Okay, here we have The 5th Annual HCA Film Awards, a film awards ceremony from 2022. Those took place back in February 2022, so it is over a year now since this event and I actually came across them after watching the 2023 edition of this awards show or actually after finding the 2023 edition I should say. And before watching it already. This is from the Hollywood Critics Association and I wish I could say differently, but you can see from the title that this association or rather the event do not have a great deal of history. But this is no huge surprise either as we all know there are other critics circles handing out awards bodies in the area, like the one in Los Angeles that is quite famous and also has huge tradition. But the world "Hollywood" alone offers a certain amount of glamour of course, so no surprise that these ones here also get some attention and coverage. Admittedly, you also have to give them props for uploading the ceremonies on their Youtube channel. Well, not each and every single one of them, but at least the most recent ones and there I am also referring to the television awards, for which this group of critics has their own awards show and that maybe elevated them from the rest as these only focus on releases from movie theaters and no small screen stuff, even if this means that the term Hollywood is a bit misleading in this context then. Hollywood is always associated with movie theater releases. This was a massive show in terms of the running time. Pretty unreal. This entire thing went on for over three hours and forty minutes, so way more than 200 minutes in total, more than 220 even. There were moments even when some people that were part of the show apologized to the audience and justify it by finally having a chance again to have this show take place, have people in the room etc. It must have been people from the critics group as well who apologized because honestly, if they weren't why would they, but this show represents them. The host did not apologize I think, but she told us at the very end that she had another musical number planned and they probably canceled it to make sure that this is not going on for over four hours. Tough to say though if she was telling the truth there or if she was just making another joke about the duration.
I thought she did a fine hosting job overall. When she was on screen, it elevated the show. It wasn't (only) her looks, but I felt she was an example of how women in the industry can actually be funny. Her name is Annaleigh Ashford by the way, prolific actress for years now and I would not mind seeing her get some awards attention eventually for some stuff she did. I mean she was really the complete opposite compared to Tig Notaro who hosted the 2023 edition, but it is okay. Notaro just has a different style and does not rely on energy really. Some of her stuff was funny too, but if I had to decide which host I preferred more, I would not hesitate one bit before I picked Ashford. How she got the big names in the audience involved with the "We don't talk about..." number at the start was pretty cool. I still wonder if they knew this was going to happen. But look at the names there. It was not only Nicolas Cage. Ron Perlman seemed a bit grumpy as always, but eventually he was won over by Ashford's drive as well. Pretty cool opening. I guess I will just go on with some brainstorming here for the review then. Not a great amount of structure: One thing that does feel a bit bizarre here is that Dune won the most awards that night, also had the most nominations from all movies before that, but it never felt like a big winner at all, probably because it was not really the key categories and I am not even sure if many of those were included in the broadcast or just rushed in or whatever. A bit disappointing. The second-most wins were for the film CODA and that I surely like. I am still happy that this won at the Oscars too and not the extremely overrated "The Power of the Dog". Campion triumphed almost everywhere nonetheless, but here it was a shared victory as she and Denis Villeneuve scored the same amount of votes overall. Campion accepted the awards on a prerecorded video, so she already knew she would win and same is true for some of the other winners who also were not present there that night, but accepted the award beforehand.
Nonetheless, it must be said that the amount of winners present and the amount of big names from the film industry was quite decent. I will spare you all the names now, but you can check out the "cast list" on imdb if you want and are curious. At the 2023 event, hardly anybody was there honestly. Pretty much no big names at all and this surely looked different in 2022. I still found it a bit of a pity that the likes of Nicolas Cage and Caítriona Balfe used their screen time to make random comments about the Russian war against Ukraine and did not focus fully on the awards and industry instead. I never like inclusions of politics at awards ceremonies, but hey at least they did not broadcast a speech from the Ukrainian President yet at that point. Dark times. Anyway, I mention Balfe and Cage in particular because these two were among my favorites from the entire show that night and Balfe I adore so much especially in "Belfast". Maybe my favorite supporting performance of the year and a real travesty that she did not get in at the Oscars after all her precursor attention. I would have loved to see her win in fact. But yeah, let's step away from the Oscars again and look at this event here. I already mentioned the surreal running time. What also felt a bit strange was that they did not even fill it all with competitive awards categories. On the contrary, it seemed that the longer the event went (that almost rhymes even, what kind of play on words is this), the more honorary awards they gave out, non-competitive awards. Te show was literally packed with those. This did feel a bit strange and off the mark, even if I liked some of the recipients. But here we should keep in mind especially that critics are the ones usually say a film is good or bad, better or worse than another and for some reason they stuffed this show with awards where it did not matter if somebody was better than somebody else. They should have excluded most of these. Then they also would have stayed under the three-hour mark.
