Critical Week: Teenage kicks

It's been a slow week for screenings, perhaps a brief intake of breath before the awards season kicks off in earnest. My first awards-consideration screenings are late next week. In the meantime, this weeks' screenings included The Edge of Seventeen, an unusually edgy teen drama starring Hailee Steinfeld with fine grown-up support from the likes of Woody Harrelson and Kyra Sedgwick. The other big movie was The Accountant, the slick but preposterous Ben Affleck autism-gangster thriller that's entertaining only if you don't think about it.

Further afield was the micro-budget British thriller The Darkest Dawn, which makes up for a simplistic script with some sharp acting and inventive effects. Ron and Laura Take Back America is an extended sketch-style comedy-doc lampooning head-in-the-sand right wing politics. And I also finally caught up with Clint Eastwood's 1997 southern gothic melodrama Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, starring baggy suited John Cusack and a scene-nibbling Kevin Spacey, plus a notable cameo from a young Jude Law.

Things are still slow over the coming days, with just three press screenings: Gael Garcia Bernal Pablo Larrain's biopic of the poet Neruda, the Italian drama One Kiss, and the UK premiere of the Korean thriller The Truth Beneath. I also have several screeners to watch at home....