Miriam Bale

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The New York Times
For 50 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 8% same as the average critic
  • 36% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 8.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Miriam Bale's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 57
Highest review score: 100 Caucus
Lowest review score: 10 Walter: Lessons from the World's Oldest People
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 20 out of 50
  2. Mixed: 20 out of 50
  3. Negative: 10 out of 50
50 movie reviews
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    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Miriam Bale
    Flex Is Kings
    Because of the rote and typical way of organizing a dance movie around a contest, the pace and interest lag even though the images and characters are fascinating. Yet the film is worth watching because of the strong cinematography and the glimpses of strange beauty in the dance moves.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Miriam Bale
    Jews of Egypt
    Mr. Ramses’s admirable eagerness to tell a good tale seems to have favored excitement over facts.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 Miriam Bale
    Anita
    Anita is an important historical document about an event that prompted a larger cultural conversation about sexual harassment. But, perhaps more important, it conveys Ms. Hill’s journey from an accuser alone to an activist who shares with, and listens to, others.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Miriam Bale
    Himizu
    Mr. Sono uses sound, a low, grumbling noise like an earthquake, to convey this chaos. He also gives the film a harrowing cacophony and a sense of trauma with sound effects, including subtle echoes.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Miriam Bale
    Guilty of Romance
    Most disturbing and fascinating is the mixture of Izumi’s liberation with her degradation in this film, which plays like a more horrific version of David Lynch’s “Mullholland Drive.”
    • 42 Metascore
    • 30 Miriam Bale
    Awful Nice
    In general, the film feels like all setup and no punch line.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Miriam Bale
    HairBrained
    Unfortunately, the movie lacks strong enough players to fill in subtext to Mr. Kent’s formulaic setups, and the story flounders once Ms. Posey is out of the picture.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Miriam Bale
    Pompeii
    Mr. Anderson displays his mastery as a director in the sword-fighting scenes... But the glares and eye rolls that bookend these scenes are what make this film both GIF-ready and campy fun.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Miriam Bale
    Love Is in the Air
    The two leads have enough genuine sex appeal to make the film endurable.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Miriam Bale
    Life is Strange
    [A] useful, if slightly redundant, oral history.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Miriam Bale
    Towheads
    The movie is a watchable collection of images that never quite come together.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Miriam Bale
    Life of a King
    Mr. Gooding’s performance and his complex charisma are fascinating to watch throughout.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Miriam Bale
    The Nut Job
    The Nut Job features muddy-colored and often ugly animation, a plot that feels too stretched out and loaded with details to hold the attention of most children, and more flatulence jokes than anyone deserves.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Miriam Bale
    Friend 2: The Legacy
    In addition to the copious flashbacks, there is an overly generous heaping of styles on display.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Miriam Bale
    Implanted
    Mr. Verrette shows talent in conveying complex emotions, yet he’s handicapped by his grand ambition and an inability to do simple scenes well.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 80 Miriam Bale
    Khumba
    A wondrous and slightly deranged story about oddballs embracing their differences.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Miriam Bale
    The End of Time
    [Mr. Mettler’s] images of galaxies, mandalas, particle accelerators and glowing red lava become his real subjects. He uses music and sound to control the pace, to slow time, as if cinema were a form of enforced meditation.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Miriam Bale
    Gori Tere Pyaar Mein
    Instead of one satisfyingly complex film, it’s two or three films in one, a turducken of comedies.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Miriam Bale
    Home
    A jarring realism comes both from Mr. Oliver’s script and the performances by an ensemble of brilliant character actors.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Miriam Bale
    The Fall of 1980
    It’s essentially a modern version of “The Big Chill” without the banging oldies soundtrack or competent actors.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Miriam Bale
    The Great Fallacy
    Watching it feels like packing a semester-long history course with a very cool, left-leaning teacher into less than 90 minutes. The aim is wide-reaching and abstract, yet cohesive and invigorating.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Miriam Bale
    Caucus
    The film is a testament to the power of observational documentary to tenderly present hypocrisy and to show eccentricity peeking out from behind social masks.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Miriam Bale
    Billy & Buddy
    Very young children fluent in French may enjoy the film for its jokes, but anyone old enough to read the subtitles is likely to be unamused.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Miriam Bale
    It's Me, It's Me
    Though the film is occasionally frustrating and confusing, the modern life it is commenting on is certainly that, too.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Miriam Bale
    Free Birds
    Free Birds is likely to leave audiences fuzzy-headed and vaguely nauseated instead of nourished and satisfied.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Miriam Bale
    Sweet Dreams
    The sibling directors Lisa and Rob Fruchtman have made a nuanced and deftly edited film about a complex issue.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Miriam Bale
    The Pin
    Ms. Jaye uses sound, composition and careful patience to create a contemplative mood of memory, loss and magic. With limited resources and the power of storytelling, she has created a small film that feels mainstream and epic.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Miriam Bale
    Go Grandriders
    It’s like a cheap, dry cake covered with a thick layer of frosting. But even bad cake can be enjoyable, especially if celebrating something as worthwhile as these elders, their long lives and their continued gutsiness so late in the game.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Miriam Bale
    Hellbenders
    This movie has the humor and insouciant pileup of bizarre and disgustingly beautiful images of a cult classic on late-night cable.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 30 Miriam Bale
    I'm in Love with a Church Girl
    This is a message film with the narrative sophistication of a recruiting pamphlet.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Miriam Bale
    Design Is One
    The information-rich film is enlivened by the charm of the intelligent, eccentric couple at its heart.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 50 Miriam Bale
    Cassadaga
    This eager film piles on common fears: evil puppetry, haunted homes and overly generous hosts. So despite a sloppy and humorless execution, it is scary by association.
