Hilary A White
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Beau Is Afraid (2023) |
Brilliant, perplexing, exhausting, indulgent, visionary. And yet Beau is Afraid will be hard work for some, particularly those who like neat and tidy endings. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted May 24, 2023
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Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played With Fire (2018) |
Riveting. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted May 17, 2023
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Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (2023) |
As for those too young to remember the era that Fox defined, this film will introduce them to an indomitable spirit who manages to locate humour in confronting the hand he’s been dealt. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted May 09, 2023
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One Fine Morning (2022) |
One Fine Morning slides along so smoothly that you barely notice the steady control being exerted from behind the camera. This is top-drawer urban drama for grown-ups, one that presents real people negotiating key crossroads in life. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted May 08, 2023
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Return to Seoul (2022) |
Cambodian writer-director Davy Chou finds depth and richness in the story of a young woman whose search for her roots makes her feel like a fish out of water. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted May 05, 2023
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Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023) |
Thunderous 12-bar blues cut with primal yelps made Little Richard a key building block of rock and roll. This documentary portrait doubles down on the idea, painting Richard Wayne Penniman as no less than “the big bang”. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted May 04, 2023
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How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022) |
A heist film with a muscular young ensemble cast, there are depths to Daniel Goldhaber's tense indie drama that recommend it. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Apr 20, 2023
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Sick of Myself (2022) |
This is built for those who like their satire served cold... So relentlessly lacerating is Signe's spectacular existential haemorrhage that it could be a revival of some horror-comedy from the heyday of the Grand Guignol. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Apr 20, 2023
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Suzume (2022) |
Its nuts and bolts perhaps aren’t hugely original. What certainly is, however, is the fantastical beauty and sheer, jaw-on-the-floor sweep of the animation. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Apr 20, 2023
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LOLA (2022) |
The sparkling chemistry between his two leads and the ramshackle setting add to a pleasantly unmoored register. Divine Comedy supremo Neil Hannon provides original song compositions, which is never a bad thing. - Irish Independent
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| Posted Mar 30, 2023
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The Night of the 12th (2022) |
Director and co-writer Dominik Moll uses controlled pacing and the jutting Alpine backdrop to give this excellent thriller the space to burn slowly but purposefully. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Mar 30, 2023
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The Beasts (2022) |
Between its bitter feud and sense of pastoral lawlessness, The Beasts is a timeless Western movie narrative that has been seamlessly transported to today’s northern Spain. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Mar 29, 2023
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God's Creatures (2022) |
Co-directors Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer build real tension and dread against a contained maritime community where the uncaring laws of nature have the final say. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Mar 29, 2023
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Rye Lane (2023) |
On her feature debut, director (and former advertising creative) Raine Allen-Miller makes a splash with a film so fresh in look and feel that it stands far apart from most other offerings in the genre. A modern classic? Just maybe. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Mar 23, 2023
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Boston Strangler (2023) |
Knightley and Coon duet with the lived-in feel of a seasoned screen pairing. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Mar 23, 2023
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My Sailor, My Love (2022) |
My Sailor, My Love is a romantic drama that manages to be both tender and laced with integrity. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Meet Me in the Bathroom (2022) |
This is more of a family photo album than a museum piece, a collection of musty Polaroids... As a companion piece to Goodman’s book, however, it will always be in the shade. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Mar 16, 2023
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Close (2022) |
Few films this or any year will leave such a mark on your heart and stay with you in the hours and days after house lights go up. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Mar 08, 2023
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About Joan (2022) |
Effortlessly magnetic throughout, Huppert is a solid base upon which to assemble the whole film’s superstructure, with Eidinger, Townsend, and Screen International Rising Star Éanna Hardwicke the other highlights. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Mar 08, 2023
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Broker (2022) |
A road movie that unwraps itself in sweet and hilarious ways to reveal a soft centre, this is more wonderful storytelling by Hirokazu Koreeda. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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Cocaine Bear (2023) |
[Cocaine Bear's] screenplay is so barmy and confusingly plotted that no amount of star-factor could lift it above the level of “stoner curio”. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Mar 02, 2023
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The Son (2022) |
While sleekly filmed and featuring a strong cast trio in Jackman, Dern and Kirby, this unrelenting two-hour melodrama is hard work by the time it wraps up. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Feb 24, 2023
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Atomic Hope (2022) |
A timely and stimulating film that shows us a very human side to a subject we’d rather ignore. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Feb 23, 2023
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Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023) |
Tatum’s physicality allows him to transcend his limitations as an actor, but Hayek steals the show. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Feb 15, 2023
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Women Talking (2022) |
It won’t be for everyone, but when all its guns are blazing, it’s impossible to look away from, especially as the grim underlay of the crime is teased out. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Feb 15, 2023
