Critical Week: Don't be shy

The weather perked up this week, giving us three days of summer-style heat to revel in just as lockdown restrictions eased slightly. It's been great to get outside each day and enjoy it, and I hope there's more of this soon (we've returned to the chill again today). Meanwhile, I'm back to normal movie-watching after the festival glut of the past two weeks. The most notable film I caught up with this past week was the Oscar-nominated Tunisian drama The Man Who Sold His Skin, a fiendishly clever and remarkably moving film that uses a true premise to explore enormous issues in an earthy, often witty way. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Undine • The Man Who Sold His Skin
PERHAPS AVOID:
Chaos Walking • Last Call
ALL REVIEWS >

There are also important themes in the Canadian drama Like a House on Fire starring Sarah Sutherland, although the film is relentlessly mopey. Jeremy Piven is charming but miscast in the loose, ramshackle comedy Last Call. The British romance The Drifters is an enjoyably freeform take on the immigrant experience with a slightly contrived plot. And from Kosovo, the dark drama Zana is a gloomy but involving look at the emotional devastation of war.

Films coming up this week include a very late press screening of the blockbuster mashup sequel Godzilla vs Kong, Jessica Brown Findlay in the horror The Banishing, the Argentine thriller A Common Crime and the Chilean doc The Mole Agent.