Critical Week: London's gleaming

UK critics last week got to see the upcoming London crime thriller Welcome to the Punch, starring James McAvoy and Mark Strong. Our comments are embargoed ahead of the March release date, but the still above gives a pretty good idea of filmmaker Eran Creevy's sleek, glassy approach. We also watched Pierce Brosnan's gentle and rather enjoyably sweet romance Love Is All You Need, which is actually a Danish film (directed by Susanne Bier and costarring Trine Dyrholm and Paprika Steen) set mostly in Italy.

Speaking of Italy, we also caught up with last year's surprise Berlinale winner Caesar Must Die, a clever twist on Shakespeare by the Taviani Brothers. And we were glued to the harrowing genius of Alex Gibney's latest documentary Mea Maxima Culpa, which compellingly, lucidly sets the abusive-priest scandal in the context of a staggering global conspiracy.

This coming week I have a few more films to catch up with - since I took a bit of time out last week to work on the London critics' awards ceremony. I'll be seeing Rafe Spall and Rose Byrne in the rom-com I Give It a Year, Mia Wasikowska and Nicole Kidman in the acclaimed Sundance film Stoker, Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral, the British drama Papadopoulos & Sons, the festival hit A Hijacking, the anime horror The King of Pigs, and the indie horror Crawl.