Critical Week: Not-so-ordinary Joes

Made up of the coolest elements of every summer blockbuster in recent memory, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was the most fun of all my press screenings last week. I just sat back and enjoyed the preposterous story, outrageous action and endless digital trickery. Those rubbery-plasticky body-hugging suits are pretty hilarious too.

The rest of the week was a mixture of pure randomness, from the superb Chinese action biopic Ip Man to the painful Eddie Murphy family comedy Imagine That, from the quirky and endearing British indie Bunny & the Bull to the bloated and murky British period horror take on Dorian Gray, from Michael Keaton's understated directorial debut The Merry Gentleman to the sloppy wackiness of Table for Three. There were memorable moments scattered among all of these films, and some of them are well worth seeing, but none offered as much fun as the Joes did.

This week we have the Renee Zellweger thriller Case 39, the South African aliens-amongst-us thriller District 9, the award-winning buddy comedy Humpday, the anxiously awaited adaptation of the bestseller The Time Traveler's Wife, the British book-publishing comedy The Agent, and the boarding school drama Afterschool.

And next weekend is Movie-con, run by the BFI and Empire in an attempt to bring some of that San Diego Comic-con hysteria to London. I've already seen all of the films they're screening in full (Inglourious Basterds, Adventureland, The Hurt Locker), but it's the preview footage I'm looking forward to! Watch for special daily reports from the Southbank....