Critical Week: It's a slam dunk

It's been a fairly busy week for screenings, with another eclectic bunch of movies to sift through. There is an unusually large number of films opening this weekend, including several animated movies to coincide with school holidays, date-night movies for Valentine's Day and some awards-season gems that are finally getting into cinemas. Most are well worth seeing. One of the bigger ones screened for us this week was the animated adventure Goat, a lively basketball-adjacent comedy about a goat who wants to be the greatest of all time. Painterly animation and sparky characters make it worth a look. And then there's Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in Emerald Fennell's unsurprisingly lascivious adaptation of Wuthering Heights. I'm a fan of her deranged style of storytelling, and this movie is deliciously full-on.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Crime 101 • Wuthering Heights
Palestine 36 • Cold Storage
Goat • The President's Cake
Stitch Head • Little Amelie
My Father's Shadow
PERHAPS AVOID:
The Day the Earth Blew Up
ALL REVIEWS >

Other films screened this week include the nutty horror thriller Whistle, starring the gifted Daphne Keen. It's corny, but fun. Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough take a tearaway Anson Boon into their home in The Good Boy (retitled Heel in the US), an unnervingly dark British drama that raises some enjoyably provocative moral questions. Danny Dyer puts on a one-man show in One Last Deal as a London sports agent trying to save his career, or maybe his soul. It's rather thin, but riveting. And the Swedish-produced Egyptian drama Eagles of the Republic, starring the terrific Fares Fares, starts as a satire about politics and moviemaking before shifting into a tensely mind-spinning thriller. I also attended a live performance of Pina Bausch's Sweet Mambo at Sadler's Wells. And at a special awards-season brunch in honour of Sentimental Value, I enjoyed chatting with Oscar and Bafta nominated filmmakers Joaquim Trier and Eskil Vogt.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Sam Rockwell in Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die, coming-of-age drama DJ Ahmet, subterranean doc Underland, tour doc Palestine Comedy Club, plus attending the London premiere of Paradise season 2 and the programme launch event for the 40th BFI Flare.