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Wildcat (2022) |
The interplay of wild splendour, fly-on-the-wall immediacy, and the knife-edge tension of Harry’s mental health stakes gives this a harrowing potency. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Jan 11, 2023
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Empire of Light (2022) |
Scant on-screen chemistry between the pair is not helped by Ward’s love interest being too thinly sketched. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Jan 11, 2023
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The Pale Blue Eye (2022) |
Writer-director Scott Cooper’s adaptation of Louis Bayard’s novel is a strange, crafty murder mystery laden with gothic atmosphere, tight plot turns, and a fantastic supporting ensemble. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Jan 05, 2023
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White Noise (2022) |
Where it works, the harmony seems immaculate between DeLillo’s source material and [Baumbach's] slightly knock-kneed style of humour... But in the closing chapters, the novel and the film butt heads and things come a little undone around the edges. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Jan 05, 2023
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Emancipation (2022) |
Antoine Fuqua has made a striking looking, feverishly taut survival thriller that occasionally delivers a grisly adrenaline rush similar to The Revenant or Apocalypto. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Dec 21, 2022
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Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022) |
Given the choice between this and Disney’s recent live-action remake of its 1940 classic, del Toro’s film is less cynical, more inspired, and infinitely more memorable. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Dec 15, 2022
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Lady Chatterley's Lover (2022) |
A sensual tingle rings through this effective period romance. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Dec 09, 2022
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Violent Night (2022) |
For all its devil-may-care mishmash of tropes and bludgeoning mayhem, Wirkola’s jape is not quite up to scratch as a future Christmas-nasty classic. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Dec 08, 2022
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Armageddon Time (2022) |
An excellent cast (watch out for Jessica Chastain) and a keen sense of time and place make this an effective piece of nostalgia cinema about the immigrant experience. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Nov 18, 2022
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Clouded Reveries (2022) |
Ní Ghríofa [is] a worthy subject for this suitably ethereal portrait by Ciara Nic Chormaic - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Nov 18, 2022
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The Wonder (2022) |
The Wonder has a weird, hypnotic tenor about it that you don’t expect but is hugely refreshing. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Nov 10, 2022
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Triangle of Sadness (2022) |
A bit on the nose, perhaps, but an anarchic, thought-provoking romp, all the same. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Nov 03, 2022
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The Good Nurse (2022) |
As a vehicle for its two celebrated leads, Lindholm’s film exceeds in allowing each to flex considerable muscle in key scenes. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Nov 03, 2022
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Holy Island (2021) |
Director and co-writer Robert Manson’s avant-garde fable about lost souls lingering at the departure lounge between heaven and home is strange, atmospheric and difficult to turn away from. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Oct 21, 2022
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The Woman King (2022) |
Everything -- performances, costumes, score, swashbuckling choreography, courtly intrigue -- comes together, as Dana Stevens’ screenplay hits all the right notes. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Oct 21, 2022
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All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) |
Particularly searing is how it depicts the flagrant disposability of the troops, their fate resting in the hands of pampered majors squabbling over armistice as if it were a business deal. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Oct 21, 2022
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Pure Grit (2020) |
A sonorous, intimate and beautifully captured portrait from an America that seldom visits our screens. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Oct 06, 2022
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Blonde (2022) |
Dominik’s film is an assault on her rather than a tribute to her, and that is what ultimately grates about the experience. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Oct 06, 2022
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After Yang (2021) |
The warm atmospherics and clean interiors -- cinematographer Benjamin Loeb deserves praise -- provide a meditative waft to a film that wears its philosophical substance lightly. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Sep 28, 2022
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Silent Land (2021) |
Subtle, sly imagery quakes loudly around the impossibly picturesque couple, as slow-panning shots depict an uncaring world turning away in the background. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Sep 28, 2022
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It Is In Us All (2022) |
Writer-director (and cast member) Antonia Campbell-Hughes depicts an outsider’s vision of a remote Ireland that is as dreary and haunting as it is heady. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Sep 28, 2022
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Crimes of the Future (2022) |
The singular vision, the score by Howard Shore, the Giger-esque prop design all contribute to making this a macabre, leftfield victory -- albeit one you’ll never want to watch again. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Sep 14, 2022
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Both Sides of the Blade (2021) |
Binoche... is the big draw here, brilliantly at home with a lost and conflicted character whose façade of assuredness is succumbing to feelings she is not entirely in control of. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Sep 14, 2022
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The Cry of Granuaile (2022) |
Foreman’s film mightn’t be enough to launch a fleet of ships but it has an off-kilter romance to it that is pulls you along. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Sep 14, 2022
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The Territory (2022) |
This is vital, searing documentary filmmaking from producer Darren Aronofsky in which the intimate nuts and bolts of rainforest depletion are zeroed in on. - Sunday Independent (Ireland)
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| Posted Sep 08, 2022
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