Critical Week: More of the same

Yes, there were more post-apocalyptic vampires in cinemas last week, and critics had to wait until just two days before Daybreakers opened for the first press screening. Surprise, it wasn't half bad - a decent guilty pleasure complete with enjoyable performances from Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe. Alas, it wasn't such a great week for Sandra Bullock, who after the wild success of The Proposal and The Blind Side gave us the resolutely unfunny comedy All About Steve. Can't win 'em all.

Also last week I had screenings of the extremely uneven British drama Freestyle, about innercity basketball tricksters; the even more uneven British thriller Tony, about a loner who kills people; the shamelessly crowd-pleasing British doc Only When I Dance, a compelling story about two aspiring ballet dancers from the favelas outside Rio; and the award-winning Aussie drama Samson & Delilah, a fiercely cleverly almost-wordless Aboriginal romance.

This coming week is just as busy as London critics shuffle through the snow to see late screenings of the imminent The Book of Eli, with Denzel Washington in yet more post-apocalyptic action; the Harrison Ford drama Extraordinary Measures; the Ecuador vs Big Oil doc Crude; the British doc Oil City Confidential, which isn't about oil at all (it's about the 1970s band Dr Feelgood); the British indies The Infidel and Beyond the Pole, which both have some comical influences; and the reportedly difficult/brilliant Argentine film The Headless Woman.