Critical Week: Survival of the fittest

Awards season continues with nightly Q&As designed to focus voter attention on various films. I've been able to host a couple of these, which has been a lot of fun, chatting with actors and filmmakers around the world. Another group I vote in, the Online Film Critics, released its nominations this week. Beyond awards contenders, films I watched this week included Outside the Wire, a standard action-packed military thriller elevated by lead actors Anthony Mackie (as a robot!) and Damson Idris. From India, The White Tiger is a must-see blackly comical drama about a guy who leaves his low caste behind through sheer determination.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Are We Lost Forever
The White Tiger • Breaking Fast
PERHAPS AVOID:
The Exception • Imperial Blue
ALL REVIEWS >

It was an eclectic week of movies for me. From the US, Brothers by Blood is a growly, grim Philadelphia crime drama starring the always excellent Matthias Schoenaerts and Joel Kinnaman. From Sweden, David Fardmar's Are We Lost Forever is a gorgeously observed drama about a painful breakup. From Belarus, Persian Lessons is a fascinating true story of one man's survival during WWII, starring the terrific Nahuel Perez Biscayart. And from Denmark, The Exception is an intriguing thriller with big themes, although the filmmakers take a rather contrived approach to it.

I still need to catch up with a couple of this week's releases, including the acclaimed Mexican drama Identifying Features and the shorts collection The Male Gaze: Hide and Seek, plus the biographical documentary The Capote Tapes. And there are also some awards contenders: Radha Blank's prize-winning The Forty-Year-Old Version, the animated drama The Wolf House and the five shorts nominated in the London Film Critics' awards.