Hal is a documentary that helps to remind us to stick to the man and to keep fighting for art even if it means going up against the big studio executives.

| Oct 11, 2024

Ashby experienced an outburst of creativity and social criticism under the influence of the broad popular radicalization in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

| Feb 11, 2021

A stellar profile of the great filmmaker that is as radical and obsessive as its subject.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 7, 2020

The result is an unsatisfying human study, albeit a successful overview of Ashby's work.

| Mar 16, 2020

Hal is a fittingly well-built tribute to a man who's best known for his masterful films... And as a primer for a decade's worth of must-see films, particularly for those among us who profess to know a thing or two about the art form, it's essential.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 29, 2019

Ashby's story is also one of the battle between the auteur filmmaker and the studios, and one of fighting for artistic integrity in an industry that continues to define itself largely by commercial success.

| May 24, 2019

It's heartbreaking, insightful, moving, authentic, hilariously funny, and wonderfully entertaining...just like Hal Ashby's movies themselves.

| Original Score: 18.5/20 | Mar 11, 2019

So while it provides plenty of fascinating titbits for fans of 1970s cinema, Hal just doesn't feel like the definitive take on one of the decade's most-distinctive directorial voices.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 19, 2019

The film presents its case that Asbhy belongs right up there in the pantheon with his more celebrated contemporaries. It does a pretty good job of it as well.

| Feb 7, 2019

[Hal Ashby's] legacy has gotten a little, shall we say, dusty. But editor and first-time director Amy Scott aims to rectify that with the new documentary Hal.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 18, 2019

I usually complain that most movies could lose 20 minutes or so. Some of them should be longer. This is one of those.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 17, 2019

...a reflective meditation on the (high) life and (best) films of Hal Ashby, a director of note during the 1970s, when he churned out award-worthy films that now shape this debut documentary from Los Angeles-based editor Amy Stone.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 4, 2019

Scott inflates Ashby's legend to the same useless effect that the recent Brian De Palma doc deflated his artistry.

| Nov 2, 2018

Hal succeeds because it's willing to do more than just construct a hagiographical portrait of a great artist and a flawed man.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 29, 2018

Hal serves as a wonderful examination of a masterful director who had a lasting influence on generations of cinephiles.

| Original Score: B | Oct 17, 2018

Scott layers the requisite biographical information and talking-head praise with the intriguing insights, indelible anecdotes and dramatic readings of his often-dramatic letters.

| Oct 12, 2018

In making the case for Hal Ashby as a major director due for reassessment, Amy Scott's documentary exemplifies the notion of cinema as a powerful, complex tool of personal expression.

| Oct 11, 2018

If you loved any of the following movies (Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Coming Home and Being There), you need to see Hal, a documentary about Ashby's life as a pot-smoking, adventurous perfectionist.

| Oct 11, 2018

If ever a film needed a little more "Just Say No!" (and a little less defense of the eminently unwatchable Lookin' to Get Out) it's this, but first-time filmmaker Amy Scott insists on sugar coating the snow.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 5, 2018

With "Hal," Scott captures the essence of the artist, creating an active, enlightening documentary in the process.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 4, 2018