Critical Week: Road rage

Nicolas Cage somehow managed to find yet another crazy hair-do for his latest mindless action romp, Drive Crazy, which was shown to UK critics last week. This was one of five 3D movies we saw last week - this trend is getting a little oppressive. Especially since the effect only worked on one of the movies: Werner Herzog's extraordinary doc Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which feels like time-travelling 30,000 years into human history to explore unseen cave drawings in France. The others were the underwater cave-diving thriller Sanctum, which drowns in its melodramatic plotting; the live-action/animated film version of Yogi Bear, which is more fun than it looks; and the 3D instructional film The Lovers' Guide: Igniting Desire, which has no actual instruction at all and doesn't even work as soft porn.

We were able to ditch those murky 3D specs for the rollicking and fairly simple action romp I Am Number Four, the outrageously grisly 13th century British battle movie Ironclad, the clever and harrowing terrorism thriller Essential Killing, the raucous vampire-zombie thrills of Stake Land, and Alex Gibney's startlingly insightful doc Client-9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer. Yes, it was a busy week.

Coming up we have the Kate Hudson rom-com A Little Bit of Heaven, Emilio Estevez directing his dad Martin Sheen in The Way and the Bolivian drama Southern District. There are bound to be more screenings coming up this week, but I think I'd enjoy having a few evenings off for a change. Just to recover from the eyestrain.