Critical Week: Meet the neighbours

After nearly a year of on-off lockdown, it's beginning to feel like I'll never get to make a new friend again. Everyone is feeling the ongoing boredom of staying home all day during this third London lockdown, only getting out for a bit of exercise each day. This may be great for catching up on movies and binge-watching series, but it's also wearing us down. At least I'm keeping busy, which is perhaps much of the battle. But with a drastic reduction in work for self-employed people like me, the strain is getting much more serious.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Days of the Bagnold Summer
Nomadland • The Mauritanian
ALL REVIEWS >

So it helps to watch mindless rubbish like The Croods: A New Age, the enjoyably bonkers sequel to the much more coherent 2013 animated romp about a caveman family, this time with added eco-farmers voiced by Peter Dinklage and Leslie Mann. Also disappointing was Nicholas Jarecki's ambitious opioid thriller Crisis, interweaving three important plots headlined by Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer and Evangeline Lilly. Doug Liman's Locked Down was also uneven, a cleverly made but over-egged British pandemic heist comedy with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Anne Hathaway. 

I connected much more strongly with some films from off the beaten path. Sh*thouse (UK title: Freshman Year) is a scrappy university comedy, written and directed with offhanded charm by its young star Cooper Raiff. From Ivory Coast, Night of the Kings is a bracingly original prison drama with some stunning mystical touches. From Hong Kong, Twilight's Kiss recounts a sensitive, secertive romance between two fathers in their late 60s. And the shorts collection Boys Feels: Desire in the Dark features five intense European mini-dramas exploring angles on masculinity.

I have a list of films to watch over the coming weeks, including Dylan Sprouse in Tyger Tyger, Olivia Cooke in Pixie, Quentin Dupieux's comedy Keep an Eye Out, the British drama Justine, and two more collections of male-oriented short films: The Latin Boys Volume 2 and Boys on Film 21: Beautiful Secret. There's also the programme launch event for this year's BFI Flare film festival, which runs 17-28 March.

Critical Week: Stay classy

Over halfway through our month-long Lockdown 2.0, it's clear that everyone is seriously bored with all of this now, longing for a reopening of cinemas, restaurants, pubs, theatres and everything really in time for Christmas. Meanwhile I've had three days and counting without internet, thanks to Virgin Media's astonishing inability to solve whatever the problem is in my neighbourhood. This means that I've had to use my phone's 4G to watch movies this week. And the films were a mixed bag. Ron Howard's new movie Hillbilly Elegy, which stars Glenn Close and Amy Adams. It's watchable but too simplistic to have any kind of kick. David Fincher's biopic Mank, starring Gary Oldman as the screenwriter of Citizen Kane, has equally great performances (especially from Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies), and much more visual panache, although Fincher's perfectionism drains the story of passion.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK: 

Lovers Rock • Another Round

Mosul • Happiest Season

Possessor

PERHAPS AVOID:

Hillbilly Elegy • Buddy Games

The Ringmaster

FULL REVIEWS >

And then there's the messy romantic comedy Love, Weddings & Other Disasters, a frothy, corny multi-strand affair starring Diane Keaton and Jeremy Irons. Jungleland stars the superb Charlie Hunnam and Jack O'Connell as brothers on a road trip with the always excellent Jessica Barden, but the film is too hushed to come to life. Lost at Christmas is an awkward little holiday rom-com from Scotland, with just about enough charm to win us over. Host is a refreshingly original British horror movie set entirely on a Zoom screen, and it's skilfully terrifying. And The Ringmaster is a sickeningly derivative Danish horror movie that's uber-grisly but not very scary.

There were also two docs: Zappa uses extensive archival material to trace the iconic musician's career, while Markie in Milwaukee is about a 7-foot deeply religious trans woman who decides to live as a man again, then has to face her true nature. I also caught Kevin Hart's new stand-up show, Zero F**ks Given, which has a nicely intimate feel in his house, including some very personal jokes. And then there was The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, a giddy bit of Christmas fluff that felt like just what I needed.

This coming week I'll catch up with Red, White and Blue, the third film in Steve McQueen's Small Axe series, as well as the all-star musical The Prom, Viggo Mortensen's Falling, Diane Lane in Let Him Go, Drew Barrymore in The Stand-In, Margot Robbie in Dreamland, the psychological thriller Muscle and the shorts collection The American Boys.

