Critical Week: Fly away

It's been another eclectic collection of screenings this week for London-based critics. My Life as a Courgette is the wonderful, resonant Oscar-nominated French animated drama. Going in Style is a fluffy comical remake starring Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Alan Arkin and Ann-Margret. The Sense of an Ending is a thoughtful, enjoyable British drama with Jim Broadbent, Charlotte Rampling, Harriet Walter and Michelle Dockery.

And then there was the far too sunshiny and simplistic Christian parable The Shack with Sam Worthington and Octavia Spencer; the far too gloomy but provocative post-tragedy drama Aftermath with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Scoot McNairy; the nihilistic and point-free murder-fest of The Belko Experiment; the gripping, nasty kidnapped-tourist thriller Berlin Syndrome with Teresa Palmer; and the awkward, goofy British Muslim rom-com Finding Fatimah.

This coming week we have The Fate of the Furious, A Dog's Purpose, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki, Slack Bay, Suntan and the doc Whitney: Can I Be Me.

On the Road: Family time

Love the Coopers [UK title: Christmas With the Coopers]

dir Jessie Nelson; with Diane Keaton, John Goodman, Alan Arkin 15/US ***.

Marketed as a wacky holiday comedy, it's rather surprising that this film strikes a more serious tone right from the start, with Steve Martin's warm, wry narration introducing us to each member of the sprawling Cooper clan as they reluctantly approach a Christmas Eve dinner together. There are plenty of hilarious moments along the way, but the issues each of these people are dealing with are anything but flippant: this is a film about how life is only very rarely like the happy-glowing images we surround ourselves with at the holidays. And things are beefed up by the powerhouse cast swirling around the terrific Keaton and Goodman in the central roles as a couple at the end of their tether after 40 years of marriage. Olivia Wilde and Ed Helms have strong scenes as their conflicted children, Arkin finds some new nuances in his usual patriarchal role, Marisa Tomei gets the film's most complex role as Keaton's drifting sister. With the multistrand approach, the film feels eerily similar to Love Actually, except with everyone directly related to each other (plus outsiders nicely underplayed by Amanda Seyfried, Anthony Mackie and Jake Lacy). And the large cast kind of spreads the depth around between them, never quite pushing any single character too far. But there's something to engage with in each of them, and the nostalgic emotional surge is meaningful and thankfully not overly sentimental.

~~~~~~~ ~~ ~~~ ~~~~
CRITICAL WEEK
I'm still out in California for a few more days - hope to catch a couple of films this weekend, including Secret in Their Eyes (a remake of a favourite film, but the top-notch cast makes it look unmissable) and The Night Before (which looks like it might be mindless fun).

Oscar night: out on a limb

Here are my hopes and expectations for the big ceremony on Sunday in Los Angeles. For the first time in about four years, I'll be in London watching through the night - the ceremony runs roughly from 2am to 6am, with Best Picture awarded just as the sun is coming up.

This year's awards race has been the strangest in ages, with no runaway favourite. Most but not all of the categories have someone who is odds-on to win (Supporting Actor is the hardest to predict), but Oscar voters have a way of confounding expectations. So as always I'm cheering for upsets...

P I C T U R E
Will win: Argo
Should/could win: Life of Pi
Also quite possible: Lincoln
Dark horse: Silver Linings Playbook

D I R E C T O R
Will/should win: Ang Lee
Possible: Steven Spielberg
Dark horse: Michael Haneke

A C T R E S S
Will/should win: Jennifer Lawrence
Very possible: Emmanuelle Riva
Dark horse: Jessica Chastain

A C T O R
Will/should win: Daniel Day-Lewis
Possible: Hugh Jackman
Dark horse: Bradley Cooper

S U P P O R T I N G    A C T R E S S
Will/should win: Anne Hathaway
Possible: Sally Field

S U P P O R T I N G    A C T O R
Will/should win: Alan Arkin
Very possible: Tommy Lee Jones or Christoph Waltz
Dark horse: Robert De Niro

O R I G I N A L    S C R E E N P L A Y
Will/should win: Django Unchained
Possible: Zero Dark Thirty
Dark horse: Amour

A D A P T E D    S C R E E N P L A Y
Will win: Argo
Should/could win: Lincoln
Dark horses: Life of Pi or Silver Linings Playbook

F O R E I G N    F I L M
Will/should win: Amour
Dark horse: A Royal Affair
(NB. I haven't seen War Witch or Kon-Tiki in this category)

D O C U M E N T A R Y
Will win: Searching for Sugar Man
Should/could win: How to Survive a Plague
Dark horse: The Gatekeepers

A N I M A T E D   F E A T U R E
Will/should win: Frankenweenie
Very possible: Wreck-it Ralph
Dark horses: Brave or ParaNorman

Critical Week: Fields of gold

London-based critics finally had a chance to catch up with last year's Terrence Malick film To the Wonder, a deeply personal meditation on relationships and faith starring Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams (pictured), plus Olga Kurylenko. It's a swirling, virtually dialog-free drama that kind of spirals out of control in the final third, but leaves us thinking. The only real mainstream film last week was the enjoyable geriatric caper romp Stand Up Guys, with the all-star trio of Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin. I also had the chance to catch up with Roman Coppola's A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, an unhinged style-over-substance comedy-drama clearly based on elements from the life of star Charlie Sheen.

Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral is an exercise in style and substance, a gleamingly yucky futuristic tale of fandom taken to life-threatening extremes. Sammy's Great Escape is a sequel to 2010's A Turtle's Tale, and keeps us entertained with a slightly deranged script and a gloriously excessive use of 3D. Aussie filmmaker Cate Shortland's unnerving dramatic thriller Lore is so gorgeously well shot and naturalistically acted that we almost forget that it's set in Nazi Germany. The Argentine anthology Sexual Tension: Volatile is an intriguing collection of six shorts exploring unexpected attraction between men. And bringing things full circle, Muzaffer Ozdemir's loosely plotted Home (Yurt) is a deeply personal meditation on the effects of progress on nature in the mountainous wilds of Turkey.

Coming this week: Bruce Willis in A Good Day to Die Hard, the gothic teen romance Beautiful Creatures, Danny Dyer in Run for Your Wife, Elijah Wood in Maniac, Barry Levinson's found footage thriller The Bay and Hirokazu Koreeda's I Wish.