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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    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Mike Hale
    Convention
    Some of this is awfully pedestrian, but there are moments of both high comedy and high drama.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 40 Mike Hale
    My Soul to Take
    A thoroughly dreary, by-the-numbers exercise.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Mike Hale
    Whisper of the Heart
    Mr. Miyazaki wrote the screenplay for a love story about a shy girl and an aspiring violin maker (and a talking cat), but the result looks like a lot of non-Ghibli anime.
    • 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.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Mike Hale
    Ip Man
    Over all, the film is a prime exhibit in the relentless and regrettable shift away from a natural, allusive, romantic Hong Kong style and toward a mainland studio aesthetic that is stagebound, literal, overstuffed and sentimental - like the big-budget Hollywood weepies of the '60s or the '80s.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Mike Hale
    Only When I Dance
    The lack of information about the school, or about any aspect of the two dancers’ lives that doesn’t involve training for and competing in international competitions, can be startling. When another Centro de Dança student, a petite woman, is a winner at the prestigious Prix de Lausanne, we’re stunned. We didn’t even know she was there.
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