Critical Week: And I feel fine

By far the most enjoyable press screening of the past week was the apocalyptic comedy This Is the End (with James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel and Danny McBride, above). Reviews are embargoed for a couple of weeks so I can't say any more. We also had screenings of Baz Luhrmann's lavishly entertaining version of The Great Gatsby, which sharply captures the hollowness under the hedonistic excess. Then there was the underwritten British spy thriller The Numbers Station starring John Cusack, and Marlon Wayans' ghost-movie spoof A Haunted House, which is better than it looks but still a missed opportunity.

Further off the beaten path we had the fragmented British romance/drama/romp Spike Island, a choppy story about teen Stone Roses fans in 1990; the topical and deeply involving low-budget German drama The Visitor; and a 50th anniversary restoration of John Schlesinger's timeless British comedy Billy Liar, starring the fabulous Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie. It's simply wonderful - get your hands on a copy.

Just before it opens, the press will finally get to see the end of the trilogy with The Hangover Part III. I also have screenings of Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, the thriller Black Rock, Studio Gibli's From Up on Poppy Hill, the Canadian comedy The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mum and the French drama Atomic Age. And it's another long weekend here, so maybe I can carry on catching up with my stack of DVD screeners.

Requisite Blog Photo vs The Apocalypse

Critical Week: Man in the mirror

Michael Shannon held our attention at the press screening of his new thriller The Iceman, based on the true story of a mob hitman - a gritty, punchy film with superior performances. The other big movies this week weren't quite as smart: Fast & Furious 6 is the polar extreme, with idiotic action that's enjoyable but starting to feel stale; the animated adventure Epic is visually amazing, with some terrific comical moments and action scenes but an uneven, simplistic tone; and The Moth Diaries is a suitably gothic and creepy drama set in an isolated girls' school that struggles to reach a decent payoff.

From off the beaten path came the Austrian fable The Wall, a kind of female Robinson Crusoe in the mountains story that is too literary for its own good. Blackfish and We're Not Broke are two extremely well-made docs that get our blood boiling about psychological cruelty to animals and corporate collusion with politicians, respectively. And Pasolini's 1968 masterpiece Theorem is a challenging, surreal exploration of class and culture starring a strikingly young and seductive Terence Stamp.

Coming this week is a very late press screening of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (it's timed to coincide with the opening night screening at Cannes), Emma Watson in The Bling Ring, Seth Rogen and James Franco in This Is the End, Robert Redford's political drama The Company You Keep and the comedy A Haunted House.

And no, I'm not going to Cannes, staying in rainy London instead...

Requisite Blog Photo: Sunday with the slugs

Critical Week: London's burning

London was the centre of the Star Trek universe last week with the first press screenings of JJ Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness, an epic press junket at City Hall looking over the river at the skyline (not burning in real life but glistening in the spring sunshine) and a mammoth world premiere in Leicester Square. I attended two press screenings and hugely enjoyed the film both times. It's definitely one for the fans, as those who don't know the back-story will struggle to understand the significance of the plot and characters, but the cast is terrific. Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban and Alice Eve were all on great form at the press event.

Also last week, we had Paul Walker in the rather implausible but involving Johannesburg road thriller Vehicle 19, Tim Roth and Jack O'Connell in the darkly comical British crime thriller The Liability, Alexey Balabanov's violent and pointed black comedy The Stoker, and the Belgian-Turkish culture clash drama-romance Mixed Kebab. I also planned a Madeline Kahn marathon over the long weekend with friends who had never seen her best work. We thoroughly enjoyed the genius of What's Up Doc and Young Frankenstein, but the warm sunshine tempted us to put off Blazing Saddles for another day. Frankly, those are three films I could happily watch on a loop.

This coming week, we have Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, the uber-reunion sequel Fast & Furious 6, Michael Shannon in The Iceman, the animated adventure Epic, the German fable The Wall, the acclaimed doc Blackfish, and a second attempt to see the Brazilian doc Tropicalia after a projector issue cancelled last week's screening. I also still have to see those reissues: Theorem, The King of Marvin Gardens and Billy Liar - let's hope for bad weather this weekend!

Critical Week: He's smokin'

Jason Statham strutted through the London press screening of Hummingbird, a much more thoughtful and darkly emotional thriller than he usually offers us. Set in Soho, Chinatown and Covent Garden, it was also fun to see the streets outside the screening room represented so stylishly. More action came in two "dead" movies: Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace are both on very personal revenge missions in Dead Man Down, a stylish but nonsensical mob thriller that holds our interest even if we never believe it; and Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde are outlaw siblings in Deadfall, a stylish but nonsensical family dysfunction thriller that shifts into deranged guilty pleasure mode as it goes along, largely thanks to Sissy Spacek.

We also had a double dose of unsettling nastiness in The Seasoning House, a dark dramatic thriller about a rather too-grubby brothel in the 1990s Balkans, and the gimmicky 26-part The ABCs of Death, a mixed bag of good, merely ok, bad and utterly pointless shorts. The most original film of the week was the gentle Italian drama Shun Li and the Poet, about a lovely friendship between two immigrants in a fishing village near Venice.

I saw rather a lot more films this past week as part of the Sundance London Music and Film Festival - scroll down for comments on all of those.

