HCMovieReviews: a volunteer-run entertainment blog, talking film and TV since 2013.
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Top 50 Films of 2023
New year, same drill. With another twelve months of movies having come to an end, its time to look back, reflect and rank 2023’s very best. This list is based on UK/Ireland general release dates, so films such as The Holdovers, Poor Things and The Zone of Interest that have screened at festivals in 2023 but…
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REVIEW: Anatomy of a Fall (Belfast Film Festival)
(spoiler free) Winning the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes can be both a blessing and a curse. Of course, it immediately raises the profile of the recipient, but it also dramatically increases audience expectation. Over the coming weeks and months of the festival circuit, living up to the hype generated from receiving this prize can…
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REVIEW: Lie of the Land (Belfast Film Festival)
(spoiler free) After his formidable performance in Chris Baugh’s Bad Day for the Cut (2017), actor Nigel O’Neill has once again found himself playing a local farmer caught in a spot of bother. Now, in John Carlin’s Lie of the Land, he stars as one half of farming couple the Wards, with Ali White playing…
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REVIEW: How to Have Sex (Belfast Film Festival)
(spoiler free) Over the last decade or so it’s been well-documented just how essential the first big, boozy, summer holiday abroad has become for many teenagers. Reality shows such as BBC Three’s Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents (and many other similar iterations since) gave an insight into the outrageous antics that often occur on these…
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REVIEW: The Royal Hotel (London Film Festival 2023)
(spoiler free) From the opening moments of writer-director Kitty Green’s The Royal Hotel, it’s clear that her sophomore feature will continue the depiction of misogyny and male violence against women that she previously explored in her critically-acclaimed debut film, The Assistant (2019). American backpackers Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are travelling across Australia…
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REVIEW: Asog (London Film Festival 2023)
(spoiler free) In November 2013 the Philippines experienced one of the worst ever tropical cyclones. Typhoon Haiyan, also known as Super Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines, was the most intense tropical cyclone of that year and tragically claimed thousands of lives, while devastating the homes of many more. It’s in the destructive wake of this…
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REVIEW: No One Will Save You
(spoiler free) Having previously penned the screenplays for Underwater (2020) and Love and Monsters (2020) – both of which are well worth a watch – writer-director Brian Duffield is certainly no stranger to the creature feature. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that his sophomore directorial effort, No One Will Save You, once again sees him pit…
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REVIEW: Passages (EIFF 2023)
(spoiler free) German actor Franz Rogowski is currently in the midst of an exciting rise to fame. In the last number of years he’s starred and impressed in, among others, festival favourite, Undine (2020) and Austria’s 2022 Oscars entry for Best International Feature, Great Freedom (2021). He’s got plenty in the pipeline too, with upcoming…
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REVIEW: Scrapper (EIFF 2023)
(spoiler free) Kitchen-sink dramas have often been characterised by their drab, colourless settings. And while these features are sometimes appropriate, they’re hardly representative of working-class domestic settings as a whole. First-time feature film director Charlotte Regan clearly thinks so too, as her debut, Scrapper, couldn’t be further from these somewhat reductive genre trademarks. After sadly…
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REVIEW: Hello, Bookstore
(spoiler free) At first glance Hello, Bookstore would simply appear to be a film about a small, struggling, local business, trying to survive the pandemic. And while this isn’t untrue of Adam Zax’s documentary, it’s also not really what the film’s about. This is just the blurb; designed to persuade audiences to take a chance…
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