Critical Week: Under attack

There's been some tentative move to ease lockdown, but cinemas are still mainly showing old movies (The Empire Strikes Back is No 1 on the UK box office chart this week). I had my first meal in a restaurant since early March -- well outside it on a distanced table. But the weather has been gloomy, which is more suited for watching movies at home really....

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Sunlit Night • The Painted Bird
Palm Springs
PERHAPS AVOID:
Fatal Affair • Getting It • Divos!
FULL REVIEWS >

The biggest movie I saw this week was the gripping WWII thriller Greyhound, which no doubt would have looked better on a big screen. As always, Tom Hanks is solid as a captain shepherding a convoy of ships through a pack of Nazi submarines in the North Atlantic. Much better is the Andy Samberg comedy Palm Springs, a bit of time-loop madness that's both clever and surprisingly deep. By contrast, Fatal Affair is a simplistic and derivative thriller that wastes excellent actors like Nia Long and Omar Epps.

As for arthouse titles, The Sunlit Night is a very smart comedy-drama about a young American painter (Jenny Slate) working in Arctic Norway for a summer. It's quirky and involving. Carmilla is an atmospheric 19th century gothic freak-out based on a pre-Dracula vampire novel. It looks amazing. From Denmark, Dreambuilders boasts seriously impressive, ambitious animation and some great characters. But the goofy comedy Divos! never lives up to its promise, and Getting It has a solid story but works too hard to praise its writer-director-star. There were also two entertaining, offbeat docs: In Bright Axiom is about a playful secret society that sparks imagination and collaboration, while Superhuman: The Invisible Made Visible explores the untapped power of the mind's connection to, well, everything.

Films to watch this coming week include Elisabeth Moss in Shirley, Brenton Thwaites in Ghosts of War, Josh Hartnett in Most Wanted, underground boxing thriller American Fighter, horror movie Open 24 Hours and the Italian drama Piranhas.