On a completely different note, Kotsur's rise to Oscar glory was reflected here as well, but his biggest (pretty young) competitor from the Academy Awards then was not even nominated here, so the win came easy. Andrew Garfield's win in the lead actor category was definitely a positive surprise. They clearly loved his film quite a bit here, more than most other awards bodies and I was delighted to see him defeat Cumberbatch here and especially see him defeat Will Smith. Kristen Stewart was Garfield's equivalent on the women's side and she maybe had a slightly better chance at the Oscars, but eventually both came short, but they are surely among the defining actors from their generation these days and I like them both. Admittedly, I am not the biggest Encanto fan, but seeing Beatriz win was still nice because I liked many aspects from her television comedy cop series. In general, I would say that the winners here felt fairly inspired. As a German, I happily mention Hans Zimmer this time, who was also not present, but here in my city in fact, in his home country, and not far away from the Brandenburg Gate were a demonstration linked to the war was about to take place. He filmed it from some balcony or so. So, I have to correct the number of artists that I liked that sadly came up with political statements that night from two to three even. Oh yeah, everybody also loved Jude Hill back then. I wonder what is going to happen with his career once he grows up. I must say I was not too overwhelmed by his child performance in "Belfast", but he was alright. The grown-ups carried the film for me. Jamie Dornan can be included there as well and of course with his speech how critics have treated him in the past, it was a priceless inclusion, but also one that felt very true and heartfelt even, yet funny at the same time. Definitely a very talented actor and I am happy for him Belfast became such a hit and I am looking forward to seeing him in other films.
One I must definitely mention in this context is also Sir Kenneth Branagh. The more I see from him and read about him, the more I adore him really. He seems to not care one bit what newspaper and biased press releases are saying about particular actors, but he just casts whoever he thinks is right for the role and I have huge respect for everybody who does not care about the mainstream media's desperate and despicable attempts to take over certain film production aspects.. Hope Branagh can keep going like this for a long time. Overall, I would say that certainly this was not really a particularly good awards show. It was also not tragically bad or anything, but running longer than the Oscars yeah, it was just too much. Here and there we had a few attractive women as part of the show which always helps, but this also does not apply to everybody. Kristen Stewart really made the blonde work though in the end. I did not expect that as I am generally not too big on blonde girls, especially when I know them with darker hair, but she makes everything shine these days it seems. It can be said that the films and everything else that were honored here during this show, no matter if through wins or nominations, were pretty much superior to the show itself. So yeah, better watch the content featured on here than the event itself and if the HCA Film Awards want to have a bright future and reach a 15th birthday one day or a 50th even, then they still have a long way to go. Or maybe not because so many big award shows with long traditions have been way worse in recent years than this one here. I say skip it though.
I thought she did a fine hosting job overall. When she was on screen, it elevated the show. It wasn't (only) her looks, but I felt she was an example of how women in the industry can actually be funny. Her name is Annaleigh Ashford by the way, prolific actress for years now and I would not mind seeing her get some awards attention eventually for some stuff she did. I mean she was really the complete opposite compared to Tig Notaro who hosted the 2023 edition, but it is okay. Notaro just has a different style and does not rely on energy really. Some of her stuff was funny too, but if I had to decide which host I preferred more, I would not hesitate one bit before I picked Ashford. How she got the big names in the audience involved with the "We don't talk about..." number at the start was pretty cool. I still wonder if they knew this was going to happen. But look at the names there. It was not only Nicolas Cage. Ron Perlman seemed a bit grumpy as always, but eventually he was won over by Ashford's drive as well. Pretty cool opening. I guess I will just go on with some brainstorming here for the review then. Not a great amount of structure: One thing that does feel a bit bizarre here is that Dune won the most awards that night, also had the most nominations from all movies before that, but it never felt like a big winner at all, probably because it was not really the key categories and I am not even sure if many of those were included in the broadcast or just rushed in or whatever. A bit disappointing. The second-most wins were for the film CODA and that I surely like. I am still happy that this won at the Oscars too and not the extremely overrated "The Power of the Dog". Campion triumphed almost everywhere nonetheless, but here it was a shared victory as she and Denis Villeneuve scored the same amount of votes overall. Campion accepted the awards on a prerecorded video, so she already knew she would win and same is true for some of the other winners who also were not present there that night, but accepted the award beforehand.
