'Hara writes that "this one's for the fans." Rarely has that been more true.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Reel Injun
    Absorbing and amusing for as long as it looks back at those Hollywood westerns, recounting their sins against American Indians.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Salt of This Sea
    A sad and engrossing look at a haunted landscape.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    The Nature of Existence
    His film is no more profound than its forerunners, but it’s quicker, funnier and less pretentious.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Mugabe and the White African
    The courses of colonialism and racial strife were radically different in America and Australia than they were in Africa. That doesn't make Mr. Freeth's cause any less just, but it does mean that Mugabe and the White African needs to be approached with care.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    The Disappearance of Alice Creed
    The Disappearance of Alice Creed will keep your attention, but you may walk away thinking you've seen something like it before: "Sleuth," with more sex and violence.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Kings of Pastry
    The film builds in interest and intrigue as it goes along, helped immeasurably by the directors' choice - canny or fortunate or both - of the astonishingly good-natured and likable Jacquy Pfeiffer, an Alsace-born, Chicago-based chef, as their chief protagonist.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    Kiki's Delivery Service
    A conventional but delightful tale of self-discovery and heroism from Mr. Miyazaki, it feels like Disney one moment, Truffaut the next.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Mike Hale
    Porco Rosso
    This homage to vintage Howard Hawks-style aerial thrills is as beautifully drawn and colored as anything he’s done. And it’s tremendous fun.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Mike Hale
    The Chaser
    While it could stand to lose 20 minutes and several plot twists, Mr. Na’s debut manages to be thought-provoking and adventurous while providing solid thrills.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Mike Hale
    My Neighbors the Yamadas
    Mr. Takahata’s broad, cartoony family comedy whose smeary watercolor washes and Peanuts-like line drawings don’t follow Ghibli’s house style. The family’s misadventures are standard stuff, but the art is continuously inventive.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Mike Hale
    Pom Poko
    The best film by Isao Takahata, who started the studio with Mr. Miyazaki, this is a comic allegory about battling packs of tanuki (Japanese raccoon dogs) joining forces to fight human real estate developers. It’s earthy and rollicking in a way that his co-founder’s films aren’t.

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