Critical Week: Kitties for Christmas

On Tuesday evening I was able to get into two huge press screenings, easily the most surreal double bill of the year. First up was Cats, Tom Hooper's bizarrely imagined adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's already bizarre musical. It looks like nothing you've seen before, awful and brilliant at the same time. Immediately after that, the critics shuffled across Leicester Square for the only press screening of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth film in the 42-year-long movie saga. It's very entertaining, but a little too carefully concocted to be the masterpiece we were hoping for.

Being busy planning the announcement of the London Critics Awards nominations, I didn't have a lot of time for screenings this week. But I did catch up with Ryan Reynolds in 6 Underground, a massively colourful action romp directed by Michael Bay with little concern for plot or character or coherence. The Courier is an odd patchwork action thriller, as it seems like stars Gary Oldman, Olga Kurylenko and William Moseley never met each other. But it's slick and fast. And Daniel Radcliffe continues to defy expectations, playing a real-life 1970s South African hippie activist in Escape From Pretoria, a grippingly straightforward prison-break movie with a political angle.

Over Christmas I'll be catching up with some late-season awards movies, and also binging on the TV series I've fallen behind on. I'm definitely looking forward to some down time, especially a slowdown in the glut of emails relating to the three film awards I vote for.

Contenders: Four dramas

I've been catching up with movies released earlier in the year that are eligible in the upcoming awards season. Whether they're worthy of consideration is another thing...

The Laundromat
dir Steven Soderbergh
scr Scott Z Burns
with Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Jeffrey Wright, Melissa Rauch, Nonso Anozie, Matthias Schoenaerts, Rosalind Chao, David Schwimmer, Robert Patrick, James Cromwell, Sharon Stone
release US/UK 18.Oct.19 • 19/US Netflix 1h35 **

Weaving together a series of true stories, this financial comedy-drama seeks to explore the secret life of money. It's ambitious, silly and deliberately absurd, narrated by two dandy lawyers (Banderas and Oldman) in Panama. But the script follows so many threads and delivers so much information that it never comes to meaningful life. The themes are vitally important, the film makes some very strong points, and the performances are excellent, but the wildly flailing barrage of detail is numbing.

After a personal tragedy, Ellen (Streep) begins looking into the fraudulent insurance company in Nevis that has shortchanged her. She discovers it's linked to a Panama law firm helping the world's wealthiest people hide their money in shell companies. Their globe-spanning clients include murderous drug kingpins, an African billionaire (Anozie) who knows he can buy anything, and a British businessman (Schoenaerts) who arrogantly challenges his contact (Chao) in China. And the story is about to break, implicating everyone from movie stars to governments.

The film is essentially about the astonishingly thin line between illegal tax evasion and legal tax avoidance. But it's very difficult to care, or even to pay attention, amid endless conversations about finance, insurance, lawsuits, and so on, especially when the tone is so glib. The cast tries to spice things up with personality, screenwriter Burns keeps the words sparky, and director Soderbergh keeps things visually whizzy. But it still feels dull and unfocussed. There's too much effort to create witty cause-and-effect metaphors and colourful explanations, when a coherent, involving central story would have done this much more efficiently.

29.Oct.19

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The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
dir Terry Gilliam
with Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce 18/Sp ***. 
Terry Gilliam spent more than 25 years working on this project (a previous attempt to film it was documented in Lost in La Mancha), and getting the film released wasn't easy either. The plot is wacky and meandering, but Gilliam infuses it with a gleefully freewheeling tone, taking flights of fancy at every turn. So even if its defiantly original style can be challenging, it's both raucous good fun and sharply pointed... FULL REVIEW >

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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
dir-scr Chiwetel Ejiofor
with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Maxwell Simba, Aissa Maiga, Lily Banda, Lemogang Tsipa, Philbert Falakeza, Noma Dumezweni, Rophium Banda, Raymond Ofula, Joseph Marcell
release UK/US 1.Mar.19 • 18/UK BBC 1h53 ***.

For his writing-directing debut, Chiwetel Ejiofor ambitiously takes on a true story from rural Malawi. Beautifully shot in the actual locations, the narrative unfolds in a relatively straightforward way, which doesn't allow for a lot of subtext. But it's a thoroughly involving tale, populated by lively characters. And it's also seriously inspirational as it follows a young teen whose curiosity changed his world.

