Thursday 26 April 2018

Critical Week: On the horizon

Among the eclectic collection of press screenings in London this week, we caught up with John Hurt's final lead performance in That Good Night. Based on a play, this thoughtful film is rather stagebound, but Hurt is as magical as ever. We also had a seriously enormous screening of Avengers: Infinity War, the seriously enormous climax of this phase of the Marvel movie franchise. It's a big, busy film that has very little in the way of actual plot or characters but will hugely entertain fans.

And then there was Tully, which reteams Charlize Theron with writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman. I liked its bold approach and deep themes, but this is the kind of film that stirs debate and divides opinion. In yet another genre, Sherlock Gnomes is a profoundly ridiculous animated comedy adventure, solidly well made and packed with witty gags, even if it isn't a classic. As for horror, we had The Strangers: Prey at Night, a sort-of sequel about a group of vaguely undefined murders tormenting a family for no real reason. And then there was the quirky British indie drama Pin Cushion, a warm but very dark mother-daughter drama with fairy tale touches.

This coming week, screenings include Rosanna Arquette in Born Guilty, Doug Jones in Gehenna: Where Death Lives, the Mexican drama A Place to Be, the Daesh doc Path of Blood, the Grey Gardens doc That Summer, the Essex doc New Town Utopia, and an adventure movie titled The New Legends of Monkey.

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