Critical Week: Say no more

Working long days as part of a TV series crew doesn't leave a lot of time for watching movies, so I've only seen a handful of films this week - either late at night or on days off. Alicia Vikander stars as Katherine Parr in Firebrand opposite Jude Law as a particularly corpulent Henry VIII. It's a very well made film, if a bit on the dry side for such a, ahem, beefy tale. Michael Keaton is back 35 years later for more ghostly hijinks in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, as are Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara. Tim Burton brings a robust energy to the film, although as before there's not much to it.

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Ian McKellen gleefully munches the scenery as the title character in The Critic, set in London's theatre world in 1934, with strong support from Gemma Arterton and Mark Strong. The dialog crackles, but the plot gets bogged down in corny twists. Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark are excellent as always in the British folk horror thriller Starve Acre, which is superbly creepy and very yucky, if never terribly scary. And I revisited one of my very favourite films for its 50th anniversary: Young Frankenstein is perhaps Mel Brooks' finest movie, a warm homage that's packed with classic hilarious moments featuring the ace Gene Wilder, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Peter Boyle and Madeline Kahn. I could happily watch this movie every day, forever.

This coming week, I'm watching James McAvoy in Speak No Evil, whistleblower biopic Winner, Scottish thriller Kill and teen anime Trapezium, plus anything else I can find time to watch while working long days. 

Critical Week: I'm tired

I'm on a family weekend in the California desert, and we watched a time-honoured favourite together: Mel Brooks' 1975 classic Blazing Saddles, starring the iconic Madeline Kahn, Gene Wilder, Cleavon Little and Harvey Korman. Its rhythms are rather dated for today's rapid-fire comical style, and a lot of the film is deeply uncorrect politically, but I still adore its absurd sense of humour, raucous pastiche and some unforgettable gags. We also took a trip to the local cinema to see Rocketman, the Elton John biopic that's rendered as a musical fantasy. It's surprisingly dark at times, cleverly using the iconic songs out of sequence to generate strong emotional kicks here and there. And Taron Egerton is superb in the lead role.

There are also other films out this week in the US that I want to see, including Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Brightburn, Ma, plus X-Men Dark Phoenix next week, and perhaps I can catch Gloria Bell out on home entertainment release in North America (it opens in UK cinemas next week). It just depends when I can sneak out to a cinema...