Phil Hall

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Film Threat
For 197 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 34% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 65% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 12.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Phil Hall's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 54
Highest review score: 100 Drift
Lowest review score: 0 The Groomsmen
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 59 out of 197
  2. Mixed: 84 out of 197
  3. Negative: 54 out of 197
197 movie reviews
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    • 54 Metascore
    • 100 Phil Hall
    Standing by Yourself
    It is a horrifying and devastating spectacle of life gone dreadfully out of control, yet it is also riveting and hypnotic in such a dramatic sensation that you are left breathless by the sequence of events which will haunt and torture for as long as your memory remains intact.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Phil Hall
    Once Upon a Time in the West (re-release)
    Alas, the big screen also magnifies the problems with Once Upon a Time in the West. Specifically, Leone’s insistence on style trumped the need for substance. The film is basically a B-Western stretched an agonizing 165 minutes.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 100 Phil Hall
    Union Square
    A raw, brutal, hypnotic journey into the world of seven heroin addicts who barely survive on the streets of New York City. It is a film of great sadness and pain.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Phil Hall
    Quality of Life
    With a clumsy hip-hop score permeating every free inch of the soundtrack and ugly 16mm cinematography that would never be allowed out of Film School 101, the audio-visual experience is a wreck. The quality of Quality of Life is non-existent.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Phil Hall
    A Woman Is a Woman
    What may have seemed energetic and innovative four decades ago is fairly enervated today, and only the most rabid Godard fanatics will find reason to seek out its new theatrical re-release.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 100 Phil Hall
    Xanadu
    How does Xanadu qualify as the greatest movie musical? Simple: it offers nothing but pure wall-to-wall fun and nonsense to keep a smile on one’s face from the opening credits (which cleverly spoof the logo of Universal Pictures) through the end of the picture. [11 Aug 2005]
    • 81 Metascore
    • 10 Phil Hall
    Bad Education
    Such garbage that taking a shower at the Bates Motel is a more appealing alternative.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Phil Hall
    Saraband
    One could literally milk a thesaurus in trying to find the right words to lavish on Saraband: brilliant, towering, majestic, challenging, remarkable.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Phil Hall
    Let It Be
    In many ways, Let it Be is the best Beatles film of all since they are not playing the Beatles but rather are being themselves.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 30 Phil Hall
    Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan
    Inert, inept epic.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Phil Hall
    Word Wars
    Quirky, entertaining documentary.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Phil Hall
    Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
    In throwing hatchets at Murdoch and his silly Fox network while pretending the rest of the media world is fine and objective, the film comes across as a shrill, one-note slam against a very easy target.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Phil Hall
    Rabbit-Proof Fence
    Achieves the impossible by taking one of the most compelling and harrowing stories imaginable and channeling it into one of the most ordinary movies of the year.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Phil Hall
    Short Cut to Nirvana: Kumbh Mela
    A beautifully crafted documentary.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 100 Phil Hall
    Drift
    One of the year's best films. An extraordinary work of intellectual maturity and emotional depth.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 10 Phil Hall
    Blackboards
    About as much fun as a grouchy ayatollah in a cold mosque.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Phil Hall
    Maestro
    Painfully boring.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Phil Hall
    The Great Water
    Grim and frequently depressing, and despite the artistry of its framing it nonetheless is a very difficult movie to endure.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 30 Phil Hall
    Chicago
    Chicago is a failure, but that should not come as a surprise. Bob Fosse, who directed and choreographed the original 1975 Broadway production, was long baffled in making a film of the show and eventually gave up trying.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Phil Hall
    Dogville
    If Dogville has a reason for importance, it is the astonishing all-star ensemble who try very hard to put life into their cardboard characters and make this silly film work.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Phil Hall
    Through the Fire
    Through the Fire is a fraud masquerading as a documentary.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Phil Hall
    Tsotsi
    Tsotsi emerges as being among the finest films ever to come out of Africa. It is a brilliant, jolting and altogether powerful blast of energy and emotion.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Phil Hall
    Golda's Balcony
    Reconfigured into a very different one-woman movie by Gibson and director Jeremy Kagan. Unfortunately, the transformation was not successful.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 40 Phil Hall
    Vera Drake
    The film's screenplay is thick with major lapses in logic, resulting in a story that ultimately makes little sense.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Phil Hall
    Siddhartha (re-release)
    An extraordinary achievement on all possible levels.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Phil Hall
    Paradise Now
    Filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad, who helmed the excellent "Rana's Wedding," missed the boat on this one. He may have hoped to give a human voice to the suicide bombers, but instead he gave them a misfired movie.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Phil Hall
    The Road to Guantanamo
    For telling America to acknowledge how far the country has deviated from its values and how painfully it has failed to make the world safer, this is the most important movie of the year.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 30 Phil Hall
    The Quiet
    The Quiet is best for cheap laughs by jaded moviegoers with absolutely nothing better to do with their time.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Phil Hall
    Lightning in a Bottle
    A documentary which wobbles and weaves as much as often as it soars.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 10 Phil Hall
    Beyond the Sea
    Such a hopeless mess that there's no fun in tossing insults at its endless shortcomings.
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