Marcus Hale

Marcus Hale leads Trumpwatcher's reviewing desk. He earned his BFA in Film Studies from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2014, and has spent the eleven years since then writing about cinema for regional alternative weeklies, independent film blogs, and craft-focused journals. His reviewing philosophy is straightforward: a film deserves to be judged by the choices its makers actually controlled — the script on the page, the lens choice on the day, the cut in the editing bay, the tempo of the score. Star ratings are a shorthand; the real argument belongs in the paragraphs that explain them.

Marcus came to film criticism through the back door. He was a projectionist at a single-screen revival house in Brooklyn for four years during and after college, and that physical relationship with celluloid — splicing reels, watching the same picture forty times in a month, hearing audiences laugh or stay silent at the same beat — taught him more about what makes a film work than any academic seminar. He still believes a great review is one you remember after the film leaves you.

At Trumpwatcher he covers theatrical and streaming releases, with particular attention to mid-budget character dramas, contemporary thrillers, and the directors who have built careers outside the franchise machine. He does not accept screening fees, paid trips, or unreleased screeners. He has never written about a film he has not personally watched start to finish. Reach him through the contact form for review pitches or corrections.