Critical Week: Call the police

It was an odd week for London critics, mainly because two major studios uninvited us from two very high-profile film screenings, saying we could watch them later because they had more important people they wanted to see the film (usually their friends and bloggers who are easily impressed by free movies so never say anything remotely critical about the film). This is happening with alarming regularity here, to the point where normal working journalists will not be allowed to see the final Twilight movie at all.

Anyway, the films we did see this past week were all off the beaten path, including the seriously offbeat (and slightly uneven) British black comedy May I Kill U starring Kevin Bishop (pictured), the clever and involving Norwegian comedy-drama Happy Happy, and the moody and moving Israeli sequel Yossi. There were also four docs: Hit So Hard is a lively exploration of drummer Patty Schemel's journey through drugs; We Are Legion energetically explores the hacktivist movement; McCullin follows the noted British photojournalist through a series of harrowing assignments; and Tempest is a rather fragmented look at an urban theatre group's take on Shakespeare.

This coming week, if we're not unvited, we'll be seeing Colin Firth in the Gambit remake, Denzel Washington in Flight, Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln, Toni Collette in Mental, Aaron Paul in Smashed, plus a few films with more than one word in the title: the animated ensemble adventure Rise of the Guardians, David Chase's 1960s drama Not Fade Away, and Luis Tosar in Sleep Tight.