In a small farming village plagued by cycles of drought and flooding, it's getting more and more difficult to manage the grain harvest. Farming a small plot of land, Trywell (Ejiofor) finds his crops either over-soaked or parched. His wife Agnes (Maiga) is an educated woman who wants the best for their teen children Annie (Banda) and William (Simba). Annie hopes to go to university and is secretly seeing a schoolteacher (Tsipa), while William is a voracious student worried because his parents can no longer afford his school fees. So keeping access to the school library becomes a problem as he begins to figure out a way to solve their irrigation problems using wind-power.

The dramatic conflicts in this story feel a little contrived, as they pit the observant, inventive William against his pointlessly stubborn father. Surely Trywell would understand by now that his son might have ideas beyond his age. But he digs his feet in, flails against nature and prays for rain, while ignoring the solution right in front of him. On the other hand, this provides some meaty conversations, and terrific scenes between Ejiofor, Simba and Maiga, who flesh out their characters beautifully. So in the end, it's a skilful retelling of an important story, and aspects of the film are impressive, such as how Ejiofor learned the local language. It also looks gorgeous, and its emotional kick is very strong, as is the way it encourages us to seek outside-the-box solutions to things like political corruption and natural disasters.

23.Oct.19

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Ma
dir Tate Taylor
scr Scotty Landes
with Octavia Spencer, Diana Silvers, Juliette Lewis, McKaley Miller,  Corey Fogelmanis, Gianni Paolo, Dante Brown, Luke Evans, Allison Janney, Missi Pyle
release US/UK 31.May.19 • 19/US Universal 1h39 **.

Starting as a rather typical slickly made smalltown comedy-drama, director Tate Taylor begins from the start to undermine the usual forced Hollywood-style levity with elements from horror movies. But while Octavia Spencer keeps it watchable, the script and production are far too smoothed out to actually generate any suspense, including the way the screenplay uses important topics to offer simple explanations for the nastiness that erupts later on.

Erica (Lewis) and her teen daughter Maggie (Silvers) are settling into life in a new town. Trying to fit in at high school, Maggie hangs out with a group of cool kids including popular girl Haley (Miller), nice guy Andy (Fogelmanis) and jocks Chaz and Darrell (Brown and Waivers). After friendly Sue Ann (Spencer) buys booze for them, she stalks them online and befriends them ("Call me Ma!"), turning her basement into party central. But is she only pretending to be a cool adult?

There are interesting layers to the story, such as Ma's insecurities, which date back to her school days, when her classmates included Maggie, Andy's dad Ben (Evans) and his mean-girl girlfriend Mercedes (Pyle). Taylor overstates these themes loudly, making each wrinkle in the story so painfully obvious that the actual surprises seem anticlimactic. And many sequences feel badly compromised (surely Ma did something else to Ben in the first draft, and her own teen humiliation is botched in a pitch-black gloom). Thankfully, Spencer is skilled at believably navigating Ma's whiplash tonal changes from sweet to party girl to psychopath. But even she can't sell the hyper-grisly climax.

31.Oct.19

Critical Week: On the warpath

Since I've seen most of movies that were screening to the press this past week, I've been catching up on awards season films like Steven Soderbergh's The Laundromat, a bizarrely comical farce circling around the Panama Papers scandal. The material is strong, but even an A-list cast (led by Meryl Streep, above) can't ground this kind of overambitious approach. Also somewhat uneven, Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote boasts great performances from Adam Driver and Jonathan Pryce and fabulously freewheeling production design, with deep themes running under a meandering narrative.

The low-budget Spell was a nice surprise, a scruffy horror romp about a quirky American in Iceland. From Netherlands, Bloody Marie is an internalised drama that takes place during a freaky crime thriller. From Brazil, the bracingly naturalistic Copa 181 explores people who live on the fringe of decency, and are quite happy there. There were also three docs: packed with awesome archival material, Sid & Judy is a lovely look at Judy Garland's life through the eyes of third husband Sid Luft; American Factory is a striking exploration of the cultural collision between China and the US in Ohiol and Anton Corbijn's Depeche Mode: Spirits in the Forest is a superbly engaging blend of concert film and fan doc.

