Critical Week: Eric's the man

It's hardly surprising that it took an ex-footballer to bring out Ken Loach's warm and funny side. His new film Looking for Eric caught the Cannes audiences by surprise and left London critics smiling last week too. It's a charming little film with a serious drama at its centre (of course) and a hilarious comedic pay-off. And Eric Cantona is terrific as himself - poking fun and having a ball, much as he did as the snooty French director in last month's French Film.

Other movies offered up to London critics last week included the Beyonce bunny boiler Obsessed, which is far more trashy fun than it has any right to be; the grimly involving and gorgeously shot Mexican migrant drama Sin Nombre; the ever-so-slightly more edgy high school musical BandSlam; and the gripping guerrilla journalism doc Burma VJ, which examines how video footage of a vicious closed society makes it to our newscasts.

This week is another odd mix of screenings, from the Sandra Bullock-Ryan Reynolds rom-com The Proposal to the Chinese war epic Three Kingdoms, by way of the Iranian experimental film Shirin, the yodelling doc Echoes of Home, and the concluding chapter in the trilogy Goal III: Taking on the World, which is sadly going straight to DVD here in the UK. Probably because Eric Cantona's not in it.