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
    • 60 Mike Hale
    Last Letters from Monte Rosa
    What leaves a bad taste in the mouth is not the film itself, which is passable for a low-budget war picture, but the fact that neither the official Web site nor the press notes even suggest that it largely has been scavenged from an existing movie.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Mike Hale
    The Virginity Hit
    Unfortunately, the things that can be funny and even liberating in a movie like "American Pie" end up looking coarse and slightly depressing in the scripted pseudoreality of The Virginity Hit.
    • 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.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Mike Hale
    Alpha and Omega
    This talking-animal tale - has old-fashioned backgrounds that occasionally achieve a touch of grandeur, but that's about the best that can be said for it.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Mike Hale
    The Happy Poet
    The consistent comic tone of those earlier scenes - a gentle squirm - makes The Happy Poet a promising debut.
    • 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.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Mike Hale
    Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead
    A toothless satire whose targets include vampire mania, low-rent theater, indie romantic comedies, Scorsese, Shakespeare and “Law & Order,” it plays like a Web series expanded to feature length, or an adaptation of one of the Naked Angels’ staged serial soap operas.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Mike Hale
    The Anchorage
    At several points the depiction of Ulla's isolation takes on slasher-movie overtones, which undercuts the general solemnity but doesn't really add anything to the experience.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Mike Hale
    Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone
    When the material is condensed, nearly everything that made the first two-thirds of the television series distinctive _ — the deliberate pace, the wry humor, the subtle (for anime) characterizations — is lost. “Evangelion” becomes just another giant-robot story.
    • 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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