Critical Week: Watch the skies

I'm enjoying a quieter life this week after the end of the film festival. Screenings have mainly been smaller films like I Kill Giants, a strikingly well-made teen fantasy drama starring Madison Wolfe (above) and Zoe Saldana. Modern Life Is Rubbish is an engaging if somewhat awkwardly structured British romantic drama with cool musical overtones. Baja is a low-concept, low-energy road trip comedy that never quite hits its stride.

There were two films from Germany: Shelter is a cleverly subtle espionage thriller with very strong characters; and Western sharply explores personal and cultural issues between German workers and locals in rural Bulgaria. From Spain, The Night of the Virgin is a bonkers horror comedy with excessive grisliness and some wobbly storytelling.

Coffee House Chronicles is a multi-strand relationship comedy based on a web-series and featuring a huge number of characters in witty/corny little sketches. And I also managed to catch the live American broadcast version of one of my favourite musicals, Jesus Christ Superstar, a fairly straightforward version of the Webber & Rice classic featuring terrific musicians. John Legend was superb in the title role, but the show-stealing performance came from Brandon Victor Dixon as Judas.

This coming week I'm watching Dwayne Johnson in Rampage, Lily James in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, teen horror Truth or Dare, designer documentary McQueen, and the Basquiat doc Boom for Real.