Coming up next week are screenings of Paul Feig's holiday rom-com Last Christmas, Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen in The Good Liar, Shia LaBeouf in Honey Boy, the all-star war action Midway, Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life, the British drama Into the Mirror, the rather self-explanatory The Amazing Johnathan Documentary and a reissue of the landmark 1985 Aids drama Buddies.

Critical Week: See you later alligator

With the 20th FrightFest coming this weekend, it's feeling a bit like Halloween around London. In addition to watching four FrightFest horror movies (more about those next time), I also saw two freak-outs that are both at the festival and in UK cinemas this weekend. Crawl stars Kaya Scodelario (above), trying to survive a mob of massive alligators in her family home as hurricane floodwaters rise. It's relentlessly terrifying and a lot of fun too. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark comes from producer Guillermo del Toro, and features teens who find a haunted book that begins killing them one by one with new stories. It's dark and enjoyably yucky.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson and her actor husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson wrote the script themselves for A Million Little Pieces, adapting James Frey's controversial memoir detailing his time in rehab. It's beautifully made, raw and wrenching. Set in the late 70s and early 80s, Driven recounts the story of John DeLorean (Lee Pace) through the eyes of his shifty neighbour (Jason Sudeikis). It's uneven, but lively and very entertaining. And French filmmaker Francois Ozon shifts gears again for By the Grace of God, a powerful, sharply well made fact-based drama about men taking on the Catholic Church because they were abused as boys.

I also caught up with Adam, a New York-set drama that's been generating controversy because it dares to have a central character who makes a terrible mistake and learns from it. Since it's dealing with trans and queer issues, it's understandably touchy. But the film is also important, and very nicely made. And from Mexico, the 80s-set drama This Is Not Berlin is a sharply observant, skilfully shot and acted coming-of-age journey with vividly resonant themes. By contrast, the offbeat British crime thriller Killers Anonymous is a choppy mess, so it's a mystery how they lured Gary Oldman, Suki Waterhouse and Jessica Alba to be in it (albeit clearly filmed apart from the main plot).

This is a long weekend in London. I'll be blogging about FrightFest, and since the weather looks good I may brave the Notting Hill Carnival as well. Screenings include Henry Cavill in Night Hunter, Matthias Schoenaerts in The Mustang, the Norwegian drama Phoenix and the Argentine drama Rojo.

Critical Week: Oscars for everyone

The 90th Oscar ceremony on Sunday night felt unremarkable, running along without incident with a line-up of winners that was never surprising. There were some nice touches along the way, including host Jimmy Kimmel's opening newsreel montage and his dry, sharply pointed opening monolog. Many of the thank you speeches were also topical, touching on key themes of inclusion and diversity. The star moment went to an impassioned Frances McDormand.

Meanwhile, the show was stolen by Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph, who appeared holding their high heels to present a couple of awards. That made as strong a statement as any, and their banter was flat-out hilarious. Clearly the producers worked overtime to compile a diverse list of presenters, with an emphasis on women and ethnicities. Some of the homage sequences were a little odd (looking at war movies through the decades?), and Kimmel's star-packed trip to the cinema next door was clever but rather corny.

Other highlights included powerful performances of all five song nominees and welcome wins for A Fantastic Woman and long-time nominee Roger Deakins. Although the sweep by The Shape of Water felt somewhat excessive. A good film rather than a great one, its message to outsiders was certainly timely. And frankly, if the ceremony was more entertaining, we wouldn't mind if it was longer.

Meanwhile, back in the screening room, Rooney Mara stars in the biblical drama Mary Magdalene, which is a little too reverent to properly spring to life, despite a strong cast that includes Joaquin Phoenix, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Tahar Rahim as Jesus, Peter and Judas, respectively. Gringo stars David Oyelowo, Charlize Theron and Joel Edgerton in a lively, funny, entertaining but ultimately pointless action comedy. Peter Rabbit is a fast-paced, genuinely amusing romp mixing photo-real animation with live-action (Domhnall Gleeson and Rose Byrne are adorable) to riff on the classic Beatrix Potter stories. And the documentary Mansfield 66/67 traces the final years of the iconic bombshell, whose notorious friendship with Satanic church leader Anton LaVey sparked rumours of a curse surrounding her death at age 34.

