Critical Week: The happy couple

Watching The Proposal, there's very little doubt where it's going, as Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock bicker their way to true love. But at least they have an infectious chemistry that keeps us smiling. And a hilarious back-stage mini-doc on YouTube gives us a glimpse how they kept the silly energy on-camera as well. Have a look: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH9qwa4Avlw

Also last week, I caught up with the third instalment in the trilogy, Goal III, subtitled Taking on the World but actually a much gloomier look at world-class football than the first two films. No wonder it's going straight to dvd next week. I also saw Three Kingdoms, a gritty Chinese battle epic based on the same 14th century novel as John Woo's more exhiliarating Red Cliff. And then there was the Swiss yodelling doc Echoes of Home, which is indescribably odd and probably only for extremely curious filmgoers. My best film last week was another doc, shot in 1974 but assembled this year: Soul Power tells the story of the music festival that ran alongside the Ali-Foreman Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire. It's even better than its Oscar-winning companion piece When We Were Kings, about the boxing match.

This week's films include the offbeat romance Adam, the Irish runaway drama Kisses, the acclaimed Italian drama Mid-August Lunch, the Vogue doc The September Issue, and the next awkwardly titled summer blockbuster, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.