This coming week, the big one screening for the London press is Star Trek Into Darkness - plus a press conference with the entire cast and crew. And we also have Paul Walker in Vehicle 19, Alex Balabanov's The Stoker, the Brazilian doc Tropicalia and three newly restored classics: Tom Conti in John Schlesinger's Billy Liar (1963), Terence Stamp in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Theorem (1968) and Jack Nicholson in Bob Rafelson's The King of Marvin Gardens (1972).

Sundance London: Day 4

And so it winds to an end, the second Sundance Film & Music Festival dragged me out to the O2 every day for the past week to see some very good films indeed (and a few only ok ones). My 5 best of the festival are In a World, Blood Brother, God Loves Uganda, The Kings of Summer and History of the Eagles Part One. Here are a few final notes...

Upstream Color
dir Shane Carruth; with Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth 13/US ***
Carruth is back with an even more challenging film than Primer, eschewing traditional narrative to create a sensual thriller based on visual and audio textures. But there's not much in the way of coherent plot or characterisation. It's a bit infuriating, as it indulgently refuses to coalesce into something focussed, but as a cinematic experience, it's pretty fascinating. It centres on a woman (Seimetz) who is robbed with the use of a trance-inducing worm. When she wakes up afterwards, she has a strange connection to a cyclical system involving pigs, a sound recordist and the other people who have been robbed this way, including a man (Carruth) she falls in love with. We never really have a clue what's happening, but the film is gorgeously shot and edited, with a stunning sound mix. And in the end, it's more like an eerily emotional David Lynch thriller than Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, which it strongly resembles.

A.C.O.D. 
dir Stu Zicherman; with Adam Scott, Richard Jenkins 13/US ***
There's a strong autobiographical feeling to this comedy, in the sense that the filmmaker is using it to work out his own issues as an Adult Child of Divorce. Yes, it feels like an act of therapy rather than an actual organic comedy. Fortunately, it has a strong cast of comedy experts who make it both funny and engaging. Scott stars as a guy terrified by the thought of his brother (Clark Duke) getting married, because it means their feuding parents (Jenkins and Catherine O'Hara) will be in a room together. So he turns to his childhood therapist (the magnificent Jane Lynch) for help, and discovers that he was the subject of a book as a child. And now she wants to write about him again as an ACOD. The dialog is snappy and often hilarious, performed to perfection by an up-for-it cast who know how to deliver a punchline. So it's a bit annoying that the plot itself feels so contrived, cycling through the expected situations on the way to the expected conclusion. The cast includes Amy Poehler, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ken Howard and Jessica Alba. Yes, really.

The Inevitible Defeat of Mister & Pete
dir George Tillman Jr; with Skylan Brooks, Ethan Dizon 13/US *** 
A strong story helps make up for this film's somewhat pushy tone, as it features young actors who are simply too sophisticated for their characters. But it's still thoroughly engaging, winning us over with its open-hearted approach and the tenacity of people living in such a difficult situation. Mister (Brooks) is a 14-year-old whose junkie-hooker mother (Jennifer Hudson) goes missing at the beginning of the summer. Saddled with Pete (Dizon), the 9-year-old she was babysitting, Mister decides they can survive alone for the summer and make it to his August audition for a role in a TV series, which will of course solve all his problems. As they panhandle for survival, they seek help from a wealthy friend (Jordin Sparks), a pimp (Anthony Mackie) and a homeless veteran (Jeffrey Wright), all while trying to avoid a ruthless cop (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Yes, the cast is impressive, but the script is extremely constructed, and the young actors are a bit too good to be true. But the story is important, and the film wins us over with its genuine emotional depth.

The Summit
dir Nick Ryan; with Pemba Gyalje, Cecilie Skog 12/Ire ***
This strikingly well-made documentary about a harrowing real-life incident lets itself down by taking a too-ambitious approach to the narrative. Filmmaker Ryan chops the story up in an attempt to build suspense, but ends up making it very difficult to engage with the chain of events. In August 2008, 11 climbers died on K2 in one of the deadliest days in mountain-climbing history. But what happened was a mystery, and the facts weren't revealed until three family members travelled to Pakistan to talk to Sherpa Gyalje to fill in the gaps. Frankly, the story is thrilling enough without being told in such a circular fashion, and intercutting it with Walter Bonatti's account of the first K2 ascent in 1954 leaves both stories feeling incomplete. Which is frustrating since the film looks absolutely amazing, seamlessly mixing archive footage and photos with dramatic recreations shot in the Swiss Alps. The cinematography (by Robbie Ryan and Stephen O'Reilly) is spectacular, and the interviews with survivors are deeply moving.

Sundance Shorts
There were nine short films in this programme, including the prize winner - and easily the best in the collection: William Oldroyd's Best is a brief little film that packs a whole world into its single scene. A clever idea impeccably executed by a strong cast and crew.  Other stand-out clips included the hilarious cat-breeding comedy The Date from Finland, the blackly amusing horror comedy The Apocalypse, and the intriguing stop-motion doc Irish Folk Furniture. There were also two films that attempted to show stereotypical men as human beings: The Whistle quietly follows a beleaguered Polish football referee, while the slightly preachier Black Metal centres on a death-rock singer blamed for a tragedy.