Coming up this week are screenings of Alicia Vikander in the Tomb Raider reboot, Bella Thorne in Midnight Sun, Mathieu Amalric in My Golden Days, the dark drama My Friend Dahmer, the teen drama Screwed and something called Attack of the Southern Fried Zombies.

Out on a limb: Oscar picks & predictions

Here we go again: it's the 90th Academy Awards, and it seems as predictable as always. Hopefully they'll throw some surprises in on Sunday night. So even though I rarely get many of these right, here are my votes, who I think will win and who might sneak in and take home the prize. I'm always hoping for an upset...

BEST PICTURE
Will win: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Could win: The Shape of Water
Should win: Dunkirk

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Will / should win: A Fantastic Woman
Could win: The Insult
Dark horse: Loveless

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Will / should win: Coco
Dark horse: The Breadwinner

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Will / should win: Faces Places
Could win: Strong Island

DIRECTING
Will win: The Shape of Water - Guillermo del Toro
Should / could win: Dunkirk - Christopher Nolan

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Will / should win: Call Me by Your Name - James Ivory
Could win: Molly's Game - Aaron Sorkin
Dark horse: Mudbound - Virgil Williams, Dee Rees

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Will / should win: Three Billboards - Martin McDonagh
Could win: Get Out - Jordan Peele
Dark horse: Lady Bird - Greta Gerwig

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Will / should win: Frances McDormand - Three Billboards
Could win: Sally Hawkins - The Shape of Water
Dark horse: Saoirse Ronan - Lady Bird

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Will win: Gary Oldman - Darkest Hour
Should win: Timothee Chalamet - Call Me by Your Name

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Will win: Allison Janney - I, Tonya
Could win: Laurie Metcalf - Lady Bird

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Will / should win: Sam Rockwell - Three Billboards
Could win: Willem Dafoe - The Florida Project

ORIGINAL SCORE
Will win: The Shape of Water - Alexandre Desplat
Should win: Phantom Thread - Jonny Greenwood

ORIGINAL SONG
Will win: This Is Me - The Greatest Showman
Should win: Remember Me - Coco

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Will win: Blade Runner 2049 - Roger A Deakins
Should win: Dunkirk - Hoyte van Hoytema

FILM EDITING
Will win: Baby Driver - Paul Machliss, Jonathan Amos
Should win: Dunkirk - Lee Smith
Dark horse: I, Tonya - Tatiana S Riegel

PRODUCTION DESIGN
Will win: Blade Runner 2049
Should win: The Shape of Water

COSTUME DESIGN
Will / should win: Phantom Thread

VISUAL EFFECTS
Will / should win: Blade Runner 2049
Dark horse: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2

MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING
Will / should win: Darkest Hour

SOUND EDITING / SOUND MIXING
Will win: The Shape of Water
Should win: Dunkirk
Could win: Blade Runner 2049

Critical Week: Never surrender

It was a disparate collection of movies this past week. The most obviously prestigious one was Darkest Hour, which chronicles the first month of Winston Churchill's first term as UK prime minister. It's a lavishly made film, anchored by a bullish performance from Gary Oldman. At the other end of the spectrum, Daddy's Home Two reunites Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell (plus Mel Gibson and John Lithgow as their dads) for a holiday comedy that's amusing without doing anything very new. More ambitious, The Dinner features strong performances from Richard Gere, Steve Coogan, Laura Linney and Rebecca Hall, although the film might be too tricky for its own good.

There were also three more true stories. Josh Brolin and Miles Teller lead the firefighting drama Only the Brave, which gets a little too caught up in its heroic machismo. Colin Firth stars in the sailing adventure The Mercy, a riveting tale with an enigmatic core. And The Man With the Iron Heart is a great story of the Nazi resistance, thrown out of balance with its duelling plot-strands starring Jason Clarke, Rosamund Pike, Jack O' Connell and Jack Reynor.

I'm travelling over the next week or so, and not sure what I'll be able to catch up with along the way. Targeted films include Justice League, Wonder, Thank You for Your Service, The Disaster Artist and The Current War. I'll be posting comments whenever I can...

