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Hugh Barnes

Hugh Barnes's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at Tomatometer-approved publication(s).
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Sudan, Remember Us (2024) 100% 4/5 EDIT “Often Meddeb steps beyond traditional documentary techniques to explore a soixante-huitard culture of agitprop, poetry, music and rap that lies at the heart of Sudan’s fight for freedom.” – The Arts Desk Jul 1, 2025 Full Review Words of War (2025) 75% 3/5 EDIT “...[Maxine] Peake here marvellously conveys an empathy and listening style that enabled Polikovskaya as a reporter to win the trust of Chechen civilians.” – The Arts Desk May 8, 2025 Full Review Two to One (2024) 3/5 EDIT “... [Two to One] looks great but never quite manages to fly, even if the charm of Kurth, whenever he’s on-screen, almost brushes the dust off its wings.” – The Arts Desk May 5, 2025 Full Review The Problem with People (2024) 72% 1/5 EDIT “The main problem with The Problem With People is its woefully cliché-ridden script, which could have been copied and pasted from dozens of buddy films.” – The Arts Desk Nov 8, 2024 Full Review The Room Next Door (2024) 80% 2/5 EDIT “The artificiality of the setting, as well as of the dialogue, constantly jolts the film out of its story.” – The Arts Desk Oct 30, 2024 Full Review Endurance (2024) 70% 2/5 EDIT “The moment of discovery itself can’t avoid a certain sinking feeling of bathos.” – The Arts Desk Oct 16, 2024 Full Review Timestalker (2024) 87% 3/5 EDIT “Timestalker is totally -- and delightfully -- bonkers right from its first scene.” – The Arts Desk Oct 11, 2024 Full Review The Teacher (2023) 83% 3/5 EDIT “The political context of this first feature by British-Palestinian director Farah Nabulsi, who also wrote the screenplay, is so thoroughly appalling that it sometimes overshadows the TV-style melodrama onscreen.” – The Arts Desk Oct 1, 2024 Full Review My Favourite Cake (2024) 100% 5/5 EDIT “Go and see this film: it’s not only a work of art, it’s also a strike for freedom.” – The Arts Desk Sep 16, 2024 Full Review Priscilla (2023) 84% 3/5 EDIT “Coppola’s movie is superficial in the best sense. It eschews profundity in favour of surfaces. There is no subtext, really. In fact, right from the opening sequence, the film glamourises textures.” – The Arts Desk Jan 2, 2024 Full Review Tchaikovsky's Wife (2022) 85% 2/5 EDIT “The film is so lavishly dressed and shot (by cinematographer Vladislav Opelyants) that the human story gets lost in all the handsome but inert costume drama.” – The Arts Desk Jan 2, 2024 Full Review Dance First (2023) 43% 3/5 EDIT “Byrne gives a thoughtful performance as a successful writer clinging desperately to his own imperative of failure.” – The Arts Desk Nov 6, 2023 Full Review Our River...Our Sky (2021) 3/5 EDIT “Pachachi captures the atmosphere of Baghdad, and her large cast of actors excels in the naturalistic mode of a film beautifully shot in widescreen by Jonathan Bloom.” – The Arts Desk Oct 24, 2023 Full Review 20 Days in Mariupol (2023) 100% 4/5 EDIT “An emotionally devastating account of the inhumanity of war.” – The Arts Desk Oct 9, 2023 Full Review Strange Way of Life (2023) 78% 3/5 EDIT “Strange Way of Life is a minor work by a master filmmaker because unlike its lush orchestral score by Alberto Iglesias, the dramatic content of the movie feels a bit thin. On the other hand, Almodóvar serves up half an hour of fetishistic fun.” – The Arts Desk Sep 26, 2023 Full Review Mercy Falls - How Far Would You Fall To Survive? (2023) 63% 3/5 EDIT “The film is oddly watchable, maybe because its real star is John Rhodes’s cinematography of the Scottish highlands, a glorious patchwork of light and mist and trees and crags and glens on the way to the eponymous waterfall. ” – The Arts Desk Sep 5, 2023 Full Review The Red Shoes: Next Step (2023) 33% 2/5 EDIT “Co-directors Jesse Ahern and Joanne Samuel, who made the 2019 children’s fantasy adventure The Legend of the Five, have also crafted a story about ballet and bereavement, but theirs has the shallow, implausible feel of a soap opera by comparison.” – The Arts Desk Aug 25, 2023 Full Review Lie with Me (2022) 97% 4/5 EDIT “Lie With Me is an enchanting film about the disenchantment of growing up.” – The Arts Desk Aug 19, 2023 Full Review A Kind of Kidnapping (2023) 50% 3/5 EDIT “Clark is a talented director who delivers more than just a clever set-up with A Kind of Kidnapping. His characters are both plausible and surprising, and he comes up with several intriguing plot points, even if the dialogue itself could be sharper.” – The Arts Desk Jul 17, 2023 Full Review Harka (2022) 94% 3/5 EDIT “In the hands of a more visceral director, someone like Ken Loach perhaps, this slow demolition of an ordinary person... might have felt less didactic and exploitative. Unfortunately, Nathan’s script lays it on a bit thick with the doom and despair.” – The Arts Desk May 8, 2023 Full Review The Laureate (2021) 45% 2/5 EDIT “In homage to Graves perhaps, The Laureate is itself borderline absurd, another expensive foray into sub-Bloomsbury period porn in which a troupe of handsome actors impersonate shell-shocked intellectuals.” – The Arts Desk May 8, 2023 Full Review Pamfir (2022) 94% 3/5 EDIT “As the plot hurtles toward a violent resolution... Pamfir begins to feel outdated in a different way. A downward spiral of crime caper clichés take us from Wes Anderson to Guy Ritchie or Quentin Tarantino. ” – The Arts Desk Apr 24, 2023 Full Review
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