Critical Week: Troubled teens

After a very nice break, screenings have started up in London again, and I've had a couple this week. It's been a gentle start to a new year, with the usual offbeat January releases alongside awards-season gems that are being released this month. My first screening was the comedy-horror Get Away, written by and starring Nick Frost (Sebastian Croft and Maisie Ayres, pictured, play his kids). It's nutty and gleefully grisly enough to keep fans happy, but is a bit undercooked. Claes Bang stars in a big-scale account of the Swiss legend of William Tell. The settings are gorgeous and the starry cast is terrific, even if it's never hugely involving.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Hard Truths • A Real Pain
The Girl With the Needle
Babygirl • Maria
ALL REVIEWS >

From France, the always enjoyable Laure Calamy stars in It's Raining Men, a comedy about a middle-aged woman who tries to spice up her marriage by hooking up with other men. It feels a little simplistic, but is likeable enough. A UK production filmed in India, filmmaker Sandhya Suri's Santosh is a riveting if slightly underpowered procedural thriller with very strong character beats. And the meta-comedy Extremely Unique Dynamic his hilariously packed with layers of gags as it highlights the friendship between filmmakers Harrison Xu and Ivan Leung.

This coming week, among the films I'll be watching are Michelle Yeoh in Star Trek: Section 31, Julia Garner in Wolf Man, Tom Hanks in Here and the documentaries Changing the Game and Zodiac Killer Project.

Critical Week: Driving home for Christmas

I seen many films this week, largely due to work required prior to the announcement of the London Critics' Circle Film Awards nominations yesterday. This involved compiling my own ballot, then counting all the others that came in, tabulating the results, giving nominees a heads-up, working on a press release and preparing the announcement event, which was hosted by young actors Ellie Bamber (Willow) and Fionn O'Shea (Handsome Devil) at the May Fair Hotel as a low-key Christmas party. The nominations are listed HERE if you're interested in comparing them with all the other awards spiralling around at the moment.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
Living • Corsage • Women Talking
ALL REVIEWS >

Now things are calming down for the holidays. Whew! Of the films I saw this past week, the most ambitious was Noah Baumbach's White Noise, a busy and somewhat unfocussed comedy-drama about a family dealing with a range of big issues. The cast is excellent, led by Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, and it ends with a fabulous burst of choreography. Will Smith plays a real-life historical icon in Emancipation, set at the end of the Civil War as an escaped slave faces brutal trackers and ends up fighting on the battlefield. It's ambitious and admirable, but the themes get a bit lost. Christian Bale leads the cast of Scott Cooper's moody period mystery The Pale Blue Eye, playing a detective who works alongside a young Edgar Allan Poe (a superbly wide-eyed Harry Melling) to investigate a murder at West Point in 1830. It's mesmerising but ultimately a bit thin. And the animated adventure The Amazing Maurice, based on the Terry Pratchett novel, has some wonderful thematic depth beneath the usual slapstick wackiness and slick digital imagery.

This coming week I will continue to catch up with movies before writing up my year-end lists. There's quite a pile-up of these, and I have a list of about 10 priority titles, plus eight more if-time ones. A couple of them are forthcoming releases, such as Kore-eda's film Broker and the documentary Wildcat.