Critical Week: Never walk alone

My best film this past week was last year's festival favourite A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, an outrageous Wild West-style Iranian vampire movie filmed in California. It's so fiercely original (and so much fun) that director Ana Lily Amirpour is bound to be dragged to Hollywood, if she hasn't already. As for big-name movies, we had Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and Gary Oldman in the Russian mystery-thriller Child 44, which is interesting but somewhat overstuffed, and Samuel L Jackson and Ray Stevenson in the Finnish action romp Big Game, which has lots of attitude and a great premise but kind of runs out of steam.

Further afield were the insane Chinese horror mash-up Rigor Mortis and the entertaining Soviet hockey team doc Red Army, plus a 30th anniversary version of John Hughes' The Breakfast Club, a classic that's definitely worth revisiting - and feels oddly timeless.

This coming week we've got screenings of the next Marvel blockbuster The Avengers: Age of Ultron, the hotly anticipated sequel Pitch Perfect 2, Carey Mulligan in a new adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd, the social media drama Unfriended, the animated Noah's Ark romp Two by Two, the Oscar-nominated animation Song of the Sea and the British indie Taking Stock.

Critical Week: Hard work

Being a film critic isn't a bad job: you get to see movies for free, after all, and people pay you to write what you think of them. On the other hand, they don't pay you that much anymore. And sometimes you have to sit all the way through something like Pudsey the Dog: The Movie, an almost unwatchable mess that really should be left to the trained professionals. Actually, it had potential to be a charming little adventure. But no.

So we turn to two sequels that have emerged as some of the best films of the year: How to Train Your Dragon 2 is even more ambitious than the superb first film, and it has the best action sequences in cinema at the moment. And Dawn of the Planet of the Apes may not be as delicately surprising as the reboot three years ago, but it's a remarkably complex thriller without a true villain. And the acting is hugely involving. But the best film this week was the Cannes hit Pride, a shameless British crowd-pleaser in the vein of Billy Elliot and The Full Monty, with terrific characters addressing a strongly resonant political issue through the true story of gay activists supporting striking miners in the Thatcher years.

Also this past week: Daniel Radcliffe brings his awkward charm to the quirky rom-com What If, costarring Zoe Kazan, Rafe Spall and Adam Driver; Nicolas Cage acts his socks off in the violent revenge thriller Rage, as a dad who wants to kill everyone for hurting his teen daughter; and Brian Cox plays the great Man Utd coach Matt Busby in Believe, a charmingly scruffy British comedy-drama that pushes the sentimentality button. There were also two docs: the fast-moving All This Mayhem traces the turbulent lives of Aussie skateboard-champion brothers Tas and Ben Pappas; and the inventive, colourful Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton tells the life story of the experimental filmmaker with a surge of emotional energy.

Coming up this week: Emma Roberts in the adaptation of James Franco's book Palo Alto, Gerard Depardieu in Abel Ferrara's controversial Welcome to New York, Disney's animated spin-off of a spin-off Planes: Fire and Rescue, the acclaimed 20,000 Days on Earth about Nick Cave, and the mystery-documentary The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden,

Critical Week: Send up a flare

This past week, the British Film Institute staged its annual programme launch event for the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, which kicks off its 28th edition on March 20th. But the big news this year was that the festival is changing its name to BFI Flare. The launch party was great fun, as always, attended by filmmakers, journalists and industry bods who become like a family this time of year.

As for screenings, we had Kevin Hart and Ice Cube in the occasionally entertaining action comedy Ride Along, Liam Hemsworth in the preposterous but sleek thriller Paranoia, the cleverly freaky indie revenge drama Blue Ruin, Del Shores' astute filmed play Southern Baptist Sissies, the marriage documentary 112 Weddings and the Canadian digital series Coming Out, watched in one go. I also saw a few films that will be at BFI Flare next month.

This coming week I will catch up just in time with three Oscar nominees: Hayao Miyazaki's acclaimed animated epic The Wind Rises and the buzzy docs 20 Feet From Stardom and Dirty Wars. (This leaves only one Oscar-nominated feature I won't have seen on Sunday night: foreign-language nominee Omar.) Also this week, we have the sequel 300: Rise of an Empire, the animated Wrinkles and three more docs: Bridegroom, Next Goal Wins and Errol Morris' The Unknown Known.

Critical Week: But is it art?

