Critical Week: Brotherly love

There weren't many press screenings for me over the past week, as I was a bit busy with the London critics' awards. But I did manage to catch up with two coming-of-age dramas. Mid90s is Jonah Hill's writing-directing debut, an involving, realistic drama about a young teen (Sunny Suljic, above right, with Lucas Hedges as his thuggish big brother) who turns to skateboarding to find his place in life. The British film Old Boys has currents of comedy and slapstick as it follows a teen (Alex Lawther) at a posh boarding school caught in a Cyrano-style love triangle. It's a bit goofy, but engaging and inventive.

Even further afield, In Like Flynn is an Australian biopic about Errol Flynn's pre-Hollywood days. Thomas Cocquerel is dashing in the lead role, but the film is far too cliched and corny. The Polish drama Nina is set up as a lesbian coming-of-age drama for a married woman, but the elusive filmmaking leaves the audience on the outside looking in. And ParTy Boi: Black Diamonds in Ice Castles is a gritty documentary about the rise of crystal meth among America's black gay subculture. It's pretty harrowing, cautionary without shying away from telling the whole story.

This coming week we have screenings of the upcoming animated sure-fire hits The Lego Movie 2 and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, plus Christophe Honore's Sorry Angel, and the British independent dramas Lucid, He Loves Me and Wretched Things.

Critical Week: Find a reason to smile

Denzel Washington's directing debut Fences screened to the press this week, with an eye on awards season. August Wilson's text is simply glorious. Washington reprises his Tony-winning stage role opposite a devastating turn by Viola Davis. And there's more awards-worthy acting in 20th Century Women, with Annette Bening giving a beautifully textured turn in Mike Mills' latest engaging autobiographical drama. And then there's Nicole Kidman as Dev Patel's emotive adoptive mother in Lion, a powerful true story of a young man's search for the past he literally lost.

Other films included the enjoyably camp but rather uneven mystery Kiss Me, Kill Me, the sumptuously animated castaway fable The Red Turtle, Kirsten Johnson's astoundingly revelatory memoir Cameraperson, and a sobering exploration of food waste in the lively doc Just Eat It.

This coming week, as voting deadlines loom for various awards, there are screenings of Office Christmas Party with Jennifer Aniston, Miss Sloane with Jessica Chastain, Certain Women with Kristen Stewart and Ava DuVernay's documentary 13th. I also need to tackle the eight-hour doc OJ: Made in America.