Critical Week: At world's end

Notorious filmmaker Lars von Trier's latest opus Melancholia screened to London critics this past week in the wake of its controversial but award-winning premiere at Cannes. It's another ambitious, provocative, achingly gorgeous movie that leaves us shaken and unsure whether we love or hate it. Just my kind of film, in other words.

More populist entertainment was had in the relentlessly hilarious Bridesmaids, starring Kristen Wiig, although the relentlessly unfunny Bad Teacher, starring Cameron Diaz wasn't nearly as much fun. The indie film this week was Jamie Thraves' Treacle Jr, a South London comedy-drama that's slightly uneven but will probably be praised like Thraves' The Low Down. The foreign film was David's Birthday, a moving but rather operatic drama from Italy. And the documentary was Born to Be Wild 3D, telling the superb stories of two women who rescue baby animals in breathtaking, razor-sharp Imax.

This coming week sees some more festival films on the screening schedule: Ewan McGregor in Beginners, Mel Gibson in Jodie Foster's The Beaver, a much-acclaimed dual performance from Dominic Cooper in The Devil's Double, James Gunn's comedy Super, and maybe I'll finally find time to catch up on a few screener discs I still need to watch. Next Monday, though, I'm off to Scotland for the drastically revamped 65th Edinburgh Film Festival: watch here for daily blogs and all the dirt. If there is any.