The week's big film was George Clooney's The Monuments Men, which quickly answered questions about why its release was shifted outside awards contention and why it wasn't screened for the press until just a few days before release: it's only ok. The story it tells is certainly essential, but it's mainly watchable because the strong cast inserts engaging detail into thinly written characters. Speaking of whom, the gang descended on London for Tuesday's press junket and premiere: Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban and Dmitri Leonidas, plus author Robert Edsel and surviving Monuments Man Harry Ettlinger. Alas, no Cate Blanchett or Hugh Bonneville.

Another very late screening was for the remake of RoboCop, screened the night before it opened. It's not half bad, thanks to a solid performance from Gary Oldman. There was also the tepid remake of another 1980s movie, the romance Endless Love. And we also caught up with Craig Fairbrass in the rather clunky LA thriller The Outsider as well as the latest in Peccadillo's shorts collections, Boys on Film 11: We Are Animals. But the film of the week, hands down, was The Lego Movie, a hilariously inventive animated romp that landed atop the box office in America and is likely to do the same thing in Britain this weekend.

This coming week we've got Scarlett Johansson as a sexy alien in Under the Skin, Wes Anderson's all-star The Grand Budapest Hotel, the British workplace comedy 8 Minutes Idle, the designer biopic Yves Saint Laurent and the cinema doc A Story of Children and Film. And the British Academy Film Awards hands out the Baftas on Sunday night.

34th London Critics' Circle Film Awards

It's always my most glamorous night of the year, but Sunday night's 34th London Critics' Circle Film Awards was also the biggest event I've ever organised and hosted myself, with a lot of help of course. This was my second year as chair of the organising committee, but we had some extra challenges that added a lot more work than ever before - and we pulled a fabulous evening out of thin air thanks to the hard working committee, our generous sponsors (The May Fair Hotel, Beluga Vodka, Audi, Cameo, Novikov, Innerplace and Publicity Media) and press management from DDA.

Somehow my committee convinced me to host the ceremony - I've never done anything like that either! It was pretty daunting, especially since it was about 15 minutes before the ceremony started when the news was confirmed about the death in New York of Philip Seymour Hoffman, our best supporting actor last year. So Critics' Circle Film Section Chair Jason Solomons adjusted his opening monolog accordingly - the audience broke in to a spontaneous standing ovation. And after that it was good to celebrate the best in cinema in 2013 together. We opened with a terrific video compilation of the films of the year, then my job was to thank everyone, then keep things moving.

And the first award in our running order was Supporting Actor, won by Barkhad Abdi, who was attending with his director Paul Greengrass (two of the nominees you can see in the photo above). Supporting Actress went to Lupita Nyong'o, who was unable to attend, so her director Steve McQueen (left) read a statement from her to accept. Then the Technical Achievement Award went to Tim Webber (right) for the visual effects in Gravity. 

Here we shifted into our British awards, starting with Breakthrough British Filmmaker, which went to Filth director Jon S Baird, who collected his trophy from Mark Kermode and me (above).

After a montage of British films and performances, we presented Young British Performer to Conner Chapman, who brought his costar (and fellow nominee) Shaun Thomas on-stage with him. British Actor went to James McAvoy, who was in another part of London filming Frankenstein and sent a video thank you (top right) - his award was accepted by his Filth director Jon Baird. British Actress was won by Judi Dench, who sent a video thank you from India, where she's filming The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 2 - her award was accepted by her Philomena costar and writer Steve Coogan. And finally, British Film of the Year went to The Selfish Giant. Director Clio Barnard, producer Tracy O'Riordan and cast members Conner Chapman, Shaun Thomas and Lorraine Ashbourne all took to the stage - presenter Tim Robey and I are there too (below).

Next up was Actress of the Year, which was won unsurprisingly by Cate Blanchett. She sent a hilarious thank you message, which was read out by her Middle Earth costar Andy Serkis (right with presenter Roger Clarke and me). Actor of the Year was also no surprise, going to Chiwetel Ejiofor. He sent a written thank you from New Zealand, where he's currently filming. Then Documentary of the Year went to The Act of Killing, which was accepted by producer Andre Gregory (photo below), who read a statement from director Joshua Oppenheimer about the ongoing issues in Indonesia.

And now it was time for our biggest honour, the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film, which this year went to Gary Oldman. John Hurt (right) was on give a lovely introduction speech and introduce a clip-reel of Gary's best work, followed by a emotive and eloquent thank you from Gary. And lots of hugging.