Nonetheless, it must be said that the amount of winners present and the amount of big names from the film industry was quite decent. I will spare you all the names now, but you can check out the "cast list" on imdb if you want and are curious. At the 2023 event, hardly anybody was there honestly. Pretty much no big names at all and this surely looked different in 2022. I still found it a bit of a pity that the likes of Nicolas Cage and Caítriona Balfe used their screen time to make random comments about the Russian war against Ukraine and did not focus fully on the awards and industry instead. I never like inclusions of politics at awards ceremonies, but hey at least they did not broadcast a speech from the Ukrainian President yet at that point. Dark times. Anyway, I mention Balfe and Cage in particular because these two were among my favorites from the entire show that night and Balfe I adore so much especially in "Belfast". Maybe my favorite supporting performance of the year and a real travesty that she did not get in at the Oscars after all her precursor attention. I would have loved to see her win in fact. But yeah, let's step away from the Oscars again and look at this event here. I already mentioned the surreal running time. What also felt a bit strange was that they did not even fill it all with competitive awards categories. On the contrary, it seemed that the longer the event went (that almost rhymes even, what kind of play on words is this), the more honorary awards they gave out, non-competitive awards. Te show was literally packed with those. This did feel a bit strange and off the mark, even if I liked some of the recipients. But here we should keep in mind especially that critics are the ones usually say a film is good or bad, better or worse than another and for some reason they stuffed this show with awards where it did not matter if somebody was better than somebody else. They should have excluded most of these. Then they also would have stayed under the three-hour mark.
On a completely different note, Kotsur's rise to Oscar glory was reflected here as well, but his biggest (pretty young) competitor from the Academy Awards then was not even nominated here, so the win came easy. Andrew Garfield's win in the lead actor category was definitely a positive surprise. They clearly loved his film quite a bit here, more than most other awards bodies and I was delighted to see him defeat Cumberbatch here and especially see him defeat Will Smith. Kristen Stewart was Garfield's equivalent on the women's side and she maybe had a slightly better chance at the Oscars, but eventually both came short, but they are surely among the defining actors from their generation these days and I like them both. Admittedly, I am not the biggest Encanto fan, but seeing Beatriz win was still nice because I liked many aspects from her television comedy cop series. In general, I would say that the winners here felt fairly inspired. As a German, I happily mention Hans Zimmer this time, who was also not present, but here in my city in fact, in his home country, and not far away from the Brandenburg Gate were a demonstration linked to the war was about to take place. He filmed it from some balcony or so. So, I have to correct the number of artists that I liked that sadly came up with political statements that night from two to three even. Oh yeah, everybody also loved Jude Hill back then. I wonder what is going to happen with his career once he grows up. I must say I was not too overwhelmed by his child performance in "Belfast", but he was alright. The grown-ups carried the film for me. Jamie Dornan can be included there as well and of course with his speech how critics have treated him in the past, it was a priceless inclusion, but also one that felt very true and heartfelt even, yet funny at the same time. Definitely a very talented actor and I am happy for him Belfast became such a hit and I am looking forward to seeing him in other films.
One I must definitely mention in this context is also Sir Kenneth Branagh. The more I see from him and read about him, the more I adore him really. He seems to not care one bit what newspaper and biased press releases are saying about particular actors, but he just casts whoever he thinks is right for the role and I have huge respect for everybody who does not care about the mainstream media's desperate and despicable attempts to take over certain film production aspects.. Hope Branagh can keep going like this for a long time. Overall, I would say that certainly this was not really a particularly good awards show. It was also not tragically bad or anything, but running longer than the Oscars yeah, it was just too much. Here and there we had a few attractive women as part of the show which always helps, but this also does not apply to everybody. Kristen Stewart really made the blonde work though in the end. I did not expect that as I am generally not too big on blonde girls, especially when I know them with darker hair, but she makes everything shine these days it seems. It can be said that the films and everything else that were honored here during this show, no matter if through wins or nominations, were pretty much superior to the show itself. So yeah, better watch the content featured on here than the event itself and if the HCA Film Awards want to have a bright future and reach a 15th birthday one day or a 50th even, then they still have a long way to go. Or maybe not because so many big award shows with long traditions have been way worse in recent years than this one here. I say skip it though.
