Critical Week: Battle of the bulge

Yes, UK critics were screened the all-star ensemble rom-com What to Expect When You're Expecting this past week, although our reviews are embargoed until five days after the film opens in the US. Seems a bit extreme, but there it is. Meanwhile, we had a very late press screening of Tim Burton's Dark Shadows, which almost gets the creepy-witty tone right even if the film's structure doesn't hang together. And we had to buy our own tickets to see the horror-comedy sequel Piranha 3DD, which many of us did because the first film was such a guilty-pleasure gem. Sadly, this one doesn't work on any level.

Off the beaten path, we sa a range of films. There was the blackly comical but slow-building haunted hotel romp The Innkeepers, the inspiring but cliched British world-class athletes drama Fast Girls, the silly but amusing 3D animated feature Top Cat: The Movie, the wasted genius premise of Nazis invading from the moon in Iron Sky and, best of the week by a wide margin, the hugely engaging geriatric table tennis doc Ping Pong.

This coming week we have some more very late screenings, including Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator, Will Smith's Men in Black 3 and Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom. Squeaking in just a tiny bit earlier are Kristen Stewart's Snow White & the Huntsman and Ken Loach's The Angel's Share. And a bit further afield we have Willem Dafoe's The Hunter, Kristin Scott Thomas' In Your Hands and Nadine Labaki's Where Do We Go Now.