    • 11 Metascore
    • 10 Miriam Bale
    Walter: Lessons from the World's Oldest People
    The documentary is not really about these older people but about this couple.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Miriam Bale
    Vikingdom
    Poor computer-generated effects give the movie an unsettling, two-layered feel.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Miriam Bale
    The Spy: Undercover Operation
    It’s amusing, and a refreshing change from the usual C.G.I.-heavy blockbusters.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Miriam Bale
    Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
    At times it felt as if this film might challenge Pixar’s decade-long reign, but that promise wanes. Instead, the movie is sometimes so strange, colorful and wildly cute that it may end up becoming a “Yellow Submarine” for a new generation.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Miriam Bale
    The Muslims Are Coming!
    This well-intentioned “docu-comedy” (as the filmmakers label it in publicity notes) is not very funny.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Miriam Bale
    Men at Lunch
    The film feels meandering. Not only does it offer a jumble of ideas that aren’t followed through, but it’s also structured oddly.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 10 Miriam Bale
    Battle of the Year
    The miracle of the new 3-D dance film Battle of the Year is how it can be so relentlessly boring while there is so much frenetic activity on screen.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Miriam Bale
    Herb & Dorothy 50X50
    It’s difficult to dislike a documentary with such noble, generous subjects, but the film is unfocused and repetitious, not sure whether it is a road trip, a story of a couple or an exploration of small art institutions.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Miriam Bale
    Mademoiselle C
    The filmmaking has some of the wit and irreverence of its subject, but goes on meandering tangents rather than having a cohesive vision or tone.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 20 Miriam Bale
    Bounty Killer
    Watching this movie feels like viewing a very long, expensive car commercial and waiting for the real film to begin.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Miriam Bale
    Fire in the Blood
    This virtuous stance is not unusual for issue-based documentaries, but a film with such illuminating content deserves a more artful vehicle for its moving message.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Miriam Bale
    Best Kept Secret
    Best Kept Secret is an exemplary documentary: It spotlights an important issue yet never seeks to squeeze the truth into an easily digestible narrative frame. Instead it expands its storytelling to the boundaries of messy, joyful and painful reality.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Miriam Bale
    One Direction: This Is Us
    With a group so evidently versed in the visuals of rock history, it’s a shame that a filmmaker wasn’t hired who would pay homage to classic pop films instead of offering a satisfactory paid promotional.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Miriam Bale
    The United States of Football
    The film is a thorough piece of reporting on the issues, characters and deeper cultural ramifications. But rather than present this impressive investigation as an objective reporter, Mr. Pamphilon makes the film, perhaps unnecessarily, a personal story.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Miriam Bale
    Devil's Pass
    The film is ridiculous and laugh-out-loud funny, though it’s sometimes hard to tell if this is intentional or not. Either way, it remains riveting because of its effective tropes.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 100 Miriam Bale
    Jajouka, Something Good Comes to You
    The film’s strange mixture of primitive and poetic images becomes etched into memory. Weaving observation and a shared dream state, this is an intuitive and intricate exploration into the feeling of sound.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Miriam Bale
    The Artist and the Model
    It is a film with nothing but delight — no major revelations, no gravity and no meaning. This superficiality is a problem only because of the pretense of being about great art.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Miriam Bale
    Wasteland
    To borrow from a term for the gritty, working-class British dramas that this film also nods to, it’s a kitchen-sink caper.

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