Next up was Foreign-Language Film of the Year, which was won by Blue Is the Warmest Colour and accepted by an executive from the UK distributor Artificial Eye. Screenwriter of the Year was won by Joel & Ethan Coen, who weren't in attendance. So presenter David Gritten and I, with the help of committee members Pauline McLeod and Hilary Oliver, concocted a rather silly sketch in which the film's feline star Ulysses appeared on-stage to claim the award. Director of the Year went to Alfonso Cuaron, who sent us a video from Italy (pictured above with James and Judi). And finally it was time for Film of the Year, which went to 12 Years a Slave and was collected by Steve McQueen with a lovely speech.

And then it was on to the afterparty with Beluga Vodka cocktails at Novikov, where nominees and winners, as well as the critics and guests mixed in unexpected circles late into the night. I had a particularly nice chat with Howard Cummings, nominated for his Behind the Candelabra production design. And from the below evidence, will we see Barkhad Abdi in Steve McQueen's next movie ... or Andy Serkis in Paul Greengrass'?

Of course, things wrapped up with our now-legendary goody bags (that's mine to the right), thanks to our diligent committee members and some more generous sponsors. Here are a few more photos - of our two most glamorous red carpet stars, nominees Naomie Harris and Lindsay Duncan, and of nominee George MacKay, winner Andre Singer and Reece Shearsmith, star of nominated film A Field in England.

And finally, because it has to be done, Knowing Me Rich Cline, Knowing You Steve Coogan. Aha....

Photos by Dave Bennett

Critical Week: Moonshine boys

John Hillcoat's neo-Western led the charge for London-based critics with press screening of his Cannes hit Lawless, a 1930s bootlegging drama featuring screen-shredding performances from Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce and Gary Oldman, plus a decent turn from Shia LaBeouf and another meaty role for Jessica Chastain. We also finally caught up with Disney-Pixar's terrific new adventure Brave, featuring an unusually strong female protagonist and gorgeous Scottish landcapes. And we also saw Dax Shepard's energetic action rom-com Hit & Run, with he wrote and co-directed as well as starring alongside Kristen Bell, Bradley Cooper and Tom Arnold.

Less mainstream screenings included two genre-bending low-budget films: the emotionally potent British drama My Brother the Devil, and the intriguingly offbeat American rom-com Shut Up and Kiss Me. There were three docs: the astonishingly animated "untrue" story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman in A Liar's Autobiography, a more standard bio-doc from obviously family-approved sources in I Am Bruce Lee, and Chris Paine's intriguingly people-centric sequel Revenge of the Electric Car. Finally, I finally caught up with Luis Buñuel's surreal 1972 classic The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which is not only pure genius, but looks great after a digital restoration for its 40th birthday.

This coming week we have Meryl Streep in Hope Springs, Maggie Gyllenhaal in Hysteria, Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Premium Rush, Dakota Fanning in Now Is Good, the British music-scene ensemble rom-com Turbulence and the year's most anticipated film, Chris Nolan's final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises.


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S H A D O W S   O N   T H E   T U B E
I'm only watching three television shows at the moment... 

• Episodes finished its second series with a bit of a wimper. This season wasn't nearly as sharp as the first, although it had its moments, and is still watchable thanks to engaging performances, mainly from Tamsin Grieg, Matt LeBlanc and a sometimes slightly too-clownish Stephen Mangan. If they return for a third series, let's hope the writing gets much edgier. And that they replace that awful opening title sequence.
• True Blood is charging ahead in its fifth year, throwing as much madness at the screen as possible. The whole premise is a bit stale now, but it's still hugely entertaining thanks to the beautiful, often naked cast members. It's also becoming fun to try to guess which new supernatural being will be introduced next - this week's "fire demon" was pretty hilarious, in a grisly sort of way. And while we always knew they'd being back Russell, his reappearance draws a genuine chill of dread, which is rare for TV.
• The Newsroom is typical Aaron Sorkin: smart dialog that's deeply overwritten but thoroughly enthralling. The show kind of cheats by being set a couple of years in the past, where it can merrily revise news-reporting history with the same kind of wish-fulfilment that The West Wing provided about the White House. While the backstage melodrama is kind of corny, the newscast scenes are genuinely thrilling. And this week's appearance from Jane Fonda was simply fantastic.